Consequence (8 page)

As I work with various training officers, I learn that there are two distinct types. The first type works hard to get me involved in a variety of calls throughout the city. They take me to traffic accidents, domestic disputes, and medical calls. They are observers and teachers and mentors. One of these training officers demonstrates an incredible amount of compassion during our calls. When we arrive on scene, we find people who are often angry and upset. They cry, or yell, or scream. He is calm and professional. He offers reassuring words that quickly defuse impossible situations. He ministers to people in what are often their most terrible hours.

But there is another kind of training officer, too. These training officers teach me things like how to avoid getting involved. They tell me it will be difficult to survive for an entire career unless I pace myself. They tell me I will learn to hate people. They show me where to hide from the public while on a shift. We park under bridges or in dark, secluded parking lots. One officer has a special place picked out in an old cemetery on the south side of Bethlehem. It overlooks the now dormant blast furnaces of the steel mill. From the graveyard I can see the steeple of First Presbyterian Church.

There is a call to an old brownstone near the steel mill. Like many of the brownstones near the mill, it has been turned into an apartment building for low-income residents. One of the residents has failed to pay his rent, and the landlord is insisting we evict him. The landlord has all the proper paperwork from the court system. While not legally obligated to do so, he has allowed the resident back into the apartment to collect his belongings. The resident is drunk. Now he won't leave.

This is near the end of my probationary period. One of the compassionate training officers arrives to back me up, but he sends me in alone to see what I will do. I try to say all the right things and follow all the right procedures but the resident refuses to leave. Eventually the training officer comes in and takes over. He does a better job and convinces the man to be on his way. I escort him outside while the training officer fills out paperwork with the landlord. Outside, the evicted drunk wanders into the street. I order him onto the sidewalk. He wanders farther into the street, forcing cars to swerve and honk. When I approach, he says he's going to the church where they'll take care of him. I say, “I don't care where the fuck you're going, get off the fucking street.” He looks me over and calls me a rookie. I grab his arm. He fights back. I strike him with my extendable baton and drop my handcuffs again.

3.1

In Reston, Virginia, a woman stands up front and admires our attire. “Nice, I actually see some color today. We want people with color in their wardrobe.” Another man stands up front and asks why we think it's important to conceal our identities. We raise our hands and give wrong answers. Finally, someone says, “Because what we do is illegal.”

This is the right answer. Working for the CIA isn't illegal, but working in a foreign country as a spy is. I sit for my personal interview with a man who asks me how I feel about lying for a living. He says he's read my personal essay and respects how important my faith is. He asks, “Do you see a moral conflict here? Do you see a religious one?” I say, “Sometimes it's necessary to lie to evil.”

I'm told to come back for further interviews and evaluation. I'll need to schedule an entire day for language testing. I tell them it will be difficult for me to get time away from the police department. He says, “Here's your first chance to practice your new skill. You'll just have to lie.”

3.2

After six months of riding with training officers in Bethlehem, I'm released from my probationary period and allowed to patrol on my own. My first call is a man with chest pain and difficulty breathing. I remember the bad training officers who told me to pace myself. They told me not to be the first person to arrive on a medical call. That was a job for the guys driving the ambulance. They said, “ABC, ambulance before cop.” I do not want to be this kind of officer.

I am the first to arrive. The man is sprawled on the floor. His wife is next to him. I set my medical kit down and pull out the oxygen tank. I'm nervous. I can't get the oxygen turned on. I forget which valve is which. I stick the tubes up his nose and ask him how he feels. “I don't feel the air,” he says. I say, “Don't worry, it's flowing.” It's a lie. He says he feels better. His wife thanks me.

My days off come in the middle of the week, so when I go back to Reston, Virginia, for interviews with the CIA I don't have to lie to the police department about being sick. But I want to impress the CIA, so I lie to my interviewers about not having lied to the police department. They say I should get used to the feeling. They ask me why I didn't choose to reenlist after 9/11. I tell them I didn't want to spend any more time deploying to war in Louisiana. One of the interviewers is a former soldier who has been to JRTC. He tells the others this is a really good answer. We both know the war in Afghanistan will be over before the Army gets a chance to do any real fighting. And if there's a war in Iraq, we think the whole thing will be fought from the air.

