Around the Clock …: Diary of a Street Cop

By Tony Leone

Author Tony Leone was simply a boy growing up in South Brooklyn in the 1950s. He was the oldest of three children born to average, middle-class parents. Leone didnt harbor a childhood ambition to become a cop. No one in his family was a member of the police force, nor did anyone ever speak of or encourage him to enter the police department. In fact, he didnt even know any cops. Yet, Leone served twenty-three years as a member of the New York City Police Department.

In Around the Clock Diary of a Street Cop, he shares his coming-of-age story and long career with the police department. Leone offers insight into the daily rigors of the patrol function as it existed in the transitional decades of the 1960s through the end of the 1970s. It underscores how most day-to-day police activities are not glamorous, nor are they anything like the super sleuth, who-done-it drama, or nail-biting suspense stories portrayed in the movies.

Leones memoir outlines the highs and lows, as well as the gratifying and disheartening moments associated with police work. It poignantly depicts how, when called to respond, an officers stress level can escalate from complete calm to life-threatening action in a mere heartbeat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491780107

Tony Leone

Tony Leone is a principal of Leone Design. His work has been honored by the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Brand Design Association, and has been featured in Communication Arts, Print, Graphis, and elsewhere. He has a son in kindergarten and a newborn daughter. @UnboredGuide

Book preview

Around The Clock…

DIARY OF A STREET COP

TONY LEONE

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AROUND THE CLOCK…DIARY OF A STREET COP

Copyright © 2015 Tony Leone.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

iUniverse

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8009-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8010-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015917039

iUniverse rev. date: 12/10/2015

CONTENTS

Prologue

PART ONE

In The Beginning

Earning a Living

Everything Happens for a Reason

Could This Really Be Happening?

A New Way of Life

The Academy

The New Centurions

Changing Times

An Obstacle

Almost There

I Can Almost Taste It

The Day Of Reckoning

Getting Started

PART TWO

Constable on Patrol

Paying My Dues

Flying

Precinct Conditions

Another Rookie Mistake

Jammed Up

Back on the Ranch

Arrests

Aided Cases

Partners and Characters

Coming Into My Own

A Game Changer

Overcoming A Hurdle

A New Beginning

The Business at Hand

Insight

Development

Putting It All Together

PART THREE

On My Own

Transition

Starting Over

Like Riding a Bike

Change

A Year in Clothes

Back in the Bag

Staying Alive

Winding Down

The Beginning of the End

The End

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

For Morris - Who showed me the way. I shudder to think of what may have been if I did not have you as a guide.

For JoAnn - My companion and best friend along life’s journey; who has encouraged and believed in me every step of the way.

Perform good works all the days of your life, and do not tread the paths of wrongdoing. For if you are steadfast in your service, your good works will bring success, not only to you, but also to all those who live uprightly.

Tobit 4:5-6

PROLOGUE

I’ve heard the 1950’s referred to as the era of good feeling. That was my era. Although I was born in the previous decade, the 1950’s was my era. That’s when I grew up. That’s where I draw my earliest childhood recollections. Life was simple. Life was lived in the neighborhood. I was part of the neighborhood. I belonged in the neighborhood. I was safe in the neighborhood. Everyone knew me, and I knew everyone. Everyone knew my family, especially since my father before me grew up just around the corner from our cold water flat apartment on Third Avenue between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets, in South Brooklyn, New York. My grandmother and grandfather still lived in the two family home where they raised six children, and where my aunt and uncle now also lived with my two cousins. After my grandfather became too old and sickly to work as a cement laborer, my grandmother opened a small ethnic grocery store on Third Avenue, just across the street from our apartment, and it was there, especially on Sundays when many of my cousins came to visit, that many family memories were made.

Winter months, with their shorter daylight hours seemed very long, but we did enjoy our snowball fights and sledding activity through the city streets, and occasionally in Prospect Park. Winters in the cold water flat were cold, especially at night. To conserve heat from our converted coal stove located in the kitchen, our only source of warmth during those winter months, my father would have to seal the door on my sister’s bedroom located to the side of the kitchen, so as to allow the heat to circulate more freely through the remaining railroad rooms, and provide more comfortable living conditions throughout the remainder of the apartment. Of course in winter we always had Christmas to look forward to, but school took up the lion’s share of our time during that season. Grammar school grades one through eight for me were spent with the Dominican Sisters at Holy Family School on Fourteenth Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues. The daily routine was the same each morning, up for school beginning at 9:00 a.m.; home for lunch at noon; back to class for 1:00 p.m.; and home again at 3:00 p.m. Wednesdays were a bit different, and something we all looked forward to. On Wednesdays we didn’t break for lunch at noon, rather we stayed in school until 1:00 p.m., and were dismissed at that time so that our neighbors and fellow students next door at P.S. 124 could attend religious instruction, courtesy of the good Dominican Sisters.

