The Name of the Law

TIME: 1625

The lobby of Portland Police Bureau’s East Precinct, located
at 737 SE 106th, exudes the kind of sterile, authoritative charm
normally associated with post offices and civil registries, in that
there are many free brochures, receptionists pull apart sliding glass
windows before engaging you in conversation, and the chairs are very
uncomfortable. After introducing myself I’m predictably told to take a
seat.

My contact for tonight’s ride-along is Officer Jeff McDaniel, an
eight-and-a-half-year veteran of the Portland Police Bureau. He’s
patrolled the Southeast neighborhoods from 82nd and 136th to the east,
and between Division and Holgate to the south, for the past seven
years. Known as “Felony Flats” by those who live elsewhere, Officer
McDaniel’s district is a loose amalgam of dive bars, strip clubs, pawn
shops, taquerias, tarnished apartment complexes, adult video arcades,
low- to middle-income housing, gas stations, an international farmers
market, convenience stores, abrasive neon advertising, strange
churches, Asian groceries, barbed wire, Goodwill stores,
first-generation immigrants, kids on low-rider bicycles, and several
fast food restaurants that have yet to correct their brightly lit
marquees that read “ON DOLRR BRGER.” Much of the pavement around the
empty office parks in this area appears permanently blackened with the
worn tread of street-racing vehicles. There’s also Lents Park, which
recently lost a Minor League Baseball team.

TIME: 1630

Dispatch reports two teenage girls fighting near the
parking lot behind the Taco Bell at SE 83rd and Francis. By the time we
arrive, a second officer has separated the girls for questioning. Girl
A is pouty and standoffish. When questioned by Officer McDaniel she
paints herself as the victim, claiming the altercation stemmed from an
earlier incident at school.

“I am bullied,” she says. “I’m always being bullied.”

To make matters worse her mother—a thin, chain-smoking woman
who repeatedly punches numbers on her cell phone yet never places a
call or receives one—gives a dramatic statement to Officer
McDaniel regarding her daughter’s long history of being victimized by
Girl B and how said victimization has gotten so bad Girl A cannot go to
school due to the general atmosphere of hatred and vitriol aimed
squarely at her daughter—a good, honest girl whose only crime
thus far is daring to grow up in a society that hates her.

“I can’t take it no more,” the mother says. “I just can’t take
it.”

Compared to Girl A, Girl B is without friends or immediate relations
yet remains taciturn and calm, crossing her arms and glaring off to the
side with an impatient air that suggests a familiarity not just with
the mechanics of standard police procedure but the highly regimented
process that is the justice system entire.

After taking her statement, Officer McDaniel and his fellow officer
decide the situation warrants an official “write-up”—which means
the details of the case will be sent to the city district attorney, who
will then decide whether further action is necessary. In the meantime,
no one will be taken to jail. Standing alongside the police cruiser I
realize—with a certain degree of shock—that to the carloads
of people passing by the situation, it appears that I, an adult male
dressed in street clothes, have somehow gotten myself entangled with a
pair of teenage girls to a degree that requires police attention. No
matter how innocent and official I attempt to appear, nodding my head
as if waiting to give my opinion on the matter on which the two
officers are engaged, the eyes of the passing motorists harden in
condemnation. The sky above me goes dark. The public has come to an
opinion.

TIME: 1701

Officer McDaniel’s police cruiser is a basic Ford Crown
Victoria outfitted with a “police package”—a phrase that calls to
mind cinematic images of battered cruisers jumping city bridges in
pursuit of an outlaw vehicle, but in reality means a beefed-up motor,
improved suspension, and a horsepower equal to most consumer vehicles
with a sticker price over $35,000. Like all American automobiles, it
comes outfitted with a boring interior, a lot of legroom, and a
depressing sense that the best parts of your life are far behind you.
The brakes however are quite impressive. More than once they pull us to
a stop so fast the world outside the car snaps back into place a full
second after we’ve come to a halt. Names, addresses, criminal records,
mug shots, driving records—all can be accessed by an officer from
the detachable laptop computer spored from the dash on a flat black
tray. Officers send and receive information using a bevy of abbreviated
words and numbers, which to the casual observer appear as
indecipherable as serial numbers or computerized lines of binary code.
Besides the 9mm Glock in Officer McDaniel’s holster, a standard
12-gauge shotgun loaded with beanbags is the extent of our firepower
this evening.

Although many consider that “Bad Boys” jingle to be the official
soundtrack of the law enforcement profession, the true music of the job
is the ever-present sound of the police radio—a constant flow of
static hisses, pulsing beeps, and the ever-present voice of dispatch
reading off the details of the night’s emergencies like the disembodied
voice of some impatient God. “212, robbery in progress, suspect appears
intoxicated; 212, suspects are engaged in a fight with a baseball bat;
212, victim fled on foot; beep, static, hiss, beep; 212, multi-car
accident at 122nd and Foster”—and so on until the end of
time.