Back in Bethlehem, I arrest a woman for public intoxication. She is a heroin addict. I escort her to St. Luke's Hospital to detox. I handcuff her to a hospital bed while doctors and nurses feed her a charcoal-like solution designed to absorb the drugs in her system. She secretes it onto her bedsheets throughout the night. I hold her down while the nurses change her gown. She spits and spews and curses. At times she begs for mercy. At times she pleads for help. At times she threatens to kill me. At times she urges me to kill her. At times she tells me to fuck her.

The nurses inject her with a drug that induces a moment of clarity. The veil of heroin lifts, just briefly. She cries. She reads my nameplate. She says, “Officer Fair, oh God, oh God, help me.” The heroin reasserts its grip. She shits herself again. This is the worst thing I have ever seen.

Police officers and federal agents from a local task force tell me about the war on drugs. They say it is a losing war, but one worth fighting. I talk to one of the agents about the woman at St. Luke's Hospital and all the terrible things that came out of her. The agent works for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and says of all the drug addicts he's dealt with, the ones addicted to heroin are the worst. He says, “Once they're hooked, there's no way to save them.” He also says that much of the heroin sold in the Philadelphia area originates from the Middle East and helps fund groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It probably helped fund 9/11. I tell him about my language skills and my military experience. He says, “Come work for us, we need you.”

While waiting to hear back from the DEA, one morning I respond to a break-in. A woman on the west side of Bethlehem thinks her neighbor's house has been burglarized. The neighbors are on vacation but she sees lights on upstairs. We enter the house and find open beer cans and bottles of vodka. There are kids passed out upstairs. We wake them up and drag them outside by their feet. Most of them have marijuana. They are young. Only one of them is older than eighteen. I don't need to notify his parents. I arrest him and take him back to the department for processing.

I wait for detectives to come in and take over, but they are busy today. My supervisor says, “It's time to conduct your first interrogation.” I spent weeks at the police academy learning about vehicle code infractions and traffic violations. I spent a single day learning about interrogation. I remember being told it wasn't like TV. I remember being told never to ignore a suspect's rights. I remember the instructor telling us that unless we were nearing retirement, we'd “better fucking read people their rights.”

I read the young man his rights. I ask him if he'd like to talk about what happened. He says no. The interrogation ends. My supervisor says, “You fucking idiot.” A lawyer arrives and the young man is released. My supervisor says, “You suck at interrogation.”

Later in the week, I'm dispatched to a bar where the owner has called for assistance in removing a belligerent customer. The customer has thrown up on himself. He has pissed himself. He throws beer at me. I attempt to wrestle him to the ground but he is far too strong for me. He throws punches and roundhouse kicks. He slips and falls. I shove my knee into the back of his neck, pinning his face in the vomit and piss. Other officers arrive and help me gain control. As I lead him to the squad car he spits beer-soaked vomit onto my uniform. He calls me a faggot. My patrol sergeant says, “Don't ever let someone say that to you. You'll never get respect back.”

I take him to the station. He spits on me again. He says the same thing. My supervisor says I should interrogate him. He says, “And I don't mean read him his rights.” The man attacks me in the fingerprint room. His elbow strikes hard against the side of my face, disorienting me. I am off balance and vulnerable. He grabs my neck and shoves me into a filing cabinet. He tugs at my belt and drags me to the ground. I am taking a beating, but the alcohol in his system disorients him, and I find a way to recover. I create space and distance. I draw my extendable baton and strike him on the arms and legs. He doesn't follow commands. Instead, he struggles to protect himself, raising his arms above his head and flailing with his legs.