Summers were hot in the apartment. Our cooling system consisted of an exhaust fan which my father installed in the living room window at the front of the apartment, and with the kitchen window in the rear of the apartment open and the fan switched onto the exhaust mode, a cross ventilation breeze would be created through the railroad rooms, making our days and nights bearable. Many people sat outside on the sidewalk in front of the apartment buildings beginning at sunset, and it was not uncommon at all to look out of your window on a summer evening to see people sitting on the their fire escapes to catch a brief respite from the summer’s heat. After dark with the traffic settled down, it wasn’t unusual to see some of your neighbors take a mattress from their apartment and place in on the fire escape, where they would fall into a deep slumber.

I was rarely in the apartment during summer days. I could be found in a variety of places, either in the playground on Twelfth Street between Second and Third Avenues, or playing off the point, an urban form of want-to-be baseball, which was played with a ten cent pink rubber Spalding ball which we threw to the rim of the bottom foundation edge of a corner building (hence the name off the point). The concept was simple, with hits (singles, doubles, etc.) being determined by the number of bounces the ball would take after it cleared the sidewalk curb. Runners, though non-existent, would advance and score accordingly on each succeeding hit. On weekends when there was less traffic, we’d get to play stickball in the street, which is recognizable as a more legitimate form of baseball. As I got closer to becoming a teenager, I was permitted to go fishing at the lake in Prospect Park, a hobby which I relished back then, and still enjoy to this day.

Television was in its infancy then, but early TV titans included such names as Art Linkletter, Perry Como, Ed Sullivan, Steve Allen, Milton Berle, Jackie Gleeson, and Red Skelton, to name a few. Shows like Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, The Life of Reilly and Howdy Doody were among my favorites and will also go down in the annals of television history. However, I loved watching cowboy shows such as Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, and The Cisco Kid, but my favorite was Roy Rogers. He was billed as The King of the Cowboys, and he was my hero. Some nights I’d go to bed wishing and dreaming that I could be on his Double R Bar Ranch.

But that was then. Life has a way of happening around us, and for me, change was in the wind.

I never had any childhood ambition to become a cop. No one in my family was a member of the police force, nor did anyone ever speak of or encourage me to enter the police department. In fact, I didn’t even know any cops. When I was young I certainly was not ambitious, neither did I really ever think about the future nor did I ever give much thought to a career or vocation. Like many of my peers, I was simply a boy growing up in South Brooklyn, the latest of three family generations before me to call this part of New York home. I am the oldest of three children born to average middle class parents. My father was a mechanic, and my mother, like most women who married GI’s returning home after the Second World War, was a housewife, more contemporarily known as a stay-at-home mom.

I, who had been an ordinary kid from Brooklyn, and who never had a game plan, in many ways grew up and matured in the New York City Police Department. To be sure, it was there that my life came full circle. My name is Anthony Leone; Tony to my friends. This is my story.

PART ONE

IN THE BEGINNING

It’s funny how things happen.

In 1960, after I graduated from Holy Family Grammar School, my parents relocated the family from Brooklyn to southeast Queens County in search of their slice of the American dream. It was, by all standards, a relatively serene existence during the age of innocence. I attended Martin Van Buren High School during that time, and like thousands of other teenage kids my age, I had a paper route after school, delivering The Long Island Press along a designated route to about sixty single family houses built between the 1920’s and 1930’s, along a tree lined street in southeastern Queens County. The paper route provided me with the income and financial independence I needed for going to the movies; to go bowling; or to attend dances on weekends.

I never did keep in touch with any of my fellow paper boys, so I can’t sit here and tell you that I established life long bonds with a group of people that I still see on a regular basis. There was however, one exception. One of the fellas I met who delivered papers along an adjacent route was Bob Barry (or simply Barry as we all called him). Barry and I were the same approximate age, and truth be told, aside from our paper routes, we didn’t have much else in common. Barry went to a Thomas A. Edison Technical High School in Jamaica, New York, where he was studying to become an electrician, while I was attending Martin Van Buren High School, and didn’t study much of anything. Like everything else I did, school didn’t interest me very much, and I did just what I needed to do to get by. I don’t know why, but Barry and I did keep in touch from time to time for a couple of years after our days with the Long Island Press.

