Hero To Zero 2nd edition Page 11

  In a few short months, he had proven to be a welcome change from his older predecessor. The school administrators could not have been more pleased with this smiling and less-frightening addition to their faculty.

  In his off-duty time, Davis would often be found attending sporting events the kids were involved in and mentoring young volunteer explorer cadets in the city’s explorer program.

  All good things must come to an end, however.

  Times were tough after the latest economic downturn, and the police department had to make deep cuts in its budget. The SRO program was cut, and Davis was sent back to patrol. He still maintained his presence in the explorer and police athletic programs, however, and volunteered as much as he could in the city’s school district during his time off. He intended to keep his hard-won relationships with the school district personnel relevant.

  Cynical veterans would shake their heads at his enthusiasm for working with the city’s at-risk kids. They felt it was not normal for a guy to become a cop and want to work with kids so quickly. Cops are hired to crunch crime and battle bad guys, getting down and dirty in the streets and learning the ropes of the court system. Davis had spent minimal time on the streets, and the old-timers felt it in their guts that something was different about the guy. No polygraph or psych exam could identify what they tried to explain to each other over coffee. The guy just “felt wrong.”

  Granted, if he had spent more time on the streets, and had paid more dues, they would have been more comfortable with his time spent with kids. Often, veteran cops feel the need to give back to the younger generation after spending their time in the streets; veteran cops thus often end up in the schools trying to teach at-risk kids how to rise above their conditions and make better choices. Young cops rarely end up there so quickly. Cops like Davis who were not yet hardened by the streets and still proudly wore their baby fat just set off the alarms in the old timers’ heads.

  About a year passed after the department had to cut the SRO program, and Davis was still working as diligently as ever in his off time with the Police Athletic League and the explorer program.

  The department had cut deep into many of its programs, but one program that had not been cut was the Internet crimes unit. The ICU investigates cases of people committing fraud online and advertising for prostitutes in online forums. This particular area of investigations is growing incredibly. Davis had shown no interest in the ICU. The unit, however, knew about him, and in the spring of that year had enough information to obtain a warrant to seize and search his home computer. They arrested Davis for attempting to purchase child pornography on the Internet.

  The police department administration issued a press release stating that, as far as they knew, Davis’s illegal activities had not spread into the schools, and they had no report of Davis abusing any of the children either there or in the Police Athletic League or explorer program.

  This was, frankly, a pipe dream. Pedophiles work their whole lives to gain the kind of access to children that Davis had achieved. There was no way he hadn’t abused any of the children he had “mentored” while in such a position of trust in the schools.

  As is invariably the case when a break comes in a case like this one, children who had been too ashamed to talk to their parents finally decided to come forward. After a few more months of investigation, Davis was charged with nearly 200 counts of sexual abuse of the children he so loudly professed to wanting to protect and mentor.

  He had come up with all kinds of clever ruses to manipulate the kids. The one that was best-known to the public was a story that Davis had concocted about a very contagious fungus spreading through the locker rooms of the teams he mentored and coached. He had the kids strip, and then would physically “inspect” them for the virus.

  After a more extensive search of his computer was conducted, a video was found that Davis had made of himself abusing several young boys. He apparently watched it repeatedly to relive the events. He was a very sick man.

  Davis was thirty years old when his twisted house of cards fell apart and he was criminally charged. He’d made himself out to be a hero in the eyes of the people who worked with kids in the inner city. He fooled teachers, administrators, coaches, and even a lot of cops.

  In the end, though, the suspicions the older veterans had voiced about him proved to be true. He just did not “feel right.” No polygraph test, voice stress analysis, or psychological exam had caught this bad seed. He had clearly walked through the gauntlet untouched, and worked as a wolf walking among the sheep.

  The veteran cops knew what the tests could never understand. There is no test to show what makes a good cop. Davis received what amounted to a life sentence for the sexual abuse he had inflicted on the children.

  Davis rose to hero status quickly, showing that the pre-employment tests were worthless. Fortunately he was caught, and dived right back down to zero.

  POLITICS IS ONE THING THAT you never want to involve yourself in as a cop. The politics that can exist at a city or county level can be unbelievably brutal. Greg Johnson found that out the hard way. Johnson applied for a job with the local police department and made the cut. He somehow made it through the gauntlet of psychological tests, polygraphs, voice stress analyses, and background checks. He then passed the physical fitness exam with an almost perfect score. He was physically fit, smart, and eager to make a difference. He graduated from the state police academy and started working the midnight shift after successfully passing his four-month field-training phase.

  Johnson was still on probation, as police departments have learned that even passing a battery of tests is not a guarantee that the new hire will work out. Most departments have at least a year of probation that must also be passed for the new recruit finally to be accepted as a full-time police officer. Johnson passed his year-long probation successfully, without a hitch. Nothing had popped up to show that anything was suspicious about the man.

