Down in the Hole
Conlon, Edward
Edward Conlon Down in the Hole Six weeks with the police in New York's subway tunnels. Come back to the subways! But not to live! Only to go from one place to another! There's not much graffiti,...
...It was early in the rush hour in midtown, and Tara and I waited as John asked the token clerk for the key to the bathroom...
...He was sick, he was crazy—did you see his ankle...
...nested on the BMT platform at City Hall, and you can see Mama and Papa bird fly up and down the platform after bits of food and soft bedding for their young...
...John stepped out to meet him, firm and polite, available for questions and blocking his way...
...Some plainclothes cops want to look tough, to wear the same hard face they do in uniform: that blank, angry, no-nonsense mug behind mirrored shades that terrified Hitchcock...
...No...
...Two Oriental males, one in a black jacket, had robbed someone on the street and fled to the East Broadway station, possibly into the tunnels...
...Like most cops, Tara takes it well enough but there is, perhaps, a gradual toll on the sympathies...
...Extraordinary care went into the decoration of the stations, from the gabled control houses of brick, stone, and terra-cotta to the marble and mosaic interior walls...
...They have to let you know they know, the wiseasses...
...It's a tougher collar down here," said Keith, a six-year veteran who is one of the most active cops in Manhattan...
...All right...
...You can't take that...
...I asked him about the mask: "Because of the dust...
...John, I think, has never been told that he was "looking pretty juicy today" by someone he was slapping the cuffs on...
...Human feet, size twelve at least...
...You know...
...We waited jumpily for the train, asking people how long they had waited, looking down the tunnel...
...Most calls like that end in lost trails and dead ends...
...30 The American Spectator May 1992 his left hand...
...I ain't gonna call you Officer, I'm gonna call you 'Mr...
...The peddlers were given summonses for $50...
...That first day was a relatively short one, as John and Robin had to meet the sergeant to get their memo books signed...
...John had the man go to his knees while he took his statement, and sent me to look for the chain, which in the rush hour traffic must have lasted as long as a snowflake on a radiator...
...One of them stared back at me, and I recognized him as the messenger whose job had been spared at the last one...
...a smart crook might put in an emergency call to concentrate the cops in one area...
...What's going on here...
...The doors closed, the train began to move, there was a scrimmage for seats, and the man went through the door to the next car...
...We waited as more information came on the radio: ". . three males, NFD . . ." "Does that mean, 'No further description...
...I had a look at the knife: its single, sharp, 3" steel blade was an inch too short to qualify for a charge of Criminal Possession of a Weapon, but quite sufficient for the task he spoke of as he boarded the train...
...He broke the law and got a browbeating for his trouble, and several million people were able to take the train that day without having to hear from the self-appointed spokesfreak for the oppressed south of the border...
...Tara talked about how her sister was going into the next class at the Academy...
...The call was so sudden and insubstantial that John told me it might have been a fake...
...A fter the steady activity of catching farebeaters, the watch for more serious crimes was generally dull...
...When the time is up, the prisoners are cuffed to long chains, five to a chain, and bussed back to the district...
...The scratch," they call it...
...Anybody that looks—" "Are you married...
...His partners have expressed the hope that he doesn't find them...
...He had a knife...
...We grabbed slices of pizza and had lunch in Seward Park, a playground on Canal and East Broadway at the eastern edge of Chinatown...
...Though his appearance was odd dreadlocks and a surgical mask—he spoke coherently, answering my few questions in a sleepy, succinct voice...
...There's not much graffiti, and you're wrong about crime—it happens mostly during the day, not at night...
...Since the thirties, the trend in architecture has been toward the utilitarian, in aesthetics toward the nonexistent, and in philosophy, if you like, toward a kind of paternalist pessimism...
...The messenger said, to no one in particular, "They got the handcuffs on me, too...
...We were talking about the pressures on policemen and the manners of New Yorkers, and my friend told me I couldn't go two weeks without wanting to hit someone in the head...
...He has a false cast and sling for his arm...
...tunnel .. ." "Central, which way is he headed...
...You waited till he turned his back, then you went through anyway...
...By day, the cops serve primarily as information booths...
...The shortcomings of the case were brought out by a bystander, a young black man in an embroidered jeans jacket, who was watching When the rest of the world does what I did then, the same thing generally happens: they get a free ride...
...Tell your homeboys it's not worth it...
...There are countless printed exhortations to refrain from both spitting and from touching the 600-volt third rail...
...A young black man in a business suit went through the turnstile, cursing volubly...
...There was a recognition that everyone else on the train would be gone soon, would be at work or dinner or home, and only the police and the street people would be together underground for the hours and years to come...
...New York City hasn't had a good pattern crime since Son of Sam, and everyone was hungry for an arrest...
...one would throw a basketball in the air, and the others would run till it dropped...
...As the weeks passed, I found myself anxious to be where the bad stuff happened...
...Before we left the station, I talked to Warren Clarkson, an extraordinary man who has the unenviable task of keeping the station clean...
...And so on...
...They could be a freak, too...
...City Hall is a few blocks below...
...I'd buy a herd of mustangs...
...I asked...
...At that time of day, the crowd was a good sign: it meant a train was due...
...And a young black woman in neat street dress paid her fare and waited by the turnstiles through two trains, calling out "Watch it, the cops...
...A rival company which became the BMT (Brooklyn Manhattan Transit) opened at the same time, and the first map to show both lines was not printed until the twenties...
...John and Tara finished with the ticket and released the man...
...Little old ladies are good for that...
...The call had come from the city cops, who do not use the same frequency as the transit police, and there is a three-to-four-minute delay in the relay of information...
...Be advised, that's an unauthorized transmission...
...In the eyes of the world and the guts of Middle America, New York is the embodiment of urban nightmare...
...And a radio call for a "man under...
...the panhandlers, unless particularly menacing or persistent, were simply escorted from the train...
...We ran out at East Broadway to find an empty station...
...As it was, he was charged with a violation of the Administrative Code, section 10-133.C, which prohibits an "exposed blade in public view...
...He was also, plainly, both sober and reasonably intelligent...
...He pointed to a three-inch slash on his biceps...
...Where do you live, Miguel...
...These thoughts clacked and pinged through my mind like slot-machine lemons for the six weeks I was lost on the subways with a friend of mine, a plainclothes transit policeman...
...14th and Sixth, where all the homeless sleep, you can't even sit on the stairs...
...It was a humid day, and the transmission came over like a cheap AM beach radio, a laryngitic croak through a cloud of white noise: "Be advised . . . armed...
...Where should we send an ambulance...
...I don't know...
...They all gravitate to the hole...
...they were otherwise an undistinguished bunch...
...I saw a santeria doctor walking through the trains with an armful of roots and herbs, and a woman told me that they were for love potions and "sickness of the stomach...
...Are you married...
...It is an offense comparable to smoking or littering...