During the early 1960’s The New York City Police Department launched a Police Trainee program. Eligible young men were between seventeen and twenty-one years of age, and after passing written, physical, and medical examinations were eligible to be hired as Police Trainees who would perform clerical tasks in police precincts and facilities throughout New York City. Trainees could be found in precinct station houses assigned as telephone switchboard operators, where they would be teamed with a Lieutenant Desk Officer, or in a precinct clerical office, where they would prepare reports submitted from patrol cops, or receive complaints from members of the public at large, who would simply walk into a precinct station house from the street. Trainees were also employed in various offices at police headquarters, or worked in any of the department’s communications bureau offices, one of which was at that time located in each of the City’s five boroughs. The concept was a good one, one which I would call a win/win situation for all concerned. The Trainees would receive valuable hands-on training from working with and around veteran patrolmen and superior officers, at a rate of pay significantly less than a Patrolman. The City on the other hand would be able to free patrolmen from clerical assignments for patrol duties. Then, upon reaching his twenty-first birthday, the Police Trainee would be appointed to the rank of Probationary Patrolman, and after attending the Police Academy would be assigned to patrol duties in any one of the five boroughs of New York City.

But I cannot now get ahead of myself. All things in our home were centered on the family, and as was customary on New Year’s Eve, our family spent the evening celebrating with a dear aunt and uncle, and several of our families’ friends. My aunt and uncle also had two sons, but in those days Joe was my favorite. Although he was only one year older than me, Joe was always doing things which made me envious. Joe was handsome, a good athlete, had plenty of girlfriends, and an entire group of buddies (some of whom were older), who drove nice cars. Call it envy or call it respect, but I had always looked up to my cousin. My aunt and uncle had a finished basement in their suburban Queens home, complete with a full service bar. We boys along with the adults always had a good time, and as we matured our parents taught us how to enjoy spirits responsibly. However, we certainly were no angels. And as you might expect there was more than one time in the earlier years when we engaged in juvenile mischief. One such holiday eve occurred as 1961 became 1962, and Tim Nichols, one of Joe’s friends and neighbors, furtively introduced us to a pint of lemon gin. I imagine that this libation should have been enjoyed either in a glass on ice, or mixed with soda or juice. Honestly, I wouldn’t know, because after guzzling it with two other compatriots, I got as sick as a dog and to this day have never drunk it again.

Then, one fine day in 1964 at the ripe old age of seventeen, I received a telephone call from my dear aunt who told me that my cousin Joe, and some of his friends were going to take the walk-in written police test which was scheduled for the following Saturday. So without giving it another thought and without any preparation whatsoever, I consented to go along to take the test. Or should I more accurately state that I went along for the ride, because part of the deal was that although I’d be accompanying Joe and his friends who were also going to take the test, Joe and his friend Vinnie DeRosa were going to pick me up bright and early on that Saturday morning in Vinnie’s 1964 Thunderbird, complete with its sexy blinking rear directional lights. The other guys had made arrangements to car pool among themselves. I don’t know about their career aspirations or other motives for taking the test, but I was literally in it for the ride.

I had not prepared for the test, and granted, I wasn’t receiving very much notice, but I had no plans anyway, and a walk-in test meant exactly what the name suggested, therefore, no previous filing for an application or attendant application fees were necessary, so a candidate could just show up and take the exam. Needless to say, the inevitable result occurred; I failed the test. In fact, our entire group of test takers did not yield one single cop!

Then, as 1964 became 1965, I had some decisions to make. In a few short weeks, and after four and one half years (I told you I didn’t study much of anything, ergo the four and one half year plan) I’d have the distinction of graduating from Martin Van Buren High School. My next task?: finding a job. Graduation day came and went for me without the usual fanfare accorded such significant occasions. This being a mid-year graduation ceremony, we had no special venue such as a local college campus; rather our high school auditorium was the setting for this momentous event. Save our high school band’s rendition of Pomp and Circumstances, there was precious little of such goings on. No senior prom, no stretch limousine, no night out on the town. So after receiving the customary congratulatory remarks form our Principal, Maurice Blauvelt we graduates went off into the world. Precious few of our numbers from that January, 1965 graduating class went to college, primarily because most were like me, enrolled in the four and one half year plan, and we were not what you may have called in those days, college material. College was something you were required to apply for and be accepted to, and something for which you actually had to have good grades to be accepted. Open enrollment had not yet come into play.

So with my General Diploma in hand I boarded the Q43 bus which ran the east/west route along Hillside Avenue into Jamaica, Queens and I began my quest to find a job. From Jamaica I was able to take the F train to the Lexington Avenue Station in mid-town Manhattan in search of employment. I remember being awestruck by the many tall buildings, restaurants and shops on every block, and I couldn’t help but think that most, if not all of those enormous structures contained the prize which I sought; a job!

