Chapter 59: Back to Work

Monday, May 26, 2008

Certain things worked out for me. The bullshit out of the CORB had gotten pretty extreme, and the Justice Department planned to investigate them and not me. The Review Board wasn’t helped when Pendergast was caught saying that he was hoping for the dissolution of the entire Matucket Police Department and its replacement by a federally supervised police force. That was considered more than a bit nutty, even for hard-core Democrats. In any case, it got me off the hook with the Feds. I was called in for the second internal investigation, which lasted a day, and simply rubber-stamped what Barker and Smith had done.

My grand jury appearance was scheduled for Wednesday, May 14, so the day before that Brockport had me come to Atlanta to be prepped for my appearance. When I got there, I found that it wasn’t just going to be some quick lessons in how a grand jury worked, but they had set up a small conference room and brought in some of the associates and junior lawyer wannabes to act as grand jurors! Anderson was using this as a teaching tool for them as much as for me.

Grand juries are very different than regular juries, and very few people ever actually see one in action. The purpose of the grand jury is simply to determine if the prosecutor, in this case the District Attorney for Matucket County, has enough evidence to take an alleged criminal to trial. If yes, they issue a bill indicting the defendant; if not, they no-bill it, which basically drops it. It is not a trial, just a review of the evidence. There are no lawyers except the prosecutor, and no judge. The proceedings are secret.

Much depended on the prosecutor. If he was on my side, then he would show the grand jury the videos of Jerry and me being shot and tell them we were justified, and then let them vote. If he wanted to be an asshole, well, the saying was that if a prosecutor wanted to, he could indict a ham sandwich. The thinking was that the DA wanted this mess to go away. If he brought Jerry and me up on charges that were obviously bogus then he was not going to be thanked by the voters, and the police department he depended upon for winnable cases would find a way to get back at him. We spent the morning practicing.

It turned out that the District Attorney, Eli Younger, was not interested in being a jerk; in fact, he wanted nothing to do with this. He had an Assistant DA named Joe Billingsley handle it. During the morning Billingsley had the grand jury watch several different videos of the traffic stop and shooting, and then had somebody from the Drug Task Force review everything that had been seized from the car. After lunch, we were called in to testify, first Jerry and then me. Theoretically they couldn’t compel me to testify, since that would be a violation of my Fifth Amendment rights, but in that case, I could just write off any chance of getting through this. Brockport simply told me to tell the truth, but to volunteer nothing and only answer the specific questions that were asked.

There was one amusing part of the day, when the Assistant DA had me go to a white board showing a drawing of the shooting scene that had been prepared. I had to go through the traffic stop and my actions, describing what I was doing at each step. Brockport had been expecting that and had his own mockup prepared to practice with. That was fine, at least until I explained that I had heard one guy tell another to wait until we got closer.

Unlike in a regular court case, the jurors in a grand jury were allowed to ask questions of witnesses. There were sixteen grand jurors, and rather than go by name, they were only identified by number. After I explained what I had overheard, Juror Eight asked, “Officer Reaper, do you speak Spanish?”

“Yes, ma’am, some anyway.”

“Where did you learn to speak Spanish?” she asked.

“I had a couple of years in high school, at Matucket High, and when I was in the Army, there were a lot of Spanish-speakers, either as a first or second language. We often spoke in Spanish when we didn’t trust the locals,” I explained.

”¿Exactamente qué fue lo que dijo? Dilo en español, por favor.”

“Espéralo a que se acerque más.”

”¿Que pensó que eso significaba, Oficial Reaper?”

“Creí que eso era malo, señora.”

At that point Billingsley interrupted and asked, “Officer Reaper, what in the world?”

“Sorry, sir. The juror asked me what I heard, in Spanish, and I was telling her.”

“Mister Billingsley, I asked Officer Reaper to repeat what he had heard, so I could judge his Spanish-speaking skills.” Juror Eight looked at the other jurors. “To be honest, they seem quite adequate. What he just told me is what he told us before, in English.”

“Thank you. Now, can we continue in a language I speak?” he said, smiling.

Afterwards I went home, but they must have been satisfied with my answers. By the time I got back to the apartment, Brockport called and told me the grand jury had no-billed it almost immediately.

