Some People Deserve To Be Lied To.

Please stop being nosey. From minor accidents in the opposite lane of the highway, to murmurs down your block, just mind your business. Why? Because most likely, your half-assed assessment will lead to misinformation or worse if the police get involved. What dividends do being nosey pay anyway? Just think of all the yentas in your workplace and the hearsay they promote. Nosiness rarely improves your condition, and if you’re dealing with me, might even set you back. From wash-women colleagues to bystanders on the street, I always look forward to messing with nosey people. One of America’s greatest thinkers, Jerry Seinfeld, once geniusly said, “People who read supermarket tabloids deserve to be lied to.” Well, I feel the same way about people who can’t mind their fuckin’ business.

In law enforcement, police are often tasked with non-enforcement matters. Sometimes we need to return property, or get signatures on documents, or to notify next of kin for an arrested family member, or other non emergency conditions. But drive down any block on a nice day and you would think we were giving away PBA cards. The same residents who have never “witnessed” a crime on their street, or cannot verify a description for any wanted person in the vicinity, will practically jam their heads into the back windows to see who we are escorting home. Ring someone’s bell for a civil matter and every tenant in the building peeks out when they hear the police radio echo in the hallway.

In a three story building I once had to resort to ringing many bells randomly because I did not have an apartment number for a family notification. Standing near the vestibule and announcing up the staircase, “Helloooo, is anyone related to Jimmy Rodriguez?” One question asked aloud on the first floor usually brings out all the nosey neighbors.

“Did he do something wrong?” “Is he OK?” The barrage of questions begins. “Where he be at?”

“DOES ANYONE IN THIS BUILDING LIVE WITH HIM?” I holler, glancing up the three story staircase admiring the broken and missing handrails.

“I know Jimmy” I hear from a faceless voice above. “What did you people do to him?”

Laughing inwardly, “If a family member does not come forward Mr. Rodriguez will be deported for espionage within the hour.”

One time a well dressed black man walked to the end of a subway platform, put down his briefcase, turned and nodded to the college student next to him, then jumped head first under an incoming train. A true tragedy all around- especially to witness or sift through for identification.

Aside from a traumatized onlooker, we had a very messy crime scene to maintain. We closed the station, bagged up our macerated victim and removed him to the morgue. Stepping up to street level we were blocked from the ambulance by a traffic clogging corner full of onlookers. Staring intently at the zipped up body bag on the stretcher, a particularly nosey group of Hasidic men began their dumb inquisition.

“Is he dead?”

“I think so” I replied, looking at the body bag.

“Is he Jewish?” They asked.

“It’s hard to tell, but I think he was.”

At another subway crime scene, we had to close half an elevated station at rush hour for evidence collection. This time the poor guy lived after being caught in the subway door and dragged down the platform. After assisting with crowd control for an hour on a hot summer day, I began to get creative with the gawkers- especially those who weren’t leaving and being nosey. To the litany of “what happened?” questions, I tried to see how far I can push the truth. To a particularly nosey few, my responses were as follows:

To the young Russian woman with the baby I answered, “Mining disaster.”

To the group of skateboarders, “Water main break due to frozen pipes.”

“Shark attack” I whispered seriously to a group of Jewish students.

A drunken Mexican walked under two streams of crime scene tape and up the stairs toward the elevated platform. Yelling loudly so the crowd could hear, I said, “Sir the platform is closed! Can you not see how the station is flooded!”

I enjoy the opportunity to lie to the nosey, deserving public. As you may surmise, New Year’s Eve is the most heavily staffed nights in the NYPD. Due to the scale of the televised event worldwide, New Year’s Eve night is the one shift every cop is expected to work. I have known a Captain forced to work the detail with over twenty years on the job despite his child’s first birthday.

People start lining up at noon for a front row viewing location in the crossroads of the world. By 6pm traffic is halted and the masses begin to arrive. Despite the well announced gridlock and street closures, there are legions of stupid people who STILL arrive within 10 minutes of midnight, expecting a decent viewing spot. They deserve to be lied to. Every time I’m working in Times Square, I convince a group of uniformed officers to walk to the Times Square station ten full minutes before midnight, when the crowd is at fever pitch. Just as the stupid masses arrive, ascending the steps in a sprinter’s pace, we all hold back the smirks, look at our watches, and scream in unison… TEN…NINE…EIGHT…SEVEN… and watch them panic. They inevitably look around, seeing a wall of barricades and police…SIX…FIVE…FOUR… They scramble from one exit to the other, going nowhere, and then resolve to celebrate just below street level. THREE…TWO…ONE… HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

The funniest part is encouraging well over a hundred dim bulbs to pop streamers, blow horns, and hug strangers. Then we quickly move to open the barricades and usher them upstairs into pedestrian gridlock; because if we do it right, we can intercept at least two more trains of the stupid before the REAL stroke of midnight. I almost felt bad one time as we watched some schmuck take a knee and propose to his girlfriend right there in front of the token booth, five minutes before midnight.

Then I realized he too DESERVED to be lied to.