Working. Part 11

We knew pot was involved. They were creating a disturbance. It was after eleven o'clock at night. You got rules and regulations for one reason -discipline. I consider the law as rules and regulations-in the military, on my job, or as citizens. They were puncturing tires, breaking antennas off cars, throwing bottles, fornicating on the beach-everything! Hitchhiking was impeding traffic. So I started locking them up for hitchhiking. All of a sudden, lay off! The citizens made a peace treaty with them. I'm the one who gets chastised! I did the job the citizens wanted me to do, right? All of a sudden, "Hey dummy, lay off!"

Jealous? Never. No way. I'm not prudish in any way, shape, or form. I'm far from being a virgin. (Laughs.) You're not a marine to be a virgin, no way in the world. But I don't believe in garbage. s.e.x is a beautiful thing. I dig it. But to exploit it in such a fas.h.i.+on to make it garbage, that to me is offensive. Jealousy, no way. I look at those people out there as I would be going to the zoo and watching the monkeys play games. That doesn't turn me on. They're all perverted people. I don't believe in perversion. They're making it strictly animal. Monkeys in the cage, boom, boom, boom, from one to the other, that's it. I believe in one man and one woman.

Do all long-haired guys bug you?

I don't want my sons to have it. Now, the sideburns I wear because I do TV commercials and stuff. I'm in the modeling field.

He moonlights on occasion-modeling, appearing in industrial films, selling insurance, and driving semi-trucks. "I'm not necessarily ambitious. I do it Because I like it. I jump in a truck and I'm gone to Iowa, Ohio, Kentucky. It's a great kick for me."

But I don't like long hair. If it's your bag, do it, but don't try to force it on me. A long-hair person doesn't bother me, but when you see that radical with the mop and that shanky garbage and you can smell 'em a block away, that bothers me.

A few years ago there was this hippie, long-haired, slovenly. He confronted me. Don't ever confront me when I tell you to move. That's a no-no. To make a long story short, I-uh-(laughs) I cut a piece of his long hair off and I handed it back to him. With a knife. It was just a spontaneous reaction. He was screaming "brutality." Anyway, a couple of weeks later I was confronted by this nice-looking fellow in a suit, haircut, everything. He said, "Officer, do you recognize me?" He pulled out this cellophane packet and handed it to me, and there was his hair in it. (Laughs.) I said, "That's you?" And he said, "Yeah. You showed me one thing. You really care about people. I just had to go out and get a job and prove something to you." That kid joined the Marine Corps.

Sometimes I feel like a father out there. You don't really want to paddle your kid's rear end. It hurts you ten times more than it does him. But you have to put the point across, and if it becomes necessary to use a little constructive criticism . . . I will think of my father a lot of times. No way did he spare the rod on my rump. And I never hated him for it, no way. I loved him for it.

My sons adore me. My wife can't understand this. If they do something wrong in my presence-(mumbles) even though I don't live in that house -they get punished. My wife said, "You're so hard with them at times, yet they wors.h.i.+p the ground you walk on." When I used the belt on them I'd always tell them why. They understand and they accept it. My oldest boy is now on the honor rolls at Notre Dame High School.

He gets a little stubborn. He'd confront me with things: "I want to wear my hair long." "You want to wear your hair long, get out of my house. You know what it represents to me. Till the day you are twenty-one and you will leave my jurisdiction, you will do as I tell you. You understand?" "Okay Dad, you're the boss." That's all there is to it. There's no resentment, no animosity. It's just an understanding that I lay the law down. There are rules and regulations.

But I'm not a robot, I think for myself. One thing bugs me. Burglary is a felony. If a burglar is trapped and becomes physical and is shot to death, that's justifiable homicide. Mayor Daley made an utterance-shoot to kill-and they-click-blew it up. I don't think he meant it literally.

I can't shoot an unarmed person. No way. Anyway, knowing people, they'll say, "Forget it, we're insured." So why should I get involved over an insurance matter? I would love to go after people who perpetrate robberies or hurt other people. A theft, granted it's a crime, but most of the people it hurts is the insurance company. Robbery is hurting a person.

