Shattered Badges: More Cases from Police Internal Affairs Files (Broken Badges Book 2) Read online

  Copyright © 2015—Lou Reiter

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED—No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the authors, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. The stories and characters and locations in this book are fictitious, but in part are based on real cases. Any connection to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published by Deeds Publishing, Athens, GA

  www.deedspublishing.com

  Printed in The United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publications Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-941165-73-7

  E-ISBN 978-1-941165-81-2

  Books are available in quantity for promotional or premium use. For information, write Deeds Publishing, PO Box 682212, Athens, GA 30068 or

  [email protected].

  First Edition, 2015

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedication

  Dedicated to the cops who strive to do the right thing: chiefs and sheriffs who lead their officers to provide professional and compassionate service and protection to their communities; the IA/OPS workers who struggle with a difficult and often unrewarding task; and advocates and protesters who keep reminding us of reality.

  Author’s Introduction

  In this second book of the Badges police procedural series, Taylor Sterling continues his work in troubled police agencies…or as he calls them, “cop shops.” Outside consultants frequently are brought into police agencies to help unravel and evaluate sensitive, complex or touchy police incidents. Most of these cases involve some form of potential police officer misconduct, agency mismanagement or civil liability.

  Taylor Sterling is like the author, who retired from the Los Angeles Police Department and suddenly found himself a sought after police consultant. Unlike the author, Taylor’s new home is now in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Taylor finds himself drawn into the dark web of police abuse, corruption and mismanagement. Some would consider Taylor a “foodie,” while others might consider him a traitor to the “thin blue line.” Taylor and Sandy Banks, a prominent real estate broker he met in his new home, have an open relationship that Taylor somehow seems to fill with other exciting women during his travels.

  Taylor’s jobs come mostly from insurance companies who cover police losses from civil lawsuits. But occasionally, the call will come from a local politician or a chief or sheriff.

  Taylor Sterling’s work is similar to the author’s work over the past 54 years. The stories in this book are fictional accounts derived from real police incidents or pieces of police actions in various locals. Some readers, particularly those who are law enforcement officers, may feel they know the actual incidents or cops depicted, but these are fictional accounts and any similarity is simply coincidental. These stories involve citizens and police officers in small and large, urban and rural police and sheriff agencies throughout the country. No locale is immune to the potential of some cop going off the radar, being tempted to do the unthinkable, or being swayed into actual crime.

  Shattered Badges continues the pursuit of justice and professional policing. The reader is introduced to the need for and investigative techniques of the police Internal Affairs—those who police the police. When that function in a police agency is bad or malignant, corruption and police abuse soon follow. These accounts are raw, introducing you to the dark side of law enforcement.

  This second novel will take you, as the reader, to new locales (New Jersey, Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky, Oregon and Indiana), new foods, and new cases of police misconduct.

  A Regrettable Shooting Indictment

  Complainant: Chief Samuel Pisnero

  Allegation: Administrative officer-involved shooting investigation

  Agency: Riverton, New Jersey Police Department

  Accused employee: Officer Ray Fay

  His fingers resembled thick Cuban cigars glistening under a film of sweat. He pulled back the ejector and sent an unspent AK47 round spinning back onto the wooden porch. What the bull of a man didn’t realize was earlier he had accidentally hit the wrong button and the 30-round magazine carrying his firepower had ejected and was now harmlessly positioned on the planked floor under him.

  By pure chance, any immediate threat to the cops had disappeared!

  Ray Fay’s finger had been slowly exerting pressure on his Glock .45. He was ready to squeeze off a round aimed at the big man crouched on the porch holding the menacing, but now ineffectual, AK47. Ray was conscious of Officer Mary Worth inching her way toward the porch, her Taser ready for action. Ray had worried earlier that one of his rounds might hit her. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief as he relaxed his trigger finger, recognizing the AK47 was no longer a threat.

