BY Detective (Retired) Martin Swirko, Manchester NH Police Department

Most people are familiar with the Miranda Warning. It was derived from the US Supreme Court decision which emerged from the now famous Miranda vs Arizona case in 1966. Despite its notoriety, I would venture to guess that most people don’t know much about Miranda beyond what they see on TV and in movies. I’d also guess that most people don’t know when, where, how or under what circumstances a suspect in a criminal case must be advised of his Miranda rights. I will not be having that discussion here beyond opining that during my time as police officer, it was my responsibility (and all law enforcement officials) to zealously safeguard any suspect’s constitutional rights. That certainly included their right to “remain silent” and seek advice from an attorney. 

Today as I take another stroll down memory lane I’m going to talk about the day when I was testifying in the Manchester NH District Court and I had my rights read to me. On that memorable day, I was testifying during a preliminary or Probable Cause (PC) hearing on a case that I had investigated and made an arrest on. Probable Cause hearings always followed soon after a felony level arrest. The legal reason they occurred was to provide a defendant another layer of protection between arrest and indictment. Also, bail could be argued and reset if the court felt that the initial bail set by the court’s bail commissioner or magistrate at the time of arrest was either too lenient or too harsh. 

One other characteristic about this preliminary hearing was that the rules of evidence for trials didn’t apply. Hearsay evidence, for example, could be presented at a Probable Cause hearing, but not during a criminal trial. What that meant in simple terms was that one officer, that being the arresting officer or in the case of a detective, the case officer, could testify under oath to what witnesses told the police about what they saw, what they said and what they thought. In a complicated case, like a homicide, at a PC hearing, the detective who knew the most about the case would testify and an array of other witnesses or experts wouldn’t have to come forward and a mini-trial held. The judge just needed to hear the facts of the case, the defense attorney could cross examine the presenting officer about the case in the presence of his or her client. The only purpose of a PC hearing was to establish whether or not probable cause existed and to argue bail. That was it. Nothing more. 

Naturally many defense attorneys pushed the limits during these hearings. If the judge or prosecutor let them run away with their cross examination during the hearing, that’s exactly what a PC hearing could turn into. A miniature trial. Also, many attorneys, rather than to waive probable cause and forego the hearing, used the hearing as an opportunity to get “discovery” for the case. Discovery was the legal process that a defendant went through, after indictment but before trial. During the discovery process the defendant, through his or her attorney made a written request to the prosecutor and through the trial court to obtain all the evidence and witnesses that the police, or the state accumulated that led to the arrest and indictment. Defendants are entitled to this information as a matter of law so that they can prepare for trail. 

Many attorneys did their best to circumvent the legal or lawful Discovery process by holding long, drawn out PC hearings. They would push the limit as far as the presiding judge would allow them to. Each judge was different. Some judges gave great latitude to the defense, while others followed the letter of the law and had a low tolerance for theatrics. 

On the day I am going to talk about here, an overly aggressive defense attorney (some would say there is no such thing) tried to turn the tables on me in the hope that I would fold on the witness stand or confuse me while I testified. Failing that, the attorney used this tactic to place the case on hold and draw it out over time with the hope that it would be dropped and eventually go away. 

I found early on during my career that this delay tactic was commonly used in sexual assault cases. Defense attorneys often tried to obtain continuance after continuance hoping that the victim would eventually be worn down, develop second thought about testifying and eventually choose not to go forward with the criminal charges. I’ll talk more about these dynamics in my upcoming book about police work.

During the case I am going to talk about here, I was assigned to the Manchester Police Department’s Financial Crimes Unit. My detective partner for about five years during that time was Ken Loui. Today, as I write this, Ken serves as the Assistant Chief of Police for the Manchester Police Department. But during that time he was a young detective that got stuck working with me on financial cases. 

Ken was, among other things, the funniest cop I ever worked with. He had a work ethic that matched my own and was far smarter that I ever could hope to have been. I loved working with him and we had a great partnership. We and our families are still close friends to this day. Between the two of us, we carried a combined case load of over one hundred assigned cases at any given time. In addition to working our cases, we also responded to ongoing crimes and crime scenes as well as homicides as they occurred. Of course, you couldn’t actually work one hundred cases at a time, so we usually each select five or ten cases at a time to work together on. 

One day I was assigned an Identity Fraud case, one of many. After reviewing it, I decided the case had enough merit to pull out and place at the top of my list to work on immediately. It wasn’t a huge dollar amount case in terms of loss, but to the victim the financial damage along with the problems associated with that loss in this case for him and his family were tremendous. I did most of the work on this case myself so that I didn’t pull Ken away from anything he was in the middle of.  

The victim in this case was a law abiding citizen who lived in Manchester. He was a blue collar, middle class, hard working guy with a family. He owned a home and had good credit. In other words, like most victims of financial crimes, he had something someone thought was worth stealing.  

