Hero To Zero 2nd edition (7 page)

The chief was also happy. He finally had the perfect example of what his new breed of “super patrolman” should act and be like. He praised Zeller as one of his “finest officers,” and told the press that Zeller was someone on whom he had always been able to count. The file he had been building in an attempt to fire Ray Zeller disappeared.

Meanwhile, the sergeant involved in the shooting, and the SWAT team members, were silent. There was a very real reason for this.

After any cop shoots someone, even in a case in which he shoots someone who is killing random innocent people, the cop is investigated. Every action is carefully examined. He has to have acted in accordance not only with the laws of the state and federal governments, but also with department policy. If there is any violation of any of those three things, the cop is in serious trouble.

It takes several days to sort out evidence and witness statements, and make that decision. That is why cops never comment after a shooting. They are being criminally investigated, and must be cleared before they can make any statement. Every cop knows this.

Ray Zeller knew this, and our chief knew this too. The fact that Zeller could talk the very next day after the shooting, less than 12 hours after the incident, was a silent testimony to the fact that he did nothing at all to protect anyone. Zeller didn’t care, though, and neither did the chief. They were two peas in a pod, both searching for recognition for their “obvious” talents. Finally they both were given their due.

The sergeant and the SWAT team members were eventually cleared of any wrongdoing after a long and intense investigation. They made an appearance on the evening news and were quickly swept under the rug. The media was not interested in the truth. They had their hero and didn’t want to admit that they had been duped by Ray Zeller and his arrogant, self- serving chief.

Karma is a bitch with a long memory, and she had been looking for Ray Zeller for a long time. Zeller and the chief would soon have their payback coming. Zeller’s aggressive and disrespectful ways of treating people on the street were catching up with him.

Finally a woman came forward and filed a complaint against Ray. She was drunk, loud, and abusive during a DUI stop, so Ray pulled her pants down around her ankles after he arrested her. This was typical of the stupid shit I had heard about him.

The complaint made the news, and then more people came forward to complain. The chief stood by his “super patrolman” and tried to brush off complaints against him as attempts by the public to discredit Zeller, claiming Zeller was a target of jealousy because of his heroism. The chief was still careful, though, never to appear at press conferences on the subject. He always made sure an assistant chief or public affairs officer presented any press release that supported Zeller.

Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back. Before he achieved hero status by running away during the mall shooting, Zeller had been on a call one night breaking up a loud party. He told the partygoers to keep the noise down, and while he was looking around, he saw a girl he liked. He came back later and convinced her to give him a blowjob while others at the party watched.

She was willing at the time; problem was, she was underage. A minor.

When she came forward with witnesses to the event, Zeller tried to deny it had ever happened. The chief again sent his spokesman to support Zeller and claim it was all lies, and that there were people out to discredit Zeller because he was a proven national hero.

It was all smoke and mirrors, of course, and Zeller was history. The chief eventually disowned him. Zeller was decertified and stripped of his police officer status, and eventually ended up in jail.

He was never a “real” hero, but he definitely hit zero. I am sure the sergeant and the SWAT team members who really did stop the killer that day had smiles on their faces at the news of Zeller’s very public demise. I know I did.

MORE THAN ANYTHING, ED MASCARENAS
wanted to be a cop. He had entered the Marines after high school and did a four-year enlistment. He did some time in Bosnia while he was in the Marines, and then elected to get out when his enlistment was up.

He applied at the police department in my city and was picked up as a non-sworn community-service officer, tasked with handling cold calls not considered important enough for sworn officers. Mascarenas immediately made a name for himself as a go-to-guy in the community service officer (CSO) group.

He came in early, stayed late, and was always available for overtime shifts. That was what the brass looked for in the new guys—workers who were willing and able to put the job above all else, make the job their only reason for living. It was a philosophy that came back to haunt them time and time again.

Police work is taxing, and even the most resilient cops get jaded and twisted from the job. The brass didn’t care. They wanted production and enthusiasm. When the new guys burned out and fell apart, they’d just get more young, fresh meat. This kept budget costs down and production up. Ed Mascarenas wrote more reports and handled more cold calls than any other CSO in the department. One night after he had come to patrol, I asked him how he did it, and he admitted that he took paperwork home and did cases on his off-duty time to stay ahead of the rest of the group.

“That’s crazy!”

“I was going to get to sworn status no matter what it costs me, and I have to prove myself. I wouldn’t let anything get in the way of my goal of being a patrolman.”

It took about a year, and the brass liked what they saw: another go-getter to add to the growing list of new guys. They offered him a job on the road, and he jumped at the opportunity.

While Ed was working as a non-sworn officer, he had to do a lot of tasks in the records division—filing papers, writing cold reports, and answering the phones. He hated the work, but there was one major benefit to the job. The department had recently hired several young women as records clerks. Ed was able to spend a lot of time with the new hires, and eventually he fell hard for a nineteen-year-old clerk.

