A Bronx Tale

Figured I would use this a forum to post some of my past writing, as well. More will surely follow.

Bronx, New York, Feb. 24 - The police officers of NYPD’s 44th precinct in the Bronx are considered the second most active in New York City, those of the Bronx’s 46th Precinct being only slightly busier. Within about two square miles of the South Bronx, there are 125,000 people, 18 elementary schools and more than two dozen churches, and there were 16 murders, 38 rapes and 564 robberies in 2005.

We arrive at the police station at 4 p.m. for a civilian ride-along, and are told to wait for roll call before we can be assigned to a car. Half an hour passes, and within the baby blue cinderblock walls of the waiting room police officers come and go, chatting and joking with each other while Nickelodeon cartoons play on a television suspended from the ceiling. Moments of silence are punctuated by the rumble of the elevated 4 subway that passes directly above the station.
An hour has gone by. Officers are searching for extra bullet-proof vests in surrounding precincts, after it is determined that there are none to be found here.

Diane Powell, 48, has been a police administrative Assistant for the past 10 years, and she warns us about the neighborhood while we wait. “This is hell right here,” she says. “I’ve seen it all! Only at the four four.”

The crime rate is decreasing rapidly here, but the addition of 100 new recruits to the ranks at Precinct 44 this year alone suggests that there is more to be done. Police say that residents notice their added presence and feel safer because of it, even if the officers' jobs haven’t gotten any easier.

More than two hours have passed before we strap on our vests and leave the police station at 6:15 p.m. We get in a car with officers Craig Carroll, 23, and Gabriel Paez, 26, who work the 4 p.m. to 12 p.m. shift. Officer Paez is a short man of Hispanic descent, with a long jaw and shaved head. Carroll is white and slightly taller, with wavy brown hair and a young pudgy face. They have been partners for about six months. Due to a shortage of officers tonight, they are one of only four or five cars on patrol, compared to the usual eight or nine. At any one time, there are 60 to 70 officers patrolling the precinct on foot, most of them new recruits who have been on the force for little more than a month.

As we begin our patrol, Officer Paez immediately reinforces what we have heard about the South Bronx. “It’s the most shooting, the most homicides, the most everything,” he says. “It’s a really, really rough area. Whatever you can think of, it has happened here, or it is happening, or it will happen.”

We drive in seemingly endless circles as we wait for news on the radio. We pass neon-lit streets lined with litter, where Officer Carroll says, “Out of the people we pass tonight, guaranteed there will be 10 to 15 people carrying guns. Guaranteed.” We keep driving. On Morris Avenue, a building that looks less like the homeless shelter it is than the prison it could be sits directly across the street from a high school. We keep driving.

The 44th precinct is home to Yankee Stadium and Grand Concourse, two miles of waterfront and 53 acres of parkland. And while the Bronx is known as a dangerous borough, the 44th precinct is one of the most dangerous areas, having already tallied one rape, 29 robberies and 38 assaults in the month of January alone. The majority of its residents would be considered minorities in other regions; the population is 58 percent Hispanic, 36 percent black, and only one percent white.

When looking for a suspect, “it’s the same description every time: black male, wearing a black jacket and dark jeans,” Carroll says. “Black people say to me when I pull them over that it’s racial profiling. That’s just stupid in this neighborhood. Now if I pulled over a white guy, he could accuse me of racial profiling.”

The car is called to Bronx Lebanon Hospital to resolve a dispute between a man and hospital security. When we arrive, a tall black man wearing a long fur coat and fur hat is pacing the sidewalk in front of the emergency entrance, crying. Carroll and Paez try to calm him down and lead him inside, where he claims that he needs his medicine, that he has been beaten by police, and then he starts crying again, while a crowd has begun to gather around us. The police and hospital security lead him outside again, where he is told he will not be allowed back in. He walks away.

“That guy was crazy,” Paez says. “E.D.P.s are the worst.” E.D.P. is short for “emotionally disturbed person.”

Paez graduated from Syracuse University in 2002, but found that he hated the corporate world and needed to get out. He returned to his hometown in the Bronx and began his career as a police officer. Carroll says that he was lost at college, so he left after three years to join the NYPD. Now he is going back to school to earn his bachelor’s degree, and Paez is working on his master’s. After 20 years working for the NYPD, they will both be eligible to retire with half-pay and benefits for life.

Paez and Carroll both say they love their jobs. “There are good people here,” Carroll says. “We just don’t deal with them. We don’t get invited to birthday parties.”

But, Paez says, “you gotta have a good sense of humor, and you gotta have a good time. You go crazy otherwise.”