We Are the Cops, page 12
There was a lot of embarrassed (and not so embarrassed) laughter, when these stories were told. And it can be a lot of fun – if dressing up like a prostitute or pretending to be a pervert is your idea of a good time. You get to see and – almost – do all the things that you are about to arrest somebody for, without actually having to physically do whatever they were expecting you to do. I imagined it would be like an actor who always has to play the good guy, suddenly getting offered the part of the villain.
Of course, such a shadowy and bleak world has its dangers and as the officer in Baltimore reminded me, it isn’t victimless, despite what people sometimes think. Whether it’s the girl prostituting herself out through desperation or the spouse at home, unaware of their partner’s secret life, vice can ultimately be devastating for all of the players involved.
We had a guy called ‘Bloody Charlie’. He drove up to our undercover officer who was pretending to be a prostitute and goes, ‘Are you on your period?’
And she’s like, ‘What?’
He says, ‘Are you on your period?’
She’s like, ‘No!’
And with that, he drives off. So we can’t arrest the guy, as we don’t have anything on him. We were all like, ‘That was the weirdest thing.’
Later, we were picking up prostitutes – we’ve got somebody out there patronising the prostitutes, making the deal, then we make the arrest and put them in the van.
So I’m driving and I say, ‘You know girls, I want to ask you something. Have you ever had a guy drive up to you and ask you are on your period?’
They were like, ‘Oh, yeah, Bloody Charlie.’
We were like, ‘Bloody Charlie?’
One of them goes, ‘Yeah, all the girls know him. He only likes to fuck girls when they’re on their period.’
Is that not nasty? So ‘Bloody Charlie’ is the guy that drove up to our undercover that day and tried to patronise her. But she wasn’t on her period so he didn’t want to do it. How disgusting is that?
****
When I came out of the academy they used to put you on the foot squad to make you walk around to try and take all the piss-and-vinegar out of you, so you didn’t go out and wreck a car on your first day out there. So I’m in the foot squad for three days, in this horrible little shopping centre where literally no one wants you there – it’s not in a good neighbourhood so there are only, like, five stores. They don’t want you there. And I’m thinking, ‘Did I make a horrible mistake? I can’t believe that I just went through six months in the academy to be trapped here. It’s June, it’s hot and I’m just miserable.’
Then I get a phone call at home – after my miserable three days on the foot squad – and it’s the vice sergeant, from the district. He told me who he was and asked me if I was willing to work vice – young female cops like me often get asked that. Remember, I’ve been on the streets for three days. So I said, ‘Sure.’ I could either stand in a shopping centre in a hundred degrees, doing absolutely nothing, or I could go out there and lock people up.
So, day four, I’m working vice and I get a little bit of training from the two guys I’m working with, about what I should do, what I should expect, and then they just send me out there. We’re locking up people by the wagon-full because the area was known for prostitution. The guys would lock up the prostitutes and I would lock up the johns. In the first three months I got drugs, I got guns, I got wanted felons – you name it. And then, of course, I got the experience, as I had to testify in court almost every single day, because we were locking people up every night.
Being in a courtroom full of people was an experience. I had to say all those things. Some of the stuff I didn’t even know what it was. So I literally had to say all those bad words in an open court. If I got lucky, they did a silent reading of the statement and charges, but if they didn’t, I had to get up there and testify and say, ‘And then he asked me for… this!’ Things like, ‘half and half’- meaning half sex and half oral sex. Or they would ask you for just oral sex – and you can fill in the term they used for it yourself – or they could ask you just for sex.
The sex in itself was illegal. The oral sex, you had to get a price on. But for me, because I was new at it, I’d get a price for everything. I made them tell me how much they were going to pay me. So yeah, I had to testify in court – hundreds of people in there – to this stuff. I’m twenty-two years old and it was embarrassing. Even the judge once said to me, ‘I never saw anyone turn that red in my entire life.’ He told me I was hilarious.
I mean, I’ve done a lot of things in my career but I look back on that and just laugh, because here I am, some girl from the suburbs, and I’m standing out there on North Point, prostituting myself. My parents would be so proud! And I was literally getting the education of my life. It was a very funny moment in my career.
But we didn’t have a booking district, so we had to go to the next district along, to book our prisoners and there was a particular sergeant there – a desk sergeant – and you know what these desk sergeants can be like; grouchy, unhappy campers and they’d say all kinds of stuff to you. If you screwed something up, they would let you know.
So I come in one night and I actually had a guy who had offered me five dollars for a particular sex act. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I said, ‘Sure.’ And I locked him up. I didn’t care if he offered me five dollars or fifty dollars – it’s all the same to me because he’s going to jail. So anyway, I get in there and the desk sergeant is reading the charges and he was like, ‘Oh, honey, you know if you dressed a little better you’d get more than five dollars!’ He was just shaking his head at me.
I thought about it afterwards and I spoke to one of the other girls and asked her what I should have done. She said, ‘You should have told him to go to the ATM machine and get more cash!’
But I literally had guys ask me for stuff that I didn’t even know what it was. I was twenty-two years old. I didn’t know anything about life, let alone the sex trade.
