The Fence - Dick Lehr [44]
“We started to tell him some of the examples,” Mike said.
Bratton said he’d seen the same problem in New York City. He then asked Mike and Craig whether they thought the Boston Police Department should develop “some type of system” to identify officers working in street clothes, particularly black officers.
Mike and Craig both answered yes.
The ride-along ended. Bratton thanked them. The two gang unit officers felt the unexpected exchange with the new commissioner had gone well. It was good talk.
But no action followed. Within a year, Bratton was on the road again, this time to become chief of the New York City Police Department. “He didn’t implement anything,” Mike said.
CHAPTER 6
Closing Time at the Cortee’s
At the club Cortee’s, the fact that Smut and Mike and Craig did not bump into one another was simply one of life’s happen-stances. By the time Smut had arrived around midnight, Mike and Craig had completed their quick turn inside to gauge Hip-Hop Night and were already riding off in their Tango K–8 car.
It wasn’t as if they didn’t know one another; Mike and Craig had played cat and mouse with Smut ever since Smut got home from jail in 1992. By then, the two cops in plainclothes were known on the street for pulling up fast in their unmarked cruiser and jumping out to confront gatherings of “hoodies.” The in-your-face arrival was not solely cop macho; it had a purpose. “On the street the way these guys work is by intimidation,” Mike said, “so jumping out showed them we’re not intimidated.”
The up-tempo entry was also a barometer, a way to gauge a street gang’s level of current criminal activity. If the kids reacted with swagger and trash talk, then they were likely just hanging out, not up to any trouble. But if the kids went silent, looked away, or tried to melt into the night, “then we’d sense something was up. Something was just finished or something was in the works.”
Mattie Brown, however, was not impressed with their head-strong style. She nicknamed them the “Jump-out Boys.” Her son and his friends often hung out in front of her house, and then along came Cox and Jones. “I’d yell at them from my porch,” she said. “Cuss ’em out to get off my property. Sometimes they’d yell back, ‘The street isn’t private property! We can do what we want.’”
For his part, Smut regarded the two cops as no-nonsense, but straight-up and honest. The two cops, meanwhile, saw Smut as principally a dealer who seemed levelheaded, “one of the more reasonable ones in the group,” Mike said. Mike and Craig were mainly after gangbangers who specialized in the lethal combination of drugs and guns. Smut Brown, said Mike, “was not a shooter, not a gun guy.”
Of course, that didn’t mean Mike and Craig were going to look the other way. The “Jump-out Boys” and Smut did eventually have a memorable clash. Mike and Craig were heading down West Selden Street one night. It was about eleven o’clock on March 23, 1993. Smut was driving up West Selden—fast—and he roared past the two cops. Mike guessed Smut was hitting about 50 mph, well above the speed limit for the residential neighborhood. He and Craig turned. Smut cut sharply down a side street and then turned onto another street running parallel to West Selden. Mike and Craig caught up, the lights on their cruiser flashing. Smut pulled over to the curb and jumped out. He ran across the street and was heading between two parked cars. Mike followed and caught up to Smut on the sidewalk near the parked cars. Craig joined them. Something on the ground between the parked cars caught Mike’s eye. He picked up a plastic bag. Inside was Smut’s stash—sixteen pieces of crack cocaine individually wrapped and ready for sale.
Four weeks later, Smut was found guilty of possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute by a judge in Dorchester District Court. The judge sentenced him to serve a year in the House of Corrections. Smut immediately appealed. His lawyer and the prosecutor then worked out a deal. Smut would plead guilty to the lesser charge of coke possession,