Hero To Zero 2nd edition (20 page)

Her trophy husband was divorcing her. This was her welcome home.

Heywood was shattered. She called some old friends from the police department, and they came to the airport to pick her up. When she arrived home, the house was empty. There was nothing there—no furniture, no dishes; even the appliances were gone.

It was only going to get worse for Heywood. She immediately went to the bank to close the joint account she’d held with her trophy man. When she arrived, she found the account was empty—it literally had a ZERO balance.

Not only was Heywood broke and her house empty, her trophy man had not paid the mortgage for several months, and their home was in foreclosure.

She went back to work at the police department. Everyone welcomed her back with smiles and hugs, but the welcome was short-lived. Heywood was incredibly tough, but this was just too much. The reality hit her hard, and she started to drink heavily, trying to cope. Her drinking quickly got out of control, and she was picked up for DUI just one month after she returned to work. A DUI is a career-ending charge for a cop.

Heywood not only lost her home and trophy husband, she lost her job—quickly traveling the bumpy road from hero to zero.

ALAN PREVOST WAS A COUPLE
of years older than I was, and was hired at the city about a year before I was, as well. In the department, Prevost was known as a workaholic. He made it clear to every sergeant and shift supervisor that he was available for overtime shifts, at any time, day or night—it didn’t matter.

Prevost lived for the almighty dollar. He was a great example of a cop who was addicted to the job and its salary. He chased overtime with such a vengeance that it became questionable whether it was safe for sergeants to use him to fill their shift openings. For example, in one 72-hour period, he worked 68 hours. Eventually they had to rein him in, because the city had an issue with the number of hours that he was on the job.

Perhaps I should really say that he was on the clock 68 hours. That would be more accurate. Prevost had a habit of cat-napping and working in areas that would allow him the opportunity to catch a few zzz’s, as he put it, when the calls slowed down. The brass loved his supposed work ethic. The rest of us knew that he might be on the clock, but he wasn’t working. He was slow to respond to calls, and did the bare minimum necessary to complete the call. There was no checking of details, no talking to suspects, and no looking into clues. He would arrive, record the facts and write the report, catch a nap, and then clear off to the next call. He saw no problem with this at all.

Alan was as committed to working part-time jobs as he was to working hours at the department. He would work security at rare coin and gem shows, movie set security, retail security, concerts. Any job you can imagine that would require a cop to be present, he would be working.

He was a force in motion when it came to “working.” No one in the department worked more hours on the clock and accomplished less. He made an amazing amount of money sleeping in closets, corners, and dark parking lots, almost never going home except to shower and say hi to his kids, and then set back out in the quest for the almighty dollar.

He was able to “work” his way into a variety of units. He worked bike patrol, domestic violence crimes, gang task force, and even made it into the Community-Oriented Policing (COPs) unit. He never seemed to close any calls in any of the units by arrest, unless they fell into his lap and an arrest was impossible to avoid. The department didn’t track actual convictions, so I have no idea what his conviction rate was, but I can imagine it was less-than-stellar.

Here is an example of his amazing work ethic: One night while working his usual overtime shifts, Prevost was called to a report of two men fighting on the west side of the city. He normally didn’t work that area. The calmer, southeast side was his favorite area to work—fewer calls there, more naps. Tonight, though, he had to venture out and actually hit the west side. It was not exactly lily-white on the west side, and people often broke into fistfights and gang fights. Homicides weren’t that infrequent there. A report came in that the two men were fighting, and had really been going at it for some time.

People on the west side didn’t call police for a fight that amounted to a couple of punches; they only called to prevent someone from being killed, and even that was not a sure thing. Often we would get no reports from anyone that a fight had even occurred. The only way we knew that anything had happened at all was when people started showing up in the local emergency rooms with knife wounds or gunshot wounds. A car would pull up, drop off the bodies and drive away. Seriously, that was the way it was done. Dump the injured bodies and go.

Anyway, Prevost arrived on the west side and located the two combatants. They were on the verge of being homeless, and life had become brutally serious for each of them in the last couple of months. Each was poor, hungry, and literally fighting for survival. No one ever found out what they had been fighting about. They were both bloodied, and had beaten the hell out of each other.

Prevost did the usual bare minimum, asking them if they were okay. Did they need medical attention? Did anyone want to press charges? Because if they did, he would have to take them both to jail.

That was his standard approach: find a way to make the incident go away as quickly as possible. The less paperwork, the better—and back to the power nap.

The two men could not afford medical care, and neither wanted to be arrested. Each quickly agreed to leave the area immediately and go his own separate ways—no harm, no foul.

Prevost was happy with that solution, and minimized the seriousness of the fight. He claimed on the radio that neither combatant was seriously injured and that their disagreements had all been worked out. He was clear from the call.

Reality was very different. One of the combatants had been so severely beaten (which was painfully obvious at the scene) that he died the next day. He had severe internal injuries, and a bleeding hemorrhage on the brain. The mutual combat call had just become a potential homicide.

Detectives were called out. They investigated and discovered that Prevost had been assigned the call. Homicide detectives contacted Prevost to see if he had his notes from the incident.

