PAX Centurion - Fall 2016

Page 26 • PAX CENTURION • Fall 2016 617-989-BPPA (2772) Editor’s Note: This article is dedicated to the officers pictured in this section who have retired over the last year and were honored at this year’s retirement banquet at Venezia’s in Dorchester. We apologize in advance for any errors or omissions; we attempted to contact each retiree with limited success. Some retired BPPA members have moved away and simply desire to be left alone, as is their right. If any retiree desires to remain in contact with fellow members of the BPD, please contact us at (office) 617-989-2772, (fax) 617-989-2779, or stay in touch via our website at www.bppa.org, or leave a message for Bill Flippen, Retired Patrolmen’s Division President, through our office or website. We anticipate that the number of retirees will increase greatly over the next several years. C LASS 1-82, REPORTING FOR DUTY! November of 1982, the first class hired after the Propositon 2½ layoffs of 1980-81, (quick: what was the “Tregor Bill?”) , the first “numbered” class to graduate from the BPD academy (what are we up to now? 55-15?) , full of piss-and-vinegar, outfitted in new, baby- blue shirts (Thank God we got rid of them) , armed with spiffy new Ruger .38 specials with speed-loaders. Many of us were “salty” former cadets, already cynical and pre/burnt-out after a few years of dealing with the public via the front desk of the district stations and the back- rooms of headquarters. (Somebody once said that the motto for the cadet program should be “Destroying future cops since 1968”; there may be some truth in that…). You could smoke inside the stations back then, and many did, the numerous butts littering the worn-out floors of District 2, 135 Dudley St., Roxbury, my first regular assignment after probation. Headquarters was located at 154 Berkeley St., it is now a five-star hotel (if the walls could talk…). Long-ago closed and sold off by the City after the layoffs was the old District 3 located at 872 Morton St., Mattapan (now a vacant lot) , District 13 on Seaverns Ave., JP, (now condos) and District 15 next to the courthouse in City Sq. (currently occupied by a social-service provider) . District 6 at 273 “D” St. remained open for some years as a hybrid-station housing various specialized units, and is now being turned into… (take a guess what?) . Old District 4 (now condos) had been located at WarrenAve. and Berkeley St. in the South End. Prisoners were transported to D-4’s underground “ID” unit in the exhaust-fume polluted basement from everywhere around the City by the wagons, fingerprinted and photographed before being returned to the stations and taken to court. (Female prisoners were held in the “tombs”, the basement below the BMC at Pemberton Sq. and were guarded by police matrons.) The “old-timers” (definition: anyone older than us…) were equipped with swivel-holsters, slapsticks, call-box keys, paper manifolds, and not much else. Portable radios were distributed after roll call, and you had to return them to the “radio room” at the end of the tour. For some reason, new recruits got the shiny, working radios, while the veteran officers always got the broken ones. “Geez, they must really like us, giving us the new radios”, I thought . ( … dumb as a rock ….). Our class was the first to be assigned to one-man cars; previously, all cruisers were two-officer units. The older officers tried to tell us how to stay out of trouble in one-man cars (“Kid,… do nothing…but do it well..”) , but we managed to get into trouble anyway, because we were Retirement reminisce; were the dino-days of the 80’s really that long ago? By James W. Carnell, Pax Editor so much smarter than them (at least that’s what that they told us…). Anyway, we were told to stay away from the crusty-old veterans – they smelled bad and they would teach us horrible, terrible things, like police work and other bad stuff. That much was true: they did smell bad, and despite our reluctance, we did manage to learn a few tricks-of- the-trade. There was the old “How to empty out an unruly party in the middle of winter with a sneaky shot of mace into a hot radiator while they’re not looking” trick. It worked like a charm: just wait outside and the whole crowd of people who had just told to you “Go f… yourself, Pig!” five minutes before would be pouring out into the street rubbing their eyes and gasping for air. And there was the “Lamb method”, employed while using your nightstick aimed at a would-be assailant’s protruding knee. It didn’t work. Or, if it did, I never saw it work exactly the way they taught us in the academy. Stupid old veteran officers always aimed too high, even as I tried to show them the correct way displayed in the “New Centurion” training manual. Of course, that’s way back when we actually could even think of using the baton as a defensive weapon; today, it takes up space on your belt and is sure to get you on “Youtube” and the six p.m. news if you ever dared to use it. After the oil-embargo of 1979, which resulted in long waiting lines and shortages of gasoline, the BPD moved fromAMC Matadors to Ford Fairmonts to save on gas; a piece of automotive garbage if ever there was one. Officers taller than 5’8” could barely squeeze themselves into the front seats. Later on, then-Supt. John Gifford devised a plan for permanently-assigned, take-home radios. The Horror! Everyone was up in arms! But soon thereafter, somebody discovered that the portable radios worked as far south as Marshfield, and somebody else said they even worked crossing the Sagamore Bridge! I never did figure out why this was so important, because I lived in/near the city and none of our officers got radio calls down in Marshfield or the Cape, …. at least as far as I knew …, even though some of them lived there, but the controversy soon faded away for some strange reason. (No, I didn’t make Detective, why do you ask?....) Many years had passed since a Boston Police Officer had been killed in the line of duty, but the names of Roy Sergei, Louis Metaxas, Jerry Hurley, BerisfordWayneAnderson, Tommy Rose and John Mulligan would become familiar (and personal) over our first fifteen years on the job. Other (in)famous events included the so-called “Roslindale Tow” (non-)scandal, Edith Ban and Café Budapest, ( she survived the Holocaust, but not our relentless FBI, and all over some free meals… sad, when you think of what goes on today in politics) and the infamous “Brighton 13” case. One of our classmates became the Police Commissioner, others became Superintendents, Deputies, or police chiefs in other departments. Other classmates committed suicide, have passed away, or have since left the job under circumstances both good and bad. We remember good cops whose careers and lives were ruined by overzealous FBI agents and prosecutors, and we remember bad cops whose treachery disgraced us all. We remember the crack epidemic of the mid-80’s and the year of about 150 homicides in Boston (1986?). We remember with fondness and respect great bosses like Bob Faherty, Bob Hayden, Dan Flynn, Florastine Creed, Eddie Eager, Willis Saunders, Marty Mulkern, Ron Conway, Donald Devine, Jimmy Claiborne and many others…