Officer Jill Jacobs received the 9-1-1 call in her vicinity and mumbled, “That’s right up the street from…”
She clicked on her siren and lights and zoomed up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the scene of the crime. When she arrived in under three minutes and doubled-parked her squad car in the middle of the street, she hopped out with her gun holster open, and headed to the pavement. Then she spotted the same hot-footed college boy from ealier, sitting up against the wall of a closed storefront. His face and head were bruised and battered with fresh injuries.
“Some boys just jumped on him, and ran off,” the woman who had made the call informed her.
Officer Jacobs took a breath and leaned down to inspect the young man’s injuries.
“Does anything feel broken?” she asked him.
It took him a few seconds to respond. “I don’t know,” he finally grumbled. He seemed ticked off about it all.
The officer took in his sour mood and rose back up on the sidewalk. She stood at nearly six feet with a solid frame. Her hair was wrapped in a pony-tail under her hat.
“Okay, well, there’s an ambulance on the way,” she told him. The kid wasn’t dying, and she blamed him for switching up the sidewalk—late night in a tough Baltimore neighborhood, anyway. She didn’t have much sympathy for him.
“Did you get a good look at the guys who did this to you?” she questioned.
The young man hesitated. Then he mumbled through this busted lips, “Yeah, they were a bunch of young thugs. Ouww,” he whined, tasting the bloody sting from his lip.
Officer Jacobs shook her head, growing noticeably irritated. Despite the young man’s busted head, lip, and battered and bruised body, she didn’t feel like being bothered with his attitude. It was her job to gather the needed information from him. He had been assaulted while walking through her area while she was on duty. She had to get his report.
“About how young were they?” she asked him.
She took out her mini notepad and pen to began taking notes.
“I don’t know… Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, young,” he told her.
Officer Jacobs took another calming breath. “Okay, let’s do it this way and start over. What’s your name?”
“Derrick Wilcox.”
“Where do you live?”
“On campus.”
I knew it, she told herself. He doesn’t even look like he’s from Baltimore. He looks like he’s from a suburb in Virginia somewhere.
She looked up from her notes and asked him, “What campus? Coppin State? Morgan? Or what?”
“No, Johns Hopkins,” he answered snidely.
The officer couldn’t tell if he was still sour about taking a beat down, or if he was being a plain smart ass.
Finally, she told him, “Look, I’m trying to help you, okay? So just answer the questions when I ask you.”
The woman with the cell phone stopped, looked and gave Jill an evil eye.
“Look, you see how he’s talking to me, don’t you?” the officer pleaded to the woman. “He acts like it’s a crime to do my job. I’m not the one who beat him.”
“Well, he just needs some medical attention right now, more than anything,” the woman responded.
“Well, his medical attention is on the way,” Officer Jacobs informed her. “In the meantime, I need to file my report to help us find the kids who did it. You don’t want these boys to get away with it, do you?” she addressed the young college student.
Right as she asked him, two more Baltimore squad cars pulled up with an ambulance hot on their tails.
Out jumped two male officers from their squad cars; one African-American and one Latino.
“Is he all right?” one inquired.
“I’m trying to find that out now.”
“Did he describe the guys who did this to him?” the other officer asked.
“I’m trying to find that out now,” she repeated.
Both of the male officers looked over at her notepad and figured she had the report well underway without any further questions on their part. Officer Jacobs’ cold-eyed glare informed them both that she knew how to do her job.
“Okay, well, you need anything else from us?”
“You can direct the traffic and get this ambulance in and out,” she suggested.
The two officers looked at each other and grinned. She was what they called “a tough bitch.”
“All right,” they both agreed in unison.
Officer Jacobs then got back to her victim and his report. “So, what did these guys all look like—tall, dark, short, light, heavy, thin?” she ran off at him. “I want you to think about that, and I want to call you. What’s your cell phone number?”
The paramedics arrived with the ambulance and pulled a gurney to the sidewalk as soon as Derrick began to give her his number.
“It’s seven-oh-three…”
I knew it, Officer Jacobs told herself again as she wrote his Virginia-based number in her notebook. Damn, I’m good! she bragged.
Once the medics took over, Jill shrugged her shoulders and walked back to the woman to see what she had seen. She figured she’d catch up with the college student later.
“Ah, Ma’am, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
The woman immediately became hesitant. “About what? I only saw the boys run away when I saw him lying out on the pavement like that.”
“Can you describe any of their coats and colors?” Officer Jacobs asked her.
“Well, you know, it’s dark, and my eyes aren’t that good from a distance. They never were. And I need to buy me some glasses.”
Jill took a deep breath and knew that the case would be difficult. Who would bother to talk about a basic beat down of a college boy, who may or may not be a homosexual? Jill figured the case could also be upgraded into a hate crime.
“Well, can you tell me which way they ran?” she asked the woman.
“Oh, I just saw them run down the street. I didn’t see which way they turned. I was too busy being concerned about him.”