I prefer going after robbery more than homicide. When a guy commits murder, he's usually done. He's caught and goes to the penitentiary or the chair. But a guy that commits robbery doesn't usually get caught the first time, second, third time. He's out there over and over again. I want to grab the guy that's. .h.i.tting all the time, instead of the guy that's doing the one shot. I love risk and challenge. Driving a semi down the road is challenging. You never know what's going to happen. (Laughs.) Some guy pa.s.ses you, cuts you off, you're jack-knifed. You blow a tire, you're gone. I don't like a boring life.

When I worked as a bartender, I felt like a non-person. I was actually nothing. I was a n.o.body going nowhere. I was in a state of limbo. I had no hopes, no dreams, no ups, no downs, nothing. Being a policeman gives me the challenge in life that I want. Some day I'll be promoted. Somebody's gonna say, "Maher has had it for a long time. Let's give him something." Some sort of recognition. I've proven myself. I don't think it's necessary for a man to prove himself over and over and over again. I'm a policeman, win, lose, or draw.

I'm in this Loop traffic. I don't even consider this a job. It's like R&R, rest and recreation. My day today is like-(whistles) it's a no-no. It's nothing. I get up, I eat, and I blow the whistle. It's not very exciting. I'm looking at it now as a fellow who goes to the office and he's not very enthused. Because I wear a uniform people that are garbage will say I'm a pig. They don't look at me and say, "This is a human being." They look at my dress. I'm a representative of the law, of you, the citizen. You created my job, you created me. To you, I am a robot in uniform. You press a b.u.t.ton and when you call me to the scene you expect results. But I'm also a man. I even have a heart. (Laughs.) RENAULT ROBINSON.

He is thirty. He has been a members of the Chicago Police Department for nine years. He is the founder of the Afro-American Patrolmen's League.

I became a police officer because of the opportunity it afforded a young black who didn't have a college education. I started out working in vice and gambling, a special unit in a black area. I worked in plain clothes, in undercover a.s.signments-trying to stake out dice games, bookies, policy wheel operations, narcotics, prost.i.tutes. I would write the report and another team would make the arrests. It was very easy for me to find these things in the community, because any black can find 'em. I really worked as a spy. At the time-I was twenty-one-I thought it was great to be a young police detective, being able to lock people up. A lot of young blacks are misdirected when they first join the force. I soon became disenchanted.

I watched the double standard at work, blacks being treated one way and whites the other. I learned one thing: whites control the vice and gambling in this city. They make most of the money out of it and very few are arrested. The people being arrested are blacks.

My supervisor would say, "We need two policy arrests, so we can be equal with the other areas." So we go out and hunt for a policy operator. If our narcotics enforcement was down, we'd find an addict and we'd pressure him to show us where his supplier was. We'd bust him. We'd pay him some money so he could buy from another supplier and we'd bust him too. Usually the addict had one guy he didn't like. He was willing to trade the guy off for fresh cash. The police department has a contingency fund for these purposes. We'd pay the guy fifty or one hundred dollars depending . . . We'd get a warrant, or if we didn't have time we'd lock him up anyway. It would be impossible to work without informers. How'd you know there's a house of prost.i.tution across the street? A policeman grabs a guy off the street: "I'm gonna pay you X amount for information." These types come up to you sometimes. They make a good living informing.

You arrest a narcotics peddler three or four times, you know what he's doing. There's a way of putting him out of business if you wanted to. If you think about the people operating policy, bookies, narcotics-hundreds and hundreds are employed in these illegal trades. It's full-time work. A lot of people would be out of business if they broke these things up. What the police do is just enough to let the public know they're out there. There's no fight between the professional criminals and the police. There's no police brutality here. They know the police, they got the bond money in their pocket or a lawyer who'll be down there. We maintain an image, that's all. To look as though we actively pursue organized crime. It's a farce. The fight is with the normal citizen who goes astray once in a while.

