THE ROGUE COP
by Dick Kraus
Newsday
Staff Photographer

The phone rang at 6:45 AM. My clock radio had gone off a few minutes before, filling my bedroom with the sound of some cool jazz. But, I wasn't ready to get up yet. When the radio started up, I awoke, and reached up to close the window over my bed. I could feel the cold air cascading through the window and over my body. It was cold this morning. So I skootched down under the warm covers and dozed a bit while Miles played some great trumpet from beyond the grave.

The phone jarred me awake, a few minutes later. OK! Dammit. OK!

"Hello."

"It's Bob." (Bob Luckey, Newsday's Day Photo Editor. Cripes! What time does he have to get up to call me this early?) "The Nassau Cops have made an arrest of one of their own, for sexually abusing a woman. They're gonna walk him around 8 AM. Can you get to Police Headquarters by 8?"

"Yeah, sure," I said. (If I don't take time to have breakfast.)

Bob went on to tell me that this was going to be a big story and that he would send Karen Stabile, another Newsday Staff Photographer, to work with me. That's fine. I like working with Karen. She's a pro and no prima donna. She'll stand her ground and do what she has to do to get the shot. 

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and struggled into the bathroom to shave and brush my teeth. I have an automatic coffee maker which I load the night before and set to brew at 6 AM. So, as I dressed, I was encouraged by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. There was no time for my usual natural bran cereal and yogurt, but I poured the coffee into a thermal mug and snatched a chocolate covered donut from the fridge and went out into the cold morning to start my car. While it was warming up, I had to spend a minute scraping the thick frost which coated the windshield and glass windows. As I worked my car into the bumper to bumper west bound traffic on the parkway, I sipped the hot coffee, which helped to drive to cotton out of my brain. The chocolate donut added the extra sugar in my blood stream and soon I was awake enough to realize how cold I was, sitting in this unheated steel cocoon of a car. It took about 10 minutes before some much needed heat eminated from the heater ducts. The water on the lake at Belmont Lake State Park was frozen solid as I passed by, and I could see flocks of water fowl sitting on top of the ice.

Traffic eased up a bit, and I pulled into the parking lot at Police Headquarters with about 10 minutes to spare. There are no press parking slots for us, so we usually pull as far to the right as we can and park along the driveway leading to the lot. There were already a couple of press vehicles there and I pulled up behind the van from Cablevision News 12. I called Karen on the radio and she informed me that she was just pulling into the driveway. I asked the News 12 guy to pull up a couple of  feet and I slid up as well and made room for Karen, right behind me. The other van was a freelance video outfit from Village Video and he came over to inform me that he had spoken to the police public information officer who said the perp would be walked after 9 AM. So, Karen sat in my car while I ran the heater to ward off the bone numbing cold. And we discussed how we would cover this story. We don't normally put two shooters on a perp walk, but this was turning into a big story.

We have two counties on Long Island, that are the bulk of our coverage. Nassau and Suffolk Counties make up the political portion of what is known as Long Island. On the west end of the island, you have Queens and Brooklyn, and geographically, they are part of Long Island. But, politically they belong to New York City. Newsday puts out a Queens Edition which covers Queens, Brooklyn and NY City, and they have a separate staff. But, this story belonged to the Long Island Edition. There have been ongoing stories of scandals in the Suffolk County Police Department for the past couple of months. A police officer from the Highway Patrol is alleged to have been pulling over women on the pretext that they have been driving erratically and performs sobriety tests on them. He tells them that they are drunk and if they disrobe for him, he won't issue a ticket for DWI. He is alleged to have done this several times, and while the women have been afraid to blow the whistle, finally one of them did and it unleashed a bunch of other victims who came forward when this story hit the press. The case is currently under investigation and the cop is doing desk duty in the meantime. We've been unable to get a photo of him, but I did copy his high school yearbook photo which we found at his home town library. Even though it's from 1988, all the tv news programs and newspapers have been running it.

Now, the other county, Nassau, comes up with a scandal of their own. They have a cop from the 3rd Precinct who is alleged to have been stalking a woman from the Dominican Republic who was too terrified of police to complain. Last August, he picked her up on some pretext and took her to a secluded area and forced her to have oral sex with him. After months of fear, she finally came forward and her story was backed up by a woman who lived near where the incident took place. This woman keeps an eye on this "lover's lane" and writes down the license plate numbers of cars that habituate the place. She noted the number of the police car and when word of the incident began to appear in the media, she came forward. Today, the Nassau County Police arrested the rogue cop and after questioning, he would be paraded before the assembled members of the press as he was taken to arraignment court.