My strategy was simple. All that I had to do was to walk in and out of the buildings, and ask the doorman or elevator starter which personnel offices for which companies were located in that building. The protocol for such an entry level position at that time was to simply appear at the personnel office, announce your intention, and fill out an application. No resume required. Not that I had a resume, or even knew what a resume was for that matter. In fact, if you were lucky, you might even get an interview on the same day! So in accordance with my plan, I made my way from East 53rd Street, south along Lexington Avenue with the goal of visiting as many personnel offices as I could in one business day. My objective for the day was to get as far south as East 42nd Street, which I accomplished by 3:30 p.m. Since I had already visited approximately six personnel offices and dutifully filled out an employment application in each of them, I decided that it was mission accomplished, so I retraced my route and returned home to eastern Queens.

When I arrived home later that afternoon, my mother was waiting for me at the door, and happily reported that one Mrs. Hartigan, the Personnel Officer from Bankers Trust Company had called and wanted me to contact her to schedule an employment interview. She explained to my mother that she had been out to lunch while I was at their Lexington Avenue office in Manhattan. During their conversation she informed my mom that she was familiar with Martin Van Buren High School and was impressed by their graduates. Mrs. Hartigan went on to say that she wanted to meet me for consideration for an entry-level position. Needless to say, my mom was ecstatic and implored me to call her back right away. It had not yet reached five o’clock, so I called her back that very afternoon, and set up an interview for 9:30 a.m. the following morning. This all seemed too good to be true. Only one day out on the pavement and I scored an interview!

So bright and early the next morning it was back on the Q43, then aboard the F train to Lexington Avenue. This time however, I had a destination; 485 Lexington Avenue, Fourth Floor, to the personnel offices of Bankers Trust Company.

Upon arrival at my destination, I checked in with the doorman (whose name was Robert) and told him of my good fortune. He congratulated me and, as he had done the day before, requested that I once again sign the visitor entry book. I complied with his request as he dutifully ushered me to the elevator, and after wishing me good luck, he pressed the button for the fourth floor. After exiting the elevator onto the plush blue carpet, I went directly to the personnel office and opened one of the two large plate glass doors into which was permanently etched the phrase Welcome to Bankers Trust Company, along with their pyramid shaped corporate logo. I re-introduced myself to Patricia Zimmerman the pretty young receptionist who was seated behind her desk, and who less than twenty four hours ago provided me with an employment application. This time however, instead of requesting an employment application, I proudly announced my pre-scheduled 9:30 a.m. appointment with the Personnel Officer, Mrs. Hartigan. Miss Zimmerman acknowledged me with a courteous simile and gestured for me to have a seat while she informed Mrs. Hartigan of my arrival.

I was only seated for a few minutes when the outer doors opened once again. In walked an Ivy League looking fellow about my approximate age. He had a head full of thick blonde hair combed over to the right side, and who, like me, was neatly attired in a dark blue suit and overcoat. But the first words from his mouth hit me like a ton of bricks. He too announced his pre-scheduled 9:30 a.m. appointment with the Personnel Officer, Mrs. Hartigan.

Wait a minute I thought! What was happening here? Make no mistake about it. I was from Martin Van Buren High School, and I was the one with the scheduled interview with Mrs. Hartigan … Not this pretty looking interloper who was about to become my competition.

He too was acknowledged by Miss Zimmerman with a courteous simile, as she motioned him to the same area where I sat, while she informed Mrs. Hartigan of his arrival.

After waiting approximately ten minutes, a nice looking, well-dressed woman about fiftyish, appeared from an inner office, and invited both myself and the interloper into her office. Once inside, she introduced herself as Mrs. Hartigan which conformed to the name engraved on the shiny brass nameplate on her desk. Then, after introducing ourselves, Mrs. Hartigan began to explain to us that she had read each of our employment applications, and she thought that we may be a good fit for two vacant entry-level positions which the bank had been looking to staff within their Stock Transfer Department. The starting salary was sixty dollars per week, and was permanent, provided that we successfully completed a six month probationary period. After that time our performance would be reviewed at six month intervals, with the possibility of earning raises of three dollars per week.

This was not one of those back and forth, what are your goals and aspirations or where do you see yourself in five years from now, politically correct question and answer sessions, to which I am sure that all subsequent employment interviews have morphed. She then inquired as to whether or not we might be interested. It’s funny isn’t it; how your mind can ask and answer multiple questions in an instant?

"Was I interested? Are you kidding me? Why do you think that I came here in the first place? Of course I was interested!"

