Hero To Zero 2nd edition (13 page)

Several months went by and the financial reality had hit Bilko hard. He could barely afford to buy food, and gas for his car. He was mad and perplexed. He could not understand how he had not been elected by the people of the county as their sheriff. Reality is a hard teacher.

Bilko was so broke, he decided to start using the city gas pumps for his own personal vehicles. Every dollar he saved would help—and besides, he rationalized, he deserved the perk for all he had done for the department.

Bilko had not been informed that there had been several thefts of gas from the city’s gas pumps, and so detectives had installed hidden cameras to keep track of who was pumping gas in order to catch the thieves. Imagine their surprise when wonder boy Bilko pulled up to the pumps on his day off and filled ‘er up. A very quick and surgical internal investigation was conducted, and Bilko was not only let go from his job and decertified as an officer, but was also criminally charged and publically humiliated. He fell incredibly hard and fast from the top of his public relations throne.

With no job, no career, and no retirement prospects, his future was looking pretty bleak. You would think that Bilko would be done with the media.

Nope. Old habits die hard. Once a media whore, always a media whore. Mr. Bilko was contacted by one of his reporter buddies and asked if he would consider giving an interview about his fall from grace.

The reporter did not expect much. No sane person would jump back into the public spotlight after having so loudly proclaimed that he was the answer to the escalating crime rate in the county, and then, a few months later, becoming a member of the “criminal element” he claimed was so intimidated by his mere physical presence.

Mr. Bilko, however, surprised the reporter, and proved more than willing to provide an in-depth interview. At the end of the interview, looking deeply and heartbrokenly into the camera, with tears and snot running down his face, Bilko cried and asked for the public he served to please forgive him. His perfect porcelain teeth shone in the light.

Still not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Mr. Bilko did not understand that the public had seen through his shiny disguise, even if his media groupies had not.

I ATTENDED POLICE ACADEMY AT
a satellite location. It was located at a college that had contracted with the state police academy to provide the same courses as the actual academy, but at a remote location. The coursework and academics were the same, but they were taught by local state-certified cops.

This was where I met Dan Arnold. Dan was a state-certified arrest-control instructor, and a black belt in aikido. He was one of four local cops hand- picked by the director of the police academy to teach the arrest-control course.

On the first day of arrest-control class, we lined up in six rows, and the four veteran cops made us do pushups until we could not do them anymore. I noticed right away that none of
them
did pushups. It was not going to be a lead-by-example class. The motto of the class became, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

We were “worked out” by the four cops non-stop until we all were covered with sweat and some of us puked. Dan stood with his arms folded and watched. Later, on our hourly breaks, he would take out his martial-arts staff and dance around the room in mock combat with an imaginary opponent. In the brief five-minute break, we watched him break into a profuse sweat while he defeated his imaginary foe. He was that special.

Several years passed, and I was now at the same department as the four arrest-control instructors who had worked us out years before. Dan was now one of my field training officers. He was as enthusiastic working as an FTO as he had been in the arrest control class. He offered a lot of wind, smoke, and mirrors, but not a lot of action or help.

Finally, however, Dan found his place in the department. He put in for a transfer and was granted a slot in the department’s traffic division.

Traffic enforcement fit Dan like a glove. It came naturally to him. In, traffic Dan rose to the occasion like he had never done before as a cop. He applied himself almost from day one. After a brief period of time, he was recognized for his efforts in DUI enforcement, and even received recognition at the state level for the impact he had in identifying and arresting drunk drivers. From there, Dan went on to obtain the department’s first Drug Recognition Expert (DRE) certification. Dan sailed through the certification effortlessly.

This was a noteworthy accomplishment. Several others had attempted to get the certification and had been unable to do so. The classes are long, and it takes a lot of determination to obtain all of the necessary real-world drug observations in the field required to get the certification. Dan was proud of his certificates, and posted them in his office. I was checking them out one day when I noticed he had a diploma that stated that he had graduated with honors with a bachelor’s degree in genetic engineering. I looked at the certificate and thought,
Seriously?
Genetic engineering?

“So, do you have a Bachelor of Science?” I asked

“NO!” he said. “Rookie, can’t you read? It says ‘genetic engineering.’”

Rookie could read just fine. Rookie decided to write down the name of the college that had awarded the genetic engineering degree and look it up later on the Internet. Guess what the stupid rookie found out? There was no such college, ever, anywhere, period.

Bad rookie for challenging the genetic-engineer wannabe. What was I thinking? I kept that little tidbit of knowledge to myself. If others wondered about the curious degree, they would just have to check it out for themselves.