****
A guy once patronised our undercover prostitute with his three-year-old in the back seat. It was three days before Christmas and he told his wife he had to go and get more Christmas lights for the tree and a gallon of milk. But she wanted him to take the baby so that she could take a shower. So he takes the baby, he goes to get the Christmas lights and a gallon of milk and as he’s out driving he sees our prostitute – our undercover officer – who happens to have very large boobs. He saw her and he thought, ‘The hell with it, I’ll get a quick head before I go home.’
He drove up to her and she said, ‘But you have a baby in the back seat.’
He says, ‘It’s three months old. She’s not going to know you’re giving me head. Come on, let’s go, hurry up. I’ve gotta get home and put the Christmas lights up.’
And all of this is on tape. So we locked this poor bastard up and had the wife come and get the baby.
She’s like, ‘What did he get arrested for?’
We said to him, ‘You tell her.’
He told her, ‘I got arrested for a driving suspension.’
She’s like, ‘How the fuck can your licence be suspended? Your licence is not suspended.’
She arguing with him on the phone and he just tells her that it’s suspended, hands me the phone and tells me to hang it up.
He’s like, ‘Please don’t tell her. Please, please. I just had a baby with her, please. You don’t understand, for nine months she wouldn’t give me sex and then she has the baby and she still doesn’t want to have sex. All I wanted was some fucking head. That’s all!’
I actually felt bad for the guy.
But our Lieutenant said, ‘Fuck him.’ After we arrested him, she went up to the car, grabbed the baby and said, ‘You’re an animal.’
She was so pissed off at this guy for putting the baby’s life in jeopardy. Remember, you’re picking up women with scabies, HIV, all this stuff, and on top of that, you’re in a bad neighbourhood. He literally went there, to that area, to get head, with the baby in the car.
I didn’t tell the wife shit but the undercover told her. She said, ‘There’s no way the wife’s not going to know what her husband’s doing. He put their daughter’s life in jeopardy.’
****
When I worked prostitute detail, they used to have to go lock the girls up before they would let us go stand out on the street. There would be a couple of us and they would have to get the real girls and lock them up first, because if you put us next to them, we would look way too healthy and way too clean. I mean, they used to tell us to go out in the garden all day, get really dirty, don’t shower, and then they’d want to black in one of our teeth. But I’m not doing all that, you know? That’s just not going to happen. So they would have to take all the unhealthy, really disgusting, open sores girls off the streets and then they could put us out there.
It was an experience men will never have. Obviously they would pick up the girls, so they had their own experiences, but I had a trucker try to pull me through his window one time. Luckily the guys that I was working with were watching me and they saw it. And I was unarmed – back then we had revolvers but there was nowhere to hide a revolver. No radio, either. You just have to trust the guys you work with. They’re watching me. But if they’re taking a break, that could be a problem.
That was a funny time, but sad too. I think about these guys and most of them are married and they had families and they were going to pick up some nasty junkie and have sex with her and then go home to their wives and their families. People think it’s a victimless crime but I don’t know. I never saw it that way.
****
We were in what we call the ‘P-van’ – the prisoner van – and I’ve got all the arrested johns in the back seat. I was doing the paperwork in this unmarked van, with the prisoners sitting behind me. It had no police markings or anything, so we could pull into an area and not be noticed. We would move up when we made an arrest, cuff the johns and put them in the van. We’d then back the van up and park it in a nondescript area so that we weren’t noticed and do the paperwork. So, I’m looking down, writing the arrest reports to get it started, so that when we get back in the office we have less to do, when all of a sudden I hear a bang on the hood of the van. There’s a guy getting head from a prostitute on the hood of my van and the prisoners are sitting there watching this. She’s blowing the guy on the hood of my van!
And I go, ‘What the fuck is this?’
And all the johns – in one voice – from the back of the van go, ‘How come he can do it but we can’t?’
I hit the siren – WHOOOOP! – and get out of the van.
The prostitute jumps up. She’s got a pack of cheese doodles – which are like Cheetos – in one hand and orange cheese doodle shit all over her mouth. She’s got cheese doodle all over her lips, she’s got cheese doodle on her hands and she’s got cheese doodle in her hair. The guy then starts to pull his pants back up and he’s got cheese doodle all over his frigging dick.
He says, ‘It’s not what you think!’
This is the shit you can’t make up!
We were like, ‘It’s exactly what we think!’
****
When I was the undercover john, the signal was that I would take my hat off; that would be the sign that the deal was done, because sometimes the radio wasn’t working right. The other officers could hear what you were saying but you would always take your hat off because sometimes you’d drive into an area and the radio signal would be lost. You could be making a deal with a prostitute and she might have HIV or something and she’s trying to pull your zipper down, and you’re like, ‘Hello? Is anybody hearing me?’, so you would take your hat off to make sure they knew you had made the deal.
Well, I get in the car one day and this frigging real nasty one, she gets into the car and says, ‘Kiss me.’