He was twenty-six, and in a dying marriage with his high school sweetheart. They had grown in totally opposite directions since Ed had decided to become a cop, and he was miserable. It took him about a nanosecond to decide that he wanted out of the marriage when he met “Victory,” the nineteen-year-old records clerk.

Ed ended his marriage and became a sworn officer at about the same time. His life was turning around and his dreams were coming true. He was now a patrolman with a beautiful young girlfriend.

He started in patrol with the same enthusiasm that he had shown as a CSO. He was coming in early, going home late, and always working overtime. He appeared to be headed for greatness in the department.

He received his first medal about a year later for saving an infant who was drowning in a swimming pool in the backyard of the child’s home. The child’s mother had left the infant in a wading pool and had gone inside their house. She came back to find the child face-down in the pool. She called 911, but was so distraught she could not determine whether the child was breathing or not.

Ed was working that night and monitoring the dispatchers on the medical channel with his own personal police scanner. He heard the call come in about a possible drowning, and jumped the call. He arrived several minutes ahead of paramedics and started infant CPR on the drowned child. By the time paramedics arrived, he had the child breathing and crying loudly.

He was credited with saving the child, and received the department’s lifesaving medal. No one could remember the last time a lifesaving medal had been awarded issued. Ed was proud, as he should have been. His enthusiasm and zest for the job had saved the child’s life. He liked how it felt to be recognized by the chief as a hero. The local paper ran an article about him as well. He received a lot of recognition in the community for the incident.

His new girlfriend was proud as well. She beamed as she stood at his side while he was given the medal at the annual awards ceremony.

Ed doubled his efforts, made even more arrests, and handled more cases than any other officer on his squad. He fell back on the tactic of taking home cases that were not high-priority and writing them up in his off time. This enabled him to get back on the road, available sooner for the next call that came up in his area.

The brass loved it. His stats were so far above any one of the other officers’ stats on his shift that they were almost double the next-highest producing officers. The sergeant praised him daily. The chief left him personal notes in his mailbox, praising his performance. The sky appeared to be the limit for him in the department.

The practice of taking paperwork home, however, eventually came back to bite Ed in the ass. He started to lose cases and case notes. The reports went unwritten, incidents were not recorded, and Ed was in trouble. He had to admit to the brass that he had been taking work home and doing it off-duty, which wasn’t technically allowed. Instead of punishing him, though, they gave him a slap on the wrist and sent him back out on the street. He was told to keep up his strong work ethic, but to stop taking casework home.

A short time later, he saved another child in much the same fashion as the first child. Again the mother had fished the infant out of a small wading pool. She was also so distraught that she could not tell the dispatcher if the child was breathing or not.

Ed again overheard the dispatch and responded. He again arrived before paramedics, and claimed the child had not been breathing when he arrived. He said that he started infant CPR on the child and that it started to breathe again.

Paramedics found this suspicious.

Their resuscitation rate with CPR was never as successful as Ed had been. They quietly mumbled that something was wrong with this repeated lifesaving by the enthusiastic officer. The brass pushed their suspicious complaints aside, and Ed was awarded another Lifesaving medal. He now had two in fewer than five years on the department.

Six months went by, and Ed Mascarenas was on patrol. He called on the radio one afternoon about another child he said he had watched fall into a backyard pool as he drove past a house. He had jumped out of his patrol car, hopped the fence that enclosed the backyard of the residence, and grabbed the child he said he saw fall into the pool. He said that he had started CPR, and requested immediate medical response.

He claimed the child was not breathing and that he had resuscitated it, as he had the past two victims. This time, however, things did not add up. The child was too small to have climbed into the above-ground pool, and had been left in a swing by her mother for a brief moment while the mother went into the house. She came back out to find her child was in Ed’s arms, wet from the pool, and he claimed to have saved her from drowning.

They say lightning never strikes twice, but how about three times? This time, no one believed Ed. He was pissed that the tactic backfired—and now there was an investigation into the previous lifesaving events.

He was never formally charged with falsifying reports, but the rumor mill kept whispering that the lifesaving events were now being questioned and Ed was being watched. Not surprisingly, Ed never saved another infant.

Instead, he looked for other ways to shine. He eventually worked his way into the DUI squad. He volunteered to become a Drug Recognition Expert (DRE). He, along with one other officer, was sent to the DRE school, and six months later both were certified as DRE-trained and -certified officers.

His work ethic was taking its toll on his relationship with his new bride. He and Victory had been married for about a year, and they had a child on the way. It would be his second child, and her first. He worked harder to pay the bills and took whatever overtime he could.

One night he was headed home, after already having been held over for two hours , and an officer called out that he had a located a DUI and asked if Ed could respond. Ed paused and then said yes, he could. He came back to work, completed the DUI paperwork, and then signed off the radio, telling dispatch that he was done for the night.

He headed home, and about half-a-mile later he was hit broadside by another drunk driver. His left shoulder was injured in the impact, and he required medical treatment. He was about to get a reality check.

When he went to file a workers’ compensation claim, the department denied it. They said that because he had signed off the radio two minutes before the crash, he was no longer at work. They would pay him no compensation for his injuries.