The department had an aging fleet of motorcycles that desperately needed to be replaced. Dan again stepped up to the plate and was instrumental in the department obtaining a brand-new fleet of Harley Davidson police-package cruisers.

Dan felt the best he had felt about himself in a long time. He was making a contribution that mattered to the department, and his efforts were noticed and appreciated. Finally, people respected Dan in a way he thought that he deserved. Dan spent several years in traffic and then transferred to the gang unit.

As a gang-unit detective, Dan was the go-to guy for public speaking. He could not put a case together and see it through the courts to save his life, but he could give a presentation to the public that was head-and-shoulders above those of the other detectives in the unit.

Dan excelled at public speaking. He had a natural talent for putting together PowerPoint slides and charts, and making problems understandable to the groups that contacted the department and requested informative presentations.

Dan would meet with church groups and business owners, and even gave a brief at the honors forum at the university. Day-walkers all! All totally unaware of what went on in the streets of their city at night. Dan spoke to them on a regular basis, and made problems seem less frightening, telling them we in the police department had the problems under control and well in hand. It was far from the truth of course, but it comforted them, and that was what they needed.

Dan spent a few years in the gang unit, and then was hand-picked to head up the department’s newly organized intelligence unit. The unit was supposed to gather information on criminals and their activities, matching specific crimes committed to a list of criminals who specialized in that type of crime, matching MO and past history to the people. The idea was to speed up the process of identifying who had committed the crime and making an arrest.

I have no idea how Dan did at that specialty. The chief and his administration chose him specifically. Dan was selected because they thought that he could work alone and master the task at hand. The unit was quietly managed, and no one knew what really went on—probably not even the chief.

Dan, like most cops, had a few issues he kept on the down low. One day, however, he got himself into a real shit storm. Dan had been seeing a woman who was a convicted felon. This was a major faux pas for a cop, especially a veteran cop in charge of gathering intelligence on the criminal elements of the city. Dan met with her on occasions when her boyfriend was gone and “gathered Intelligence” on a pretty regular basis.

The boyfriend became suspicious that something was going on while he was away. Maybe neighbors said something, or maybe he just had a hunch. Either way, he came home early one day and caught Dan in the act of “gathering intelligence” from his girlfriend.

Dan hopped off the woman and grabbed his gun, holding the man at gunpoint. He then handcuffed him and stuffed him in a closet while he thought about what to do next. Yep, this scene went to shit in the blink of an eye. Dan was in a convicted felon’s apartment “gathering intelligence,” which was totally against the rules, and now he had her boyfriend at gunpoint and in a closet in handcuffs. Amazing how fast that happened.

The old cops had a saying that they repeated over and over to the new guys when I was first starting. It was pretty crude, and at the time I thought it was bullshit. But as the years went by I watched more and more of my fellow cops fall by the wayside because they failed to listen to the saying and take it to heart: “The badge will get you pussy, but the pussy will get your badge.” Dan was about to find this out in a big way.

There was no way to make this little intelligence-gathering episode disappear. Next thing Dan knew, he was up on aggravated kidnapping charges and he had lost his job. He was decertified as a cop and would never work again in the field of law enforcement. The incident made the local news and then the national news. I was in another state and actually saw the incident mentioned on TV.

Somehow Dan was able to reach a deal with the prosecutors, and charges were dropped. He had reached the required time limit in the state retirement system and he was allowed to retire quietly after this very public humiliation.

He went from being handpicked to run a specialized unit within the department to being charged with a felony himself. Dan dropped from grace as quickly as his convicted-felon girlfriend could drop her panties for some “intelligence gathering.”

CHRIS COPE IS AN AMAZING
story to me, and maybe that’s because I was a part of the beginning of his incredible flame-out as he came crashing down to earth. Before I tell you about the crash and burn, though, you need to know his background.

Cope joined the state patrol as an enthusiastic young rookie fresh from the state police academy. He had wanted to be a trooper his entire childhood. Some kids want to be firemen or rock stars; some dream of being professional athletes. Cope dreamed of being a state trooper.

One of the proudest moments in his life was not, in fact, graduating from high school, where he was an outstanding athlete, or from college, with his four-year degree firmly in hand. It was graduating from the state police academy, at which he distinguished himself with honors and obtained the class award for the highest academic achievement. Cope had dreamed of this moment, and now it was about to be real. In a few short days he would be assigned to a county to start patrolling its freeways. He could hardly wait to begin his field training with a seasoned trooper.

Cope was a bright and shiny new guy with a bright and shiny future ahead of him. He successfully completed his training, and was set free to patrol on his own. He was highly successful in learning the ins and outs of the interstate, and the political roadmap of the state patrol organization.