I let him out of the cell the next morning and hand him a citation for public intoxication. He apologizes for spitting. His arms are black and blue. He says, “I'm guilty.” My supervisor says, “You're getting better at interrogation.” I arrest the man again a month later. He doesn't struggle. He doesn't spit on me. He doesn't call me a faggot.

Karin and I still go to the First Presbyterian Church. We're uncomfortable with the position the church has taken on homosexuality, but this also means we are less concerned about what now seem like arbitrary and inconsistent rules. Still, the church is an important part of our lives. I continue to attend a weekly prayer group, and I volunteer to teach Bible study to high school students. There's an Alcoholics Anonymous group that meets on the same night as the high school Bible study. I see the man who spat on me and called me a faggot. I pretend not to recognize him.

I respond to a call about a broken window from a newly married couple who just bought a vacant house on Bonus Hill. Bonus Hill is where Bethlehem Steel executives built large beautiful homes with their excessive annual bonuses. The married couple stand outside and flag me down. The house is supposed to be unoccupied, but a lower-level window is broken out and a light is on in the kitchen. I wait for another officer. We enter the house and search all three floors. We find empty beer bottles and drug paraphernalia. In another room, we find soiled clothing and a wad of money. We hear a noise. We draw weapons. The other officer attempts to search a bedroom closet. He pulls on the doorknob but the door fights back. He holsters his weapon, motions to the door, and pulls it open with both hands. The man who is holding the other end of the door stumbles out and falls. I jam my knee into his ear and shout something offensive. He urinates on the rug.

In the squad car the man sits in the backseat and stinks. I ask for his personal information. He says, “You don't recognize me, do you?” We went to Liberty High School together. We talk about Mr. Deutsch's history class and how we all hated Mr. Wetcher. He tells me he remembers the day Mr. Wetcher escorted me out of class. While we were gone, fellow students took Mr. Wetcher's coffee cup and took turns stuffing it down their pants. I talk about the Army and he talks about Bloomsburg University. He talks about his girlfriend in high school. I sat next to her in study hall. They got married. She divorced him. He dulled it with drugs. Heroin abused him. He lost his job. He lost fifty pounds. He lost his house on Bonus Hill. He broke in and continued to live there because it reminded him of his wife. Someone else bought the house from the bank. I wrestled him out. Now I am taking him to jail.

I tell Karin about the man from Liberty High School. She remembers him, too. I tell her about shoving my knee in his face and taking him to jail. She winces, as though I've hurt someone. I did everything right at the house. He had no legal authority to be there. He hid from the police. He resisted arrest. He refused commands. I had every right to use force. But the look on Karin's face makes it impossible to feel as though I protected him.

3.3

I get a job offer from the DEA. The special agent in charge of the Philadelphia office calls me personally to congratulate me. He is excited to hire an Arabic linguist with military and law enforcement experience. He says the agency is eager to get me on board. He says, “You'll be doing some impressive things.”

It is the fall of 2002. Karin and I are settling into marriage. We have created routines, developed friendships with other couples, and talked about starting a family. We both appreciate our individual experiences after college, and we're glad to have had the chance to live our own lives for a time. The Army was a difficult stretch for me, and there was a brief period after the Army when it was difficult to find a job. Lehigh was difficult for Karin. She has spent the last seven years working her way through the male-dominated ranks of the chemical engineering world. It was a lonely journey for her. But we're settled down now. And even though the DEA will require us to be flexible and move every few years, we agree that we're happy together, and we agree that it's nice to have those difficult years behind us.

I receive a packet from the DEA with final instructions and a class date for the training center in Quantico, Virginia. I am excited to be a special agent with the DEA. I schedule a final physical with my family doctor.

In November 2002, I take my last call as a Bethlehem police officer. It is the day before Thanksgiving. There are only fifteen minutes remaining in the shift. I park my squad car in a secluded lot in the city and wait for the day to end. I curse the dispatcher when she calls my badge number. I'm sent to a northern section of the city to retrieve a runaway.