Jill looked down the block and to the corner, presuming that the boys had turned left. She doubted they would turn right and run across to the other side of the street. She also doubted that they would run two straight blocks.
“Thank you.”
She walked over to the two male officers out in the street, who were still directing traffic for the ambulance to leave.
“Hey, I bet you if we rattle the cage around the corner, a few birds’ll fly out,” she suggested to her fellow officers.
“Don’t we know it,” one responded. They both grinned; they liked rattling cages.
“Well, as soon as we clear this all out, let’s go get to it,” she told them.
It didn’t take long for the three officers to round up seven teenagers to scare into confessions. They were still out running the streets after ten o’clock at night. Baltimore stayed up all night that way.
“So, how many of you beat him down and stomped him? And if you don’t tell, you’re going to jail by yourself,” Officer Jacobs threatened. She was the ringleader of the interrogation.
“Yo, I don’t know what y’all talking about, man. What boy? I didn’t beat up nobody,” an older, rugged young man snapped. He looked out of high school and ready for the work force, the service, jail, or the graveyard. But he definitely wasn’t in grade school anymore.
As the loudest protester, the guy was telling the truth. He had nothing to do with it. He was nowhere near Pennsylvania Avenue when the beat down had occurred. But two of the seven were there. They had participated in it, including the first boy who spotted Derrick and his hot-footed walk. And it was only a matter of time before something shook loose.
“Nobody bragged about beatin’ down a faggot tonight? A bitch. A girl. A sissy in pink panties?”
Officer Jacobs was going hard on them. She understood how young men thought. She had to deal with them every day of her life, young and old. And she knew that the gu
ilty would soon tell on themselves.
Sure enough, one of the boys began to smile helplessly. He was the one who had kicked Derrick Wilcox in the ass to initiate the beat down.
Jill singled him out immediately and snapped, “So, you think it’s funny? What if you killed that boy tonight? Then what? You think homicide is a damn joke, something for you to smile about? Well, I hope you weren’t there, because you’re gonna be a part of the line-up,” she informed him.
When the boy heard that, he panicked. “For what? I ain’t do nothing,” he screamed. He tried to act as hard as he could to camouflage his fear, but his heart was practically jumping out of his chest.
Jill placed her hand right on his pounding chest and said, “Uht, oh. I think we got one. So, who else was there with you? We know it was five or six of you. Or are you going down to the line-up by yourself? Let’s check and see who else’s heart is beating.”
At that point, the first teen who spotted Derrick, and who had started the whole mess, began to panic as well. He looked straight down and refused to acknowledge his friend. He didn’t want the officers to see any eye contact between them. However, the rest of the suspects didn’t have a problem with looking. They all knew that they were innocent, or at least of that particular crime.
“Go on, tell us who else was there with you,” Officer Jacobs continued to jeer the smiling boy.
“Man, I’on know what you talking ’bout.” He refused to look at his friend, his partner in crime, as well. But when the other officers noticed the one kid who refused to look in his friend’s direction, they connected the dots between the two.
“What’s wrong with you? Hey, I’m talking to you,” the Latino officer addressed him. In the boy’s panic, he was confused with what he needed to do to act normal. And when he finally raised his head to make eye contact with the officers, it was too late.
“So, you got a problem looking at him? What does that mean? You were there, too?” the black male officer asked him.
Jill jumped on the bandwagon. “Well, you look at him right now. Look at him!” she shouted. When the two friends finally looked at each other, they tried their best to fake indifference.
“Do you two know each other?” Officer Jacobs asked the two line-up suspects.
Both boys were confused again. Of course, they knew each other. They were all hanging out together when the police rounded them up that night. But how closely did they dare to associate?
Jill stretched her hand out to feel the second boy’s pounding heart, and she commented, “We got another one. That’s two for the line-up now.”
The second boy tried to shake it off by speaking calmly. “I wasn’t there, man. You got the wrong guy.”
“So, how come your heart is beating like that?”
“Because y’all jumped out here and started rounding people up for no reason,” he explained.
“Oh, we got a reason. Somebody beat down a faggot on Pennsylvania Avenue tonight, and we’re gonna find out who did it.”
“Isn’t that wrong for you to call him a ‘faggot’? You supposed to say gay, right?” one of the other boys spoke up. That caused the guys to chuckle.
“I’m calling him what you call him. Did you call him gay when you beat him up tonight?” Officer Jacobs asked the smart-mouthed boy. “Step on up here. You’re next in the line-up. Now we got three of ’em. Who’s left?”
Before the smart-mouthed boy could respond to her, the first older protester responded for him.
“Yo, he wasn’t out there, man. That boy just came back from the movies,” he commented.
“Oh, yeah, what did you go see?” one of the male officers asked him.
“I saw that Underworld movie, The Rise of the Lycans. You know, the one with the werewolves against the um, vampires.”
“Okay, so you probably won’t be picked out of the line-up then,” Officer Jacobs told him.