TIME: 1712

Now seems like a good time to mention that the seatbelts in
this police cruiser are first rate. Before locking the belt clip into
place, there is just the slightest bit of resistance in the coiled
spring of the buckle before it pops into a hold and the strap tightens
against my chest. It is a very good click and in light of the speed the
car travels, highly reassuring. When a passing motorcyclist reports a
major accident at the intersection of 140th and Division, Officer
McDaniel flips the lights and the city bends and in less than 10
seconds we arrive to find traffic moving peacefully.

“People call in fake reports all the time,” he explains later, as he
attempts to call off the rest of the emergency personnel—fire
trucks, ambulance, and paramedics—dispatched to what is
ostensibly a non-event. “A lot of the time these fake calls come from
mentally imbalanced people. Other times people pull pranks. Either way
we don’t have any choice but to respond.”

TIME: 1755

Near 122nd and Division, Officer McDaniel points out three
young men who look about 16 walking down the street dressed in gang
attire—blue Dickies and red flannel shirts. According to Officer
McDaniel, in addition to the Bloods and Crips, the Eastside is home to
the Family Kings, a gang of mostly Mexican men who as of late have
spread out of Gresham and into the outer reaches of East
Portland—a move that’s been generating a fair amount of static
among those gangs who have long claimed the area between 122nd and
136th on SE Division as their own. The Family Kings are known for
sending out the youngest members of their gang—such as the three
men we see tonight—to walk the neighborhoods as a way of
advertising their presence in the area. Higher-ranking gang members,
especially those with criminal records, are rarely seen in public and
often give orders through lower-ranking members to avoid detection.
What’s disturbing about gangs is for all their inter-territorial
squabbling about boundaries of dominion, gang violence often plays
itself out in public using bullets that know no affiliation. In the
hands of gang members, firearms are little more than an article of
improvisation, a gut reaction to chaos. The results are never good.

“What’s scary is that gang members often have no hesitation before
firing,” Officer McDaniel admits. “They don’t aim. They just
shoot.”

TIME: 1810

Officer McDaniel says, “One of the worst things I ever saw
was a dead body of a man about 12 days after he passed. He was alone in
his apartment with drug paraphernalia scattered all around him. His
family reported him missing. Arriving at the house we saw the usual
telltale signs. Mail had piled up. Newspapers were stacked on the
porch. When I came in his entire body had swelled and bloated and his
skin was black like the color of charcoal. Jet black. The smell was
unbearable. He’d been there for so long the maggots in his flesh had
hatched a second generation of maggots that were crawling in and out of
the skin. Seeing a human being decay is strange and overpowering. You
know it’s a human even though it doesn’t resemble one. I can still
remember that smell. You don’t forget something like that.”

TIME: 2026

Officer McDaniel directs my attention toward a skinny woman
in a sequined dress shuffling up 82nd in high heels. “You can always
tell who the prostitutes are on account of they either walk too fast or
too slow. They can never blend in.”

Although the Portland police have a separate task force devoted
specifically to targeting prostitution on the Eastside, Officer
McDaniel has been involved in several sting operations himself, both as
the undercover “john” and the arresting officer in a sting. He explains
the experience of being an undercover john:

“If a women has been arrested before and knows the deal she will
enter the car and ask if I’m a cop. I say no. Then they ask me to touch
their breast. Police officers cannot legally do that but it really
doesn’t matter because at that point we can arrest them on suspicion of
prostitution. That’s all the evidence needed to take them in.”

TIME: 2105

Dispatch reports a 17-year-old girl with a history of
incarceration and psychiatric problems has locked herself in her
bedroom at 111th and Division and is threatening violence. We arrive to
find the girl in question screaming at her mother on their front lawn.
A second officer arrives and the two women are separated. The girl
claims she wants to leave the house and go live with her father, which
her mother—the girl’s legal guardian—will not allow her to
do because the father is homeless. Despite the claims of the daughter,
her mother hasn’t done anything against the law. Seeing as how it’s
been decided by the officers that the girl is no longer a threat to
herself or anyone else, there isn’t much for them to do besides nod
with concern until everyone calms down.

It’s disconcerting to realize how, to this family and many like
them, having the police arrive to break up a disagreement is an outcome
indelibly thread into the narrative of the argument itself. In other
words, a family squabble doesn’t end with slammed doors or teary-eyed
hugs or a requisite period of non-communication, but when the police
show up to end it. Most officers will tell you they spend 90 percent of
their time dealing with 10 percent of the population. I can see why.
Tonight’s trumped-up altercation has an underlying numbness, a
characteristic of routine. At one point the mother’s boyfriend—a
thin man wearing pajama bottoms and a muscle shirt—emerges from
the front door holding a trash bag. Walking through the middle of the
arguing women, he heaves the thing into a plastic can at the edge of
the driveway, brushes his hands clean, and without a word goes back
inside the house to fix himself a sandwich. The officers leave soon
after.