  The latest round of elections had begun to heat up in the city. The mayor was running for reelection, and had made a lot of enemies in the police department during his previous two terms. His decisions were based on his priorities, not the priorities of the police department, and a lot of times that placed him in a position that was seen as opposing that of the cops.

  Johnson had been a cop long enough now to know that the mayor’s continued occupation of his office meant more cuts for the police department and lower pay for the officers. Like most cops, he hated to sit back and watch while the world passed him by. Just complaining about a problem was worthless.

  So Johnson decided to act. He started to support the mayor’s opponent in the election quite vocally, and actively campaigned for him. Johnson became more and more involved in the city’s politics, and eventually even caught the mayor’s attention. Johnson did this by making up a billboard attacking the current mayor, attaching it to his minivan, and having his wife drive the van through the city. The mayor saw the van and wrote down the license plate.

  The mayor then called his buddy, the chief of police, and had him find out who was driving this mobile billboard through the city. The chief had the license plate checked out and found out the vehicle belonged to one of his own officers. He was upset, to say the least. The chief had his own political aspirations, and he was not about to have them derailed by Johnson.

  The mayor asked the chief to take care of the problem. At first he just called the officer in and tried in a subtle way to intimidate him. That had always worked in the past. Having the chief, who had married into one of the more politically powerful families in the city, as an enemy was not a good idea for a young cop.

  Most cops the chief tried to intimidate backed down. Johnson didn’t; he doubled his efforts in campaigning against the sitting mayor, in effect challenging the chief and mayor to try to stop him from doing so. Johnson had no idea just how far the men would go to smear his name. Like most people, he judged others by his own value system, and it would never have occurre
d to him to lie or mislead others about anything. He campaigned honestly and straightforwardly for his candidate.

  About two weeks had passed since the meeting with the chief, and suddenly Johnson found himself in the middle of a nasty internal investigation. It was highly publicized in the local press that he had been accused of stealing a man’s wallet while on duty.

  The chief was clearly and very publically disturbed at the thought that one of his officers could be a thief. After all, this officer had passed all the background tests and had been working the streets for some time. The chief promised in a press release to get to the bottom of this situation and make sure that if Johnson were found to be a thief, he would be punished.

  Johnson had a rude awakening to the realities of the city’s politics. Right and wrong don’t apply in the political world. The line around what is real becomes very grey when powerful people in a city get involved. They don’t live by the same standards and are not above tactical press releases and baseless accusations to destroy anyone who dares to get in their way.

  Johnson found this out the hard way. At first he fought back and tried to give the chief and the mayor a taste of their own medicine. He knew that the chief had accessed the motor vehicle records that identified his license number illegally; only cops working a criminal investigation could access them. The chief deftly sidestepped this accusation, and it also fell onto deaf ears in the press corps. No one wanted to challenge the powerfully placed chief of police. Johnson continued to take a beating in the easily manipulated press.

  The reality is that nothing was ever proven against Johnson. He was never decertified by the state, and no criminal charges were ever brought against him for theft. The message he received, however, was loud and clear: Keep up this political campaigning, and you will find your life and career destroyed.

  Johnson could not believe what was happening. He fought the good fight and did the best he could, but he was no match for the unscrupulous power brokers of the city.

  Eventually he resigned from the police department and took a job working as a contractor for a security firm. It was not police work, and he no longer felt he was making a difference. He was lost and disillusioned by the experience.

  Good cops are very much living in a dream world at times. They believe in what they think is right. They believe that you have to try to make a difference and be part of the solution, not the problem. Johnson had found out the hard way that the good guys don’t always win. It shook his world.

  He started to bounce from job to job, trying to find the purpose he had felt as a cop. He was never able to find it. His wife divorced him, and he moved away to a smaller city to try to start over. He was a good father, and took care of his kids after his divorce, making sure to spend time with them whenever he could.

  But one night, depressed and feeling overwhelmed at the turn of events that had seemingly destroyed his life, Johnson started drinking. He was pretty drunk when he decided to get into his car and try to go see a girl he had recently met through some friends. He’d driven maybe a mile when the state trooper saw him weaving in and out of his lane. The trooper stopped Johnson and, after performing the necessary sobriety tests, charged him with DUI.

  Johnson could not believe his bad luck. Less than two years earlier, he had been a sworn police officer, proudly wearing the uniform. Now he was sitting in the very jail into which he himself had booked criminals. How could this be real?

  Johnson got out of jail the next morning and tried to figure out what to do. He still hoped to get back into law enforcement, but if he were convicted of the DUI he would never get hired. His future would have to lie in another career field. Johnson was desperate. He had to find a way out of this.

  Johnson had a friend who worked in one of the smaller police departments in the area. He called him and asked him if he had any suggestions. Was there anything that he could think of that Johnson could do to salvage this?