...He works for the Transit Authority, he told you not to do it...
...Surface crime, I'm there...
...There are some semi-permanent camps, with populations of a dozen or more living in relative comfort, with televisions, hot plates, and refrigerators run on electricity pirated from the third rail...
...I ain't dissin' you, I'm just sayin, you ain't got no evidence, you ain't got no complainant, you ain't got no case...
...John told us about his standing in his bowling league, back in Brooklyn...
...We were unable to find it, and John said, "If it went into the tunnels, the rats ate it by now...
...Transit cops go for an extra week of self-defense training after the normal six-month stint in the Academy...
...There's not much graffiti, and you're wrong about crime—it happens mostly during the day, not at night...
...I'd take a bow...
...As I waited for John one day outside the district, another chain gang came in from a TOS sweep...
...The problem is that the bad guys can spot it in an instant, and it frightens decent people off the train...
...The public breaks you," he said...
...Some left and others arrived, milling about...
...she said nothing and her eyes welled up with tears as Robin wrote a summons for the name on her Human Resources Administration ID card...
...they left twenty dollars and decided to eat somewhere else...
...He also held up a knife...
...You his lawyer...
...Let me see some ID, sir...
...The cops' behavior was strange as well, talking to their charges in sympathetic and solicitous tones...
...Both cops are of medium height and solid build, and both are from Brooklyn...
...Like the city itself, it is a thing of democratic opportunity and imperial reach...
...The redneck with the Italian obsession was an escapee from Creedmoor...
...at Bowling Green, a guy walked past and cat-called, "Undercover...
...Mental patients, alcoholics, crack-heads, they all get out of the hospital and go straight to the hole...
...Tara took the suspect upstairs and sat next to her prisoner in the back seat, behind the driver...
...Times Square brought us to Diane Warden, a 40-year old black woman, broad-built and placid...
...They made a lot of noise, said that it was race preference...
...f I were ever to join the police force, my first choice might be the Transit Police...
...Tara, a tough, athletic blonde from upstate, is John's regular partner...
...A well-dressed West Indian woman arrived and called out indignantly, "What is this...
...Then the messenger spat out, "Who you talkin to...
...It began as a bet...
...No, say twenty-five after...
...There were over one hundred thousand Edward Conlon is a writer living in the Bronx...
...You know why they come down on freaks in Mexico...
...Less urgent than a 10-31—"Officer in dire need"—it was however accompanied by a Code 3 call—top priority, lights and sirens—for a surface crime car...
...In plainclothes, it is shooting fish in a barrel...
...Grace Hall, the tallest building in the area, has a row of Hebrew letters below the cornice in the front, a string they drifted apart, with odd twos and threes taking separate trains, until the last stragglers departed...
...I thought it was a plastic bag until it moved...
...Policewomen bear an additional set of burdens, from the fit of the vest—with their generally shorter torsos, the holster pokes up on the side—to the kind of disrespect described above...
...pected them of drug use or dealing, at which point they quickly confessed their real business in the tunnel...
...He radioed in his findings: "Central, there's a dead man here, send a—" "Officer, you are not a doctor, you are not qualified to make that determination...
...He paid his fare and returned sheepishly to the train...
...We are not having a discussion here...
...You know I wasn't harassing anybody, or after a purse . . ." A friendly, almost collegial tone was typical of exchanges between cops and the homeless...
...If one person a day said, 'Thank you,' it would be worth it...
...The Santa Maria is bordered with pink-andblue or pink-and-yellow mosaic—in rectangles and lanky, perpendicular strips—and the walls are crowned the length of the station by a green ceramic frieze of garlands of flowers, broad amphorae, and horns of plenty...
...That's China...
...I don't think she spoke English...
...We watchin' you...
...He is looking for sandals and love beads...
...Like the Marine Corps or a last-place Little League team, the transit cops take a perverse pride in the intrinsic indignity of their position...
...And they say New Yorkers just don't give a damn...
...Step over to the wall...
...We took the next train out...
...Columbus Circle has walls of buff-colored brick that lead, two feet above the floor, to a strip of marble wainscoting...
...As it was the first day I had worked with her, a public contradiction was out of the question, but I told her he was a mental patient as soon as he was out of earshot...
...The most perfunctory of panhandlers worked the opposite platform, mouthing "Money, please," in a tepid monotone...
...The population of Manhattan had doubled in twenty years to almost two million, and the city added another million with the incorporation of Brooklyn in 1898...
...Even at the district, where cops can grab an hour or two The American Spectator May 1992 35 with...
...But often, and more often in recent times, you will hear cops say that they like their jobs...
...The public breaks you," he said...
...I hoped that they wouldn't get one, as it would likely mean that I would lose them...
...No, I'm single...
...You see them go by, dragging pieces of pizza...
...If one person a day said, 'Thank you,' it would be worth it...
...The annual ridership is over a billion...
...Valentine's Day Massacre...
...And to the cops, with a raised hand, he called, "We watchin' you...
...A homeless black man went to hop the turnstile as the TA clerk was taking out the tokens, and the clerk chased him away...
...People stopped to watch...
...Both wore black nylon waist pouches for handcuffs, paperwork, and extra rounds...
...If you do not have the decency to at least move to another station . . ."—the threat level ascends, but unless someone is an actual menace, an arrest will not be welcomed at the station: What's this, a bum...
...He was just opening a can of soda .. ." "Well, actually, I heard him say—" "Why they have to have the cuffs on him...
...The brutality of the subways has led some cops to respond to the public in kind...
...The group got off at Grand Central Station and waited, again at the end of the platform...
...The frieze is in bad shape, with long scrapes along the amphorae and garlands and fierce chunks knocked loose from the horns of plenty...
...I thought I could get through since your back was turned...
...You can be arrested if you refuse...
...I got this last year...
...No, I had lost my mind...
...They walked together, somewhat hurriedly, and the white man spoke to him, answering his own exasperated questions over the noise of the departing train: "Why'd you take that chain from that girl...
...Well, part of him's on 14th Street, part's on maybe 15th, there's a loose leg on . ." When the sergeant arrived, he was of little consolation...
...the lilac in the City College station plaque at the 137th Street station runs from deep violet to pale rose...
...And then they switch...
...John called back, testily, "What you want...
...The plaque itself is framed by lilac and black mosaic in a geometrical pattern and topped by a bas-relief bust of a three-faced deity, one-upping both the modest Columbia College plaque a few stops down and the original Janus on which it was modeled...
...Most of those who are caught are charged with fare evasion, a violation of section 1050.4A of the Rules and Regulations of the New York City Transit Authority, a relatively petty infraction carrying a $60 fine payable by mail...
...Other kids, too, they slip right back into the projects around here...
...There are a few suicides and an occasional murder, and kids fooling around are knocked from the platforms or fall between cars...
...I told John that I thought he had been a little rough on him...