I said, ‘Are you out of your mind? Number one, I’ve never kissed a prostitute, I won’t kiss a prostitute. You’re here to do one thing, suck my dick and that’s it. I ain’t kissing shit.’
She says, ‘Okay, pull your dick out.’
I’m like, ‘What’s the matter with you? We haven’t even moved yet.’
She goes, ‘I want to make sure you’re not a cop.’
I’m like, ‘I’m not a cop. I wouldn’t be putting you in my car if I were a cop. If you’re going to get weird then I’m going to think that you’re a cop. Just get out of my car.’
She goes, ‘No, no. I’m not a cop. I’m not a cop.’
I said, ‘You know what? I don’t trust you, get out of my car.’
She says, ‘No, no, no, no. I’m telling you, I suck a good dick.’
I’m like, ‘Well how much do you charge for sucking dick?’
So she goes, ‘Twenty bucks.’
I said, ‘Alright.’
So I take my hat off – giving the signal – and she starts grabbing my zipper.
I’m waving my hat but little did I know that they’re sitting right behind us in the van, laughing their asses off watching me waving my hat with her right in my lap!
I said to her, ‘Alright, that’s enough! That’s enough!’
I got out of the car, took my hat and threw it at them, in the van.
They get out laughing and then she gets out and goes, ‘You are a cop!’
I’m like, ‘Yeah. I’m a cop.’
She says to the other cops, ‘He let me suck his dick!’
My pants are up but she got my zipper open. I’m like, ‘Yeah right, you sucked my dick! I don’t think so!’
My sergeant goes, ‘In three seconds? You know what, I believe her!’
****
Our undercover female officer would have a wire on her and I used to predominately work the wireless tape recorder. We’re in a van watching her and we have somebody ‘ghosting’ her, like a backup that’s close to her in case she gets touched or gets into trouble. But we also have the backup cars that move in when she makes the deal.
So this guy drives up and I’m listening to her talk to him and listen to what he’s saying to her. He drives up and he says to her, ‘How you doing?’
She goes, ‘Hey, you looking for a date?’
He says, ‘I just want to know, are you clean down there?’ And he points at her crotch.
She looks down – I’m listening and watching at the same time – she looks down and she goes, ‘Am I clean down here?’
And he says, ‘Yeah.’
She says, ‘Of course I’m clean down there!’
He says, ‘I’ll give you forty bucks if you let me eat your pussy.’
She says, ‘Wait a second, you want to pay me forty dollars to eat my pussy?’
He says, ‘Yeah.’
She makes the deal, we move in and we get him. We get back to the office and I say to her, ‘Well, we never had a guy drive up to you and say that before!’
She says, ‘Let me tell you what I thought. Remember when I said, “You want to pay me forty dollars to eat my pussy?”’
I said, ‘Yeah.’
She said, ‘I almost turned the wire off and told him, ‘Okay, let’s go!’’
****
My partner and I were working a high prostitution area. It was the middle of the night and we see a street girl jump in a car, so we follow them. We see them park up and we give them a little bit of time before we go up on them, suspecting that maybe there’ll be an act going on.
We come up on the windows and my partner’s like, ‘Whoa! What the hell are you doing?’
The girl had a high heeled shoe in her hand and she was hitting the old man’s genitals – and he was obviously excited.
We’re like, ‘What in the world is going on here?!’
And the girl says, ‘He pays me to do that. That’s all he wants.’
Well, what can you do? You’ve just got to tell them to knock it off and then conduct your follow up investigation.
That’s the dark side – the crazy stuff that the general public would never, ever see.
****
Here in Las Vegas, there are a lot of adult bookstores and these adult bookstores have ‘theatres’. Basically, you go in and there’ll be all the dirty magazines, all the graphic videos and all the products for sale – you know, dildos and things like that. Well, at the back of these stores they’ve put in little theatres that might have three or four rows with twenty seats and a large screen showing porn. There’re also little arcade booths that you put quarters in and it shows a number of different porn things on them. So a lot of guys will go there.
Well, these areas are high trolling areas for gay men to hook up with other gay men for sex acts in these places, and it’s not exclusively gay men – there are couples that have kinky fantasies; husbands will bring their wives there and things of that nature.
The Vice section at that time would bring up fresh faces from patrol or from somewhere else, because a lot of their guys had been there for a while and had been identified or become too well known. Well, one of the things that they would do, they would send you into these little bookstores. You’d go in and observe the different illegal acts. Then they’ll throw the lights on in the theatre and you then point them out so they can cite everybody or arrest whoever, depending on the circumstances.
When you first go up – the first time that they send you into the adult bookstore – usually you are horrified. And I certainly was, the first time I went in there, because honestly, I had no idea what went on in these adult bookstores, these little arcades and these little theatres.
I had to go and work with a group of old timers who had been in Vice forever, and they’re giving me advice like, ‘Okay, listen, don’t sit down in any of the chairs, because obviously you’ve got a lot of different people coming and going and they’re either by themselves or with someone else and they’re masturbating or they’re engaged in sex acts.’
So the advice to not sit down was easy to figure out. I don’t want to sit in somebody else’s ‘problem’ or biohazard or fluids.