A vice officer spends quite a bit of time in court. You learn the judges, the things they look for. You become proficient in testifying. You change your testimony, you change the facts. You switch things around 'cause you're trying to get convictions. You figure he's only a criminal, so you lie about it. The judges are aware of it. The guy who works in plain clothes is usually ambitious and aggressive and will take the time to go to court.

A lot of times for certain disorderlies, the policeman won't show up and the judge will throw the case out. What he did was just inconvenience the guy. He didn't even care about it. He just wanted to get the guy, sort of built-in I'm-gonna-punish-you kind of thing. He still gets his points.

About sixty percent of police-citizen conflict starts in a traffic situation. It's easier to stop a person on the pretext of a traffic violation than to stop him on the street. It's a lot easier to say, "Your tail light's out." "Your plate is dented." "You didn't make that turn right." You can then search his automobile, hoping you can find some contraband or a weapon. If he becomes irritated, with very little pus.h.i.+ng on your part, you can make an arrest for disorderly conduct. These are all statistics which help your records.

Certain units in the task force have developed a science around stopping your automobile. These men know it's impossible to drive three blocks without committing a traffic violation. We've got so many rules on the books. These police officers use these things to get points and also hustle for money. The traffic law is a fat book. He knows if you don't have two lights on your license plate, that's a violation. If you have a crack in your winds.h.i.+eld, that's a violation. If your m.u.f.fler's dragging, that's a violation. He knows all these little things.

They're sure the person who has stolen a car is probably driving, the person who is transporting stolen merchandise is in a vehicle, the person selling dope has it in his car. In their minds, the average black person driving down the street falls into one of these categories. (Laughs.) So if they stop the average black driver, in their mind the likelihood of finding five or six violations out of a hundred cars is highly possible. If you stop fifty cars, find five, stop a hundred, find ten. After you've stopped a thousand, you've got 950 people who are very p.i.s.sed off, 950 who might have been just average citizens, not doing anything wrong-teachers, doctors, lawyers, working people. The police don't care. Black folks don't have a voice to complain. Consequently, they continue to be victims of shadowy, improper, overburdened police service. Traffic is the big entree.

If it's a bunch of kids, they get stopped automatically. If it's a black in a Cadillac, he gets stopped.28 He's gotta be selling dope or something. If it's a white woman and a black man in a car in a black community, they're automatically stopped, 'cause she's gotta be a wh.o.r.e. If it's a long-haired white kid, he's gonna be stopped, 'cause he's probably a communist.

It's not restricted to just the black community. There are a lot of white youths. Many of them know they were never stopped for violations before they let their hair grow long. Many whites know that before they put a b.u.mper sticker on their car, PEACE IN VIETNAM, they were never stopped by the police.

The young black is the big police hang-up because his tolerance of police brutality has grown short. They say, "The new n.i.g.g.e.rs don't respect us any more the way the old n.i.g.g.e.rs used to. We used to holler at 'em and shout at 'em and kick 'em and they went along with it." Young n.i.g.g.e.rs ain't going along with it and that's what bugs them more than anything in the world. That's why more young kids are being killed by police than ever before. They won't accept dehumanizing treatment.

You have to remove salesmans.h.i.+p from police work. Don't put me on a commission and say, "Every time you stop a guy, you get X amount of points." It takes a certain amount of points to reach a certain plateau. You can't go back to the boss and say, "I didn't see anything." He says, "I know they're out there. Go out and get 'em." So the policeman has to create a little something.

So many points for a robbery, so many points for a man having a gun. When they go to the scene and the man with the gun has gone, they'll lock up somebody anyway, knowing he's not the one. The record says, "Locked up two people for UUW"-unlawful use of weapons. The report will say, "When we got there, we saw these guys and they looked suspicious." They'll get a point even if the case is thrown out of court. The arrest is all that counts.