...He was tall and gangly, sweaty in his greasy, red down jacket...
...He works for the Transit Authority, he tells you not to go through, you don't go through...
...The reason for this, as I later learned, was that if they could establish a reliable identification, the paperwork would be finished in a few hours and the farebeaters could go home...
...If I call this number, I'm gonna get your mother, right...
...My favorites are the "All it takes is a dollar and a dream" ads for the Lotto, which feature the smiling faces of the thirty-odd slogan contest semifinalists...
...The train came and we took it...
...There is the construction worker with his tool belt and concrete-dusted boots, the messenger with a knapsack and Lycra shorts, and the tourist with baggy Hawaiian pants, subway map, and video camera bag...
...We noticed their absence when the waiter brought two steaks to their empty table...
...To the north and east is the Hispanic Lower East Side, to the west the mostly Orthodox Jewish business district that, while still bustling, has only a shadow of its former size and energy...
...Jacoby and Meyers, they're okay...
...John asked the alleged perpetrator to get up, saw how stiffly he moved, and helped him...
...The energy with which the cops wrote summonses so early in the day led me to ask a foolish question: "Do you guys have some kind of quota...
...We were at Delancey Street and got a call for a robbery in progress at East Broadway, one stop down...
...One afternoon I heard on the radio, "Central, are you gonna wait till someone gets killed before you get these radios fixed...
...You're supposed to do it...
...The two people in the seat beside them leapt up and ran away, leaving me a good spot to watch...
...He gets to make a phone call, right...
...Robin had a gray hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and running shoes...
...I picked a business card from the paper-shuffle and took it from her...
...They took the next train and so did we, a few cars not been a robbery but some kind of dispute on the street, perhaps a family argument, which ended with one of the parties brandishing some kind of weapon before running away...
...The city owned the tracks and the private companies leased them for operation until the mid-century, when the city joined them to the IND lines it had built in the thirties...
...We were jittery with adrenaline, having seen in a few minutes the plausible inceptions of a stabbing and a race riot...
...What...
...Please stay back, sir...
...You look Italian...
...Um, there's no quotas but . . . allocation of resources is based on volume and there is . . . a friendly competition between districts...
...I walked around to the other end of the shed and was relieved to find a head and body attached to them...
...The two shuffled aimlessly across the platform, laughing...
...About sixty people a year are run over by trains...
...robberies in New York City last year...
...We sent away Thomas O'Brien from another station on the East Side, at the request of a token clerk who said he was "frightening people...
...Five years later, there was elevated or underground service on seven avenues in Manhattan, and the IRT went from the Bronx to Brooklyn...
...Eight hundred thousand people pass through Grand Central Station each day...
...The sights we encountered at Second Avenue were only slightly less gruesome...
...He was pale as a drowned man, and could have been a derelict from central casting except for his gleaming gold fingernails, each an inch long, and what looked to me like wedding rings on each finger of Some plainclothes cops want to look tough, to wear the same hard face they do in uniform...
...As it happened, that day we were a bit more popular with the criminals...
...Ann wore bright red lipstick, and her eye makeup—black and green and deep brown pancake in broad concentric circles—made her look like a rabid raccoon...
...CI The American Spectator May 1992 41...
...I had thought she was a fake when I first saw her and I decided to at least test her English by asking her the time...
...For the peddler detail, we would ride a particular train up and down the line, waiting for people to come through the train hawking fortune cookies, wallets, Street News, or whatever else they had...
...We began one day on the Lexington Avenue line and caught nine farebeaters in just over an hour...
...The man behind me echoed him and approached the three against the door...
...With his non-prescription granny glasses, pre-torn jeans, and black suit vest over a T-shirt, John is as convincing an out-oftown has-been as I've ever seen...
...Before this neighborhood was Chinatown it was A call for a cat on the tracks brought us down into the Delancey Street station...
...The cops arrived in a Chevy Suburban, the latest model paddy wagon...
...And of the 23,000 homicides that took place in the entire country, the city claimed one in ten...
...another young white kid, a chubby little skinhead with a pocketknife...
...But they said he didn't cut me bad enough for a felony assault charge, and the guy was on the streets four days later...
...Okay...
...It'll blow our play for later," John said...
...Startled, he left and went through when the clerk was back in the booth...
...Their choice of boudoir was appalling, but perhaps appropriate: the temperature in the tunnels was over a hundred degrees and the stench was overpowering...
...And then we got a call for another robbery in progress at Delancey Street, threw the food down, and ran back into the station...
...I asked him what had happened...
...The ticket booths were of oak with bronze grilles, and there were men's and ladies' bathrooms at each stop...
...It's that simple, you understand that...
...He had the strong goatish smell of long weeks on the streets...
...The West Indian woman walked away, shaking her head...
...The periodic terror and routine abuse undo some people over time, and others virtually instantly...
...This is false arrest, call my lawyer...
...You can commandeer a vehicle in any emergency situation," John explained...
...Are you sure you're not Italian...
...I stood at the open door and John and Robin were behind me against the opposite wall...
...If they headed uptown, they would run into us...
...He was in handcuffs in an instant...
...Dude shot my leg two weeks ago," he mumbled...
...Some smart-aleck samaritan obliged and he hopped the turnstile into the waiting arms of a cop...
...Another white teen raced down the stairs to catch the train in the station, Along with every other cop in lower Manhattan, we staked out the "Screwdriver Stabber," whose three attacks in four days commanded the tabloid headlines for perhaps a week...
...The police had certain advantages: they had a good description, his attacks had been confined to a very small geographical area, and he seemed to persist in spite of media attention and police presence...
...There was a power shed, a small structure about eight feet tall, and John directed my attention to a rectangular white form on top of it...
...It's fairly reliable and it runs all night...
...We were talking about the pressures on policemen and the manners of New Yorkers, and my friend told me I couldn't go two weeks without wanting to hit someone in the head...
...In some stations, there are new bum-proof seats, six inches of butt-busting blue plastic on black steel racks...
...It was a Friday night, and the temperature on the streets was over ninety degrees...
...The peepshow would never end...
...The man laughed and was slow to leave...
...The advertisers seem happy...
...Yeah—talk about rights...
...We'll commandeer one...
...But you know, what I'm saying—" "Shut up...
...You can kind of tell if it's raininbreadth, and can apply to statements as various as "Middle management often takes a cavalier attitude toward Fourth Amendment issues" and "That's the sergeant, the tubby bald guy over there...
...Police from twelve districts patrol the 26 lines and 469 stations of the subway system which, with 740 miles of track, is the largest in the world...
...You understand what I'm telling you...
...On the trains, you say...
...Donald Willis...
...One morning I worked the Lower East Side with John, Tara, and Keith, another cop whose partner was on vacation...
...The subways ran for three decades before anyone even thought of putting policemen there...
...When John answered in the affirmative, the sergeant handed him a pair of latex gloves and told him to search the body parts for ID...