  Barbs exploded from Mary’s Taser and knifed into the naked barrel chest of the enormous hulk that had command of the porch. The man dropped to his knees, but quickly grabbed the wires extending from the Taser barbs and furiously ripped them out. Small beads of blood oozed from the sharp piercings. Fat Guy lunged off the porch and followed the wires, leading him directly to Mary Worth. Like a kid capturing a June bug, he lunged and flattened her small body with his immense size.

  Ray and two fellow officers rushed to ease the altercation. Handgrips were hard to secure on the sweaty, fat, shirtless form of their nemesis. Ray circled his left arm around Fat Guy’s neck and grabbed his own left wrist with his right hand. He exerted pressure on Fat Guy’s carotid artery in an attempt to choke him into unconsciousness.

  Fat Guy rolled off Mary and in an instant Ray found himself pinned under three hundred pounds of blubber. His arms ached as he tried to cut the flow of blood to the Bluto wannabe’s head. Another officer struck Fat Guy across his thighs with an extended collapsible ASP baton.

  Batons have served as sidekicks for field cops since the early days of Robert Peel’s police squads in London. Most English cops still carry a baton as their exclusive peacekeeping weapon. In the early days, the English instruments were called truncheons; in America they were known as billy clubs. In Boston, the short twelve-inch billy was often packed with a lead pipe. In the 1940s, the straight stick baton was uniformly adopted. This was a twenty-six inch baton usually made of ash or other hardwood. It featured a leather strap that secured the club to a cop’s wrist. Exceptionally talented officers could twirl batons in artistic dances as they made their rounds on the beat. Think Officer Crumpky in “West Side Story.”

  After the American urban riots in the 1960s, a new style baton surfaced. It was commonly called a Monadnock after the original inventor’s New Hampshire hometown. This device was similar to the straight stick, but had a short handle extending about a third up the baton. This gave a cop more striking power. Supposedly a cop could use it as a come-along device, but most street cops couldn’t use a Monadnock properly for this function. It took a lot of practice and most cops didn’t want to spend time performing the mundane exercise over and over again. This side-handled baton proved to be awkward and difficult to maneuver effectively. In the late 1980s, the expandable baton became the tool of record. It was constructed of metal and could be collapsed, then expanded easily and quickly. It was less obtrusive, yet very effective. Today the baton has lost luster as an enforcement tool. Chemical sprays and Tasers are far more effective and don’t cause as much damage. Inflicting damage on a subject meant a cop h
ad to spend more time with him or her, seek medical treatment, and file additional reports.

  “Turn the asshole over!” one of the officers yelled.

  “Shit, he’s pissed in his pants,” another shouted.

  “Fuck. It’s gettin’ on me!” Ray huffed as he continued pressuring Fat Guy’s neck.

  Fat Guy’s arms flailed from side to side as he tried to scissor-kick his legs. Suddenly all movement stopped. It felt like an additional hundred pounds had collapsed over Ray, enveloping him like a tortoise would cover her eggs. Fat Guy finally choked out, causing his largess to turn to pure dead weight.

  “Roll him off me, damn it!” Ray yelled.

  Fat Guy flopped onto his stomach with a mighty heave-ho. He was so big the officers needed two sets of handcuffs to restrain him. Mary retrieved a ripcord, a glorified dog leash with Velcro connectors, circled it around the guy’s ankles and cinched them up to his cuffed wrists.

  Ray was on his knees positioned next to the subdued hulk he had conquered. The young officer was gasping, his lungs searching for air to fill the void the intense exertion had brought on. His shirtsleeve was soaked from the river of sweat streaming down Fat Guy’s neck.

  Mary looked at Fat Guy and screamed, “Hey, I don’t think the guy’s breathing!”

  Two officers grabbed Fat Guy’s arms and legs and rolled him on his back. They immediately loosened the ripcord, but kept him handcuffed. One kneeled down and began chest compressions, his hands interlaced as he pumped the barrel chest. The third forceful compression caused the subject’s mouth to open and the contents of his stomach spewed like a scene from The Exorcist. Fat Guy wrenched his body upward and began breathing heavily.