The boy grimaced and looked confused. “Yo, you already know I wasn’t there, man. I mean, you gon’ grab me up just because I said you shouldn’t call him a faggot? I don’t have no problem with them people, man.”
“Them people, hunh?” the Latino officer repeated.
The boy looked at him. “Yeah, man, they do what they do. That’s their thing. To each his own. As long as they don’t bother me.”
That made a few of the other boys laugh again.
“Or what?” the officer challenged him. “You’ll whip his gay ass?”
The first protester spoke up again. “Yo, man, he wasn’t there.” He was adamant on protecting the boy.
“What, is he your little brother or cousin?” the black male officer asked.
Officer Jacobs assessed it all. She asked the oldest protester, “Were you there? You step up then.” She read his dominant body language and knew that he could help her get to the bottom of things.
“So, will he pick you out of the line-up?” she asked him.
“I’m not going to no damn line-up,” he answered defiantly.
She read his body language again. He had a real chip on his shoulder for a reason.
He most likely wasn’t there, and he probably has a solid alibi, she told herself. But he can still help me to get the answers that I need. “So, if you weren’t there, then what did you hear about it? Somebody come back home bragging?”
“I didn’t hear nothing about it. I was standing out here talking about movies.”
“Well, what about you? What did you hear about it?” she asked the second line-up suspect again. She had gotten away from him for a minute.
He shook his head. “Nothin’,” he said weakly.
“Well, we’ll see what he says at the line-up. Now we got four down and two to go. So, who else was there? Is anyone missing?” she asked the first boy who had been caught smiling.
Finally, the oldest protester had had enough. He looked at the first two partners in crime and said, “Yo, if y’all know something, y’all better let it be known,’cause if I go downtown for some shit that I didn’t do… And I know that shorty wasn’t there either. And y’all know that shit. So, if y’all ma-fuckers out here fakin’…”
“Watch your mouth,” Officer Jacobs warned him. He was getting a little too full of himself.
“I’m just saying, man,” he told her. “They know who they are. And I’m not going downtown for no faggot shit. Excuse my French,” he apologized.
“That’s not a French word,” the Latino officer told him.
Once the dominant and older young man let it be known that he wasn’t taking the rap on something he didn’t do, the first two culprits began to cower. That’s when Jill read their wilting reactions, and she knew she had picked the right two boys to work on.
“Okay, so…you two are definitely going down for a line-up. You can either tell us who else was in on it, or you can pay the price for it yourselves.”
They definitely were not planning to point any fingers out there. All that was left was silence, confusion, and fear.
The second teen, who had pointed Derrick out earlier, and who had started the commotion, took a deep breath. He realized that a line-up would be his downfall, so he began to think about who else could go down with him.
Officer Jill Jacobs read the dilemma on the young man’s face before he spoke a word. She knew it would only be a matter of time before he agreed to give up his friends. She stared him down with poise and patience, and she repeated to herself, Damn, I’m good!
After all of her excellent police work in rounding up the five boys involved in assaulting Derrick Wilcox, when Officer Jill Jacobs got in touch with the college student to perform a line-up selection of the culprits, he became non-committal.
“You know, I just don’t…wanna get involved with that,” he told her over his cell phone.
“What? What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean, I don’t wanna see those guys again.”
“You don’t have to see them. You pick them out from behind a shielded glass. You?
??ve seen cop movies before, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, but I don’t… I mean…”
Jill snapped, “Look, cut it out. Now I know you may be a little afraid, but you’re totally safe. I can pick you up from the dorm rooms at Johns Hopkins myself, and make sure no one bothers you. Now you can’t let these kids get away with this. This case can be considered as a hate crime, and it will protect other people against similar attacks in the future.”
Derrick stuttered. “But that…that’s, that’s what I mean. I…I don’t want all of that attention. I just want to live my life.”
Again, Jill started to feel a certain bias against his sexual orientation. If he were a straight kid who got jumped, there wouldn’t be a problem. But since this kid is gay…
She asked, “Well, what were you doing out there in the first place?”
Derrick hesitated a second time. “Ah, minding my own business,” he quipped. “And are you trying to um, insinuate something?”
You know what, this boy needs a real… Officer Jacobs stopped and shook her head against the phone. She figured it was all a waste of time.
“So, that’s it? After all my work of rounding these kids up, you’re just gonna let them get away with it?”
“Well, they know that they’ve been caught, right?”
“Look, that doesn’t mean anything, if you don’t force them to pay for it. They’ll just look at this as a dodged bullet, and they’ll go right back out there and assault somebody else.”
“Oh, it sounds like you have a lot of faith in humanity, officer. I wonder where you learned that from.”
Jill had to stop and pull the phone away from her ear to look at it. Was that kid serious or what?
Amazing! she told herself. The people you meet out here as a police officer.
Finally, she told him, “Okay. Good-bye.”
Before she could hang up on him, he muttered, “Thank you,” and continued to be a smart-ass.