...Her generally cool demeanor was a few degrees chillier when she stopped a middle-aged man who any case, her partner is a far softer touch...
...Adverse criticism" is a term of magnificent The American Spectator May 1992 29 Edward Conlon Down in the Hole Six weeks with the police in New York's subway tunnels...
...Though unpleasant to watch, it had been the right play: Donald was someone who could take advantage of a situation...
...An express train took us the twenty blocks to his station, and we were there within three minutes...
...Who are you...
...Another cop translated: "If they piss you off, you tag the skell and boot 'em...
...Sugar—" "Do you have ID...
...We rode for a few stops on the last car, the traditional after-school party car, and returned to the station...
...I saw the man with the knife—again with a can of soda and a newspaper under his arm—and his brother on 14th Street...
...Other cops arrived and it was time again for me to disappear...
...The cops call it "the Hole," but you don't have to...
...I just wanted to give him a quarter, if he don't have it...
...At West Fourth Street, we ejected Kandi Jackson, age 30, undomiciled and unmarried...
...Is this a black-white thing...
...But most of the casualties are homeless people who live in the tunnels—between five hundred and two thousand of them...
...Except for the cops, the station was empty...
...He was speaking either to himself or someone in the small crowd that followed him onto the train...
...watched uneasily the only time John showed some temper...
...The peddler was a Haitian woman who sold Nike sweatsocks from a platform on Penn Station...
...I say a prayer every day before I come to work...
...the men opened fire and in the ensuing gunfight, the woman was killed...
...What...
...The chance of running into the cops in the place he hits is therefore substantially reduced...
...He opened a bottle and invited us to have a sniff...
...The black man in the cap said that he had to go, or else he'd be fired from his messenger job...
...I turned to see Robin signal to John...
...would meet John every day around noon, down the hall from headquarters...
...he talked to it and stroked it, and it ruffled its feathers and rested beside him...
...He was just opening a can of soda...
...And, discounting my last vestiges of respect for the human race, it was a victimless crime...
...The uniform is "the bag...
...A lady had a heart attack on the 4 train downtown, and it slows things up...
...It's not a threat, it's a promise...
...The token sucker jams the slot on a turnstile and lets the person through after they attempt to pay the fare...
...To begin with, the numbers: the 4,100 officers of the New York City Transit Police make up the sixth-largest police department in the country...
...First came two white teenagers, tough at first, then pleasant-voiced and pleading, then dewy-eyed and nervous as they squirmed in their cuffs, realizing they would wear them for the next few hours...
...John and Robin work well together and, like most male-female teams, are difficult to spot as police...
...The first uniform came back with a politic word: "Ma'am, if you got in trouble, would you want us telling everybody who came by what you did...
...A freak is automatically discriminated against...
...On ah, on ah, on ah, Nealand...
...What is wrong with you...
...This is a false arrest, call my lawyer...
...he asked, seeing John queasy and trembling...
...We were on a robbery stakeout, and the peculiar pastimes of consenting adults were beneath notice...
...The man protested but did not resist: "What you doing...
...At Columbus Circle, the embellishments have suffered much from vandalism and decay...
...More frustrating are the false alarms...
...Upstairs, we met two uniformed cops and John told them that I was with them, the brother was not...
...We would go to a station, often near a school, and wait...
...I'm going through the same thing as him...
...John had him empty his pockets—menthol cigarettes, matches, loose change—before putting the cuffs on, which he did with sour indifference: "Man, I don't got dick...
...While we were writing them up this white guy goes through, you could see he was retarded, and we just let him go...
...And the subway is where our bad blood flows...
...Take your hands out of your pockets...
...When John told me that the Police Department averaged eight suicides a year, his partner added, "That's just the obvious ones...
...She shouted a preemptive "Hi...
...the ones sitting down looked constipated...
...Lealand...
...him his name...
...Some cops were fatherly, others positively apologetic: "You ever get in trouble...
...Uptown on the East Side to Grand Central to the shuttle across, then down the platform on the Broadway line, I followed her till only one man was with her...
...The problem is that the bad guys can spot it in an instant, and it frightens decent people off the train...
...When John ordered him against the wall, he explained how annoyed he was because he mistook the clerk for a policeman...
...A dozen boys hung out at the end of the platform, waiting as a number of trains passed...
...By night, they are scarecrows, a "visual deterrent" to whoever might be after more than a ride...
...Tara looked through his wallet until she found an address...
...Around 30 percent of them are mentally ill, a population that overlaps with the 25 to 30 percent who are substance abusers...
...Miguel Duenas found that out when he went through the gate...
...Both insisted that they had done nothing at all, until it became clear to them that we susHe has been on the streets for two years, in the tunnels since January...
...Then The tens of thousands of mosaic tiles were set by hand and tinted a dozen half-shades on the specified color...
...One afternoon, John worked alone in uniform and let three people through the gate in less than a minute: a homeless man, a woman who said her wallet was stolen at work, and a middle-aged woman in a housedress, who sobbed and chattered in Spanish as she proffered a handful of dimes...
...t was not always so...
...Every kid knows who you are once you start the summonses...
...He turned to me as I scribbled at my notepad: "You a cop...
...Alcoholism is common...
...We caught a "troll," a man with a key to an unattended gate, but I never got to talk to a "token sucker...
...Other commemorative plaques include the steamboat at Fulton Street, the beaver at Astor Place, the fierce federal eagle at 33rd Street, and the stockade at Wall Street...
...as we hopped the turnstiles and went down to the crowded platform...
...Keith complained that if the mayor closed the Central Park Zoo he would have to take his daughter to the beach "every goddam day...
...The divorce rate is extremely high...
...And, until 1950, it cost a nickel to see it...
...I pay my own salary," he said, which certainly got my attention...
...As I stepped through, John and Robin each took an arm and in smooth unison pushed him against the door...
...John is Italian and Robin is Irish...
...See what I'm saying to you...
...Plus a stern, a cabin, and a large crew...
...Jesus, we're in Chinatown, all they say is 'two Oriental males.' This is a situation where peoples' rights get violated...
...For an ejection, the officer asks the person for a name, age, address, and marital status, and writes down a brief description for a more-orless informal record...
...She gave a Bronx address unnervingly near my own...
...I'm there and this yuppie, suit and tie, says, Tor the delay this lady caused me, the least she could have done is died.'" (I don't mention the cop's name because of a regulation prohibiting "adverse criticism" of the department, which is punishable by up to fifteen days "modified duty"—straightening files...
...I'd dress to kill .. . the President...
...As a slogan, it was a distant miss, but the man kept on repeating it anyway as he walked onto the train...
...We ate lunch at a diner in the Village...
...Undercover man...
...But far more common than physical attack are ferocious assaults on the senses...
...Stay back...
...The only problem I've ever had was with taxis, but I take them 95 percent of the time, and 95 percent of them have been great...
