The
below short story originally appeared in American Crime Magazine.
Officer Mack
By Paul Davis
Back when I was
a teenager in South Philly in the late 1960s, long before I became a newspaper
crime reporter and columnist, some of the boys on our corner at 13th and
Oregon Avenue hated cops.
South Philadelphia was and is
the hub of the Philadelphia-South Jersey Cosa Nostra organized
crime family, and these teenagers were the sons and nephews of the mob
guys.
I recall that “Crazy Joe”
Villotti, the nephew of a Cosa Nostra capo, or captain, refused to
go with us and see the film Goldfinger.
Villotti asked me, “Isn’t
James Bond a cop?”
“No,” I replied. “He’s a
British secret agent, a cool spy of sorts.”
“Yeah, he’s a fucking
government guy, so I don’t want to watch the fuck.”
But for most of the boys on
the corner, like me, we saw that there were two types of cops. There were
“cool” cops and “prick” cops.
The cool cops were generally
tough guys who could afford to be lenient and understanding at times, while the
prick cops were weaker men who we believed made up for their feelings of
inferiority by acting stern and officious at all times.
Police Officer Thomas T. Mack
was a prick cop.
Mack, a short and muscular
30-year-old, began dating Marie Saccone, the attractive elder sister of Chick
and Stevie Saccone, two of my friends on the corner.
Their father was a mob
associate and a big-time bookmaker and loan shark. But despite their father
being an illegal gambler, Chick and Stevie didn’t hate cops the way Villotti
and some others did.
Mack asked to be transferred
to the 3rd Police District to be closer to Marie. He patrolled
Oregon Avenue, a four-lane wide street and major thoroughfare in the
predominantly Italian American neighborhood in South Philadelphia.
He often stopped at JP’s
Luncheonette at 13th and Oregon Avenue for cigarettes and
coffee. He would then come out and gab with Stevie, whom he treated like a
younger brother.
Chick would walk away, as he
hated Mack. He hated Mack, not because he was a cop, but rather because he
thought Mack was a phony and an asshole.
Mack’s friendliness with
Stevie and the other teenagers on the corner ended the day Marie dumped
him.
That very night he arrested
Stevie and two other teenagers for drinking beer on the corner. And from that
night on, Mack declared war on us. He harassed us nearly every night. We all
hated Mack.
On a Mischief Night before
Halloween, Mack pulled up on the corner and shouted through his open passenger
window for us to get off the corner.
“Yes, Sir,” we replied in
unison. And in unison, a half dozen of us tossed a half dozen eggs at him
through his passenger window. We then took off running but not before I saw the
furious look on his face and his cap knocked sideways with egg yolk dripping
down his face from the cap’s brim.
I was laughing madly as I ran
away from the corner.
Mack went crazy and zoomed
around the streets hunting us. I ran home after throwing my egg at him. My
mother asked why I was home so early, and I told her I was tried and wanted to
go to bed.
Officer Frank Grant was a
cool cop. We never would have thrown eggs at him.
Grant stopped into JP’s
nearly every night for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Grant, a tall, gangly
man in his late 20s, told funny stories to the owners of JPs and us.
I recall him telling a story
about a drug raid on an abandoned house in the 3rd District.
The district captain saw
white powder that lay on a sheet of brown paper on the floor in the corner. He
wet his index finger and dipped his finger in the powder and tasted it on the
tip of his tongue.
“Is this heroin,” he asked.
He again dipped his finger in
the powder and tasted it.
“Is this heroin,” he again
asked.
One of the officers told the
commanding officer, “Captain, I think it’s rat poison.”
The captain froze for a
moment and then told the officer to drive him to the hospital.
Like many cops I’ve known
over the years, Grant was a fine storyteller. When years later I read and
enjoyed Joseph Wambaugh, the LAPD detective sergeant who became the
best-selling author of The New Centurions, The Choir Boys, and
other classic cop novels and nonfiction books about cops, I often
thought of Grant.
Another thing that endeared
us to Grant was that he hated Officer Mack and often mocked him.
One night as I sat alone with
Grant at JP’s counter, I told the officer that although my Uncle Bill was a
police captain, and my father, a WWII Navy chief and Underwater Demolition Team
(UDT) frogman, was a strict law & order man, I hated Officer Mack.
Grant laughed and said most
of the 3rd District cops also hated
Mack.
Although we had some tough
guys on 13th and Oregon, like my older brother Eddie, Joe Villotti and the
Saccone brothers, we were more of a party corner, as we hosted various
crews of pretty girls that hung out with us
But the street gang blocks
away at the corner of Dalton Street and Oregon Avenue, called the “D&O,”
was a crazy crew of violent, drug dealing teenage hoodlums.
The D&O street gang hated
Officer Mack even more than we did. Like us, Mack rousted the D&O teenagers
for no reason other than hating them. True, they were hoodlums, but Mack often
went overboard, roughing them up after handcuffing them. He then threw them out
of his patrol car without even bothering to arrest them.
I suspect that because he was
rejected by a beautiful Italian woman, Mack hated Italians. He called the
D&O boys and the 13th & Oregon Avenue teenagers “dagos”
and “wops.”
But the D&O teenagers
fought back.
I heard Mack went batshit
crazy when he drove down Oregon Avenue and saw that the D&O boys had spray
painted on the side of a building in very large letters, “OFFICER MACK BLOWS.”
The painted message was the
talk of the 3rd District cops. Mack was widely mocked by his
fellow officers.
One night Officer Mack pulled
up to 13th & Oregon, jumped out of his car, leaving the
driver’s car door open and the patrol car running. He dashed into JP’s and
shouted to the dozen or so guys and girls on the corner, “Be off this fucking
corner by the time I come out, or I’ll lock up all you up.”
I saw his patrol car door
open and the car running, so I seized the day and jumped into the driver’s seat
and took off. I drove across Oregon Avenue and jumped the curb of Marconi’s
Park.
I looked for, but could not
find, the siren. As I drove through the park wildly, I glanced in the rear-view
mirror and saw Mack running and shouting like a crazy man across Oregon Avenue,
his service revolver held up into the air.
I put on the brakes halfway
into the park and jumped out running. I ran right into the beefy arms of a
Fairmount Park Police Officer, who twisted me around and handcuffed me. He held
me for Mack.
Mack came up huffing and
placed his service revolver back in the holster. He took out his “sap,” a short
steel rod covered in black leather, and he slapped the sap across my
knees.
The pain was awful, but the
worst thing was that I could not clutch my aching knees, as my hands were
handcuffed behind my back. I leaned down as the Park cop held me.
The Park cop asked Mack if he
wanted to arrest me, and Mack said no.
“Do me a favor and drive the
kid down to the river and let the punk walk back home.”
I had to walk from the river
on Delaware Avenue and Front Street back up to 13th and Oregon
with swollen and throbbing knees.
But it was worth it, as I was
the talk of the corner that night and Thomas Junior High School the next day.
Everyone thought I was a cool guy. The wild hoodlums from the D&O slapped
me on the back and called me a “crazy motherfucker,” which was a high
compliment from them.
Grant came to JP's the
following night and told me that I was lucky that Mack didn’t arrest me or
shoot me. He said that Mack didn't probably hoping no other cops would hear
that a teenager stole his car.
But the Park cop hated Mack
and he called a friend at the 3rd District and told him the
story. The cop in turn told all of his fellow 3rd District
officer