TIME: 2134

Through the windows of a police car the darkened city streets
appear endless and strange. As Officer McDaniel peels around corners
and shoots down side streets lit only by the glow of porch lights, the
car is not once without a concentrated center of balance. Even at
speeds of 90 MPH, as the lights along 82nd Avenue elongate into a
single streak of amber and pedestrians whip by no different than
sedentary columns of stone, there is a feeling of control.

Dispatch reports two men fighting in the parking lot of Tommy’s Too,
a strip club on 103rd and Foster. By the time we arrive the brawlers in
question have already gone. I follow Officer McDaniel through the door
as he enters to get a statement from the bartender.

The interior of Tommy’s Too has that boozy, underwater slowness
typical of strip clubs and other drinking establishments devoid of
natural light. Upon our entrance, a dozen erections go limp as men
mutter curses into the ice of their drinks and look the other way. The
only person moving is the onstage dancer, a long-legged African
American woman naked save for a leopard print thong, caressing the
wrinkled face of an elderly man holding a pair of crutches. I ask a guy
standing at the bar how long he’s been coming to this particular strip
club and if he’d like to be quoted for the article.

“Go fuck yourself,” he tells me.

TIME: 2145

Somewhere in the maze of orange streetlights and quiet houses
near 111th and Division we come upon the very Twin Peaks-like
image of a shirtless man trying to cut down a tree branch on his
property with a handsaw. As the headlights sweep over him, he curses
the flimsy saw with that air of inconsolable rage all men get when
things they want to break are uncooperative, but fails to notice the
motions of our passing inquiry. Other than him, most people along this
street have gone to sleep.

TIME: 2328

Dispatch reports 15 people engaged in a brawl at an apartment
complex at 174th and Powell. We arrive to find the first three officers
on scene standing at the end of a darkened courtyard with their arms
crossed, waiting for backup. It doesn’t take long to see why.

In the courtyard roughly 15 feet ahead of them, an unknown number of
people are screaming at each other at a volume far exceeding the level
of polite conversation. It is unclear what the problem is or who the
people are screaming about. If an illustrator were to animate this
scene a bunch of squiggly lines with little voice bubbles of starred
profanity hanging overhead would be more than adequate. There is just
one single spotlight shooting down on the middle of the courtyard and
the air smells of charcoal that’s been heavily doused in lighter fluid,
like a barbeque arranged by pyromaniacs. Everything else is
darkness.

Again, it cannot be overemphasized how loud this argument is. Within
the next five minutes, four more police cars arrive. The officers then
proceed into the darkened courtyard slowly, a solid mass of law
enforcement trying their best to maintain calm in the face of what is
essentially madness. As they walk forward two officers remain at the
edge of the yard, watching the upper balcony for the first sight of a
weapon. I’m taking cover behind a truck bed filled with twisted scraps
of metal and sharp gadgets that in light of the argument serve no
function beyond the general aura of intimidation. To my left an older
man in a wheelchair silently smokes a cigarette as he waits for the
situation to play itself out in a manner keeping with those he’s
witnessed countless times before. Noticing me behind the truck, he
gives a limp wave.

***

To spend a significant amount of time with a police officer is to be
witness to a series of split decisions, the byproduct of which rarely
pleases those affected by the consequences of their choice. The very
nature of a police officer’s job is to routinely and without hesitation
engage in the types of conflict the rest of us go out of our way to
avoid, from violent fights to petty arguments to crimes involving
children—all while acting humanely and sensibly and without error
in the face of a society under no such obligations. Recent news of the
murders of four officers in Lakewood, Washington, at the hands of a
lone gunman is a tragic reminder that the job of a police officer,
while never above scrutiny, is undeniably more dangerous and complex
than most members of the public understand it to be. In Portland, a
city that sometimes has good reason to be distrustful of authority (as
evidenced by recent news of continued misconduct by Officer Chris
Humphreys, for example), the job can seem especially thankless.

Consequently I can’t help but get a sense that the good-natured
humor that prevails among police officers—especially after
situations in which another officer’s life has been put in
danger—feels slightly forced, like jokes told at a funeral.

“Sometimes I wonder if my young daughter will be dealing with these
same problems, should she ever choose to become a police officer,”
Officer McDaniel admits in a moment of rare introspection near the end
of his shift. “Will she be going to the same houses and dealing with
the same people and be faced with the same challenges as I am or will
there be improvement?”

From where I sit in the passenger seat of a police cruiser, it’s
hard to say.