...Even after she stopped him, it was a few minutes before he could take her seriously...
...Tara spent a moment on the radio and the witness approached us...
...Had I solved the case...
...When I saw the Hispanic woman John had let on for free—the weeping monoglot with the handful of dimes—I felt compelled to find out more about her...
...I was disappointed when the gun John spotted under the shirt of a 14year-old boy turned out to be a capgun...
...This man is in chains for drinking soda on the subway...
...You want to mind your own business...
...apart, and watched them...
...We found a similar surprise looking for a bathroom...
...Are you married...
...He challenged me, you know, and—" John cut him off, barked back in his face: "He didn't challenge you...
...You look Italian...
...More importantly, the 'dreams' themselves have none of the backalley lust and millenarian rage that are the real stuff of underground vision: "I'd buy a comfortable seat . . . on the City Council...
...The cops call it "the Hole," but you don't have to...
...If I do see you again, Donald, I will lock you up...
...Tony got about a yard away before he pulled back, covering his face: "God, it burns the shit out of your eyes...
...here, for a moment, was someone to talk to...
...Jacoby and Meyers, they're okay...
...They are trying to child-proof the subway...
...A lot of people run to the train, but those who run from it are often carrying someone else's purse...
...A family of English sparrows have...
...Though there were elevated trains in Manhattan in 1870, the subways were not built until the turn of the century...
...The second uniform approached her and began to explain, his hand outstretched in a gesture of exaggerated patience, as if he were sending back a steak for the second time...
...In his late thirties, he is also probably in his last years...
...The annual ridership is over a billion...
...Maybe when we're good they'll put the upholstery back...
...And when a cop is in trouble, help has to wait for the next train...
...The police apologized, again, and then one offered to call his boss to say that he was a witness in a robbery, and would be stuck downtown for a few hours...
...But the common folk didn't fare too badly, either...
...Walt Whitman would have liked the subway, even now...
...The man called to the messenger, "Have a nice day, my brother...
...Warren has come to the aid of both passengers and police in his campaign against dirt and crime...
...The train stopped and the production exited, players, crowd, and critic...
...Mostly convertibles...
...It was a fairly cogent summary, in fact, but that was for the district attorney to decide...
...The marble is the base and sides for the rectangular panels of white glass tile that comprise most of the wall...
...We all had to think about that one for a second...
...One of the surface crime cars...
...Look, lady—" "Don't you point at me...
...Though the students have free passes, we watched The American Spectator May 1992 33 dozens of others hop the turnstiles without making a move...
...In Times Square, a young girl sang so soulfully that there were six or seven couples slowdancing, as if it were the last dance at the prom...
...Only one of them had a warrant, for car theft, but it had been vacated and he was otherwise clean...
...the show from the nearby stairs...
...But most are among the benighted legions of schizophrenics and junkies who might roll over in bed, or walk in their sleep, or never really wake up to begin One night on a robbery stakeout on the Lower East Side, I asked John and his partner, another young buff named Timmy, about a 26-year-old cop who was profiled in the Times after having been stabbed for the third time...
...He looked at me and shrugged, and we both began to laugh...
...The high-crime hours are between three in the afternoon and nine at night, which is to say between the final bell and "Doogie Howser, M.D...
...Uptown, a lot of them come from the Bronx and they gotta get the train back home...
...If someone had run away from him, he could have been charged with Menacing, a misdemeanor...
...Yeah, you threw me out last week,, remember...
...The next day, transit police in the Bronx stopped two men and a woman for fare-beating...
...Edmund Burke said that, for us to love our country, our country should be lovely, and almost reluctantly I began to see a peculiar loveliness to the subway...
...A lot of people run to the train, but those who run from it are often carrying someone else's purse...
...It's because I like it...
...There may be a medal in this for you, O'Reilly, keep up the good work...
...It was a wisecrack, but with a plaintive undercurrent...
...I was surprised to hear him agree: "Yeah, and there was no way I was ever gonna get close to him...
...Robin followed him, then John, then me, then someone else behind me...
...With their hands cuffed tight behind their backs, those who stood looked like they were striking poses for a bodybuilding contest...
...y 4 4 ou just want to stab these people, cut 'em up...
...One had a gun or a knife...
...She didn't answer and I repeated the question., She smiled politely and said, in a Spanish accent, "Yeah, it's twelve-thirty...
...These thoughts clacked and pinged through my mind like slot-machine lemons for the six weeks I was lost on the subways with a friend of mine, a plainclothes transit policeman...
...Cops in uniform usually work alone, and the radios are unreliable underground...
...Also, police work is a twenty-year civil service job, and the bosses have long memories...
...Who you think I'm talkin' to...
...You got warrants, summonses, anything...
...Working the Seventh Avenue line, we had four ejections and one peddler summons in an hour...
...John and his partner for the week, a woman named Robin, were to chase the panhandlers and vendors from the platforms and trains...
...Two young Hispanic men sat down in the booth next to us and listened in on our talk of homeless crack-heads and police suicide...
...A shorter answer would have been, "Yes...
...A few minutes later a group of teenage girls walked past, singing softly, "Undercover D's...
...And the subway is where our bad blood flows...
...Police from twelve districts patrol the 26 lines and 469 stations of the subway system which, with 740 miles of track, is the largest in the world...
...The man with the knife and his brother walked off the train...
...As the weeks passed, I was able to spot most of the undercover cops at about fifty feet...
...We raced to the end of the downtown platform, and two uniformed cops waited on the opposite side in a similar attitude of anticipation...
...His boss must think him a fine citizen, stopping two crimes in ten days...
...I heard a train pass and realized that John would be on it, taking the witness downtown, and I would have to pay to get back on...
...the lilac in the City College station plaque at 137th Street runs from deep violet to pale rose...
...Most of the young cops and almost all in the specialized units tend to be "buffs," dedicated and enthusiastic...
...Though the person rarely has any identification, a real name is often given out of pure indifference...
...Otherwise, the Department of Corrections would have to provide them with room and board for the three-odd days it The American Spectator May 1992 39 would take to get them in front of a judge...
...John asked if we should get a car...
...They like each other, too—a recent "10-31" party for a young transit cop with leukemia raised almost $80,000...
...But the harder you try, the more abuse you catch...
...And the subway seemed to get smaller...
...The homeless man was listless and thin, in dirty jeans, sneakers, and a hooded sweatshirt...
...The guns are in hip holsters and the new radios can fit in the back pocket...
...Would you open the door, you son of a bitch...
...The flashlights revealed crack vials and great wet heaps of human excrement in liberal profusion...
...The response was affirmative, so I hopped the turnstile with the rest of the skells and went home...
...The smell...
...He says—it was a robbery—`Gimme your off-duty gun, I'll go down with you!'"of sleep between shifts on benches at the back of the station, the nighttime traffic of vermin makes it an unrestful place to lie down...