Normally, but not always, to become a victim of Identity Theft, you have to be someone that had good credit and / or a little money in the bank. You had to have something. To put it another way, most Identity Theft victims had to be law abiding, hardworking, taxpaying citizens. Otherwise, there was no point in someone stealing your identity. For this reason alone, I always worked these types of cases hard when they were assigned to me.

In this case, my victim had one more asset that someone tried to steal. That asset was a decent medical insurance plan for him and his family. And the culprit? His own brother. Unlike the victim, as I recall, the suspect in this case was quite the opposite of his brother. He was unemployed, and if my memory serves me correctly he was both an alcoholic and drug addict. He was both desperate enough and had no scruples which prevented him from stealing from his own brother. “Just my kind of case “ I thought to myself after digesting the initial police report.

It seems that the suspect in this case had visited both the emergency departments in both hospitals in Manchester, twice at one location and once at the other. Each time, when he signed in to be triaged and seen, he signed in using his brothers name, date of birth. address and I believe his social security number. He did so knowing that if the costs of these visits would be billed to his brother and his brother’s insurance plan, he would never have to pay. 

The victim in this case started to receive bills from both hospitals for these visits which he never made. In addition to the multiple thousands of dollars he had been billed, he was getting bills from various medical associations for the tests and treatments that were run on the suspect. 

The bill ran into the tens of thousands of dollars, five figures for sure. To make matters worse, once the victim informed his medical insurance provider that he didn’t make any of those visits, the insurance companies not only refused to cover those visits, they reversed the payments that they had previously made, which made the victim wholly liable for those bills. 

On top of being held responsible for his brothers medical bills, these debts started to ruin his credit. By the time this case was assigned to me, this gentleman was at his wits end as to what he could do about this. 

Things kept getting worse for the victim as both hospitals and their associated doctors now billed everything to the victim directly. When the victim contacted each hospital and tried to explain what actually happened, neither hospital would help him. They invoked HIPAA (Federal legislation which safeguards patient confidentiality regarding their medical treatments and history). Suffice it to say that during my police career I found many medical professionals who never really did understand what those safeguards actually were, such as to who and when they applied, so they often just invoked HIPAA as an excuse not to co-operate with law enforcement or deal with any of those pesky situations that came up regularly.  

Often times when hospital personnel cited HIPAA as a reason not to co-operate it was done so with good intentions based on the employee’s mistaken understanding of HIPAA. Other times it was just used as an excuse so that the employee didn’t have to go out of their way to do any extra work. During my time I was astounded when various hospital personnel were so very uncooperative, always citing HIPAA when I investigated sexual assaults, homicides and even elderly abuse and elderly financial exploitation cases. Always HIPAA, even though much of the time HIPAA didn’t apply to what I was investigating. 

Getting along with my story, after reading the initial report that a patrol officer had taken, I arranged for the victim to come in for an interview, Because that officer had written an clear, concise and detailed report, I didn’t have to start from scratch and I could pick it up from where the patrol officer left off. This saved me a lot of time. Unfortunately, that was not always the case, but in this case the reporting officer did a good job. 

After digesting the report, and before I ever spoke to the victim, I knew that if this case was going to go anywhere, I had to get the both the victim’s medical records and history as well as the brother’s records from those three emergency room visits. Comparing the two medical histories (one had steel rods in his back, the other didn’t) should at least prove which brother actually visited those two hospitals. 

I already knew that the Hillsborough County Attorney would never issue a subpoena for those records. I previously had many “spirited” discussions regarding the same topic with many of the prosecutors in that office. Rightly or wrongly, apparently it was the policy of that office not to issue any kind of a subpoena for medical records. They wouldn’t even allow me to go before a grand jury to seek a grand jury subpoena. I knew before I began that was not an option.

After meeting with the victim, I formulated a plan. I had the victim fill out medical releases for his own medical records at various faculties where he had been treated in the past. As I worked the case I delivered those signed releases to the appropriate medical facilities. 

Since the suspect in this case posed as my victim during each of his visits, I requested that the victim sign medical releases requesting records for the visits he was alleged to have made in both hospitals. I reasoned that should be easy enough because after all, as far as the hospitals were concerned, it was my victim who made those visits, they reiterated that several times to the victim. So, when the victim requested this records, the hospitals released them and I was eventually able to get them for my investigation. 

I compared the records of both brothers, and medically speaking, one could never be confused with the other. They each had different histories and were treated for differing things at different times and locations. I reasoned that comparing the medical records would show that my victim could never have been the person who made those three visits. So far, so good.  But I hadn’t built an Identity Theft case yet. 

The suspect had a criminal history, so I was able to locate a previous booking photo of him. I used it to create a photo array which included my suspect. I also made it in a way that complied with various court decisions regarding the use of photo arrays and within the guidance provided by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. 