There are more cops in the black community than in the white. The eighth district, lily-white, is the largest in the city: thirty-two square miles, 237, 374 people, all right? This district, black, five and a half square miles, has more police patrol than the eighth. The crime rate's highest in this area because we're underprotected. We've got more and more policemen here, yet the crime rate rises. Evidently something's wrong.

I worked in a white area on the West Side-briefly. Being black, in plain clothes, people might mistake me for a burglar and shoot me. It's better for me to be in a black area. Of course, people couldn't mistake me there. (Laughs.) Very few black officers work in white areas. They have a few, so they can say; "No longer are we segregated."

The majority of the policemen in the station where I worked were young whites. The older white officers were trying to get off the street, trying for a soft job in a station somewhere. They were tired. It's the young white officer who's in most of the black areas. They want to go there. It gives them the opportunity to be where the action is. They don't want to go to white districts because they're considered slow.

A large amount of young white officers are gung ho. It's an opportunity to make a lot of arrests, make money, and do a lot of other things. In their opinion, black people are all criminals, no morals, dirty and nasty. So the black people don't cooperate with the police and they have good cause not to. On the other hand, they're begging for more police service. They're overpatrolled and underprotected.

The young white guys turn out to be actually worse than their predecessors. They're more vicious. The average young white policeman comes from a working-cla.s.s family, sometimes with less than a high-school education. He comes with built-in prejudices. The average young white cop is in bad shape. I think he can be saved if a change came from the top. If it could be for just eight hours a day. They may still hate n.i.g.g.e.rs when they got off duty. They may still belong to the John Birch Society or the Klu Klux Klan. So what? They could be forced to perform better during the eight hours of work.

I myself didn't work with the young ones much. They were just too much. I worked with older, seasoned cops on the vice squad. They hated blacks, but we worked together, we drank together. They lived in Gage Park and on the Northwest Side,29 so we didn't visit each other's homes. One of them-he and I would talk frankly about how we felt. He'd say, "I don't like your people, but I can work around you. Maybe I'm wrong in feeling that way, but that's how I was brought up. I got basic feelings about my kids going to school with blacks and it can't be talked away. You can't talk me out of my fears." I respected him for his opinion and he respected mine. We got along.

Those who were enlightened had one major hang-up. If they did the right thing, they'd be ostracized by the other cops. A lot of these guys have mixed emotions, but they're neutralized. If they're by themselves, they perform quite well in the black community. But if they're with another white who wants to do it the rough way, and they object, their names go on the list-trouble makers.

The job makes those who aren't really bad bigots worse after a while. You could take a tender white boy, give him a badge and a gun, and man! he becomes George Wallace over night. You have to change the rationale by which they work. We must have a system where they get points for helping people rather than hurting them.

You can take the worst bigot in the world, and if he works in a steel mill, he can't take it out on anything but a piece of steel. If these white guys show they can't work with black folks, put 'em in an auto pound. Let 'em guard the lake, put 'em on factory detail. Don't take their job away from 'em. They gotta eat, they gotta feed their families.

About five years ago he organized the Afro-American Patrolmen's League "to improve relations.h.i.+ps between the black community and the police. We felt, as policemen, we were the only organized group that could do something about it. Everything else seemed to be failing. We felt as black policemen we could effect a change. The police department would like to get rid of us. I'm still on the force. I don't know for how long. I got suspender a numbers of times. My losses totaled about fifteen thousand dollars."

He served a thirty-day suspension, "which will be another thousand." The charge: conduct unbecoming an officer. He had been pa.s.sing out League literature to black policemen at the station and was arrested on the spot for disorderly conduct. "White officers pa.s.s out leaflets all day long. There are twenty-four white groups and not one was ever arrested or bothered. If you go into any police station right now you'll find at least five or six different brochures on the bulletin board about organization activities."