...Keith Thomas, a white teenager from Queens, slipped through as John was writing up someone else...
...The population of Manhattan alone triples daily—to four-and-a-half million...
...robberies in New York City last year...
...When a call came over the radio of a robbery or an assault that was too far away to respond to, the cops would complain in a real sore-losersqueezed in behind his friend, two-for-one on the token...
...That's China...
...Aquick search confirmed their statements—neither had drugs, and the homeless man had no money—and we let them go...
...Donald Willis...
...I pay my own salary...
...Well, I had a token but I need another one to get home...
...Construction of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company began in 1900 and the IRT opened for business four years later with a line that ran from City Hall to Grand Central, went west to Times Square, then headed up Broadway to Harlem...
...it was from a psychiatric social worker at the discharge planning unit at Bronx Municipal Hospital...
...With his long hair and scurvy beard, his leatherette coat and brown-bagged malt liquor, Thomas is a ringer for Mickey Rourke in Barfly...
...Central, which way is he headed...
...It was a downtown train, and as we rode John also recalled that the kid he knew lived in the Bronx...
...He looked like he hadn't slept in the three weeks since I saw him at Penn Station...
...I tell them to send it to the mayor...
...A billion...
...Just because they're poor...
...One guy scared me, I was gonna make him let me get out...
...If she stays through another train, I'll throw her out...
...usually means one of their number...
...They tell you to fix the turnstiles, they yell at you if the train is late...
...Oriental male...
...Little old ladies are good for that...
...I'm his brother .. . man, he wouldn't hurt nobody, he wasn't doin' nothin' . . . why they have to lock him up...
...Everyone's there, and everything...
...It's bad when it rains," added Robin...
...A group of four or five more boys passed us and joined them...
...I'd rather break my own fingers before I'd touch that guy...
...You're getting off with a warning this time...
...Duke Ellington would still sing of it...
...He was a black man in his mid-thirties, thin and bearded, red-eyed and agitated, carrying a can of soda and a newspaper under his arm...
...On the first day, it rained...
...It's a life-threatening job...
...They all come underground...
...You see I'm a cop, you see I'm right here, and still you go through...
...I asked him why he stayed in the tunnels: "Less people...
...A lady had a heart attack on the 4 train downtown, and it slows things up...
...One cop took the opportunity to practice his bagpipes near the 'stiles, avoiding the suspicion of both the criminals and the talent agents...
...In the eyes of the world and the guts of Middle America, New York is the embodiment of urban nightmare...
...People go out of business," he said, and we let him go back to sleep...
...he is ahead of Fat Joe but trails the Fish Twins...
...John went on with his paperwork until the rubberneck called over again, repeating his offer...
...City Hall speaks its piece on AIDS, drug abuse, discrimination...
...She stood as John flashed his badge...
...All right...
...Catching farebeaters is easy enough in uniform...
...Undercover D's...
...A slender 30-year old with a childish aspect, he giggled at her questions and his eyes wandered up and down the platform...
...Many criminals know this...
...I myself have found at least ten bodies in the tunnels, all from drugs...
...Why'd you—you can't...
...So I went down to the token booth and asked the clerk, sternly, if someone had taken his statement...
...And the traffic of farebeaters is so huge and regular that if a cop routinely comes home empty-handed the sergeant may presume that the officer is spending the day in the doughnut shop...
...Some panels contain the greenand-beige mosaic tablet with the station name, others frame a ceramic plaque of the caravel Santa Maria, its white sails full against the blue sky...
...Back outside...
...You can kind of tell if it's raining, or if it's day or night, even if you're deep underground...
...The brother went on, his voice less angry than fed up...
...103rd and Lex, easy...
...He called to the homeless man and asked if he needed a quarter...
...You living there or me...
...I saw a homeless man waiting out the rain one night on the West Side, sitting on the platform with his pet pigeon...
...His cuffs were rolled up over the ankle to reveal an open, waxy red, baseball-sized ulcer...
...Some are stuck amid swarms of sweating ingrates and others are left alone, midnight after midnight, in Siberian isolation...
...To prevent graffiti, the cars are made of a specially treated stainless steel on which paint takes twenty-four hours to dry...
...The cause of the commotion—a mentally ill man who took a swing at a cop—was in handcuffs...
...There is a film of grime on everything, and a yellow scrawl of graffiti on the mosaic...
...You do not take it as a challenge...
...It's a tough call sometimes," she said...
...But no second call came...
...in tone of voice, "Why can't that happen here...
...She sat on newspapers, and had a duffel bag with other pairs of sneakers inside...
...When you catch somebody, always the last person to show up has to yell, 'Why are you harassing that man!' Or it's, 'Where were you, you jerk?' Except for when they need you, you feel like you're the enemy...
...There were over one hundred thousand Edward Conlon is a writer living in the Bronx...
...He's my brother, he—" "Don't worry, we're just gonna write him a summons and let him go...
...F or the first week, we were on a "Quality of Life" assignment, which the cops call the peddler detail...
...I know—" "—because Donald, right now all I'm doing is kicking you out...
...An Israeli student, whose girlfriend was so reluctant to let him go that she, too, risked arrest...
...But other cops get around it...
...Cop slang favors hard, abusive monosyllables...
...A billion...
...Some guys are too good, speeding and going through red lights...
...John remembered that he had arrested one of them for robbery a month before...
...people hop the turnstiles with a contemptuous lack of concern...
...Officer...
...Most haunting to me are the familiar songs on foreign instruments, like "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" on a steel drum...
...When we found the man with the knife, we had been looking for peddlers...
...What's the address...
...I began to understand the attraction of triads, tong wars, and opium...
...Trust me...
...In still other places the white tile is gone altogether, leaving patches of cement and splatters of black glue...
...A red-spangled fortune teller kerchief, blue gauchos, and sailor sneakers completed the outfit...
...The cop who caught him would be set for his career: "Task force, here I come...
...My ride, that is, not the murders or the robberies, although much would be explained if that were the case...
...But farebeating can also be construed as Theft of Service, a misdemeanor that goes onto a permanent criminal record...
...They call me the King Disinfector...
...But whether he jumped off a bridge or went back on his medication, the Screwdriver Stabber stabbed no more and the case remains open...
...Look here, I got it, they wouldn't take it...
...First time, huh...
...Believe me, it's nothing personal . . ." "This is a pain in the ass, I know...
...Perhaps three times a day, we would go through the big stations—Penn Station, 59th Street—and clear out the people working the platforms...
...John has a ponytail and wore jeans and a gray jeans jacket, a white turtleneck and Timberland boots...
...You can kind of tell if it's raining, or if it's day or night, even if you're deep underground...
...We talked with the cops for a few minutes afterward, had a cigarette, exchanged commiseration and thanks...
...Mercy and economy mix well in keeping such cases from clogging up the system...
