Chapter 8 "COPS"

"I am a beautiful woman!" She emphatically reminded me of this. I sighed. It was Tara. She was speaking in my head again. The three year old conversation had the distortion of a telephone call. I remember it sounding more personal. It was some long forgotten conversation in between the mist and mystic of our relationship.

"I DO have men that ask me out, and I think I'll take 'em up on the offer," she continued. "And maybe I'll find a man that actually thinks as much of ME as he does of HIS FRIENDS!" I sighed again, and then I slowed down time to watch her stamp her foot on the ground and stomp out of the room like a little girl. She slowly stormed out of our college apartment, looking more beautiful than she ever did. I groaned as if I was kicked in the stomach. "Do YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"

"No, I really don’t get you sometimes," I muttered.

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!? CITIZEN? COMPLY. I am going to restrain you for my protection." I was dazed, it happens sometimes. When I am in terrible, stressful situations, sometimes I think back on my past and sort of block out the present. At present, I was slammed up against the door of my car. My stomach was reeling for two reasons. One, I was being detained by an officer of the law. Two, said officer slammed me into my side view mirror as I was daydreaming.

"Is that necessary, man?" I wheezed.

"COMPLY, citizen." He cranked the cuffs and my wrists into the small of my back.

"Affirmative...fuckin-A,” I could barely breathe. He spun me around and put me on my ass, nearly dumping me off the curb and into the space between my car and the curb. "Oh! Nice! Thank YOU very much officer!!" He still had a hold of my shirt and my legs were skitting about on the grass as he pulled me closer to the sidewalk. Finally, he layed my ass to rest on a wettish patch of grass with a grunt and stood there panting and regarding me.

"Twenty-one-oh-one." His radio went psssshhht.

"Go oh-one." It was dispatch.

"I'm oh-one...standby." He regarded me for about a minute, while catching his breath for some reason. It was as if he had a mighty foot pursuit in apprehending the furious "missile throwing bandit". I was trying to catch my breath from the side view mirror that I caught in the solar-plexus. What a drag.

I will digress, at this point...

I am of the theory that the show "COPS" has done nothing more for society than breed a new smarter criminal, and a new form of cop. This form of cop automatically thinks, no matter how small the bust, that he is somehow being secretly taped. (In a way, they are, via the front camera on their squad car. I suspect that this tape is used solely for police’s advantage and not the suspect's.) So now, I am about to hear from him, not only how he apprehended me, but why, and then he will start on some heavy handed and blunt street cop interrogation.

"COPS" has also bread a new kind of criminal. If you notice, in the later seasons, after COPS: FLORIDA and after COPS: KANSAS CITY and yes, even after COPS: DENVER, the subsequent episodes had less and less of the blurred-blob-over-the-face shit. Why? Dear reader, I'll tell you. It's because, they make you sign some kind of binding legal paperwork to show your face on TV. By signing whatever that form is, they have to give you certain rights. For some reason, it used to work in the favor of defense lawyers. What do they say at the beginning of all COPS shows? "ALL SUSPECTS ARE INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY IN A COURT OF LAW." Have you noticed that there are no new COPS episodes? There is no new season. It’s still the same shirtless mullet quaffed idiot from 1996. It works out that the criminal's lawyer can subpoena ALL the footage taped during the show. That means any wrong doing by the officer in rolls and rolls of tape can be brought to trial by the defense attorney. That means ANYTHING that the cop did on his supposed documentary run was under scrutiny. Word on the street became this: If you're on COPS, you get off. More and more people were advised to go ahead and sign the waiver, and let their faces be shown on camera. FOX was cool with it, but it became a judicial snafu when anyone tried to prosecute.

The defenses ranged anywhere from, "The cameras made me do it!" to "Man, I thought I was on the REAL WORLD or sumfin." More often than not, it worked. Anyway, all that footage that they still play, on weekends or whenever there is some dead ratings spot on the FOX network, you can be sure COPS is on. The smart criminals have learned volumes from it…Well, anyway I have. Seasons and seasons of episodes have taught me about the cop standard operating procedure. Personal experience has taught me even more. A big bust means more than one cop, and when there is more than one cop, they have to get their story straight at the end of the bust by replaying the bust through conversation. (i.e.: "You were over there, and I was here, and we found him under the kiddie pool, yeah?" Then you restrained him by placing your knee on his face for our protection.) You see this happen all the time on the show. They are planning to testify against you before the report is even filed.

This is my theory and god knows I’ve had chances to test it out, but I’ll get to that later.

I knew that I was not under arrest, or I'd be read my Miranda and poked oh-so-carefully via my head into the squad car, so I was mute, except for the cries of pain as I endured the abuses that were being inflicted upon me by this brute. I've been well trained by our beloved media. So I sat there watching the officer huff and puff as he walked two paces left to right and back again.

He stared at me the whole time; meanwhile, pairs of Hari-Krishnas were walking past our little scene. Two men walking hand in hand…huh. Finally, he spoke, here comes the cop interrogation.

