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Good Cop Karma
By
Paul Addis
Heather and I had just gotten back over to our side of town after spending three hours in the Castro at a birthday party for a visiting gay friend of hers. We were not yet four months into our relationship, when sex and drugs went nonstop from Saturday night through Sunday afternoon and sleep was a fleeting delicacy. There were certainly no regrets about coming home at 10:30 and going straight to bed. The following day was July 4th, and we planned to demonstrate our hearty patriotism by sleeping in as late as we wanted.
Heather had thrown out her back while lifting a dolly from the back of a truck earlier that week, so I decided to drop her off in front of my apartment, then go park the car and bring her overnight bags up to the house with me. I’d lived in the hill for eight years and was undeterred by my parking prospects. Friday night at this hour was a fine time to land a spot. Lots of people would be leaving for dance clubs and dawn-crashing parties, taking advantage of the extra day off work. This theory proved sound when I found a spot on Pacific near Hyde, about two and a half blocks from my apartment.
After racking The Club into place on the steering wheel and doing a last check around the interior for anything a smash-n-grab thief might want, I closed the door and went to the hatchback for the bags. Heather’s red backpack went on my back, my pack around my arms and over my chest, and her shoulder bag over my head and shoulder, hanging down to my right hip. I shut the hatchback and ambled up the sidewalk, looking a bit like a European or Australian backpacker making his way to the bus line.
To my left I saw the headlights of a car that was moving slowly up Pacific Street behind me. A glance over revealed a black and white police car. Both officers were leering out the window at me so obviously that I wanted to turn and ask them, "Excuse me. Can I help you with something?" But I don’t really care for cops and like to keep my interactions with them to a minimum, so I kept moving without paying them any mind. At Hyde Street, I turned right and proceeded up the hill towards my apartment. Suddenly, the police cruiser’s engine roared and the vehicle cut across my path at the first driveway in front of me.
The searchlight immediately lit me up. "We need to talk to you," said one of the silhouettes exiting the car. I raised my hands up and out from my body to show I wasn’t holding a weapon and said, "Sure, what’s the problem?" The smaller of the two, who appeared to be in his late twenties and of Mexican or Latin descent, snapped a handcuff around my left wrist and pushed that arm behind my back. I exclaimed, "Hey, what the fuck is going on here?" Closing the second cuff around my other wrist, he said, "You match the description of a guy who held a girl up at knifepoint for her backpack not far from here."
Clad in a one-piece, sleeveless black leather top that went to my waist, gray military jodhpurs, and knee-high black leather boots, along with my distinctive tribal arm tattoos and shaved head, I immediately wondered what robber could match my elegant industrial punk style sense. "Gee," I responded, "a skinhead carrying a backpack. There must be at least, what, 10,000 of us loose in the City tonight? Good work, guys." The little cop tugged at the cuffs, jerking me backward. "You match the description," he
said tersely.
Police always have immediate power over you. They can beat you up and later claim you were resisting arrest. You can find yourself a 72-hour guest of the county jail, held under no formal charges, and have no Constitutional recourse upon release. All sorts of evil can come to you at the hands of your sworn guardians. Sometimes it’s best to politely let them have their invasive way, then be on yours a bit later having lost nothing but a little time. This was the course of action I elected to take.
"Are you carrying any sharp objects or needles," asked the little cop, who was about two inches shorter than my hardly imposing five foot, six inch frame. He looked around at the front of my body, which was almost completely obscured by my backpack. None of my pockets were readily visible.
"No," I answered.
He then asked, "Do you have identification?"
This was a somewhat trickier question. I decided to be honest. "Yeah, it’s in the pocket of my vest, right next to my amyl nitrate." I figured they’d find the little brown bottle of sexually enhancing inhalant, so it was better to let them know about it now. To my surprise, both cops looked at each other quizzically. "Amyl nitrate," inquired the older, heavier, Asian cop. "What’s that?" I stifled a laugh as to how beat cops in San Francisco could be ignorant of the substance, which was commonly available in porn
stores and pervasive within the gay and hardcore sex communities.
Resisting the urge to comment on their naiveté, I fished a plausible explanation from my understanding of the compound’s vasodialatory effects: "It’s a heart attack remedy that works when you put it under a person’s nose. The vapors then open blood vessels in the brain, dropping blood from the head to the heart, giving it a jump start." Two or three silent seconds passed while my captors absorbed and digested this pseudo-educational lesson. "Oh," the Asian one replied in a flat tone. There were no follow-up questions as to why I’d have such a thing in my pocket. Instead, they moved right along to the business at hand.
"We need to get these bags off of you," said the little one. He began tugging at the various overlapping pack straps without bothering to see which strap ran where.
I said, "That would be a lot easier without the handcuffs."
Unfazed, and now joined by his partner, the little cop replied, "That’s not going to happen."
My patience waned. "Look," I said, "You can’t get them off while I’m like this. They’re set military style." A stunned hush came over both cops and their hands dropped from the straps. Again, both looked at me, this time with awestruck eyes.
"Were you in the military," the little one asked, as if he had accidentally handcuffed a commando and deeply regretted any perceived insult flowing from that action.
Disgusted with the difference a "yes" answer would have made, I responded, "No, I just carry my bags that way. Will you take these fucking handcuffs off so you can get to the bags and my ID?"
