Community Policing

A Slice-of-life Memoir

by Paula Sophia

I used to be 2 Adam 55, 2nd shift Will Rogers Division, Oklahoma City Police Department. I snagged this assignment called the Dedicated Classen Unit back in 1994 when Classen Boulevard from downtown Oklahoma City to NW 36th street was full of vacant businesses, vacant houses, and rundown apartments, and the area around NW 30th and Classen was disputed territory among several street gangs.

I was to focus on keeping crime down by being a visible presence and an active enforcer. At first, I chased my tail trying to find criminals and doing my best to stop gang violence. I snagged some good cases from time to time, but most days were pretty routine. After lineup I’d drive down to my district, patrol the streets to see what was happening, see who was out and about, and get a scoop on the day’s activities.

Frequently, I’d see a guy walking down the street, sneer on his face. He wore loose jeans that hung low on his waist, revealing his underwear, boxer-briefs pulled high above the beltline. He also had a white muscle shirt, flexing his skinny but sinewy arms, and to top it all off, a Dallas Cowboys ball-cap worn backwards.

To break the tension, I tried waving at him, only to see him mutter something before spitting. It happened often enough, the spitting, that I began to take it personally. Why is he spitting at me? And because I was still pretty much a rookie, I wondered why people like him hated the police.

In my naivety, I decided I was going to get that guy to smile and wave back at some point. So, nearly every afternoon, I drove by and waved. I saw him sitting on a front porch on NW 28th street. I saw him hanging out at the Little Jim’s store at 30th and Western. I saw him coming and going from the Classen Food Store. I waved every time, but he sneered and spit like before, every single time.

One day, I saw him at the 7–11 on NW 31st and Classen. He was joking with a couple of buddies near an arcade video game in the corner. I waved. He frowned back but didn’t spit this time. One of his buddies laughed. “Ooo that officer’s going to bust you, Terrell,” he said, giving me the side-eye. I waved at him, too.

So, his name was Terrell, I thought. Nice to know.

Not everyone hated seeing me drive by, and some people actually invited me to take a tour of their businesses. One of those businesses belonged to a woman named Anne, and she owned a flower shop in a one-block strip mall between 29th and 30th on the west side of Classen. She had a big, friendly smile, long blond hair with natural curls. If she had been in Southern California, she would fit in with the surfer crowd real well. She was flirty and nice to talk to. I learned she was struggling to keep her doors open and that she was in a battle with her landlord for needed repairs, especially to the roof that leaked buckets every time it rained.

Almost daily, I encountered a drunk named Larry. In my district, he was my Otis, like the drunk in Mayberry on the Andy Griffith show. I found him walking up and down Classen Boulevard waving at cars, stumbling over the uneven sidewalks, and sweating in the summer sun. He smelled like bad whiskey, sometimes mouthwash, and lately, he had been wearing the same clothes for at least a week. He was an easy arrest, and he always consented to go to Detox for a 12 hour stay, long enough to sober up.

On a particularly hot afternoon, I found Larry as usual, and he was drunk as usual, but as soon as I got him in the back seat of my car, I received a call from another officer requesting assistance on a traffic accident. I didn’t have time to take Larry to Detox, nor did I want to leave him out on the street, vulnerable to the coming night when the activity got more dangerous.

“Where do you stay?” I asked, figuring he might have a hideaway nearby.

“With my momma on 28th street.” He pointed west.

I drove him to his momma’s house, let him out of the car, and helped him stand up straight as a large, fierce looking woman walked onto the front porch. She was wearing a house dress and slippers, and her hair was pulled back back in a frizzy ponytail. She glared at me. “What’s wrong, officer?”

“Larry told me he stays here.”

“Not lately.”

She told me Larry had been gone almost two weeks, and I realized I had been arresting him nearly every day and taking him to Detox. Go to Jail. Don’t Pass Go. Every time I had arrested him, he was simply trying to get home.

“Get your butt in the house, Larry!”

And Larry scooted into the house obediently. His momma turned toward me before she followed him inside.

“Thank you for finding my son.”

After that day, I didn’t see Larry on the street for nearly a month, but then, on a July afternoon, I finally saw him sitting on a stack of tires piled in front of an old Army Armstrong service station. He smiled at me, hiccuped, and said, “Please don’t take me to my momma’s. I’d rather go to Detox.”

But then, I figured, it might be better to take him to his momma’s house because when he was there, she kept him out of trouble. I loaded Larry into the car and drove him to 28th street, figuring momma’s justice was better than the criminal justice system in this case.

Larry moaned. “No officer. She makes me work, and she makes me stay home. She won’t let me drink.”

Predictably, momma came out onto the front porch. This time, she was wearing a blue floral mumu with a matching head-scarf wrapped around her hair.

Fierce as ever, she hollered, “Larry, get your butt in the house!”

And he did, no excuses, no arguments.

Momma walked up to me, extended her hand. “My name is Betty.” She looked at my nametag, trying to comprehend my long German name, Schonauer.

