”I got a bunch of dope here!” Strain shouts.
The three youths tense; one starts to run. ”Freeze!” Ward shouts. ”On the ground! On your stomachs! Arms out!” They obey.
A covey of boys and girls who have been playing outside the building have stopped and are staring at the three youths who are prone on the grass and the two cops who are handcuffing the three together.
Strain radios for a squadrol. ”How long you been selling from the car?” Ward asks one of the youths.
”T. Ward, I`m telling the truth. I just walked out to the car,” he says.
The car`s owner, who has been inside the building, appears. He looks worried. He should be. The word is it`s his dope. ”Speak up, brothers,” he says.
”We done spoke up,” one of the three says.
Ward reads them their rights, then talks to the car`s owner and some young men who also were outside the building. He and Strain release two of the youths and arrest the youth in the navy-blue T-shirt.
Strain has found seven dime bags-2.4 grams of what appears to be cocaine. The youth will be charged with possession. He is 16. He says he`s an independent businessman, that he got the dope ”out west,” meaning the West Side. He denies he is selling for a gang. Ward and Strain believe he`s a good soldier who will take the fall for his bosses.
3 p.m. Roll call. The shift`s 21 patrol officers are inspected by Capt. Lou Arado, third-watch commander, who points out unbuttoned pockets or unpolished shoes. Today is the first day of the new training videos. This installment is about how to safely handle routine traffic stops. ”Courtesy is contagious,” it says.
”You got that?” Arado says. The video ends and he asks, ”Anybody have anything?” Nobody does. ”Let`s go,” he says.
3:07 p.m. At the 18th desk, Officer Kathy Cunningham is taking a complaint from a man who says he is being harassed by the brothers of the woman he broke up with. They have tried to break down his door with a baseball bat, and they have threatened to burn down his house.
Next in line is a young tourist from Finland whose camera and wallet were taken while he was in a Division Street bar.
3:45 p.m. A man in his 20s, his hands cuffed behind his back, is being escorted to the station lock-up by two laughing tacital unit officers. A few minutes earlier they had seen him driving toward the Loop, recognized him and remembered there was a warrant for his arrest on burglary charges.
”This is your lucky day,” one of the cops says.
”We`ve saved your life,” the other cop says.
It seems the man and his fiance were on their way to City Hall to be married. The wedding will have to be postponed.
3:50 p.m. Detective Povolo now has arrest records for the three men charged with breaking into the phone. ”They`ve all been arrested before. One`s a prostitute. Another has a couple of batteries and the last one has theft,” he says. ”We`re bad criminals,” one adds from the lock-up.
4 p.m. An old man wearing shorts, who was arrested for masturbating in a Lincoln Park washroom, is fingerprinted.
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4:15 p.m. ”Shoplifter from Walgreens,” an officer announces as he leads a prisoner to the lock-up.
4:31 p.m. One of the three charged with the phone break-in says he spent his youth in the custody of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. ”I`ve been in the system since I was 2,” he says.
”He`s probably been in our system a few times, too,” says Officer Eugene Elander.
4:45 p.m. Lt. John Culloton, 53, 6 feet 4 inches, 30 years in the department, 20 of those in the detective division, is driving south on Michigan Avenue. As a detective he wore civilian clothes; now as a white-shirt field officer, he wears a uniform and drives a squad car.
At Huron Street, a man raises his hand to flag a cab, and Culloton almost stops. ”It`s hard to know sometimes whether they`re flagging you or a cab. But one thing I`ve had to get used to since I left the detective division was that I`m driving a marked car.”
4:50 p.m. A woman`s voice comes over the radio: ”FOP (the proposed police contract) has been voted down.”
”All right!” a man`s voice responds.
4:51 p.m. Culloton responds to a radio call about two men taken into custody by security guards at Passavant Pavilion at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Policy requires him to supervise only at the more serious incidents or crimes. ”I try to go to everything,” he says. ”What sounds insignificant can turn out to be very significant. And vice versa.” He heads for the hospital.
