New Orleans has long been infamous for its corrupt cops, but today I heard a story about a New Orleans police officer who, with one simple act of kindness and creativity, helped transform the lives of six troubled teens.
My car's in the shop, and my bicycle has a flat, so I called a cab this morning to come pick me up today. (Yes, I called a car cab. Hey, I'm all for patronizing pedicabs, and I do so whenever the circumstances allow it. And you can be sure that I pay generous tips. But I'm living in Gentilly -- about three miles from downtown -- so running my errands in a pedicab would cost a lot more time and money than I have to spare. We all have our niche, right?)
After greeting the driver and giving him my destination, I expressed my condolences for the murder of his colleague earlier this week. He told me that although they worked for the same company, he only knew the victim in passing. However, he was close friends with another cab driver who was murdered in May 2011.
I asked my driver whether he had ever been robbed on the job, and he said no, which wasn't all that surprising. He was a big, burly African-American dude with his hair pulled back tight in a little ponytail. If I were in charge of casting someone to play the part of a bouncer, I don't think I could do any better than this guy. If, on the other hand, I was out looking for someone to rob, I'd probably look elsewhere. As it turned out he didn't just look fierce; he was actually an ex cop. He had started working as a cabby only after retiring from a full career with the police force.
He had gotten into quite a bit of trouble in his younger years he told me. "I was never really bad," he said. "Just mischievous." But that mischievous streak might have eventually pulled him down a darker path had it not been for one particular encounter with the law. Here's the story as he told it to me.
Some friends and I had climbed over the fence at the school to shoot some hoops. After a while we got thirsty, so we pried a door open to go inside and drink some water. Without knowing it we had set off an alarm. We went back outside to play and suddenly found ourselves surrounded by police cars. Some of the cops got out carrying shotguns. We were really scared.
The chief came over to me and pulled me aside. "I know you from somewhere," he said.
I said, "Yeah, I work over there at Winn Dixie by the precinct station, so you've probably seen me around."
"Look," the chief said. "I don't think you're a bad kid. Tell me what was going on here."
"Nothing, man. We just broke in to get some water."
He walked back over to his colleagues and ordered them all to leave. "I'll handle this one," he said. Then he cuffed all six of us and put us all in his car. It was tight, but he made us all squeeze in. Then he asked us where we lived, and one by one he took every one of us home and talked to our parents. I vowed that day that the next time I met up with the law, I was going to be the policeman.
After I got out of the academy, I saw that same police chief, and he recognized me. He cried!
Of the six of us who got into trouble that day, me and another guy went on to become policemen. One became an attorney. One became an executive of a big financial firm. One owns a construction company. And one is a social worker with a PhD in psychology.
By the time he was done with his story, I had tears in my eyes. "Look, I hate to bring this up," I said. "But you know how it is here in New Orleans. Whenever you talk about crime and police -- or anything else, for that matter -- race is always part of the picture. So, your friends... They were all African American?"
"Yes," he said.
"And the policeman?"
"No, he was white."
I told the cab driver that I write a blog and that I would love to share his story. He said that was okay. I asked permission to use his name, and he respectfully declined.
Assuming that his story was accurate, he and his companions definitely beat the odds. You've probably heard the grim statistics about African-American men. If anything the situation is worse around here. A couple of years ago a report calculated that a black male in Jefferson Parish (an area which includes most of New Orleans' suburbs) was more likely to be murdered than a U.S. soldier deployed to Iraq was to be killed there.
I want to be careful not to put more weight on this story than it can bear. First of all, I can't say whether that policeman's behavior was anything out of the ordinary. For all I know he may have merely been following the police policy manual. Secondly, there must have been many other people who helped point these young men toward a productive path -- schoolteachers, pastors, social workers, and who knows who else -- to say nothing of their parents. Let's not overlook the fact that involving the boys' parents was a key component of the policeman's plan.
Still, the cop-turned-cabby who shared his story with me today credits that one policeman and his wise action at a critical time with setting him on the road for a successful life.
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