“My name is Paul,” I volunteered, breaching etiquette. We weren’t supposed to be personal. But honestly, I would rather have people call me by my first name rather than struggle with my last name.

“Well, Officer Paul, I sure do appreciate you taking care of my son. He likes to get drunk and wander.”

“Yes ma’am.”

One day, late in the summer, I stopped by the flower shop. Anne was busy in the back, fuming about a customer who cancelled a big order at the last minute. She looked up at me but didn’t smile.

“I’m still going to send you a bill, you lousy jerk,” she said to somebody who was not there. Then she waved me back into her workroom.

The room smelled like a rose garden, and there were dozens of roses spread out on her table. She had been constructing a big funeral wreath, placing the rose stems into water-soaked Styrofoam. Hands on her hips, she pretended to spit at the half-covered wreath.

“I’ve been working my ass off all afternoon to get this guy his precious arrangement, and he calls and says, ‘I found a better deal.’”

I didn’t know what to say, so I tried to make light of it. “Well, at least you have a bunch of roses to sell.”

Anne stared at me. “No, I have a bunch of roses to throw away. That’s more than I’ll sell in half a month.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah, damn right.”

Anne gathered a bunch of roses, at least a dozen, wrapped them in light blue tissue paper, making a tidy bouquet. “Here, surprise your wife.”

“Well, I can’t accept gratuities.”

“This ain’t no gratuity. You’re doing me a favor. At least they’ll make somebody happy instead of going in the trash.”

She placed the bunch of roses in my arms, gathered the others and her half-constructed wreath, and placed them in her cooler.

“I’m done. Time for a beer.”

I walked Anne out of the store and stood by, arms still full of roses, as she set her alarm and locked her business. She smiled at me and walked to her car, a sleek Mustang, bright orange. I remember thinking how much of an attention grabber she was in that car. She slid on her sunglasses, backed out of her parking spot and tore down Classen, a little too fast.

I placed the roses in the trunk of my patrol car, hoping they wouldn’t get crushed by the other contents during the course of my shift. I wondered, too, if they would start falling apart in the heat. They just might end up in the trash anyway, but I rationalized my wife would appreciate the thought.

As I patrolled down 28th street a short while later, I noticed a large crowd gathered in front of Betty’s house. They weren’t doing anything suspicious, nor were they acting out in any way. As I drew near, though, I saw several people weeping, even some of the young men and boys, who would otherwise be giving me hard looks and flexing their muscles. I stopped my car and got out, standing in the street to ascertain if my presence was causing alarm.

The crowd went silent, at least two, maybe three dozen people. Some of them murmured to each other, but otherwise, it was a silence that communicated I was not welcome. I regretted getting out of my patrol car, and I started to turn away when Betty walked out into the street. She had tears pouring down her face, flowing tears that made her skin glisten.

“Officer Paul,” she said. “My Larry has gone and died. They found him on the street.”

Betty wavered in place, and I thought she might faint. I placed my hand on her right shoulder to steady her. That’s when she hugged me, and she cried a howl of anguish. Instinctively, I hugged her back. The crowd was really watching me, now. Some of their eyes staring, disbelieving looks on their faces. I felt awkward, wanting to step away, but I was afraid Betty would collapse. Then Terrell parted the crowd, walked into the street, and placed his arms around Betty.

“C’mon, momma. This officer’s got to go.”

Betty took tiny steps toward Terrell, hugged him, and he gingerly walked his mother toward the house. She looked feeble. Astonishing how the loss of a child could transform a large, fierce woman into a depleted caricature of herself, sadder than a helium balloon that had lost its ebullience, wrinkled and shy, unable to rise.

I remembered the roses, so I opened my trunk, scooped them up and took a few quick steps toward Betty and Terrell.

“Ms Betty,” I said.

She turned around and saw me standing there with the roses. A look of shock overcame her face. No longer crying, she stared at me like I was a dream, maybe a grief inspired hallucination.

I approached her, offering her the flowers.

“Please, Ms Betty, I want you to have these.”

The silence deepened, lengthening as the sun dipped below the tree line. A breeze ruffled the canopies overheard, and flashes of light moved among the crowd, giving the moment a surreal quality. When the breeze stopped, the spotlight was on me.

Betty took the roses, hugged them to her chest, and let out another howl of grief punctuated with gratitude. “Oh, the Lord blessed me,” she said. “Praise God!”

At that moment, everybody in the crowd was crying, and their grief rolled toward me in a giant wave. Seeing Betty’s reaction and the crowd’s reaction, I felt tightness in my throat, tears in my eyes, and I wept with them.

A few days later, I cleared lineup and drove to my assigned district. I drove down McKinley Avenue, saw some kids playing in the street. They were blowing soap bubbles and watching as the wind took them spinning into the air. They waved at me as I drove by, one of them doing a little jig in the street, all smiles and braids.

When I rounded the corner, I saw a young man walking down the street, the usual baggy and sagging pants, the muscle t-shirt, but no ball-cap. He was wearing rows of tight braids. He turned to look at the police car behind him, stared past the hood and into the front windshield. It was Terrell.

I waved at him.

He smiled and waved back.