He has been suspended for "Traffic violations" numerous times. "I got five tickets, written the same day. It was impossible." He was recently fined two hundred dollars for parking illegally-a matter of tickets and arithmetic. He had been suspended for failing to follow the "proper medical role procedure." He has just been informed that dismissal charges have been inst.i.tuted against him by the superintendent. The circ.u.mstance: He was attending a play at a local theater in the company of his wife and a colleague. He had been invited by the management to comment on the work; thus, his presence. Fifteen policemen sought to eject him and his party. They refused to leave. In court, the charge was disorderly conduct. His wife and his friend were acquitted, he was found guilty.

He has, for the second time, been a.s.signed to the Traffic Division, pending charges. When the League was formed, he Suddenly had been transferred from his plainclothesman job in the black area to the Loop.30 They seldom put young blacks in the Traffic Division. I directed traffic in the Loop for a short time. The white driver would say, "I want to turn down this street. My office is on this block." I'd say, "You can't turn down the street between four and six o'clock." He'd say, "Why the h.e.l.l can't I? I'm a taxpayer." He'd argue, "I'm going to tell your boss, you son of a b.i.t.c.h." This wouldn't be stood for on the South Side. A black said something like that, he'd be knocked down or thrown in jail. They don't expect you as a black officer to do that in the Loop. I'd have been in trouble and I'd have been wrong. The citizen has a right to object. But that's only in the Loop or in white neighborhoods. Of course, if a black driver in the Loop said that, he'd have been locked up.

You aren't allowed to write tickets around city hall. You aren't allowed to write tickets on cars of people who own stores in the Loop. If a cop finds my car, I get a ticket if it runs out in one minute. In the Loop, they want you to give certain people fifteen minutes' courtesy parking. If you violate that rule, they stick you on some abandoned corner where you can't write tickets.

I wrote fifty-three tickets around city hall and they moved me away. I wrote a list of tickets on another street and they moved me further away. I was actually ordered not to write tickets. I thought that was what I was supposed to do. The supervisor said, "Just don't write any tickets." The sign said: No Parking at Any Time. Courtesy parking isn't free. These people pay somebody for it.

We have a black officer who looks white and works in a white district. They don't know he's black. He'd come to our meetings and say, "You wouldn't believe the things they say. 'Give the whites the benefit of the doubt. If a guy says he left his license at home, drive by his house so he can get it. Don't misuse these people 'cause they'll just complain and we'll get h.e.l.l. Don't give people a ten-dollar ticket for going shopping. It's only going to be five or ten minutes.'" In our area: "Give 'em tickets. Don't come back and tell me you didn't." Just outrageous double standards and n.o.body ever talks about it. The media always plays down the treatment blacks receive at the hands of the police.

Your average day? You'd go to roll call and sit through a half-hour of irrelevance. A guy is reading notices. Watch this, watch that. Up the tickets. John Doe got suspended for thirty days. Mr. John Doe has been given special parking privileges around his store. After that, you're given an a.s.signment and a partner. That gets to be hairy, because most white guys are wondering what black they're gonna get with. The black guy wonders, Which one of these fools am I gonna get today?

They give you a different partner just about every day. You ride around, patrol the area, answer calls, write tickets-it gets pretty dull. You and him don't talk to each other for eight hours. The white guy feels, I'm with this black to put on a charade of integration. Black cop is saying to himself, The only reason I'm with this white cop is to protect his life while he's riding around in the black community. He messes with everybody and they put me with him to ward off the bullets. You say nothing to each other at all. Can you imagine that for eight hours?

Some of the guys wouldn't mind it much if they had to work with the same guy every day, 'cause they would get to know him. The problem is there are so few blacks and so many whites who don't want to work with them. So they keep rotating, and it's a different black with a different white every day.

The black community usually regards the black officer with suspicion. There are some black policemen that are just as bad as the white. As the years have gone by, more and more tend not to be that way. That was what was accepted. You were rated good as a policeman if you pushed people around. We're creating a new atmosphere. Deal with people on a human basis rather than a military one. There's a tremendous difference now in the att.i.tude of black police.

ANTHONY RUGGIERO.

