Breaking Rank Read online

  With each new badge, each new phase of learning, I developed a deeper and keener understanding of this: the most intractable problems of my field—racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and other brands of bigotry, fear, brutality, corruption, organizational ineptitude, even individual incompetence—are rooted in the system of policing, a system that includes the laws police are called upon to enforce.

  As my former colleagues will happily attest, I was never a cop’s cop. But throughout my career I witnessed many officers who consistently performed the job with inspiring mastery. They’re the kind of police officers who make a difference in the lives of the people they were hired to serve. My love for these cops is a major motivation behind this book. That they continue to get the job done lawfully and humanely, in spite of senseless laws, dim-witted policies, and childish workplace pressures, is something of a minor miracle.

  It’s a thing of beauty to watch these cops work with kids and parents, the homeless, the mentally ill. To observe their creativity and enthusiasm for community policing, and their talent and courage as they track down and capture the genuinely dangerous among us. Rarely did a day pass in my career that I didn’t register the humor, humanity, and compassion of these officers. Or their willingness to sacrifice all for a risky and delicate mission: in my thirty-four years I helped bury more than two dozen police officers slain in the line of duty.

  Who are the instructors I remember most vividly from my academy days? The ones who told stories. You couldn’t get those guys (not a woman among them) to cough up a theory or a principle if their lives depended on it. Not that I wished for them to turn academic on us: Their tales made the streets come alive. They educated, amused, frightened, and inspired us with images of what we’d face in the real world when we’d finally hit the streets. The instruction may have lacked a tidy theoretical foundation but it was compelling, entertaining, and unforgettable.

  Today, the best academy instructors still tell tales, but they weave relevant theories into those stories, helping new cops understand why they’re expected to do, and not do, certain things. These instructors also get their students out of the classroom and into “mock scenes,” simulations that help recruits get a taste of what it’s going to be like to collect evidence at a robbery, make a felony hot stop, or enter a stranger’s living room to interrupt family violence. In this book I set out to do something of that for you: to help you imagine what it’s like to be a beat cop, or a police chief.

  I’ve approached Breaking Rank not only as a memoir but thematically and polemically, introducing in each chapter a critical issue facing community-police relations and the justice system.

  “My aim is to agitate and disturb people,” wrote the philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno. “I’m not selling bread, I’m selling yeast.” Breaking Rank provides “yeast” for those who seek to help this country move toward more effective, humane, and progressive policing.

  * We dealt in pukes and assholes in those days. A puke was a longhaired youth who flipped you off, called you a pig, or simply had that “anti-establishment” look about him. An asshole, on the other hand, was a doctor, a lawyer, or a clean-cut blue-collar worker who gave you lip as you wrote him a ticket–or who disagreed with your informed take on current events. The world was conveniently divided into “good people” vs. pukes and assholes. There were, of course, regional, as well as generational, differences in the vocabulary of the cop culture. In the eighties, for example, Hill Street Blues Detective Mick Belker’s, “Sit, hairball!” or “Freeze, dogbreath!” was drawn directly from the streets of New York (and widely copied in PDs throughout the country).

  * Removing Managerial Barriers to Effective Police Leadership. Police Executive Research Forum, 1992.

  CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

  CHAPTER 1

  AN OPEN LETTER TO A BAD COP

  On April 26, 2003, Tacoma Police Chief David Brame shot and killed his estranged wife, then turned the gun on himself. His eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son witnessed the event.

  Dear David:

  What was it like just before you did it, inside that cocoon you’d spun around your brain? Had you convinced yourself it was a private matter, nobody else’s business? Were you at peace? I want to understand, David, I really do, as one ex–police chief to another. One ex-spouse abuser to another.

  You were angry, I get that. Crystal had filed for divorce. It made headlines. You saw your name attached not to the talented, visionary police chief you imagined yourself to be, but to the portrait of a monster. Unlike thousands of other abusive men in high places and/or respected positions, you got outed. Until that Saturday afternoon your public persona had been that of a sophisticated, well-mannered civic leader.

  The murder-suicide was hardly private, as you would have known all too well. It shook your city to the core, David. Women’s groups are demanding answers and sweeping reforms. The mayor and city council are scrambling to cover their tails. The guy who made you chief, the city manager? He’s been fired. Crystal’s family is suing the city for $75 million. Tacoma’s insurance company is threatening not to pay (remember, Chief, those premiums don’t buy coverage for the criminal actions of our employees). The FBI is investigating charges of impropriety in your hiring, as well as your ascension to the chief’s office. Your beloved hometown is reeling, people are saying it’ll take years to recover. Of course, you don’t have to worry about the “collateral damage” you caused.

  All your chiefly chatter about “valuing diversity,” treating citizens and your employees with dignity and respect—that wasn’t the real you, was it? I mean you raped a woman, for crying out loud. Someone you dated back in 1988. True, you got off on some bogus “he said/she said” internal affairs finding (and the inexplicable failure of your boss to submit the case to the prosecutor)—but you confessed to the crime. I heard that you broke down in a face-to-face meeting with your victim, sobbed to her that you were a “born-again Christian,” that you were “very truly, terribly sorry” and would “never, ever do that again.”