I still had another hoop to jump through the following week. Tuesday, May 20, I had an appointment to meet with a shrink, a Doctor Myron Shemel, at the Matucket WellCare Center in East Matucket. Anderson couldn’t tell me much about him and didn’t advise that I try to game the system. “Just answer honestly, Grim. He’s not so much trying to trick you or diagnose you as he is trying to see if you are safe to be sent back out into police work. If you are having problems, talk to him. Don’t try to hide it or fake it. It’ll be better for you in the long run. You can always find another job. Your mental health is more important.” I didn’t tell him that I was plenty nuts to begin with, dating back to Iraq and Outpost Whiskey.

The interview with Shemel was interesting. Unlike most people, I had talked to any number of shrinks, because of my PTSD. Most of them had been with the VA or at Walter Reed and had been useless, hoping to give me some pills and get me out of their hair. Shemel asked me about my service in Iraq and whether that was affecting me, along with the standard questions about whether I was sleeping or having nightmares or having flashbacks about the shooting. He seemed satisfied that I wasn’t a danger to myself or anybody else, but told me to keep his card, in case I had any issues with PTSD. I told him I would and put it on a bulletin board at the apartment.

The following week I was ordered to be at the station on Monday at four in the afternoon, in uniform, and to report to Chief Jefferson’s office. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, but I obeyed my orders. I felt silly with my duty belt and an empty holster, so I left that in my locker down in the basement. Several people were smiling as I went through, but they could have been smiling about the weather for all I knew. I got there early and sat on a bench in the hallway outside his office and waited to be called.

At four, Captain Crowley, Lieutenant Gibbons, and Sergeant Jenkins showed up. Crowley knocked on the door, and when he was ordered in, he turned to me and said, “You need a special invitation?”

“Uh, no sir.” I popped to my feet and followed the other three inside.

My future had been decided, it seemed. My badge and pistol were on the Chief’s desk. “Congratulations, Officer Reaper. You are off administrative suspension and back on duty,” he said.

“Thank you, sir.” He handed me my badge, which I clipped on, and my pistol, which I held awkwardly for a moment before setting it down again. “I left my duty belt downstairs,” I said sheepishly. “Does this mean Jerry was cleared, too?”

“Yes, though he’s now on medical leave and not administrative suspension. We’re just waiting for the doctors to clear him. He’ll be on light duty until his arm is healed.”

“That’s good, sir. Does he know yet? I should call him.”

“He knows.” The Chief glanced over at Crowley.

“Grim, Your FTO never finished his evaluation of you. Sergeant Jenkins here will finish that for him, so you belong to him for a couple of weeks longer. That’s why Lieutenant Gibbons is here and not Lieutenant FitzHugh. Fitz knows about this.”

“Yes, sir.” I thought that was a bit odd but kept the surprise off my face. Jenkins was the head of the TRT, the Tactical Response Team, the MPD’s SWAT team, and Gibbons was his boss. Fitz was responsible for the guys on routine patrol while Gibbons handled TRT, K-9, Juvenile, Special Projects, and any other oddball stuff.

“Your final part of being cleared for duty will require you to requalify with your pistol. Sergeant Jenkins will run you out to the range and do that, then you two are on patrol. Welcome to the night shift, Patrolman Reaper,” Crowley finished.

“Yes, sir,” I said, even more curious. Night shift with the head of TRT? That was unusual!

Chief Jefferson then came around his desk. “If I haven’t said this before, Patrolman, that was very good work. While I hope you never have to be in that situation again, I am glad to see you cleared and back on the force. You have the makings of an excellent police officer.”

“Thank you, sir.” I shook his hand.

“Both you and Officer Wolinski will be receiving commendations at the next PBA Benefit dinner, in the fall. Until then you can still have the satisfaction of knowing that your fellow officers support and respect you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He turned me over to Crowley, who led us all out of the office. Out in the hallway, both he and Gibbons shook my hand, and then I was turned over to Jenkins.

Hank Jenkins looked me over and said, “Before you requalify, you think you might want your pistol?”