He is an undercover investigator for a private agency. "My outfit has forty, fifty undercover agents. They have three surveillance teams, eight polygraph operators, and I don't know how many backgrounds investigators. And they got a good thirty guards. Mike, my supervisor, is the liaison man. Every time we're gonna make a move, we let him know. He's our contact. I report to Mike every day. We use a phone if something comes up quick.

"How would I describe my work? Different. Weird. At times, inconvenient. What they use u.s for is large thefts, continuous thefts of merchandise. Or if a client feels there's mismanagement, they'll put an undercover agent there, too. I've been doing this for two years and never had no problem. Undercover guys are the greatest actors in the world. You make a mistake and you're not allowed to come home. (Laughs.) If they knew I was undercover there, they woulda thrown me out of the window.

"It's a fast growing field of employment. Tremendous. Just pick up the papers, any day of the week, you can see it. There's a definite need for it. You take the department stores, they are being literally torn apart. It's three billion dollars a year in department stores. It's unreal.

"I like my work because you're not stuck in a lousy office. And I think people are very interesting. You get beautiful material . . . Pay's good, I got no complaints-Christmas bonus, three or four raises a year. I plan staying in it a long time. It's a very important held. This is one industry that affect all industries. Security. It's also very helpful to the police department. We supply the police with a h.e.l.l of a lot of information."

His wife, Diane, occasionally joins in the conversation. A delightful little boy scrambles around and about the apartment. There is an openhanded hospitality, as beer and sandwiches are urged upon the guest.

I've been on a case one day and I've been on a case eight months. You never know how long you're gonna be there. You put in an application for employment like you come off the street. You're hired. It's set up. The plant manager may be the only one in on it. Ninety percent of your job is mobility, to be able to move around, like a porter or a stock clerk. In the event of theft, you're put in the department where it's occurring.

In this one job I was a baker. They threw me in. You have a training program. I was hired as a dough mixer. They had a theft of b.u.t.ter. It sounds ridiculous but it ran into quite a bit of money. Seventy cartons of b.u.t.ter was being swiped on an average of once a week. This was going on for six months to a year, which amounted to something like four, five thousand dollars. This wasn't too important. The problem was this company had a contract with the city. It was well over a million-dollar contract and they were worried about losing it. If the city sent an order down to find out where the stuff was going.

After working in the mixing room about two or three weeks, I was positive these guys were clean. I needed more mobility, so I went on the sanitation gang. They're the guys that clean up. I had only a week to bust this case because I was going on a surveillance detail starting Monday. I did it in exactly one week.

We knew the b.u.t.ter was being taken out of the refrigerator. I stationed myself on top of the refrigerator, which was a completely dark end of the room. I stayed up there four days, eight-hour s.h.i.+fts. I sat, I walked around, there was room. The ceiling was a foot over my head. n.o.body saw me.

I knew who had access to the refrigerator. I would see them take the key. You'd time it. You look at your watch and see what time he went and what time he came back. I'd say to the guy I work for, "I have to go to the men's room." I'd go up and check out the area. I had an idea it was being done on the weekend because they usually found the b.u.t.ter gone on a Monday or a Tuesday.

This one particular Friday he comes. This was like two ' in the morning. He takes the b.u.t.ter, brings it to an adjacent room, and then he left. I got the lot number, the serial number, wrote it down, and called my supervisor, "We got the guy, the case is over." He says, "Find out where he's gonna take it." That's where we ran into a problem. I never seen him actually take the b.u.t.ter out of the place.

On Monday our office sent down the polygraphers, the lie detector guys. They confronted him and explained to him that he'd have to take the test. Everything came out. He signed a confession. But he signed without any witnesses around. He didn't have any counsel. The confession, according to the union's lawyers, was useless. It was a big, drawn out affair. The union wanted the company to take him back. Meanwhile, he couldn't get unemployment because he was fired for theft. They won't give you unemployment for that. So it had to go to arbitration.