  “Let’s drag him over to the car in the driveway and lean him upright against the door so he doesn’t croak on us,” Mary ordered. “I’ll call for EMS. Sergeant says he’s on his way here. Seems our good Sergeant White always rides in like the cavalry when the shit’s over.”

  Fat Guy was the poster boy for sudden in-custody death. Overweight, sweating profusely, and dancing demons released in a frenzied fight awarded him that identity.

  This unfortunate phenomenon was first recorded in law enforcement actions in the 1970s when PCP, or Angel Dust, was the prime drug of choice. Ingesting the substance caused people to behave bizarrely and believe they had super powers. Users had no feeling of pain to use as an early warning system. Subjects could be smacked repeatedly with a baton and would respond only with a vacant stare. Problem was, a few subjects suddenly died when the cops were trying to get them into custody.

  There was speculation that the way subjects were placed could result in positional asphyxiation. As crack cocaine took favor, additional sudden custody deaths resulted from cocaine toxicity, and what pathologists referred to as “excited delirium.” Whatever the cause, subject deaths were not good lines to fill a cop’s resume. When handling a druggie, there wasn’t much a street cop could do other than make sure the subject wasn’t in medical distress, place him on his back or in a seated position, and call EMS.

  “Looks like you got a whole lot of shit going on here, Ray,” Sgt. White commented as he pulled up, clipping the curb with the right front tire of his patrol car. “Heard this all started with some sort of domestic call.”

  Mary and Ray shot quick glances at each other.

  “Geez, forgot all about her!” Mary yelled as she and Ray rushed to the steps leading to the house. They avoided the chalk circled AK47 and the wayward magazine positioned on the porch. The officers took strategic positions on either side of the open front door.

  “Ma’am, are you in there?” Ray called. “It’s all over. Safe to come out now.”

  Dead silence. No shouts, no cries, no movement.

  Mary and Ray crisscrossed positions as they entered the living room, surveying as they moved. A glass coffee table stood upended and was broken in three parts. The pair quickly crossed the room and Ray checked the kitchen.

  “Shit, Mary! Better call the detectives and coroner.”

  A heavyset woman was splayed on the floor. Her faded flannel nightgown had been a soft shade of pink once, but now was stained with deep splotches of crimson. A bloodstained knife was balanced on the edge of the kitchen counter, blade extended in challenge. Slow droplets of blood fell and patterned the linoleum floor.

  “How come you didn’t just shoot the fat guy, Ray?” Sgt. White asked. “Seems like you never miss an opportunity to unload your gun.”

  Officer Ray Fay stood silently and glared at his sergeant. He remembered how close he had come to squeezing the trigger. It would have been a justified shooting. Hell, the guy had a gun. Shit, he had just sliced his wife like a hog. This asshole didn’t deserve to live.

  Ray knew Fat Guy’s gun wasn’t really a threat. Although he had been in five, maybe six, shootings in the six years he had been a Riverton cop, Ray didn’t get a thrill from shooting anybody. Well, maybe a momentary shot of adrenalin hopped him, but it never lasted long.

  *

  Ray Fay grew up in Rocky Hill, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Scranton. Rocky Hill was an extension of the poor, rough and tumble, big city. Ray never excelled at much of anything, except maybe staying one step ahead of the law. His dad put in over thirty years as a salesclerk at the local Ace Hardware. Ray watched his father pore over the annual nuts and bolts catalogue and salivate over tools touted in Sears Roebuck advertisements. His father’s dream was to be a mechanic on the railroad, but had no juice to get into the union.

  Ray’s mother worked in the local high school cafeteria. His friends knew she served on the food line, but Ray made her promise never to say a word to him when he shuffled through the line. She would simply blow him a kiss, which was probably worse.