"Drivers license, sir.

"Well now, that's going to be difficult, since I'm sitting on it." He pulled me up slightly by the crook of my shoulder and lifted it out of my butt pocket and came around to face me.

"How much have you had to drink tonight?" He put on a southern drawl that I hadn't heard until now.

"I didn't really notice that it was night outside, sir." I used the same southern drawl, but I was relaxed about it. He thumbed through my wallet and pulled out my old student ID.

"This doesn't look like you," he said. I squinted at it.

"No sir, it doesn't." He was trying to fluster me. The seven year old ID card really didn't, though. He found my License.

"You know your license is expired son?"

"No it's not," I said. He nodded.

"How much have you had to drink tonight?"

"Sir, I fail to see where this is going," I responded.

"Just answer the question." His southern drawl was getting thicker.

"Not a sip, I reckon...sir." The sarcasm in my voice was evident. That was little much.

"Stand up, buddy." Fuck. He grabbed me under the shoulder again. I stood up and faced him. He was short, really short, and had a really skinny head to boot. I mean, his body armor size must have read XF, for X-tra Frodo. I shuddered and winced to bolster his confidence. He regarded my license again.

"You're not 6'3"!"

"No sir!"

"Not a sip, huh?" He was essentially leering at me.

"Nope." I tried not to breathe.

I don’t care if you’ve had half the bar. NEVER EVER say you’ve had anything to drink. EVER.

Oh here we go:

"I was about a hundred yards to the rear of your vehicle when I saw you launch the first missile at that indigent."

"But..."

"I closed the distance quickly and observed you launch another missile at the green ‘91 Festiva causing that driver to perform an erratic maneuver. It was then I decided to perform a traffic apprehension and subdue you for questioning." Cop jargon. I fucking love it. I was smiling.

"Do you find this funny?"

"No, sir..." Although I wondered several things.

How did this cockjockey ever get a squad car? I mean, he WAS the size of a jockey; wouldn't a Palomino or an Appaloosa be better suited for him? Could he actually see over the steering wheel, or did he need some kind of telephone book/blocks on his shoes device to drive the car? (Ala Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.) It would explain the time it took for him to get out of his fucking car.

Also, how the fuck did he know that it was '91 Ford Festiva?! Who knows that? Isn't it a "traffic stop" and not a "traffic apprehension"? I peered at him. He couldn't be any older than I. I looked at his badge.

C. Mayhew. Imagine that.

"Any relation to Carl Mayhew?" I asked.

"He's my brother, I'm Chris."

"Small world, brother," I said.

"What do you know of him?"

"He was just at a vicious dog attack scene that I was part of." Chris Mayhew then spit on my car and coughed. I groaned at the sight of another loogey attaching itself to my car.

"No shit?!"

"No shit, man." I echoed him.

"That was all over the radios! Did you know the guy?"

"Dade? Yeah, I was there, he beat the ever loving shit out of that thing. First he hammer clubbed it..." I was working my shoulders even though my hands were bound behind me. "Then he hit the fucker square in the face, like he was hitting a human."

"How'd he hold it down if it tore up his arm so bad?"

"He squeezed it between his knees."

"No shit, huh?"

"No shit." We were both excited about the topic. It was clear. "Then he finished it off with a 2X4 and a cider block." Chris grimaced.

"Holy shit."

"To tell you the truth, Officer Chris, I have to pick up his daughter from daycare." That's what I'm doing."

"Why the hell are you throwin shit out your car window?!"

"It's..." I grunted and sighed. "...a long story." "That guy in the fucking Festiva..."

"Spit on your car."

"Yes, so you saw it."

"Yeah, so what?" He hocked a snot-filled honker on my car... AGAIN! "You gonna throw something at me now?!"

"No...Well, I can't."

"Would you?"

"No."

"You can wash your car, and you can pick your battles in life, my friend," said Chris the jockey cop. "With what's at stake right now, do you think you chose wisely?"

"No."

"Well..." He looked me up and down. I was a sorry sad sack. Really. "I'll let you off with a warning." He walked around and released the cuffs.

"Thank you Officer Mayhew, sir."

"Uh-huh. Don't thank me. Thank the daycare worker that's gonna let YOU pick up your FRIEND'S kid? You don't think they let just ANYONE pick up kids at those places do you?"

"Uh..."

"You got a longer night ahead of you than you think, kid. But if it's worth anything, don’t worry about the hassle from me. I saw the whole thing. What did you flip him, a quarter, or a nickel, or a dollar?"

"A dollar."

"Sometimes your best intentions, huh?"

"Most of the time, it seems like, Chris." He was already walking back to his squad car.

"Until that day, then,” He called back to me.

"Until that day, Officer Mayhew."

What the fuck was I supposed to do about Chloe? Officer Mayhew was right about daycare and security. What the fuck was I supposed to do about Jaime?

Fuck, I wish I had a cell phone right about now.