My eyes popped open at that. I had left my pistol on Chief Jefferson’s desk! I knocked on the Chief’s door and went back inside, retrieving my weapon and blushing bright red. Back out in the hallway, I was ordered to go down to my locker, get my duty belt, and otherwise get ready for our shift. I was told to meet him in the parking lot. He was just shaking his head and rolling his eyes as he sent me on my way.

On the way to the range, we talked about some of what had happened since the shooting, especially in regard to the Review Board, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about our differences. I was a regular patrolman and Hank was TRT. They considered themselves an elite unit, but like so much of what I had learned about police work, the reality had nothing to do with what you saw on television or the movies.

As a regular cop, my uniform consisted of standard blue pants, standard blue shirt (either short-sleeved or long-sleeved depending on the weather), dark blue or black socks, and polished black leather shoes. If you ever had to wear a tie (extremely unusual!) you wore a clip-on, so the bad guys couldn’t grab it. When it got colder, I could wear a white t-shirt, and during the winter I had an MPD coat with a removable liner. In the unlikely event that it got really cold, you could wear long underwear. TRT guys wore black uniforms and black combat boots. Where patrolmen and detectives wore a ballistic vest under their uniforms, TRT wore MOLLE tactical ballistic vests, with ceramic inserts, over their uniforms. While I had a duty belt with all my gear, they carried their gear on their MOLLE vest and wore their pistols in a PALS thigh rig like when I had been in the Army.

The same happened with vehicles. All the police cruisers in the department were either marked or unmarked Crown Vic Police Interceptors. TRT drove TRVs, Tactical Response Vehicles, fancy Chevy Tahoes painted black and loaded with emergency gear. Sometimes it got silly, like with the Cougar, the Tactical Command Vehicle. I talked to one of the TRT guys over at the Cherokee once and he admitted they had no fucking idea what to do with a Cougar in Matucket. The Feds basically were giving them away as ‘surplus’ equipment to just about any police force that could come up with any half-assed reason to have one. They came with a bunch of gear inside that somebody at the MPD had thought was good, so somebody in Services had applied. Ninety percent of the time the Cougar sat in the back of the impound yard, but once a month the contract required that somebody drive it around and document its usage.

And yet for all the equipment and special training, the TRT was not what comes to mind when people think of SWAT. On television and in the movies, SWAT teams are dedicated units of hard-chargers, highly trained to an elite military standard, and ready to move at a moment’s notice. When on duty they can be found rappelling from helicopters, acting as snipers, rescuing hostages, and otherwise doing all the exciting stuff that normal police can’t do. When not doing that stuff, they train like it’s a permanent boot camp, jogging around and going, ‘Hut, hut, hut!’ and target shooting from a mile away.

The reality was that only the largest police forces have the manpower and resources to have dedicated military-grade SWAT teams. The LAPD, where the concept became most famous, has 10,000 officers. Matucket has 196. The Matucket TRT has a dozen members, and. by the time you figure in vacations, training, illness, and every other reason people are not at work, normally you only had one or two TRT officers on duty on any given shift. That totally changed how they worked. They had to patrol just like the guys in the blue suits. However, if a SWAT-type situation arose, they were expected to come in and assist, even if they were off duty. A lot of the time, the TRT officer would be expected to be the lead officer in serving warrants or taking a door, and they were supposed to give the regular patrol guys tips and insights into potentially dangerous situations. Again, reality was different than television. On TV, when the heroic homicide detective has to break down a door to arrest a murderer, he or she draws his weapon and charges in, with the SWAT team behind them. Screw that! In real life they sent in TRT and some patrol guys in tactical gear. The detectives were the last people in the room, and then only after the place was cleared and safe. They might never even draw their weapons!

In any case, TRT thought they were the ass-kickers of the force, and they had a certain degree of swagger to them. You needed to be at least a Senior Patrolman to apply, and then, before you get into TRT, you had to go back to the Academy for the Basic SWAT course, as well as several other courses. If I did a good job as a police officer, that would be my dream job. I could never see myself as a detective, but I could see myself on TRT.

Hank drove us to the range, and then said, “You need to requalify before you are a police officer again.”

“Q targets?” I asked.

“I hear you’re pretty accurate. Let’s try some B-27s instead.”