  Ray was an only child. He figured his parents tried sex once, didn’t like it, so that was that. He never saw affection flow between his dad and mom. While he would never admit it, his parents embarrassed him.

  The only things that interested Ray were physical fitness and cars. His high school had a mediocre fitness room, but it was reserved exclusively for the hockey and football players. Scranton had a YMCA and a Boys and Girls Club that offered fair workout rooms, but they were too far away to use regularly. Ray didn’t have a car and Scranton’s public transportation didn’t stretch to Rocky Hill.

  Jackson’s Gym saved him. Jackson’s could only be entered through a door in the alley. The front portion of the Main Street building was boarded up and the front entrance was seriously padlocked with a massive chain and lock. Ray’s dad mentioned the building had once been a Woolworth’s, whatever that meant.

  The interior of the gym was dimly lit, always dusty, and smelled of stale sweat mixed with mildew. A ragtag boxing ring stood in one corner used by guys who fancied themselves mixed-martial arts contenders. Jackson’s didn’t stock the fancy machines that Ray read about in muscle mags, but the gym did have a full line of bells ranging to one hundred fifty pounds. There were bars for squats and bench presses, and enough free weights to destroy anybody’s back.

  Ray convinced Vinny Jackson to trade workout time for a light cleaning now and then. Ray knew most of the guys at Jackson’s had time logged in the joint, mostly state pens, but one boasted he’d been behind bars in the federal max prison in Lewisburg. Ray spotted the crude blue prison tats the guys sported on their arms and back that faded in the blanket of sweat they exuded. A few liked their tats shaped like crucifixes. A couple guys proudly sported swastikas that advertised their values in prominent positions on their bodies. Ray knew some guys were associated with the Aryan Brotherhood. They were the real bad asses, and most feasted on a banquet of growth hormones and steroids daily.

  “Hey, kid, come over here and spot for me,” a huge bald guy ordered.

  He was prone on the bench press with about two fifty looking at him. Spotting wasn’t the same as lifting weights. For spotting, you stand at a guy’s head and steady the bar as the lifter raises it from the stays. The spotter helps with
the final few pumps as the lifter strains the last of his muscles. Bald Guy looked to be about fifty, but it was hard to tell with years of hard living taking its toll. At eighteen reps Bald Guy showed strain, but slowly pressed the two more he was counting on while uttering loud obligatory guttural grunts.

  Ray kept his distance from most gym guys and the candy jars of pills they carried in their gym bags. Ray fancied himself a naturalist. He was interested in tone, not bulk. He was cut, and probably had a body fat ratio less than five percent. He worked hard and consistently to keep his body in check.

  Ray loved to read the car magazines left behind in the gym. He only wished he could afford one. Owning a Shelby Mustang would be his dream. Hell, anything with four wheels would do at this point in his life. Some guys his age liked Japanese cars, but Ray liked American muscle cars. Badass, big sounding ones.

  *

  Ray Fay never considered becoming a cop. He figured he’d be a mechanic or do something with cars. He tried to get a job at the dirt track on the outskirts of Scranton, but never could get hired. After working a potshot of menial jobs, Ray finally bought his first ride, an old Chevy Caprice piece of junk. But the Caprice had a ‘Vette engine and could go like a bat outta hell. Ray didn’t slow down until after his third speeding ticket. That $450 fine hurt him for six months.

  Ray figured that once he owned a car it would be filled with pussy begging for his attention, but every morning he came out and found zilch. Most girls in Rocky Hill didn’t have time for the likes of Ray. He was from the other side of the tracks in an already pathetic town. Girls didn’t want their future linked with a guy like Ray. They wanted to get outta town, too.

  One day Ray found himself tooling around Riverton, New Jersey. This small city was inside the sprawling mass of real estate surrounding Newark. He’d been to Newark International to check for jobs. Any job would be good. His car insurance was cancelled and he was one ticket away from his first stop in jail.

  “What the fuck you want, pussy cop?” a large man demanded of the female officer who’d pulled him over.