...No...
...A minute, two 34 The American Spectator May 1992 assed, and there was still no train...
...But police work, being work, is mostly dull...
...The tens of thousands of mosaic tiles, or tesserae, were set by hand and tinted a dozen half-shades of the specified color...
...The population of Manhattan alone triples daily—to four-and-a-half million...
...Most ingenious is the "sixties guy" outfit, inspired by the Kiefer Sutherland character in 1969...
...Yeah, yeah...
...A scrawny 30-year-old redneck, in an A-shirt to show off his tattoos...
...the seats flip up unless you sit on them hard and, for me at least, actually concentrate...
...It was a lucky bench for me, as the sergeant chose it as the place to put the handcuffed farebeaters for the duration of the ninety-minute sweep...
...If I see you again, because of what you just did, the disrespect you gave this man, I will have you in jail so fast your head will spin till next week...
...The cops call it "the Hole," but you don't have to...
...I began to see the same faces...
...Their choice of boudoir was appalling, but perhaps atmospherically appropriate: the temperature in the tunnels was over a hundred degrees and the stench was overpowering...
...The report had been phoned in to 911, quickly and without elaboration...
...Adverse criticism" is a term of magnificent The American Spectator May 1992 29 Edward Conlon Down in the Hole Six weeks with the police in New York's subway tunnels...
...For an ejection, the assignment is to identify and correct the situation," John said...
...less conspicuous are the punishments they visit upon themselves...
...He walked up to the train, already in the station, and laughed as he called to her, "I'll give you one, two, three, four—there you go, see you later...
...The prepster had performed an act of oral gratification on his companion, and denied indignantly that any money had changed hands: "No...
...The crowd this time was generally indifferent and unsympathetic...
...Stuff like that happens a lot...
...I saved a cop's life here once, and there was another time when these two girls came in, they had all their gold on, and a guy came after them with a machete...
...But the harder you try, the more abuse you catch...
...A drunken white laborer wandered around the station, growling "All's they do is rips ya's off...
...Each day, millions of people still go places and get there...
...A call for a cat on the tracks brought us down into the Delancey Street station...
...I think they made us already, I don't want to give them any more breaks...
...The skells stacked up like cordwood on either side of me...
...The old ones were the size of cinder blocks...
...Police officer...
...Let's get down to business, let's be gentlemen about this...
...Well, it seems to be kind of an occupational hazard these days," said Timmy in a tone of mild annoyance...
...I will call my friend John and give his colleagues other, more imaginative pseudonyms...
...I went up to him, went into a martial arts pose and said, 'My man, do not mess with me!' I happen to be an A-list liar, thank God, and he ran away...
...What's your name...
...I've taken cabs, hearses, UPS and delivery trucks, regular cars off the street...
...He'll get his call...
...I pay your salary, man...
...There's an incredible concentration of discarded citizens here," John said...
...August Belmont, the financier behind the IRT, saw the town from the Mineola, his own private subway car, which came equipped with a champagne bar and other amenities that are difficult to find these days...
...There are some strange and beautiful things underground, all the stranger and more beautiful for their persistence through the noise and the dark and the violence...
...One day as I waited for the cops to get the scratch, outside leapt to the barrier, and stayed there, poised like a gymnast on the horse, waiting to see if anyone held the door for him...
...She'll be the first to bitch when the fare goes up," John said...
...One man said to Robin as she sent him from the Christopher Street station, "Hey, don't I know you...
...Officer...
...They tell you to fix the turnstiles, they yell at you if the train is late...
...34th Street, when they closed it for a while after a rape...
...We were unable to find it, and John said, "If it went into the tunnels, the rats ate it by now...
...Okay...
...Even if a panhandler gets a ticket, collecting such fines is a low priority...
...Officer.'" At Penn Station, we moved Thomas O'Brien from the stairs...
...As we approached the end of the platform, two men emerged, both in their thirties, one ostensibly homeless, the other preppily middle-class in a polo shirt and chinos...
...You can travel from one end of the city to the other—literally, you can travel for leagues—for a buck and a quarter...
...Okay, Donald...
...To begin with, the numbers: the 4,100 officers of the New York City Transit Police make up the sixth-largest police department in the country...
...They argued, less heatedly than a moment before, and the second cop went to intercept other rubbernecks who began to move in from the other side...
...Each district conducts routine Theft of Service or "TOS" sweeps, a kind of "Fear of God" policy that complements the "Quality of Life" details...
...John thought they were tinfoil...
...It's tough enough as it is...
...My ride, that is, not the murders or the robberies, although much would be explained if that were the case...
...I got the feeling it had been a long day for him...
...That is a promise...
...She wore baggy, tweedy, sooty men's clothes: a blazer, canvas pants, and heavy leather shoes...
...One of the uniforms stepped up to us and answered, "It's for our safety...
...We made a frenzied dash to get to a 10-58 call on the radio, which means "Officer in need of assistance...
...On hot days, the bulletproof vest is hard to conceal, even under an oversize shirt...
...When John picked him up, he protested, "They wouldn't take my money...
...Either we're headed in the wrong direction, or they are...
...Do you understand that...
...You just want to stab the motherf---ers...
...As we ate lunch we watched the subway exit to see if anyone ran out...
...But sugar, sugar baby—" Officer Sugarbaby made no particular haste in writing that summons...
...the "Cops and Robbers" game they would likely play later would stress the latter role...
...Police...
...It's just a summons, don't worry, we'll let him go...
...It began as a bet...
...I saw the homeless man throw down the chain two strides before Tara took him and pushed him against the wall...
...You are gonna give me the information and you're gonna leave...
...I'll give you one shot, if she gives me the inforniation you gave me, we can get the paperwork done in two hours, otherwise you go away for the weekend...
...People crazy...
...The middle-class man was terrified at our arrival, but the homeless man, who had a jagged vertical scar that went from his eye to his jawline, swigged cheerfully from a can of beer...
...The glass tile is pocked and chipped in places, some in regular patterns with bits of steel spurs extruding, suggesting some large sign had been removed, others in random profusion, like the backdrop of the St...
...There is a comic preponderance of ads for podiatrists and hemorrhoid treatments...
...The station was full of angry people: an old black man banged his cane on the special-entry gate: four, four, and five sharp metal-on-metal cracks...
...A train 38 The American Spectator May 1992 pulled in and among those who disembarked were a casually dressed middle-aged white man and a homeless young black man...
...We took a seat at a hopefully discreet distance and watched them for half an hour...
...I hoped so...
...There is fine music to be heard, guitars and violins, entire jazz bands that echo through the tunnels...
...There's not much graffiti, and you're wrong about crime—it happens mostly during the day, not at night...
...Central updated the story: it had of Chinese characters trailing down the side...
...It sticks out over the shoulders and chest like some kind of medieval training bra, especially on the very thin, the muscular, and the obese...