Two blue-shirt officers have already arrived. The Passavant security officers are turning over the suspects to them. ”These two guys were arrested here yesterday for theft of a purse,” a security officer says. ”The woman signed a complaint. Today they show up again, and we catch them hanging around a room. They`ve given different names from yesterday.”
5:13 p.m. Action is picking up on the mating-bar stretch of Division between State and Dearborn. Culloton is driving west when a young woman in a low-cut blouse, tan shorts and cowboy boots runs across the street, screaming that she has been robbed. Culloton whips a U-turn, parks in front of Bootleggers and hops out.
”Where is he?” he says.
”The bastard robbed me of $60,” the woman shouts. ”He`s in there!”
She points to a bar. A solidly built, blond young man in a muscle shirt, shorts and jogging shoes walks up. ”Arrest the bastard!” the woman screams. This scene is taking place on the sidewalk near the Ginger Man bar.
A drunken wino in a red plastic Sox helmet from the `70s has joined the discussion. He wants to bum a cigarette from the woman. Through the confusion of his slurring demands, the woman`s shrill, rambling accusations and the young man`s stolid protestations of innocence, a story emerges.
The woman says she is an entertainer, a writer and a businesswoman and that the man is a thief. The wino begins to criticize her for her scanty dress.
The woman met the young man in a bar in April and invited him home. ”She seduced me,” the man says. ”When she gets home, she takes off her clothes and starts singing Bette Midler songs into a microphone.”
While she is asleep, she says, he takes $60 from her dresser and leaves.
”You dress like a hooker,” the wino says to the woman.
”I`m an honest guy,” the young man says. ”I don`t take money from women.” He says he is an unemployed laborer from Elmwood Park.
An incredibly patient, absolutely professional Culloton listens carefully, defuses the situation and calls for a squad.
The woman will sign a complaint. The patrolman arrives, reads the young man his rights, then handcuffs him.
”You`ll never hurt young women again,” the woman shouts.
”You psycho bitch,” the man says. ”You call yourself a young woman?”
The wino staggers toward State.
5:15 p.m. Officer Kim Lopeztello assists tactical officers Ward and Strain, who are looking for drugs on Mohawk Street and had female suspects to search. ”I search the children and women,” Lopeztello says, adding that she sometimes finds drugs hidden in babies` diapers.
Four men sit on the curb as Ward and Strain search a parked car for drugs, but find nothing. Strain says he previously indicted one of the men for cocaine dealing, but one of the four protests when the officers snidely accuse them all of being dealers.
”Don`t interrogate me like this!” he says. ”I`m a working man!”
A neighbor passes by and asks, ”What`d they do, officers?”
”Nothing,” the four men say, but the officers don`t answer.
”Leave!” Sgt. George Papagiannis snarls at the man. ”You`re not a lieutenant, you`re obviously not my mother and you`re not the mayor of Chicago, so I don`t have to listen to you!” The man leaves.
7:10 p.m. The radio reports a fight on the street at 732 N. Clark St., a block from the 18th District station. Culloton is there quickly, but the fight isn`t. Ten minutes later, there`s a report of another fight at State and Superior Streets, in front of Holy Name Cathedral. Again nothing.
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Through the early evening, there will be several reports of fights that either never happened or end before the police can arrive.
7:15 p.m. ”We`re busy. Very busy,” says Jerry Siegel, lock-up officer.
”We got 23 (prisoners) so far,” says his partner, Scott Shaver. The block contains 15 cells including a large tank. Few of the 1,100 or so prisoners who pass through in a month spend more than 24 hours here.
7:50 p.m. Yells come from the lock-up. A young Hispanic man, who had been told he could bail out a friend when the paperwork is done, goes outside and yells back through the barred windows: ”Entre una hora, puede salir!” (”You can leave within an hour!”)