  But there were other women. Your own employees. One had begun making noises about your having sexually harassed her; it seems you promised her a promotion if she’d share the sheets with you. You pestered another female employee to join you and your protesting wife in a threesome. That would have been more recent, well after you’d pinned on your chief’s badge in January 2002.

  Wife beating, rape, sexual harassment. You couldn’t live with it, could you? Being disgraced publicly. Most likely losing the job you’d politicked so hard to win. Possibly going to prison. You weren’t just angry, were you? You were scared—to death.

  I’m curious, David. Where did you get your attitudes about women? About wives? Employees? Dates? Was it from your parents? Are you aware a therapist convinced a judge that your children shouldn’t be left in the care of their paternal grandparents? They’re afraid of your mother. They say she’s been violent with them. What do you make of that? Did Mom beat you when you were a kid? Not to get too psychological, but did she help turn you into a misogynist?

  How about your dad? Did he mistreat you? If so, I can relate. My old man beat me often. Usually it was with his belt but sometimes it was his fists or his foot or the back of his meaty construction worker’s hand. I remember the worst beating as if it happened this morning. It left me bloodied and cowed. Not until my forties did I come to realize that my father was a criminal, his “discipline” a felony.

  That’s my story, David. Not all of it, of course. (I haven’t told you how Mom would send my brothers and me out to the apricot tree to pick a switch when we’d been bad. It hurt like the devil, I can tell you that, against our bare backs and bare legs. And she’d have this absolutely ferocious look on her face when she lit into us. But I choose to believe she did it to protect us from Dad. It was like they’d cut this deal between them: If she did it during the day he wouldn’t be required to do it that night.) Anyway, like I said, that’s my story. I wish you co
uld tell me yours.

  I wish I knew whether, like so many of us, you were beaten as a boy. Was your dad, the Tacoma policeman, physically violent with your mom? With you? I know I’m dwelling on it here, but answers to these questions are of consequence, they really are.

  Research over the past three decades supports the conventional wisdom: Witness your parents fighting? Statistically, you’re likely to grow into a batterer yourself. Beaten as a child? Odds are you’ll beat your own kids. If you’re both a witness to and a victim of family abuse, your chances of becoming a partner beater and a child abuser, unless you have some remarkable coping skills or some other adult to turn to for support, are off the charts. And, God forbid you should grow up in a household where violence is the norm—spousal assault, child abuse, an everyday vocabulary of violence (“Eat those peas or I’ll kick your ass,” “Wipe that smirk off your face or I’ll slap it off”), and, yes, megadoses of TV and video game violence. If you come from that kind of home, the chances are slight that you’ll not settle differences with your fists or a hammer or a gun. (Either that, says the research, or you’ll turn out pathologically passive.)

  So, those questions about your upbringing are important, David. But the answers, no matter how heart-wrenching, don’t let us off the hook. Not for how we behave as grown-ups. They’ll never excuse what you did to Crystal, even before April 2003. Let’s talk about your behavior first. Then we can compare notes.

  The pushing, the threats to kill her, the choking (four episodes in the year before you murdered her), the angry display of your firearm—I hate to say it but that stuff’s not all that uncommon among male cops, or men in general. But you did some certifiably weird things, too. You sent her flowers with no card . . . so you could study her reaction. You timed her every trip from the house. You checked the odometer on her car. You accompanied her to the bathroom, and into her gynecological exams. You weighed her daily. You handled all the money, giving her a miserly allowance then accounting for it like a cross between Scrooge and Attila the Hun. I wonder, David, if you also:

  •Listened in on her phone conversations?

  •Read her mail?

  •Followed her?

  •Interrogated her when she got home, demanding to know what she did, who she was with?

  •Expected or demanded sex when she didn’t want it?

  •Selected her friends for her?

  •Prevented her from having friends?

  •Threw the family kitten or puppy against the wall?

  •Scissored up her photos?

  •Threatened to leave her?

  •Screamed at her?

  •Glared at her?

  •Made a fist, shook it in her face?

  •Gave her the silent treatment?

  •Compared her body to photos in magazines?

  •Threw things?

  •Punched holes in the wall?

  •Left a threatening note?

  •Forced her to have sex when she was asleep?

  •Called her a whore?

  •Made yourself unavailable to watch the kids when she was counting on you?

  •Took the car, leaving her unable to get where she needed to go?

  •Refused to allow her to have male friends?

  •Accused her of flirting, or of having an affair?

  •Sabotaged family/social affairs?

  •Blamed her for financial problems, or troubles with the kids?

  •Told her she was a bad mother?

  •Told her she was a lousy lay?

  •Told her she was mentally ill?

  •Made light of your abuse, minimizing its effects?

  •Forced her to watch pornography?

  •Told her you were in charge, that your home was your castle?

  •Told her it was the alcohol or the drugs that made you do it?

  •Told her that if you couldn’t have her no one could?

  •Idolized her?