...She was a pretty, slim black woman in a long, dirty, pale-blue down coat, in jeans and sneakers and with a floral kerchief on her head...
...John reappeared and held him as Tara took the witness aside and spoke to him...
...4 The American Spectator May 1992 37 "What he do...
...I'm there and this yuppie, suit and tie, says, Tor the delay this lady caused me, the least she could have done is died.'" (I don't mention the cop's name because of a regulation prohibiting "adverse criticism" of the department, which is punishable by up to fifteen days "modified duty"—straightening files...
...While the removal of animal carcasses falls under the jurisdiction of the TA, "any [human] body parts found shall/must not be handled and should be reported to the Transit Authority Police...
...But the caravel Santa Maria is untouched: the white sails are still full, the sky is still clear, and the ship makes its way hopefully to a world that is still new...
...I use bleach, Pine Sol, and Orange Magic, which makes many people say, `Mmm, smells like Florida...
...Then a black man in a flak jacket and Islamic skullcap who had no identification but claimed to have worked for the TA and urged, in a deep, solemn voice, "Trust me, man...
...A group of Chinese teenagers played a kind of human bocci game in the park...
...The rats ran around like they belonged there...
...When you catch somebody, always the last person to show up has to yell, 'Why are you harassing that man!' Or it's, 'Where were you, you jerk?' Except for when they need you, you feel like you're the enemy...
...What's your name...
...As we ate lunch we watched the subway exit to see if anyone ran out...
...We watched again as Jewtown, and before that Irishtown, and earlier in the century it was part of the most densely populated square mile on the planet...
...If a face becomes too familiar—"Look, this is the third time today I've had to chase you...
...when she saw the badge, and continued the interview after the questions ended: "And I got two kids, and—" "You just can't stay on the stairs, Diane...
...Last week—you remember me...
...Tell the truth, there's no court till Monday, be straight up...
...If somebody tells you not to do something and you're wrong, you don't do it...
...John's first man under was one such case, and he will not soon forget it...
...Just because of the way I look, and don't have any money, that's the only—" "That's not discrimination, sir, what happened is you weren't paying your fare...
...Believe me, I got better things to do myself...
...Yeah, I think we should," I suggested...
...The cops ran like mad, and at least ten of them, plainclothes and uniformed, beat us there...
...When I had asked John and Tara for the worst rat stations, the answers quickly escalated into a spirited bidding war: "The tunnels in Grand Central—forget about it...
...Sometimes cabbies run the meter...
...And John, something of a thwarted actor, has a variety of disguises...
...I make forty grand a year and pay twenty in taxes...
...Sugar, would you please . . . if you feel that way, I will just get a dollar...
...Whoever caught it would roll it slowly toward someone, and if it hit them, they were "it...
...I just want to say that in Nicaragua, the rich, they discriminate against all the poor...
...And of the 23,000 homicides that took place in the entire country, the city claimed one in ten...
...All this dragnet bullshit, it's a pain in the ass for everyone involved...
...The problem was that she was with four or five men, all of whom had huge watches—glittering faux Rolexes or digital monstrosities that would not seem out of place on Skylab—and none of whom would appreciate my making a beeline for 40 The American Spectator May 1992 the only woman in their midst...
...The messenger responded, "Stay strong, man...
...Eight hundred thousand people pass through Grand Central Station each day...
...While I like the campaign, the formula of the smug parallel phrases, the quippy qualification soon grows tiresome: "I'd be overjoyed instead of overdrawn...
...Last week we 32 The American Spectator May 1992 got a big group of Hispanic girls for fare beating...
...The "casual but neat" look bespeaks the good homes they come from, but is demographically out of whack with the off-hour ridership of the trains...
...Minoritiesand women have a natural edge in plainclothes work...
...I made no gesture so that she would not simply imitate it and show me her watch...
...The Chinese gangs, they go after their own kind...
...Though he was likely physically weak, he was bigger than either of us and not of sound mind...
...One wears a three-piece suit with a bowler hat, a kind of Fiorello LaGuardia costume...
...The clerk called out "Pay your fare...
...At a lower Manhattan station, with the sergeant there to supervise, I took a seat on the bench nearest the turnstiles, opened a newspaper, and watched the eight plainclothes cops go to work...
...Morale is fairly extraordinary...
...Another black man, a messenger, looked on in disgust and called out: "Are they supposed to serve us, or are we supposed to serve them...
...The cars had cane seats and canvas straps, and there were special 36 The American Spectator May 1992 summer cars with open windows...
...T ara was never such an easy mark...
...said the brother...
...He—" "He had a knife...
...It's that simple...
...The auction ended at ninety-five...
...Alas, the train came before anyone could answer, and we arrived back at Delancey Street within a minute...
...It's ah, seventy-five, seventy-five, seventy-five, ninety, ninety-five...
...On the normal anti-crime detail, we would spend more time at The American Spectator May 1992 31 the stations, at smaller ones earlier in the day to write summonses for farebeaters, and at the busier stations later on, where we would watch for more serious crimes...
...The man had plenty of identification, including a recent inmate card from Rikers Island...
...TA clerks have tried putting Liquid Heat and roach spray on the slots but they suck on, undeterred...
...He kept the cops busy with his banter: "Are you Italian...
...She spotted us from her post beside the token booth, smiled weakly, and pretended to drink from her coffee cup of change...
...I approached and asked if she knew the time...
...We "played the picks," kept watch for pickpockets on the rush hour trains, but that is an extremely difficult collar, and we came up empty...
...Too many of the men look like fraternity brothers or the fellas at a corporate softball game, with their Giants sweatshirts and Mets caps, new jeans and white leather sneakers...
...to a number of people who might not have otherwise appreciated the presumption that they were petty criminals...
...It's Kandi, with a k and a i, remember that...
...Are you sure you're not Italian...
...We also met Ann Conkel, a heavyset white woman of "about thirty," by her own estimate...
...Once the farebeaters are back at the district, the police run a warrant check on them, and often—about once every seven busts—something serious turns up...
...He then retrieves the token from the slot in the distasteful yet picturesque manner that gives "Are you Italian...
...All I'm gonna do is tell you to get out of here...
...As well as your throat," said Warren as he put the cap back on, "But I suppose I'm used to it...
...A dapper dresser in black patent leathers and gray flannel slacks, oxford shirt and tweed cap, he responded to Tara and her badge as if she were a girl who was willing to go to absurd lengths to get his phone number...
...I didn't do nothin', get off me...
...We stayed close to him until he got on the train...
...Over the last few years, the ads have taken on a canny specificity, speaking bluntly to a market with little money and less brains...
...New York City's shelter system can hold a maximum of 30,000—lower than even the most conservative estimates of the city's homeless population...
...And all at once, everyone seemed to get the itches, reaching desperately for a distant spot on a leg or the tip of the nose...
Vol. 25 • May 1992 • No. 5