While the victim’s phone was ringing off the hook from various bill collectors, I set out to find each ER Doctor who treated the suspect as he posed as his brother. I wanted to interview each of them with the hope that they would be able to identify the suspect as the person they treated, not his brother. That was not an easy task. After chasing each of these docs around for some weeks, I was finally able to determine a day and time they were on duty and I could see them. 

It took a while to catch up with each, but when I did so I caught a few breaks. In one of the hospitals, the same doctor treated the suspect during both visits. After viewing all the records he went on record telling me that the man he treated could not have been his brother. But there was more. After reading his own notes on the two visits he told me he not only remembered both visits he would recognize the guy if he came in again! Out came my photo array, and after following proper protocol, I showed the array to the doctor, and miracle of miracles, the doc immediately picked out my suspect as the person he treated. That proved that that the suspect used his brother’s identity to seek treatment. I had now made two Identity Fraud cases.

The doctor further stated that that there was nothing really wrong with the suspect, in his opinion the suspect was a drug addict seeking drugs, but based on the complaints the suspect presented, he was obligated to order various expensive tests to make sure the suspect really wasn’t ill or injured. The doc said he suspected at the time the tests were a waste of time and money, but ethically he was obligated to follow up on the suspect’s complaints. In the end, the suspect was released from the ER with no definitive problems found and he was treated with an over the counter pain medication. The suspect was not a happy when he left the hospital. 

I then took the evidence I had gathered and interviewed the doctor at the other hospital who treated the suspect who again posed as his brother. Unfortunately, that doctor, even while reading his notes, was unable to remember the case or identity the suspect when presented with my photo array. That doc gave his opinion based on his notes. He was able to say, again, based on his notes and then looking at the victim’s medical history, that the person he treated could not have been his brother. No Identification, but I was hopeful at least that would show that the victim had not made that hospital visit.

After gathering all my evidence, I attempted to get the suspect to come in for an interview, but that was never going to happen. Therefore, I sought an arrest warrant charging the suspect with two counts of Identity Fraud (the two times in which the emergency room doc identified his photo) which was a Class A Felony. We eventually found the guy and locked him up. 

A short time after his arrest, a preliminary or probable cause hearing was held. Most PC hearings were a formality. Once probable cause was or was not established, the district court had no further authority or control of felony cases. Over the course of my career, I may have lost an occasional probable cause hearing, but in each of those cases, despite the charges having been dismissed at district court, we still sent the case to a grand jury and the grand jury indicted. 

And before you ask, that does not constitute double jeopardy. Double Jeopardy only applies when a defendant is found not guilty after a trial. He can never be tried again for the same crime. In the case of a PC hearing, the court only ruled that it believed there was not enough probable cause to go forward with the case. We could continue to work the case, possibly developing more evidence, but even when that didn’t happen, we always got a second bite of the apple by going directly to a grand jury regardless of the outcome of any PC hearing. That was just one of the quirky things I discovered about the New Hampshire Court System and its criminal procedures. To me, I always thought the concept of the PC hearing was redundant, and served no real purpose.  

On this day, as I sat testifying about the case and the actions I took, the defense attorney began to cross examine me. I had never seen this attorney before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. When he started off asking how I was feeling and making small talk with me on the stand, I knew he was just trying to soften me up for what he hoped would be the proverbial slaughter.  

After the niceties, the defense attorney started in on me. In a dramatic turn of events worthy of portrayal in a Perry Mason episode, the defense attorney expressed shock. “Your Honor” he began. laying it on thicker and thicker as he went along. “It’s my duty to see that Detective Swirko’s constitutional rights are protected and he has the opportunity to seek an attorney for advice before we can continue with this proceeding”. 

The attorney, after declaring that he was shocked, just shocked, then went on to declare that I had violated Federal HIPAA laws. I had persuaded his client’s brother to apply for and obtain his client’s medical records using false and fraudulent pretenses. Furthermore, he argued that the medical records I used to build my case on, since I had obtained them fraudulently, should be disallowed as evidence. He went on to demand that and any other information I gathered, such as the photo ID that the doctor made of his client, be treated as the “fruit of the poisonous tree” and also be disallowed. In fact, the entire case should be dismissed because I had not presented one iota of legally gathered evidence. Furthermore, I had entered into a fraudulent and illegal conspiracy with the alleged (his word) victim when I told him to apply for medical records that we both knew belonged to his client and not the victim. Therefore, the hearing should be suspended immediately so that I would not incriminate myself any further. He could not in good conscience allow me, for my sake to continue. Suddenly the packed court room, filled with cops, attorneys and defendants, all trying to make last minute deals while waiting for their turn became silent. All eyes were on me. 

I marveled at the act the attorney put on in front of the court and everyone present. The passion, the shock, and his feigned concern for my well being was almost believable. He certainly earned his fee that morning, I cynically thought to myself as he went on and on as though was a Shakespearean actor. 