Weighing their success with the results achieved, the little one reached for his keys and unlocked my left wrist. I’d seen enough cop shows and movies to know the procedure: raise uncuffed hand slowly and place it on back of head, await further instructions. I did exactly that. However, the little cop felt the need to tell me, "Don’t make any sudden moves," to which I replied, "I won’t. Don’t shoot me."
"Why would I do that?"
The mind can only stand so much idiotic bombardment before the blood thins and a lapse in consciousness occurs. Trying to avoid that result, I took a deep breath and said, "You’re carrying a gun."
Once my free hand reached my head, the Asian half of the duo managed to extricate all three bags with relative ease. The little cop then pulled my hand from my head and replaced it behind my back. He came around my front and asked which pocket held my driver’s license. I nodded to the left pocket and he reached in there, disregarding the amyl nitrate and retrieving only my billfold. From it he took my driver’s license and asked me the usual array of questions about wants, warrants, or tickets. I knew I was
clean and said so. He went over to the cruiser and began the process of running my name through the state’s law enforcement records. Meanwhile, his Asian comrade had finished setting my bags on the ground and returned to me so that he could ease me onto the sidewalk where I could lean up against a tree. After I was seated, he sought my permission to search the bags.
Ordinarily I would never consent to a police invasion of my privacy. But these guys had caught me on the one night when I had no drugs, firearms, personal explosives, or even a decent knife. My turn-of-the-century NorCal existence as an irreverent provocateur and believer in the safe, non-injurious nexus between First and Second Amendment rights made any of these items a fair likelihood in my bag, though firearms to a much lesser degree. Rolling with the circumstances, I agreed to the search.
The first bag he opened was Heather’s red daypack. Inspecting its main pocket with his tremendous D-cell Maglite, he found her clothes, toiletries, and makeup. This didn’t look too good for me since the knifepoint crime victim was a girl. Despite this, the cop zipped the bag shut and set it aside without saying a word. He next opened the front pocket of my backpack, where he found Heather’s heating pad. Again, he silently closed the compartment and moved on to the bag’s second large section. In this, I
carried my personal gear, which was constantly with me: legal pad for jotting assorted ideas and poem fragments, whatever book I was then reading (Naked Lunch at that time), and my personal journal. Looking up at me, he said, "Hmmm, someone’s a student." Stunned once more by the paucity of possibilities within the cop’s mind, I replied, "No, I like to read," emphasizing the last word so as to distinguish myself from the hoards of television addicts polluting the landscape of the American Dream.
The cop made no response to my comment. Then a queer expression formed on his face and he peered down into the bottom of the bag, his trusty Maglite leading the way. I racked my mind for whatever could be down there. Pot? No. Loose ammo? No. Some of those charges I’d built for detonation on the Fourth? No. What the fuck could it be? Whatever it was, he was reaching for it with all the caution due a coiled cobra. His hand retracted from the bag as slowly as it had gone in and when it finally cleared the top, I saw the source of his anxiety dangling between his forefinger and thumb. It was
the thick, black dildo I’d taken with me to the Gay Pride Parade after-parties.
"What’s this," he asked, looking sorry that he hadn’t put on a latex glove before starting the search.
Recognizing the golden nature of my opportunity for some benign mind fucking, I answered, "Oh, that. It belongs to my girlfriend. I let her use it on me every now and then. You should try it sometime. It’s a lot of fun."
Without responding to me, he swung the dildo through the air by its base, showing it to the little cop who was still in the car waiting for the report on me. The little one got out of the car and glared at me. "What’s that?"
He obviously hadn’t heard my first response, so it was now two-for-one in the mind fuck reward department. "It used to belong to my boyfriend, but I dumped him for my girlfriend." Now totally confused and mildly panic-stricken, both cops looked at each other for guidance. Finding none, they turned to me and said in unison, "Are you sure she’s your girlfriend?"
"Tell you what, why don’t we go right up the block to my apartment and wake her up and you can ask her yourself. She might not be asleep yet." Both of them laughed out loud at the suggestion, finally realizing where they were and what possibilities the city held. When he stopped laughing, the little one said, "You’re killing me, man."
I said, "You know why? Because I know I’m COMPLETELY INNOCENT and you’ll be letting me go in a matter of minutes."
"Boy, I sure hope so," said the Asian cop.
The little cop went back to the car, returning a few seconds later with what I already knew: not even so much as an outstanding parking ticket on me. He told me that the victim was en route to identify me and that if the identification failed then I’d be free to go. The girl didn’t get out of the black and white that brought her by, and told the police that I wasn’t her assailant as soon as she saw me. Her cruiser continued driving up Hyde Street towards Union. My captors brought out their keys and released my restraints. They seemed slightly embarrassed by the whole incident, perhaps having seen far more than they ever cared to. Eager to make nice with me, the little cop insisted on writing me a Certificate of Release that would verify my innocence should another pair of patrol officers stop me in the two hundred feet to my front door. "No hard feelings," he asked, holding out his hand for me to shake.
"None at all," I answered, taking his hand firmly. "I look at the whole thing as good cop karma for me. And I’ll take all of that I can get."
Copyright ©
2003 Paul Addis
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