He was there, the union lawyer, I was there, the company's lawyer. He didn't have a leg to stand on. They fired him. When I got up and took the stand, my testimony destroyed the man. I never thought I'd finish a case in a week. I never thought I'd catch the guy. I met my deadline. I'm proud of that.

DIANE (suddenly interrupts): You want it honestly? I can see sometimes where it really makes him feel bad. Where he really feels like the villain. Like the time that guy lost his job. (Addresses him) I couldn't talk to you for a couple of days.

This one particular time she's talkin' about, it did. He was with the company twenty, twenty-five years. He was supposed to retire that September. Black man. And he just blew everything. He was out. That's it. We busted the guy. Nothing, after twenty-five years. He ain't got a job, he's not a kid any more, what does he do?

DIANE: What'd you say? In your own words, you said the employer was wrong. You're always stickin' up for the employer, but in this case you didn't. (Addresses me) He said, "The employer should have more rapport with the guy than that. He shoulda called him in and said, 'What's the problem? What do you need that extra money for?' Maybe the guy's in a bind or something. You shouldn't throw him out in the street." (To him) It was the first and only time he ever met the man that owned the company, right? He works for him for twenty-five years and never saw his face for twenty-five years. You said, "He should have some respect for the guy, as a man who put his life's work into the business." All right, so he stole some lousy b.u.t.ter. He should have found out the reasons. Apparently he needed extra money for something, whatever it was, right?

(He looks away for a moment. A slight pause.) First of all, most people don't steal for money. These people are not criminals, they're just like you and I. They feel they can get away with somethin'. Whatever his reason was I don't know. I don't think it was money. He was splittin' it up with two other guys, so what the h.e.l.l did he get out of it?

I testified. Sure, it bothered me in that the guy lost so much. I don't know if I was mad at the guy for bein' so stupid to pull somethin' like this or what. The outcome was bad. You picture a guy fifty years old, out after twenty-five years. And if he's got kids, they're probably married, maybe they have children. He's gotta go home now and tell his wife, "I lost my job because I stole."

What happened to him?

I don't know. (A long pause.) My company doesn't like the idea that you're gonna go out of your way to maybe hurt somebody for a buck. I don't think they believe in that. Contrary to popular opinion, we do more good for people than damage. I wish I had a penny for every guy that became a manager because of me. You report the bad things, but you also report the good things. You've got a good man here, this guy knows what he's doing. He didn't go to college, but he knows his job-boom! I report ability as well as mismanagement. We're complete. It's everything.

The thing I like is I could start on a case tomorrow and there could be an office boy there and I could make that son of a gun a manager within six months. If this kid's got something on the ball. I could say, "Why don't you give him a better job? The other guy you got is a flunky, he's a loser." So he went to college, but he's not smart.

A lot of people say, "Oh, you're undercover," right away, "bustin' people by the dozen." How many people of all the cases I worked on, with the exception of one, every other case, was there any jail involved?

DIANE: They can fire you.

Yeah, but that's a far cry from servin' time in jail. (Muses) As soon as I go into a place, everybody's a suspect.

A long time ago I had this weirdo case. We had a client that was a big tire company that lost two hundred and some odd thousand dollars. They felt this one individual was stealin' 'em. He owned a bar, this guy. My job was to go to the bar and drink beer and eat sandwiches all night and get friends with this guy. (Laughs.) So I used to go every night. I got pretty friendly with this guy. He was sellin' hot jewelry and hot shoes, silverware you could buy, coats. But it never got down to tires. After two, three weeks, they pulled me off the case. I never found out what happened. I think if they woulda left me, I woulda found out, because the guy was mixed up in all kind of shady dealings.

The first night I walked in there, he comes over and says, "Are you a cop?" I said, "Jeez, I've been called a lot of things, I never been called that before." I got a little nervous. He was a big guy, big Polack, nine feet tall and a thousand pounds. That was the only time I was ever confronted. It was a raunchy neighborhood and anybody in their right mind wouldn't have gone in. I was clean. I never shoulda shaved.