The Honorable William Lyons was the judge hearing the case that day. He never did or ruled on anything without making a well, thought out decision based upon a solid legal foundation.  When the attorney composed himself after putting on quite the show, Lyons questioned the attorney’s legal theory and argument at length. I eventually got the impression that the judge wasn’t buying it, but I wasn’t sure. After he was satisfied, Judge Lyons was quiet for a minute and then he addressed me. 

“Detective Swirko” he began “I feel it is my duty to advise you of certain rights you have at this time.” The judge went on to read me a slightly modified version of the Miranda warning. Basically it came down to the fact that if I wanted to consult and attorney for advice he would continue the hearing to a further date until I had that opportunity. Judge Lyons actually told me that among other things I had the right not to incriminate myself (if in fact that was what I was doing by testifying) and seek an attorney. No one had ever said that to me before or since. An interesting turn of events for sure. 

Now I’d been around for more than a day, and had seen this tactic implemented in the past, but never on me. However, I was not intimidated. I recognized this tactic for what it was. Beyond that, I thought that the attorney’s legal argument had been so twisted and distorted as was his portrayal and explanation of HIPAA that it wasn’t logical. I didn’t believe it passed the legal standard known as the “straight face test”.“EFF this guy” I thought to myself. 

After Lyons had read me my rights and asked what I wanted to do, I answered immediately without wavering. Sounding as sincere and authentic as I possibly could, I started off by thanking the defense attorney for going out of his way to protect my rights. I told him I appreciated all he had done for me. I tried to pretend outwardly that I was very appreciative of his concern. Meanwhile, I was thinking to myself that two could play that game. So I did.  

I went on to say that since I had violated no laws or obtained any evidence illegally, I saw no need to seek the advice of an attorney, nor to continue this hearing to a different date. Therefore, I declined to take the opportunity that the judge and attorney had graciously offered me. I then thanked the judge. I believe the defense attorney was not expecting my response. He tried not to show it, but he was definitely surprised and didn’t expect it. Judge Lyons asked me one more time if I was certain that I wanted to proceed, and I told him I was and thanked him again. 

The hearing continued and Lyons overruled the defense request to suppress the evidence I presented. He simply ruled that the submission and legality of evidence presented at the hearing was beyond the scope of a probable cause hearing. He then ruled that probable cause existed and he was going to bind the case and defendant over to Superior Court, where the process would start all over again. Bail for the defendant would be continued in the meantime. I then left the courtroom, walking past the attorney and defendant without looking at either. I held my head high thinking my integrity had been questioned in open court and successfully defended. 

Eventually the suspect was indicted. Much to my delight, he was also indicted for the third case where the emergency room doctor could not identify or recall the suspect’s visit there. Eventually he pled guilty to all three incidents of Identity Fraud. The defendant was ordered to pay restitution to both hospitals. But, just as importantly, the hospitals and other entities involved were forced to release the victim from all monetary obligations and bill his brother for their services. Eventually, the victim’s good name and damaged credit was repaired and he was made whole. I don’t know if the hospitals ever got a cent in restitution, but that was beyond my control. In this case, that outcome was good enough for me. Chalk one up for the good guys. 

Written by Detective (Retired) Martin Swirko, Manchester NH Police

I was close to the end of what had turned out to be a long midnight shift during one night early in my career when I got a call for a domestic dispute. “Verbal only at this time”the dispatcher advised me. I looked at my watch and it was just after 6:30 in the morning. “Great” I thought. I had plans with my family after work that morning and the prospect of making an arrest this late in my shift would ruin those plans. 

I had planned to take my kids out somewhere special that day since it was my last night on before my two days off, but now I thought those plans were in jeopardy. My kids would probably be up shortly and eagerly looking forward the outing we had planned once I got home. As a result, I wasn’t thrilled at getting this call so close to the end of my shift. Normally, making an arrest this close to going off duty didn’t bother me. Hell, most weekdays I had court anyway after I got off duty and my kids would be at school long before I got home. So I had to kill time and stay up for court anyway. But I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case that morning. 

Officer Dave Connare was also assigned to the call as my back up. I got to know Dave because we came on the job together and attended the Police Academy at the same time. We had a similar sense of humor, and more than once, during the police academy, whenever something stupid or hilarious was going on, if we looked at each other neither one of us could keep from bursting out in laughter. That got us in trouble a few times at the academy. In any case, I enjoyed working with Dave and especially his sense of humor. 

Earlier that night, we had gone to a neighbor complaint together in one of those brownstone apartment buildings around the 1400 block of Elm St. When we arrived, what we found were two neighbors, in the laundry room around 1AM, arguing about something. The problem was, both parties were immigrants. One was, I believe Korean, the other Greek, and although they were screaming at each other, neither of them could understand what the other was yelling about. What made it worse was neither of them could speak or understand English, so neither Dave or I could understand either of them. The situation was complicated even more, if that was even possible, by the caller, who apparently DID speak English, but declined to identify her or himself when they called. Meanwhile, these two apparently had some type of a beef going on, but what had caused it was anyone’s guess. 

