Read Online The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic by William Bratton, Peter Knobler - Free Book Online
Authors: William Bratton, Peter Knobler
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eat meat on Fridays, so my lunch would consist of Saltines with jam. I think some of the kids thought we were so poor we couldn't afford sandwiches, but I just would not eat white bread.
At the corner of Arcadia Street was a beautiful red brick structure dating back to the turn of the century that held both Boston Police District 11 and a branch of the Boston Public Library. I knew my way to the library like a homing pigeon.
I could get lost in books for hours. I found a series of seven or eight Civil War novels designed for kids, no pictures, and I whipped through them. I was only sorry that there weren't more. When I was about eleven years old, I found one of the most influential books in my life on the shelf.
It was called
Your Police
, and it was a child's history of the New York Police Department. I couldn't read it often enough. It was a picture book, published in 1956, with photographs of the NYPD motorcycles, policecars, emergency trucks, helicopters, the equipment a police officer carried, the phone boxes, all the details and minutiae that you could want to know about a police department, everything I'd put onto my figurines. I was completely fascinated. I took that book out of the library regularly for years. Sometimes I would just go there and read it over and over.
I always wanted to be a police officer. I didn't know any police officers, no one in the family was a police officer—I just always wanted to be one. The influences were mostly from television and the movies,
Badge 714
and
Dragnet.
I watched
Dragnet
on TV every week, and when the movie came out, I saw it with my dad. I still remember the opening: A guy gets killed with a shotgun, and the detectives come to the scene to check the body out. Those shows and
Your Police
captured my imagination.
It also helped that the library shared the building with Police District 11. Sometimes I went outside, stood on the corner, and watched the cops file out for four o'clock roll call.
The officers marched out of the station two by two and piled into open-back blue paddy wagons to be delivered to their walking posts. The wagons had no rear doors, and you could see all these uniformed cops packed inside. The few police cars were all two-toned, gray top and blue bottom. The cops had gray shirts. I sat there and watched as they drove away.
But as often as I watched this daily parade, I never got up the nerve to walk inside. Some curious kids wander into firehouses; I think I was too much in awe to do anything but look.
Finally, I got my chance.
I don't know why my father had to go to the police station—maybe he needed a report for insurance or a claim number—but when he asked if I wanted to come with him I jumped.
We were going in.
My father ambled to the big desk on the left-hand side of the room. “What do you want?” the cop behind it asked. My father told him, and I just stood there and gaped. One of the cops must have noticed my fascination.
“You ever been in here before?” He was looking down at me from some height.
“No, sir.”
“Like to take a look around?”
“Yes, sir!”
He took me downstairs to the basement, to the cell block. Iron bars,cold cement floors, the whole place painted flat gray, the clanging of everything in the room—I was in another world. There were no prisoners down there that day, but the place had its own particular odor.
It smelled of urine.
Cell blocks all smell that way. The waste sits there until someone comes to flush it down. The place smelled of unwashed human funk, deep, unavoidable, foul. It's one of those smells that stays with you. A cop can walk in blindfolded and know, yup, I'm in a cell block.
“You got to stay out of trouble,” the uniformed officer told me, “or this is where we'll put you.” He didn't seem to be joking.
Then, he took me upstairs to the detective room. I remember cigars and big hats. Detectives in those days were known as the Big Hats because they all wore fedoras. The
At the corner of Arcadia Street was a beautiful red brick structure dating back to the turn of the century that held both Boston Police District 11 and a branch of the Boston Public Library. I knew my way to the library like a homing pigeon.
I could get lost in books for hours. I found a series of seven or eight Civil War novels designed for kids, no pictures, and I whipped through them. I was only sorry that there weren't more. When I was about eleven years old, I found one of the most influential books in my life on the shelf.
It was called
Your Police
, and it was a child's history of the New York Police Department. I couldn't read it often enough. It was a picture book, published in 1956, with photographs of the NYPD motorcycles, policecars, emergency trucks, helicopters, the equipment a police officer carried, the phone boxes, all the details and minutiae that you could want to know about a police department, everything I'd put onto my figurines. I was completely fascinated. I took that book out of the library regularly for years. Sometimes I would just go there and read it over and over.
I always wanted to be a police officer. I didn't know any police officers, no one in the family was a police officer—I just always wanted to be one. The influences were mostly from television and the movies,
Badge 714
and
Dragnet.
I watched
Dragnet
on TV every week, and when the movie came out, I saw it with my dad. I still remember the opening: A guy gets killed with a shotgun, and the detectives come to the scene to check the body out. Those shows and
Your Police
captured my imagination.
It also helped that the library shared the building with Police District 11. Sometimes I went outside, stood on the corner, and watched the cops file out for four o'clock roll call.
The officers marched out of the station two by two and piled into open-back blue paddy wagons to be delivered to their walking posts. The wagons had no rear doors, and you could see all these uniformed cops packed inside. The few police cars were all two-toned, gray top and blue bottom. The cops had gray shirts. I sat there and watched as they drove away.
But as often as I watched this daily parade, I never got up the nerve to walk inside. Some curious kids wander into firehouses; I think I was too much in awe to do anything but look.
Finally, I got my chance.
I don't know why my father had to go to the police station—maybe he needed a report for insurance or a claim number—but when he asked if I wanted to come with him I jumped.
We were going in.
My father ambled to the big desk on the left-hand side of the room. “What do you want?” the cop behind it asked. My father told him, and I just stood there and gaped. One of the cops must have noticed my fascination.
“You ever been in here before?” He was looking down at me from some height.
“No, sir.”
“Like to take a look around?”
“Yes, sir!”
He took me downstairs to the basement, to the cell block. Iron bars,cold cement floors, the whole place painted flat gray, the clanging of everything in the room—I was in another world. There were no prisoners down there that day, but the place had its own particular odor.
It smelled of urine.
Cell blocks all smell that way. The waste sits there until someone comes to flush it down. The place smelled of unwashed human funk, deep, unavoidable, foul. It's one of those smells that stays with you. A cop can walk in blindfolded and know, yup, I'm in a cell block.
“You got to stay out of trouble,” the uniformed officer told me, “or this is where we'll put you.” He didn't seem to be joking.
Then, he took me upstairs to the detective room. I remember cigars and big hats. Detectives in those days were known as the Big Hats because they all wore fedoras. The
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