Back in high school I did lots of Very Bad Things. Very Bad indeed. So bad I won’t talk about it here, though apparently I have no trouble discussing other embarrassing things. Anyway, I only did these Very Bad Things in the company of one particular buddy, R. R did even more Very Bad Things than I, and I seemed to follow her to whatever new Bad Thing she was starting to do, and abandon it before her, only to get caught up in the next wave. This all ended in my junior year of high school, though. I decided to go to an Ivy League university, the names of which I put on an index card and posted above my desk, and buckled down. By golly, it worked!
Back to R. R spent several years as a lesbian (I guess that’s not really a full-time job, but I’m not sure what else she was doing), then ended up in New York City in art school, married to a Middle Eastern guy. And now? Well, now she’s divorced and an NYPD beat cop with a four-block post in Central Harlem. Oh yes.
She called me a few weeks ago to tell me about it and I took some notes (expressly for you all!)
I peppered her with questions.
So when you arrest people, do you run after them?
(If I have to)
Do you have a partner?
(Not yet)
Do you feel safe?
(Not always)
Do you eat donuts and stuff?
(All the time at Dunkin’ Donuts, cops’ll congregate 10 at a time)
Do you still smoke up?
(Can’t, because of the drug tests)
Well, how does your mother feel about it?
(Proud and worried)
She told me all kinds of stuff, like that they still use typewriters. As you’d expect there is lots of bureaucracy and procedures. She described the police force as a “brotherhood–its own gang.” She patrols outside and inside of apartment buildings and projects in Central Harlem, which she says is so patrolled it is essentially “under occupation.” She says people hate them and feel rightly harassed, as they do harass them. Sometimes she’ll arrest people “for bullshit to make quota” and sometimes she’ll “violate people’s rights.” She feels like she’s “gotta correct everybody now, keep people from doing stupid things.” She reports that her “favorite thing is to catch kids sitting on people’s cars and giving them a lecture, asking them ‘Is this your car?, then get the fuck off of it, I don’t want you to sit on my car, do you want me to sit on your car?’, to make it silly; if they give me attitude I’ll give them some more trouble.”
Wow, you know?
3 April 2008 at 9:32 am
Yelling at kids for sitting on cars, yelling at kids for sitting on climbing structures… what’s the big difference? =)
Sounds like you and R ended up in very different places! It is funny to see someone like that become the enforcer, I imagine.
3 April 2008 at 12:15 pm
That is very interesting. I didn’t know that cops have quotas to meet.
How do you keep in touch with high school friends? I haven’t talked to anyone from high school in 4 or 5 years.
3 April 2008 at 12:24 pm
Oh, she calls a few times a year, and I talk to a few others irregularly. Always on the phone; maybe I’ll see people at wedding showers or something every few years. I actually don’t talk to any of my college friends (they all got so busy with med school that we lost touch), except for one I email with once a year or so. It’s kind of backward, but it helps but I live in the state I went to high school in.
3 April 2008 at 1:12 pm
I love seeing where my friends ended up. Because you can remember all the things they said they would do or never do. I am sure they think they think the same of me. It’s the most interesting to see them be parents or like your friend enforcing the law.