Dave and I just stood there as the two of them screamed and wildly gesticulated at each other in different languages, neither of them knowing what the other was saying. Each of them took turns facing us and then yelling at us, becoming more and more frustrated presumably trying to  explain whatever the problem was. Then, after throwing up their hands in exasperation they turned back to each other and continued to argue. 

We certainly had no idea what the problem was. We tried to communicate with them both verbally and also by using hand gestures which we foolishly thought were universal and could be understood by anyone no matter where they came from or what language they spoke. We were wrong, and probably looked ridiculous ourselves. We might as well have been trying to communicate with two individuals that were both deaf and blind, or should I say Hearing and visually impaired. But they most definitely were not mute. That was for sure! We rather quickly discovered that these efforts were futile.

At one point, Dave looked at me from across the room and as this ridiculous exhibition played out we locked eyes. This turned out to be a bad thing. After looking at each other momentarily, I saw a smirk start to form on Dave’s face and that was it. Both of us lost it and we broke out laughing. I couldn’t help myself. This was a serious loss of composure, because this dispute could have been over something quite serious and required police intervention of some kind. This loss of composure, or what I came to call Police Poise after lifting the phrase from cop turned author Joseph Wambaugh, was something that should never occur. Not in front of the public, anyway. The last thing I wanted was for these two people to think that we were laughing at them. After exercising a degree of self control, we finally regained our composure but it wasn’t easy. 

By the end of the 1990’s, AT&T established a 24-hour, national language line which we could access for situations like this and by using and handing a telephone back and forth, a qualified interpreter could help us navigate our way through these types of problems. In as much as Manchester had a very diverse population, this resource proved to be invaluable in the years that followed. However, no such service existed at that point during our career. 

After spending an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what was happening, we eventually got everyone separated and back to their apartments, which is where we left them. We returned to our cruisers where I disingenuously cleared the call as having been “Solved At Scene”. Whatever it was, thankfully we never heard from that bunch for the rest of the night. I only hoped and prayed that there wasn’t a murder victim or some person in need of medical care somewhere in the building which caused the dispute between the two as we left the address. I didn’t see Dave again for the rest of the night until we both got the domestic dispute call later that morning. 

When I arrived at the domestic dispute call, Dave pulled up behind me. We never pulled up in our marked cars directly in front of an address we were sent to. We always parked a few doors away from the address or maybe around the corner for several reasons, one of them being we didn’t want to be ambushed as we exited our cars or we walked up to the front door. 

Beyond that obvious concern, it also gave us a chance to stop momentarily before we approached the location and listen and look to see if we could get a hint at of what we may be headed into. Manchester Police Officer Ralph Miller was ambushed and murdered while responding to a loud party call several years earlier as he approached the address where the party was occurring. Miller didn’t do anything wrong, and his death may have been unavoidable once his assailant made the decision to kill him, but Miller’s line of duty murder was an event that all Manchester cops knew about and learned from. 

Dave and I both got out of our cruisers and paused a moment in order to see if we could hear anything from the sidewalk. Sure enough, we heard a man and woman yelling at each other from inside. “At least these two speak English” I dryly commented to Dave, remembering the earlier call we’d been at. Dave only responded with a half hearted chuckle. I don’t think anyone who worked midnights ever found themselves in a very humorous mood by the time the sun was coming up. 

We knocked on the door, each of us standing on one side of the door or the other, another tactic we followed religiously. We never stood directly in front of a door while working. Just a few years earlier, Boston Police Officer Sherman Griffiths was shot and killed through a door when he was attempting to enter an apartment to serve a search warrant. Too many cops had lost their lives doing so throughout the country, so that was another painful lesson that law enforcement had learned. 

After a few minutes, the male half of the dispute came to the door. When he did, he made a show of inviting us into his apartment by bowing to us in an exaggerated fashion, magnanimously gesturing with his right arm indicating that we should come right in. At first I thought he was being a wise guy, but that really wasn’t the case.

As I entered the apartment, I tried to re-focus my bloodshot, midnight shift eyes, devoid of sleep, while struggling to adjust to the dimly lit, cigarette smoke filled apartment. That isn’t easy after coming in from the bright early morning sunlight. What I found in front of me may have been one of the most ridiculous scenes I’d come across yet during my then young police career.

Standing in front of me I observed a white male. But it was his attire that first caught my attention. The guy was wearing open toed sandals, inside of which he had calf length black dress socks. The bathrobe he was wearing hung down just covering his bare knees. The guy may have been naked under the bathrobe, but I decided not to look any closer to confirm or deny that fact. He had a big, thick dark bushy mustache that overlapped and had grown over the sides and the bottom of his upper lip. “This guy must have a hell of a time sipping soup or drinking milk through that thing” I thought to myself as I observed the thickly overgrown cookie duster under his nose. 