So speaking for myself, and to Mrs. Hartigan for the first time since our introductions, I informed her that I was most certainly interested, and then as if on cue, my ivy-league counterpart echoed my sentiment exactly.

Now without any further ado I formally met my new colleague, Jim Smithers, and we began to fill out the necessary employment paperwork to begin our careers. We were given our respective Welcome to Bankers Trust employment packages which outlined the benefits of our employment, including a complete healthcare package, profit sharing, which was in essence a retirement benefit, and free checking account privileges into which our bi-weekly paycheck was deposited. Mrs. Hartigan instructed Jim and me to report to Mr. Fred Long in the Stock Transfer Department on the next day. I couldn’t believe it! I actually had a job and would be working full time. For the first time in my seventeen years I found myself in the inner sanctum of what I perceived to be corporate America. It was as though I had turned a page. One chapter of my life had ended, and a new one was about to begin.

EARNING A LIVING

I was employed! No longer was I required to sign the visitor’s log when I walked past Robert the doorman/elevator starter. Instead, it was a cheerful smile and good morning Robert, have a nice day.

I entered the stainless steel and wood paneled elevator, and pressed the button for the fourth floor, where I dutifully reported to the Stock Transfer Department and found that Jim had just arrived and was removing his overcoat. There was no counterpart to pretty Miss Zimmerman to greet us. Rather, I was taken aback to find an open floor plan, which seemed to occupy a space about half of the size of East 47th Street, between Third and Lexington Avenues. Half a city block! The office space was filled with about fifty desks, and an entire sea of typewriters, and key punch machines. It almost seemed to me as if it was a factory. Jim and I were later to find out that we had entered through the typing pool which serviced the seven floors of offices which Bankers Trust occupied in the building. We were rescued by Marion Greenspan, a matronly woman who emerged from behind her front desk position, and who had undoubtedly seen many dazed young neophytes like ourselves make the same mistake. We informed her that we wished to see Mr. Fred Long in the Stock Transfer Department.

Marion negotiated us through the typing pool, toward Lexington Avenue, to a more serene part of the office. Here the desks were less crammed, and the floor space had been lined with bookcases containing leather-bound ledgers, and two intermittently spaced large glass enclosed cubicles, or bullpens as we would come to refer to them. Marion had us wait at an unoccupied desk while she entered one of the bullpens to inform Mr. Long of our arrival.

Fred was about sixty years old, a tall fatherly figure, with a balding plate atop his head of thin gray hair, a real welcoming fellow who had spent his entire career as a bank employee. We came to find him to always be helpful and friendly, and he was always able to answer any questions about bank policy regarding the Stock Transfer Department known to humanity. Our job was simply to post transactions of the purchase and sale of stock certificates bought and sold by the various Wall Street brokers for whom the bank was the agent. A somewhat mundane task which did not require a great deal of training, but we were young and didn’t mind. Besides we had a lot of fun, and as the months passed we not only became proficient at our task, we also met a nice group of people with whom we began to socialize on a frequent basis.

Our performance was reviewed after our six month probationary period, which Fred told us that we successfully completed, and for which we each received a weekly raise of three dollars.

1965 was the year that I turned eighteen, and it looked like my career was destined to be centered on Bankers Trust Company. Being employed by one company for a lifetime was

Reviews for Around the Clock …

[carolee888 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Around the Clock: Diary Of A Street Cop by Tony Leone is memoir that starts with he was growing up in South Brooklyn in the 1950's to the 1970's. Not having the most spectacular grades in high school, he was thrilled to find a bank position soon after he graduated. He went along with his favorite cousin, Joe to take test for the Police trainee program as on a lark and failed. Later when he was working a bank and quite pleased with his social life, salary and work at the bank, he did again with a friend. But this time he got in. The author tells of his ups and downs through the program and how he became proud to be a policeman and concentrated on doing the best job that he could. But hurdles came along and he had to figure out to deal with them. He kept wondering why he was becoming a policeman. He had never considered doing that when he was growing up.He was a policeman during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. He was very glad to received training from some of the best and usually had great partner when he was in a patrol car. He tells of some scary situations, some ways his friends in the force took to beat boredom, get to know each other more and finding out the right type of position in the police force that he enjoyed the most and felt the most competent in. The pace is good and he has a lot of interesting stories. I think it is good to read about what a policeman’s life is really like rather that the super active fantasy built up in Hollywood films and TV series. I enjoyed reading this book and his life as a policemen seemed very realistic.I received a finished copy of this book from the Publisher as a win from FirstReads but that in no way made a difference in my thoughts or feelings in this review.