It wasn’t unreasonable for them to expect that he would at least get the men’s names, dates of birth, physical descriptions, and addresses. The usual bare minimum a patrolman would obtain at a call requires at least checking for any warrants on the suspects, and that would require obtaining identification and making a positive ID of anyone involved in the call.

However, this was Prevost. That would require more effort than he put into 95 percent of his calls. He hadn’t run the men to see if they were wanted for any previous crimes, and he hadn’t asked for identification. He hadn’t even asked them their names. He had absolutely nothing to show for his contact with the two men. Nothing.

The detectives were not only amazed, they were furious. At the time, Prevost had been a cop for fifteen years or more. He knew better, but just didn’t care.

One of the detectives mentioned the case to me a few days later. He said that they considered charging Prevost for negligence, but that the department administration had squashed the idea. They didn’t want the bad press. He asked me if that was standard for patrolmen now—not to take any information at a call. I laughed. Standard? No, not for most of us. For Prevost, though, it was normal.

The man died, and no charges were ever filed against anyone. About a week later, Prevost told me his version of the event. He was mad that the detectives had second-guessed him and questioned why he hadn’t obtained either of the men’s identification. He said, “Fuck them, they don’t know what we do on the street. It is easy to second guess us when you’re not out here in the battle.”

I smiled. There would be no changing Prevost. He was never wrong, and saw himself as one of the hardest-working and most productive patrolman in the department.

Somehow, Prevost made it through his career and reached retirement. He continued to drain the department of resources and money by working shifts and details that popped up, while actually producing very little. We called it “sucking a check.”

We compared the work ethic of cops like Alan Prevost and Mike Preston to that of prostitutes who would only give blowjobs. All did the bare minimum on the streets, yet they were all thought of as whores to the almighty dollar, willing to do anything for a buck.

Prevost loved to spend the money he made. It was part of his tremendous ego, making money and then spending it on stuff—stuff he would be sure to tell everyone that he’d purchased. Not that he could enjoy any of it; he was never home. But he did have it all, including tanning beds, laser-disc surround-sound theater systems, night-vision goggles, hand guns of every make and model, Caribbean cruises, motor homes, etc. He even had a home custom-built home with indoor and outdoor swimming pools and a hot tub. All of which he was rarely able to use, because he was a slave to the job.

Prevost thought very highly of himself, as you might have guessed. He thought that he deserved to be promoted and could not understand why he was never elevated up the food chain to sergeant or lieutenant. He knew that he belonged there, but in his mind the kiss-asses had banded together. He felt that they didn’t want a cop who worked as hard as he saw himself working in their ranks, making them look bad. It has always amazed me how people rationalize and warp reality.

When the opportunity popped up at a smaller nearby department to apply for a recently-vacated chief’s position, Prevost jumped at it. He had a resume that was impressive on paper. The reality was very different, but city councils have no idea of what makes a good cop, and even less of what makes a good chief. Prevost could schmooze the brass like nobody’s business. He’d made a career out of making a molehill of effort look like a mountain of results. So the city council did what most city councils do, and hired the least-capable man for the job.

Prevost thought that he’d finally received his due as a cop. He’d jumped over sergeant, lieutenant, captain, and even assistant chief. He was now the chief. Finally, he’d been recognized at a level he deserved. He was given the respect he had earned. He was Chief Prevost. His ego was finally satiated. He had an unmarked car and a secretary, and everyone called him “Chief.” Everywhere he went in the small town, he was recognized and catered to. Chief Prevost had arrived in the big leagues and was living large. Well almost.

One day, Chief Prevost was shopping for a few gifts. He just knew that everyone in the store whispered as he walked past, “There goes the Chief of Police.” He smiled to himself as he walked past the people in the store. It was obvious to him that they knew who
he
was and that
he
was an important man. He picked out some expensive gifts for family and friends, and filled up the shopping cart while stopping to talk to strangers and introducing himself.

He loved the reaction he received when he mentioned casually in conversation that he was the chief of police, thinking to himself, “That’s right bitch. I’m the
man
!” He made small talk with the “commoners” in the store, letting them know that at one time, he had been one of them. Well, at least that’s how he saw it.

The truth was that the people he talked to had no idea who he was, nor did they care.
I
have no idea who the chief is of the city I now live in;
I
don’t care, and I‘ve been a cop for thirty years. No one cares except the people who work for him.

Chief Prevost strutted around the store with his expensive gifts, and then, when enough people had acknowledged him, he headed to the checkout lines. He swiped his American Express Black card, and smiled at the expression on the clerk’s face at the amount he had spent.

Yep. He was a man of means, a man who had earned and deserved your respect.

Karma was about to give the chief a reality check. He walked out of the large retail chain and was approached by the frail and elderly doorman, and asked for his receipt.

Years earlier, retail stores in the US had done research on where the majority of the thefts occurring in their stores originated. They found out, surprisingly, that most theft was internal, meaning that it was committed by employees. One of the most profitable and low-risk ways for employees to steal is for a checker or cashier to fail to scan an item at checkout. A team of professional thieves gets one person hired as a checker at a store, and then the team hits the store over and over, purchasing some items, but not paying for high-priced ones that their “inside man” only pretends to scan. Millions of dollars in profits are lost this way every year.