Added to that, he was wearing a thick pair of black framed glasses and to top off his fashion statement, he had a lit cigarette dangling out of one side of his mouth which bounced up and down as he immediately started to babble about something in an agitated state. His volume steadily increased as though by doing so he thought I could figure out what the hell he was jabbering about. The man’s overall appearance, to me, seemed both clownish and farcical. 

As absurd as this looked, what really caught my attention was what was perched seemingly comfortably upon the guy’s right shoulder. As I tried to size this guy up, I immediately found myself involved in a creepy staring contest with a large, multicolored bird that sat leisurely sizing me up from head to toe! It was a parrot, or some kind of a Macaw. As I cautiously entered the apartment, the guy, started pacing back and forth while trying to telling us his story of woe. 

His wife was on the other side of the kitchen. Dave unobtrusively maneuvered his way over towards her so he could get between her and the silverware drawer. The last place we wanted to end up in during a thunderous and emotional domestic dispute was in the kitchen, any kitchen, where most people keep their cutlery. We didn’t need one or the other party grabbing a steak knife or meat clever and lunging at each other with it during a moment of passion or anger. For that matter, we didn’t want either party to attack us! And by the way, edged weapons and the damage they could do scared the hell out of me!

There were plenty of times during theses types of calls when I’d seen a steak knife, box cutter, or for that matter a butcher or simple butter knife left out on a table or cabinet within reach of any of us. When I saw something like that, I tried to grab it without making a big deal. While I continued to talk or listen to whomever, I’d stick it into my Sam Browne duty belt for safekeeping until it was time to leave. 

Dave tried to speak with the wife while I tried to chat with the gentleman while his feathered friend looked on with interest. As far as the woman went, I initially didn’t deal with her. We normally would try to separate the parties involved, into different rooms if possible, and each of us would get each participant’s side of the story and then we’d compare notes together and try to decide on the most prudent course of action to take. Actions could range from a brief marriage or relationship counseling session, a lecture on the law or, if evidence of a crime became apparent, an arrest, followed by additional gathering of evidence. 

My initial observation of the woman, who we determined early on was the guy’s wife, was unremarkable. She wore some type of a nightgown, hair in curlers and was pretty upset herself. Naturally, she was also puffing on a cigarette. Beyond that nothing about her caught my attention, so I let Dave deal with her while I kept my attention on the guy while his colorful chum sat on his shoulder.  

While I talked with the guy, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the bird. I guess I couldn’t figure out which one of the two presented the biggest threat to me. The guy paced back and forth, bird on his shoulder, shutting up just long enough to take a long drag on his cigarette then placing it back in his mouth while continuing on with his story without missing a beat. 

His wife was “crazy” he assured me over and over again. He told me he had enough of her and couldn’t and wouldn’t spend another minute in the same room with her. He told me that she had just been released from the crazy house and that I needed to take her back to the asylum where she belonged. As I tried to calmly explain to the gentleman that was unlikely to happen, his feathered companion never took its eyes off me. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought the thing was trying to intimidate me. Every once in a while it would spread its wings and flap them menacingly, as if trying to convey a message, all the while maintaining eye contact with me. I feared at one point that it might actually attack me! I wasn’t sure if it was legal to possess such a biped within the city of Manchester, but I certainly wasn’t about to go down that road at that hour of the morning. 

I tried to get a word in edgewise here or there, but it wasn’t easy. Whatever happened before we arrived, this guy was so wound up that I half expected him to start speaking in tongues. I was able to get the guy to tell me that his wife hadn’t assaulted or threatened him in any way, but she seemed just as crazy. In fact, the bird was the only calm resident in the apartment, but I couldn’t tell what it was thinking.  

Meanwhile, Dave was unsuccessful in trying to guide or steer the wife into another room so we could separate the two and get them to talk to us without arguing with each other. The end result was that this whole thing played out in a  cramped kitchen, sink overloaded with dirty dishes and an overflowing garbage bag sitting in one corner.  The four of us, excuse me, the five us, were clustered in the same cluttered space. 

As Dave tried to calm and question the wife in vain, she joined into the loud squabble which now included the two of them, screaming and yelling. Each accused the other of being “nuts” and “crazy”. Each tried to explain to us that the other had been in and out of mental institutions for years. Of that, I had no doubt. They continuously demanded that the other “get out!”. They wanted a divorce, they couldn’t stand the other and that went on as though Dave and I weren’t present. When Dave moved in front of her to block her she would just bend over, trying to reach around Dave and flinging her arms around Dave’s torso making gestures at her husband while she continued to yell. My ears were beginning to hurt. “I’m glad I don’t live next to them” I thought to myself at one point as the argument got even more heated and louder. 

However, the real trouble started when Dave looked over at me and shot me one of his comical, quizzical”What the F___” looks. Seeing the look on Dave’s face, glancing back at the bird then back at Dave, once again, I found myself struggling to keep from breaking out into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. I almost lost what little composure I worked so hard to hang onto since I first laid eyes on the giant bird and its talking, mustached companion. The last thing I wanted to do was breakout laughing in front of this couple while they argued with each other, especially at that moment!