I was called one weekend on a restaurant job. They felt it was being hit. The guys that were running it-at two ' they close it up-they were taking cases of beer and soda and putting it in shopping bags, and walking out with the joint. I had a beautiful spot to watch. I started at six. They close at twelve-thirty. They shut the lights out, they lock the door, and that's when they get their shopping bags and beer and soda and milk and everything. I sent in my report and that was it.

I was working on a very short case. They couldn't understand why all this stealing was going on. I found out their top man was making $1.85 an hour. I said, "You don't know why you have this theft problem?" (Laughs.) Give a guy a halfway decent salary-$1.85 an hour! What's he, kidding me or what? He said, "That's enough." I worked there one day and they gave me something like eighty dollars. They hired a lot of Spanish-speaking people, Puerto Rican, Bolivia, and all that. I said, "You can't understand . . . "? He's smokin' a cigar and didn't say nothin'. (Laughs.) They canceled the following day. The big bosses were the ones that pulled the cork.

The surveillance I was on was hijacking. You follow a truck all night, five days a week. You report all activities of the truckdriver and anyone you encounter. You gotta be a very good driver, you gotta have eyes like an eagle, and you gotta be a quick talker if you're picked up by the cops. Every time we had an encounter with the police, they were very cooperative.

You got identification. They give you a card. The only time I have identification on me is when I'm on surveillance. In undercover work you have nothing at all. You may lose your wallet or the guy may fool around and grab your wallet, pull out the card-hey, boom! it's all over.

Before I was a placement manager in a personnel agency. (Laughs.) The outfit I work for was one of my accounts. I used to send people there for jobs. A lot of guys went for it and a lot of guys didn't. Before they hire you, you take a polygraph test. If they don't like the way the results are, you're not hired. They're interested if you've ever been a drug user, whether you ever stole anything-in event you have to testify in court and you're cross-examined. Do you love your wife? They ask you that.

The guys who would shy away couldn't have made it anyway. They're looking for a fairly honest person, a guy not afraid to work-because you're put on cases involving manual labor. Reliability is the key. You need someone to show up for work, will do the reports and all this.

When I was in the personnel business, Wall Street was dying. Eighty percent of our business was Wall Street-brokerage houses, banks . . . I got laid off. (Laughs.) I knew these people were looking for someone, so I spoke to Mike and the following week I was hired.

The recession isn't hurting this business, jeez, no! It's the fastest growing field in the past ten years. There's a need for it. If a person did something wrong twenty years ago or immoral, today's it's accepted, like nothin'. There's a moral decay since after the Second World War.

Take petty thefts. A guy'll take a salt shaker and then the other guy takes it. Years ago this was frowned down upon. Today it's the thing. If you don't take nothin', you're an idiot. You get five hundred people takin' fifty-cent ash trays, it's not fifty cents any more. It runs into money. That's what brought the need for these security outfits. Our company does a lot of polygraph. They have contracts with trucking firms.

DIANE: Do they have to get the polygraph before they get the job?

Sure, oohhh sure. Imagine they hire you to drive a truck loaded with a hundred million dollars worth of fur coats. Hey, you drive away, you're set for life. (Laughs.) The guy's out the money.

DIANE: If you refuse, you don't get the job?

I'm gonna hire a cas.h.i.+er, right. I want you to take a polygraph and you say no. I can say to you, "I don't want to hire you."

DIANE: That's stupid.

You don't have to take the test.

DIANE: But you don't get the job.

Yeah. Why wouldn't you want to take it?

DIANE: Because I wouldn't. I want people to accept me as I am. I don't need a test to prove my honesty.

Who said so?

DIANE: I said so.

It's your word against the employer's. He's got more to lose than you. He's gonna pay you X amount of dollars a week to do X amount of work. Maybe you're a loser, maybe you're a turkey.

DIANE: That's the chance he takes.

Why should he take a chance? You're gonna be guaranteed a week's salary. Shouldn't you guarantee a week's work?