Police story usually one of valor, sacrifice By Alan Lupo
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
When you grow up in America’s urban precincts, you learn early on that there are two kinds of cops.
There are those who abuse their badges, and there are a lot more who do the job with precious little appreciation for their efforts.
We heard stories about the handful who did not warrant respect. One officer allegedly collected envelopes of cash every week from the local bookies. In 1956, when a state crime commission wondered why there had not been an arrest for illegal gambling in Winthrop for 20 years, the then-chief said that was because there was no such thing going on.
It was hogwash. By the time we kids were in our early teens, we knew the names of the local bookies and the locations of illegal slot machines.
But we also knew that cops, as a breed, were worthy of our respect. My immigrant Jewish grandmother from Belarus would try to get me to eat by telling me stories. One tale involved a woman whose little boy wouldn’t eat, so the woman took him to see a policeman, who, in turn, instructed the kid to eat his meals.
How Rose Sacon knew so much about American police procedures, I never figured out. But I ate.
As a newspaperman, you do a lot of cop stories. What you see are folks with families and bills, dreams and frustrations, men and women who at some point made a momentous decision to get into a uniform, strap on a firearm and go where most citizens dare not tread.
When you are a newspaperman whose son becomes a cop, then you have more than a professional interest in the police trade. It becomes personal, more so when you and your wife get one of those calls in the middle of the night, and it’s from a Texas hospital, and it’s your injured kid telling you not to worry, that he’ll be all right.
It turned out he would be, thanks to a surgeon who put a dozen pieces of kneecap back together. The son is in the FBI now and on one of its SWAT teams.
Then you pick up this newspaper and read Michele McPhee’s story that so far this year, 93 Boston cops have been assaulted with guns, knives, fists, whatever.
Then you read how Massachusetts last year had the highest rate of violent crimes in the Northeast.
Cops alone cannot deal with all this. We know better. Folks in Dorchester who have been yelling for more cops are right. We need more of them on the streets. But there will never be enough police.
We need well paid social workers and youth workers, pre-school classes and longer school days, family support systems, safe houses, halfway houses. Sen. Dianne Wilkerson talks how something like 7,000 minority kids were trying this year to get summer jobs. Yeah, we need jobs and job training too.
We need to convince troubled kids that there’s therapeutic help for them and push them to get an education, even if their school isn’t everything it ought to be.
Oh, we need a lot, in this city of Boston alone. But it will cost tons of dough, and if history is a realistic teacher, much of what we need may never happen.
At day’s end, we still have those men and women who put themselves on the line and put their loved ones in fear of that phone call in the middle of the night.
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