With most normal "perp walks" the Police Public Information Office from whatever police department will issue a fax letting the media know that an arrest has been made along with some of the details of the crime, the criminal and the arrest. If it looks like it'll make a good story, the various media will assign a photographer and maybe a reporter to the precinct or headquarters where the alleged "perp" has been incarcerated pending arraignment. The night's contingent of bad boys are usually put on a chain and marched out of the building into a waiting van, to go to court. That's where we wait to get our photos. Since we are not allowed to make photographs in Courtrooms in NY State, this is our only opportunity to make a photograph. If the case is a major one, the perp isn't transported on the chain with the common criminals. He or she is usually brought out later, by the detectives on the case, and taken in the dick's car to be arraigned. Such was the case with the rogue cop. The police are placed in a particularly delicate situation in cases like this. They are usually noted for their attempts to shield one of their own. There have been incidents where they will decoy the media to another location while they spirit their fallen brother out of another door. Even though we had been alerted to this arrest by faxes from the police department themselves, we were still anticipating getting some interference when they brought the cop out. Representatives from the Public Information Office came out to the parking lot to inform us when the prisoner would be brought out. That was nice, but in spite of the cooperation, we were still wary of some trick. They told us that it would be at 9 AM, so we all sat in our vehicles, trying to forestall the moment when we would have to stand out in the biting cold. The thermometer on my car read 20 degrees, but the wind chill factor made it seem a lot colder..

Karen and I sat in my car and we discussed how we would work this story. I had my Nikon D-1 with a 80 to 200mm lens. With the digital camera, it became a 120 to 300mm lens. Karen would work with a wider lens; the 28 to 70mm on her D-1. She would stand opposite the door leading out to the parking lot, where the special prisoners were brought. I would work further down the line, near the detective's car and would be able to zoom back as he was walked towards the car.

At 8:30 AM, as we were talking, we saw Charlie, one of the freelance video guys who had been standing near the building, run over to his van. Everyone grabbed their cameras, including Karen and I, and ran toward the door. It turned out that one of the cops had told Charlie to move his van because it was blocking his car. Well, everyone was on edge and suspected that the cops were trying to sneak Rogue Cop past us by leaving early. False alarm. So, we stayed out in the frigid morning, rubbing our hands together, and burying our heads down into our collars. Karen was frozen. She doesn't usually start her day until 9 AM and when Bob called her out early, she opted to take a shower but was pissed because she wasn't able to wash her hair or have breakfast. Life be like that. I offered to treat her to Starbuck's after the story was over and she seemed to brighten up at that. It turns out that we never got our coffee, because each of us was dispatched to different parts of the story, after the perp walk, Anyway, she went back to her car to get a muffler and some chemical hand warmers. She swathed herself in the muffler and pulled her hood tightly around her face, and activated the hand warmers which she inserted into each glove.

Nine AM approached. One of the PIO officers would go into the building and come back out to announce that it would just be a few more minutes. Five minutes later, another would announce that it would be just a couple of minutes. I usually keep my digital camera powered down until the last minute so that I don't have any surprise dead battery problems when the action starts. The tv guys and gals like to do the same and also rest their cameras on the ground, because, brothers and sisters, they are damned heavy. But, when someone says, "Just a few more minutes," the cameras get hoisted to shoulders and switches get turned on and last minute white balances are taken and adjusted. And, there we all stood. Cameras to our eyes. Focused on the distant door. Waiting. Ready. Waiting. Waiting.

Finally, I see Karen's flash going off as the detectives lead the rogue cop out of the door. I don't see him yet, because they have to make a 90 degree turn to the left when they come out of the door, to walk into the parking lot and the waiting car. There he is! Shit!! He's wearing a sweatshirt with a hood which covers his face. And he's walking with his head down as he comes towards me. I can't see his face. I am cranking off frame after frame, but I can't see his face. Wait a minute. Was that part of his lower face that I just saw in the viewfinder? No time to consider that possiblilty. I am back pedaling furiously and now he is standing at the car, waiting for the door to be opened and now he is seated in the back. I press my lens against the window, as do a half dozen video cameras. But, he has his face pressed against the back of the front seat and we see no more than that as the car speeds away. Crap!
 