I don’t know how we did it, but we eventually were somehow able to get both parties to shut up for a minute so we could talk to them. Dave and I talked to them while they were together. We explained the facts of life to both of them. No, I patiently explained, we are not taking either one of them back to the Nervous Hospital, which apparently, was what they really wanted. 

In fact, we explained that we would not remove one or the other from the apartment. They both lived there, and both had a right to be there. I suggested they go and sleep in separate rooms for the rest of the morning. That was a No-Go. I inquired about friends or relatives in the area and suggested maybe one of them might want to leave the house and go somewhere and come back when tempers died down. Both refused to leave their own apartment for the other. I suggested they call their counselor or their social worker, later in the morning. I also offered to give either one of them a ride to wherever if they wanted to leave for a while. None of those suggestions appealed to either one. However, at least we got them to calm down a bit and they stopped screaming at each other and us. Beyond that, we were getting nowhere. 

I started to try to figure out how we could gracefully extract ourselves from this situation. Apparently there were no crimes or threats made by either party, so thankfully for me, an arrest was not an option. I had to consider what could possibly happen between the two after we left. Would the wife be safe? Would the dispute continue and turn physical? I figured the bird could take care of himself, but I wasn’t so sure about either of its roommates. 

We continued to try mediate the argument, but no matter what we suggested neither party would budge an inch. I finally came to the conclusion that the object of the exercise, seeing that they were calmed a bit, now became keeping then from killing or otherwise harming each other after we left. Or at least I thought, somewhat cynically I admit, until the day shift came on duty and we left the building for home.  

We talked and talked. As the time approached 730 AM, in the back of my mind I was aware that there were at least two day shift guys, waiting impatiently for us to bring in our cruisers. They weren’t impatient because they were in a hurry to go to work. They were impatient because they wanted, they needed to get a cup of coffee before they got their first call of the day. Soon, the day shift commander would be looking for us and wondering why we were still screwing around. 

When we both felt somewhat comfortable enough to leave the couple alone together, we left. We warned them of arrest if either put their hands or threatened the other and also gave them a stern warning about disturbing the neighbors while they screamed at each other. 

Two things I remembered about that call was how ridiculous that guy looked walking around with the bird on his shoulder and the intense manner with which the bird studied me during my time in that apartment. It was as though the ridiculous bird thought that I was the oddity present in the apartment. 

Thankfully, we made our escape. I got home in time to spend the day as planned with my family. As I sit here and write, I recall the murder of Weymouth, Massachusetts Police Officer Michael Chesna, who, in 2018 was shot, execution style by a thug who he had been chasing on foot during his last call at the end of his midnight shift. It turned out to be his last call ever. Sadly, his family waited at home for his return to go on an outing together. I tried to picture my wife and three young kids finding themselves in the same situation. It’s still hard to comprehend. 

Officer Chesna never did make it home that morning. Sadly, I attended his funeral and obsessed long and hard about how he was lying dead in the street while his wife and children were up, packed and ready to go. The vermin that killed Chesna also shot and killed an innocent woman that was standing in her own doorway. Thinking long and hard about it now, I do realize that, beyond inconvenience, I had no valid reason to complain about being late on that or any other morning so long ago.  

When I returned to work after my days off, I was relieved to find out that apparently, neither of the two hurt each other after we left. What ever happened after that? Who knew? I never had contact with them again. However, I did experience a bit of remorse for leaving the big colorful bird behind in that apartment with that couple. After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the bird could probably take care of itself just fine.

By Detective (retired) Martin Swirko, Manchester NH Police Department

There was a time when the Manchester Police Department policed the Manchester Airport. That was back before Manchester Airport was officially renamed the Manchester Boston Regional Airport. It wasn’t as nice and as modern as it is today, but it was at times a pleasant  alternative to flying to certain destinations rather than flying out of Logan Airport in Boston. 

In January of 1991, I achieved a life long goal when I was sworn in at the Manchester NH PD. Manchester was never my first choice, far from it. Nevertheless, when I was offered a job at MPD after going through the testing and selection process, I accepted it. Time would tell that my decision to join MPD turned out to be a wise and fortuitous one. So it was that in 1991, after completing two police academies, I began my career as a patrol officer in Manchester.

That summer, I was pleasantly surprised just how busy and dangerous it was policing  Manchester. Although I still itched to be a cop in Boston, the fact that MPD was so busy, coupled with the fact that I ended up in the emergency room almost a dozen times during my first twelve or fourteen months on the job helped me put my desire to work as a cop in Massachusetts where I grew up on a back burner. 

