11

On Wednesday December 3rd, we were touring the Lincoln Hill area, when a black BMW ran a stop sign at Berry and Appleton.

“Watch this,” Butras said. “He shouldn’t be driving wildly in this neighborhood. I mean, I don’t like that. There are kids around and what have you. I’m gonna scare the shit out of him.”

“Okay.”

“Take notes. You can do the next one.”

Butras put on the flashing light and accelerated, taking a left onto Appleton. The houses were close together on either side, hoops over garages, front doors open, parents coming home at 7 PM. There were a few little dips in the road and the guy probably didn’t see us until we were right up on him. He was doing about 30 in a 15 zone.

“He’s a yuppie,” Butras said. “He’s probably not that bad a guy, but I’m gonna have to shake him up because I can’t have him driving around here like that.”

Butras gave one pull on the siren and the guy looked in his rear view coming up out of a gully and pulled over where the road levelled.

“I’ll leave my door open and talk loud so you can hear how it’s done,” he said and got out briskly.

The driver was already rolling down his window and through the dusk I saw the resigned look on his face.

Butras got up to his car and stopped short of the driver’s window and asked for his license and registration I could tell, but I really couldn’t hear anything else with our car still running and the twenty feet between us. When the guy handed over his papers, Butras moved up next to him and bent over and talked close to his face for a moment, then came back toward our car and got in.

“You heard me, right?”

“No. The motor was on,” I answered.

“The guy lives around here. He’s not a bad guy, he’s not too much of an asshole. He’s a resident here. He says he was just rushing home to see his family. He says that he hasn’t seen them in a few days and he didn’t notice anyone coming when he went through the sign. I explained to him that there are kids around here and it’s pretty dark and you got to move slower, and I think he’s pretty upset; he feels pretty bad. He was real apologetic. So I’m not going to give him a ticket. Why ruin his life?”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Why should I? Why should I be a jerk? This way he’ll think police are OK. You’re good to people, they’ll be good to you.”

Hanging around the station I learned pretty fast that there are cops who when they’re out of uniform are different from the way they are in uniform. And you have those cops who are the same in and out of uniform. Butras was the first kind; he was actually friendlier in his uniform, a little sullen out.