I radioed Bob to tell him what transpired. I told him that we got what we could, but neither of us think that we had a shot showing the cop's face. Bob told me to go to the Press Room at County Supreme Court, a few blocks away, to transmit whatever I could. Even though there was no crunch for the paper's deadline, our online edition at newsday.com would throw it up with a story, right away. Karen was to go to Arraignment Court a few miles south to see if she could get anything there.

I said howdy to the gang in the Press Room and while my lap top was booting up, I ran down to the cafeteria and grabbed a coffee and sweet roll. The hot coffee drove the chill out of my bones and the sweet roll took care of my craving for sugar. And then I was ready to work. I inserted my flash card into the reader slot on my computer and soon had my images displayed. Yech. Most of my images just showed the top of a hooded head. But, wait. There was that one shot where I went low enough and you could see his nose, mustache and mouth. Well, it's better than nothing. I made my tweaks to adjust the contrast and color balance, cropped the image the way I wanted it and added a caption. I plugged the phone line into the modem and in minutes, my image was on the server back at my office. I called up the server on my computer to make sure that the picture had indeed arrived and that the proper caption was affixed, and then I called Bob to let him know the photo was there and that I was going back to Police Headquarters for the 11 o'clock press conference that had been called.

"If they have a handout mug shot of the cop, make sure to get it," Bob asked.
 

	When I arrived back at headquarters, the parking lot was a sea of microwave trucks with raised masts. In the police auditorium, the tv cameras ringed the podium. I counted 16 cameras on tripods. There aren't 16 news outlets in the NY Metropolitan area. But, Telemundo Channel 47 was there. Because the victim was from the Dominican Republic. I guess. And there was MSNBC and some of the news magazine shows. There were three still photographers. One from the NY Times. One from the NY Post. And me. "Stills first," I called out, and walked in front of the tv tripods. No one minded because no one was rolling yet.
	I sat on the floor, off to the left and below the view of the tv cameras behind me. I attached my 80-200mm lens on the front of my camera and waited for the Deputy Commissioner to begin to talk to the media about the case. I detest using straight on camera flash and will do whatever I can to avoid it. Cranking my ISO up to 800, I could shoot wide open at a 40th of a second. That's pretty tricky with such a long lens. But, I propped the lens on my knees and squeezed off a lot of frames as the Commissioner spoke, and most of them were useable. The cops had run out of hand-out mug shots, so I had to borrow one and copy it with my digital.
	When it was over, I radioed Bob and he asked me to bring my stuff back to the office. He told me that newsday.com had used the shot I had sent, earlier. When I got back, Karen had finished at Arraignment Court and had transmitted her stuff from the Press Room. She had some dynamite shots. The first shot she made at the perp walk was a full open face of the rogue cop. She got him before he stepped out of the doorway and saw the mass of cameras waiting for him. After that first shot, he ducked his head and no one got an open shot after that. But, her best stuff was made at Arraignment Court. The cop's lawyer is a guy who is very knowledgeable in the ways of the media and will cooperate to a degree in allowing photographers to get some photos. No one got any pictures of the cop since we aren't allowed to shoot in the courtroom. But, the lawyer and the cop's family stood still outside the courtroom, after the arraignment, and Karen got a great shot of them.

Her shot of the cop coming out of the building replaced mine on the web site. And, it made page one in the paper, the next day. They didn't use her great shot from the courthouse hall. Pity. But, they used another shot of hers from behind as the rogue cop was being led to the car. The only shot of mine that was used in the paper was the copy of the mug shot. That's ok. It be that way. People ask me if I get pissed if my stuff doesn't get used. My answer is no. Not if what they did use is better than what I had. And that was certainly the case, here. Karen told me, later, that the only reason that she was able to position herself in front of the door to get that shot, was because I was in the other location. If there were only one of us, that person would have had to take the long shot because the angle that Karen took would only allow for a couple of quick frames before the rogue cop was walking away. The main thing is that between us, the paper was well served.

Nice work, Karen. I love this job.
 

Dick Kraus
newspix@optonline.net