  •Obsessed about her all the time?

  •Flew into rages?

  •Went cold, and stayed cold?

  •Drove recklessly with her (and/or the kids) in the car?

  •Failed to give her messages from people who called?

  •Defined and dictated her role as mother, homemaker?

  •Got jealous when she bought new clothes, put on makeup, got a new hairstyle?

  •Goaded her into talking about other men, then condemned her no matter what she said?

  •Checked the phone bills for suspicious calls?

  •Refused to stop the car when she requested it?

  •Followed her to work?

  •Questioned or threatened her coworkers?

  •Used sex to “make up” for your violence, expecting her to forgive you?

  •Pulled the phone out of the wall?

  •Fought in front of the kids?

  •Used violence against her?

  The whole world knows the answer to the last two questions. But, how about the other stuff on that long, depressing list? You’re familiar with these behaviors, right? If not from your own home then from the annual domestic violence conferences we sponsored in Seattle? I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some conference handouts gathering dust in the filing system of your old office. It would credit people like Michael Paymar, and his book, Violent No More: Helping Men End Domestic Violence. Had you read Paymar’s book, David? Did you see yourself in those pages? I certainly did—I saw me in them.

  I’ve been married and divorced, three times. I recall what it was like to be provoked, the rage that welled up inside when I felt jealous or possessive or disrespected or—insecure. I did things I regret, and since I’m not shy about judging you I’ll tell you what they are.

  I screamed profanities at my wife—in front of the kids (two stepchildren from the second marriage, my own from the first); turned cold, gave her the silent treatment; slammed my fist into the wall; interrogated her when she returned home—surely she’d been sleeping, or at least flirting, with someone else; glared at her; drove at breakneck speeds with her in the car; lifted her and moved her when she refused to get out of a doorway so I could leave (a favorite tactic: get to the car, roll the windows down, and motor like a madman into the mountains or the desert). Which wife? Doesn’t matter. I behaved the same way with each, habitually.

  The worst thing I ever did, from where I sit, was to stand above the woman I loved and rain down madness upon her. I was carrying my seventh or eighth badge by then, each new professional milestone symbolizing, in my delusional mind, the parallel progress I’d been making in “personal growth,” in “enlightenment.” My partner was asleep at the time, on a futon on the floor. She hadn’t returned my calls, wouldn’t commit to some office holiday function I’d felt professionally obligated to attend. She had ignored me. So, I towered some six feet above her in a darkened room and ROARED! Berating her, accusing her, intimidating her. All I lacked was the belt.

  It’s tempting for me to minimize these behaviors, to slough them off as “nonviolent,” because nobody got a cut or a bruise—much less a bullet to the brain. But, make no mistake, David: Shouting, threatening, intimidating are all forms of violence. You know this as well as I do. We both saw it throughout our careers as cops. Big men, loud men, scary men—looming over their women, making them quake in fear. I picture the difference in physical space you and Crystal take up in your respective coffins. You, a six-foot, 175-pound man. Your wife, five feet tall, all of a hundred pounds. Don’t tell me the way we “talked” to our respective spouses wasn’t violent.

  Escalation of nonphysical abuse into physical attacks and physical injury is not automatic, but it happens often enough to be predictable and of deep concern to the women being raged against. And to the children who witness it, shrinking in the corner. And to a whole society overrun by violence.

  I don’t want to be presumptuous, David, but I think I know where you and I parted company: You seemed to believe what you did was okay because you were in charge. The king
of your castle. The patriarch in a dismally dysfunctional patriarchal society that licenses men to command rather than communicate.

  Mary Nõmme Russell writes in Confronting Abusive Beliefs: Group Treatment for Abusive Men: “An abusive man’s belief in the centrality and separateness of the self precludes a definition of his behavior as abusive by disregarding effects of this behavior on his partner. His belief in the superiority of the self permits him to devalue his partner [as] well as to justify abusiveness as a necessary defense to his threatened superiority. An abusive man’s belief in deservedness of the self provides justification for abuse when his needs are not met.”

  Wow. If you’ll pardon my saying so, David, that describes you to a T. Your total self-centeredness, your sense of superiority and entitlement.

  Me? I’ll own the self-centeredness, the “centrality of self” that Nõmme Russell writes about—I was one self-absorbed, narcissistic sonofabitch (I see myself today as a recovering self-absorbed, narcissistic sonofabitch). But I never believed myself to be superior to my partner. Or that I was entitled to hit her. My actions may not have communicated it but I always felt, with each partner, that we were equals.

  Alas, what you and I may have felt about our motives matters not a whit. It’s how we acted that matters.

  There’s another major difference between us, my colleague: I got help, you didn’t. While I never entertained the thought of physically attacking my partner I knew it was in there, percolating: the potential for physically wounding violence. Psychotherapy was a great gift. It helped me understand and deal with the sources of my childhood wounds, and my adult insecurities. It informed me that my parents’ “discipline,” especially my father’s, was as unlawful as it was ineffective. It reinforced my fundamental belief in the moral (and liberating) value of true gender equality.