  The ex-cop and current cop talked things over and came up with a plan. They decided to contact the trooper and try to convince him to drop the charges. The plan was a poor one, and in retrospect, you have to wonder what the hell they were thinking. Regardless, they did contact the trooper, and over a series of meetings offered him a couple of thousand dollars to drop the charges.

  He wasn’t about to drop the charges. Soon Johnson was back in the press—front page, as a matter of fact. The article described him as the former police officer who had been accused of stealing a man’s wallet, and who was now charged with trying to bribe a state trooper to drop pending DUI charges.

  Johnson had really dug himself a hole. He ended up pleading to the charges; the police officer he had asked to help him was also charged. That cop also lost his job and was found guilty of the bribery attempt.

  TIM NELSON WAS SEVENTEEN WHEN he went into the army. He was trained as an infantryman and then went on to Vietnam. It was late in the war and he would spend about a year there, and was later shipped home to complete his enlistment. He came back to his home state after his army hitch and bounced from job to job until he ended up testing to become a state trooper. He passed the tests, and found he liked the independence the job provided. He excelled as a trooper. This was when I met him. He was at the tail end of his career, and I was at the beginning of mine. I was a deputy sheriff, and we would frequently go for coffee together during the long night shifts.

  Tim was a solid guy. Those of us in the sheriff’s department felt that the troopers were not real cops like us. They specialized only handling traffic cases, and were completely out of their element if they showed up to help out at a family fight, or, worse, a brawl at one of the bars that dotted the county. Tim was an exception to that rule. The time he had spent in Vietnam and since, working in various contracting jobs, had seasoned him. He could hold his own in any situation, and we frequently appreciated his arrival on a scene. At least he did no harm, and more often than not he helped us out. He was a pretty big guy, standing 6’3”, and he was fairly fit.

  One night the fellas at the local country bar decided they didn’t like the way a group of hippies (yeah, seriously—they said “hippies”) was looking at them. One thing led to another, and a huge fight broke out.

  Every available car was called and responded to the fight. We had our hands full trying to get the scene under control. There were just too many combatants and not enough of us.

  Tim showed up and started to do what very few troopers would ever do, at least while I was a cop. He waded into the fight and started throwing people out. Literally—he physically grabbed them and threw them out. Anyone who tried to fight back found out fast that Tim might be older, but he was still able to scrap with the best of them. Like I said, he was a solid guy, capable in almost every way.

  After the fight was over, we all met up for a quick drink and started to write reports, laughing and reliving the battle we had just survived. That was the reality of bar fights. It came down to survival, and we all knew it.

  Things went on like this for some time. Tim liked to work the late shift, and so did most of us. We’d meet up at the closest 24-hour convenience store and talk about the night’s events over a drink or coffee. If there was ever a hint that anything was wrong, this might have been where it was first evident.

  There was one moment I remember a look in his eye when a beautiful young woman walked into the store. She had obviously just left the nearby bar and was dressed to kill. He eyed her carefully, almost like a predator.

  He then said, “I guess she isn’t drunk, we’ll let her drive home.” That was it. It wasn’t the things he said; it was the look in his eye. Momentarily, he looked evil and predatory.

  About nine or ten months later, I showed up for coffee at the usual time, and Tim was not there. I asked around, and no one knew where he was. It was very much a “do not ask” response I received. Finally I went to the information source that all cops go to when they want to know what the hell is going on: dispatchers.

&nbs
p; They told me that the solid, down-to-earth Time Nelson had been stopping drivers for speeding on a nearby interstate late at night. If they were men, he wrote a ticket and sent then on their way. If they were women, he would stress that they were likely to get a very expensive ticket for their reckless speeding. The ticket would cost several hundred dollars, and then their insurance would go up as well. This was likely to cost them a lot of money overall. Almost without exception the women would say, “Isn’t there some way to make this go away?” Crying, they did not realize the door that they had just opened.

  Nelson would continue to emphasize the cost and the hardship the women had just caused their families, and when he felt he had them right where he wanted them, he would soften his hard-line attitude just a bit.

  Maybe there was a way they could come to some kind of agreement. Apparently this worked for some time. Nelson would make the offer of “working out a deal”—a blowjob in exchange for dropping the ticket. Surprisingly, some women apparently did follow through with the deal.

  Nelson continued to stop speeders and make deals where he could. He was finally caught when he stopped a car that he had stopped before. He recognized the woman as a previous speeder who had “made a deal.” This time, the woman had a female friend with her.

  Nelson felt comfortable making his pitch in a more blatant, in-your-face manner than usual. But the woman had a witness this time, and refused to “deal” the ticket away.

  Nelson had made a big mistake. The next morning, the woman was in the section commander’s office with her witness, filing her complaint.

  Nelson was relieved of duty, and eventually made a plea deal with prosecutors. He resigned as a state trooper and moved on to another career. We were all shocked, because there was no hint of this behavior in anything we saw—except, as I mentioned, that one day and that predatory look.