Needless to say, things were looking really good for me and the MPD during that first, hot summer of 1991. However, that started to change as my first year on the job came to an end. I don’t know why, but my assignments in patrol, over the next few years became kind of tedious. While other cops I got on the job with were getting regular assignments in the busiest cars within the inner city on a regular basis, I started finding myself getting some of the more mundane patrol assignments that the PD had. Don’t misunderstand, those assignments were no less vital than working a busy route car, but they weren’t for me. I used to get really irritated when I’d come in for what I thought was going to be a busy shift on the street only to find that I would be answering 9-1-1 calls that night or shuffling papers at the front counter while I listened to the radio crackle and heard cops doing “real” police work on the street. 

One of my least favorite assignments that I started getting that first year was being assigned to Manchester Airport. As the next couple of years went by, I was assigned to the airport more and more often. I reached the point when I started getting assigned to the airport full time, four months at a time (patrol shifts were then and still are changed every four months and cops can bid on their shifts based on seniority) and I found myself working full time at the Manchester Airport both days and nights. I hated it. After all I’d gone though to get a job as a cop, all those years, here I was stuck at Manchester Airport sitting on my ass and not doing anything meaningful. I was not happy. I came to the conclusion that I must have pissed some boss off at some point, but for the life of me I couldn’t imagine who, how or why. 

Back in the 1990’s there was normally only one cop assigned to the Airport during any shift. Usually you didn’t see another cop unless your supervisor came out to check on you and spent a bit of time walking around with you as you did your rounds. Now I have to explain a few things about being assigned to that airport that made the assignment particularly disagreeable to me. 

First of all, we had a few old timers that just loved to be assigned to the airport. One of those cops was known to many of the airline employees as “Officer Muffin” because whenever he came on duty, the first thing he did was take his blueberry muffin, place it in the toaster oven which was located in the janitorial office and heat it up for breakfast. During that time it was kind of an unwritten rule that Officer “Muffin” (who was a good guy, but at the end of his career) not be bothered until had had his muffin and coffee. We had another old timer who was assigned to the airport full time who had a pilots license so he loved working the airport. He just loved hanging around the airport, Stead Aviation and those who worked there. For him, this was his dream job. That was all fine and good for those guys but it wasn’t for me. 

Then there was the story of a young cop (single) who talked an attractive female flight attendant into giving him a “Tour” of an empty, parked airliner. Or maybe it was the other way around. In any case, while they were busy on their “Tour” up inside the airliner, someone on the ground, assuming the airliner was empty, moved the stairway or jetway away from the airliner effectively trapping both him and flight attendant on the jet. Eventually, after a period of time, the two were able to exit the jet. The cop was a bit embarrassed, and it was with a heavy sigh of relief that he was able to escape the jet without getting a call or being summoned by anyone to perform any kind of police duties. The fact was that other than answering a parking complaint it was unlikely that he wold have been called anywhere else for any other reason while assigned to the Airport. 

The reason I know this story is true is because I knew the cop involved and he told me the story. But like so many other oddities, the story of this cop becoming trapped inside the airliner on duty with a flight attendant was just the kind of thing that becomes legendary within any police department, and sure enough this story became part of MPD lore throughout the years. Sure enough, as time went on, I would find myself involved in an incident and that story has been told and retold from cop to cop for many years. Mine wasn’t quite so glamorous as being trapped alone with a great looking flight attendant, but it did get more than a few chuckles whenever told, but it also brought down the wrath of both the Manchester Airport Authority and for a brief period the bosses at the MPD. 

Manchester-Boston Regional Airport today is a clean, modern facility, much bigger than it was back when I got stuck there and it is a pleasure to fly into and out of. It is policed by the Londonderry NH Police Airport Unit (since the passenger terminal itself was located in the town of Londonderry) assisted by civilian security personnel, and these days it probably wouldn’t be the worst assignment to get and work there regularly. But not so much back then.

Once I made peace (kinda) with getting stuck at the Airport, I decided I’d try to make the best of it. There were and still are a few unique oddities about the Manchester Airport. First of all, the airport itself is owned and run by the Manchester Airport Authority, and as such belongs to the city of Manchester. The problem is and always was that part of airport sits within the city of Manchester, and therefore Hillsborough County, and the other half sits within the town of Londonderry, which is in Rockingham County. If one has any idea of the jurisdictional issues that this causes, you’d begin to see how complicated simple things can become. 

In order to deal with those issues, a somewhat cumbersome arrangement had been made so that the Manchester Police had jurisdiction throughout the airport, both the Londonderry portion as well as Manchester. Manchester PD would be the primary agency to respond to any incidents, routine or major and we had a captain who was responsible for the policing of the airport. That captain, thankfully for the cops that worked the airport, didn’t work at the airport, he worked at HQ. Despite this set up, sometimes there was jurisdictional confusion. 

Settling into my new assignment reluctantly, I read and absorbed every rule and regulation that I was expected to deal with and enforce during my time at the airport. That included the Airport Rules, Regulations and its SOP. It also included MPDs SOPs regarding the airport and the FAA Federal rules and regulations. Needless to say, that was a lot of material that I needed to soak up, but I did my best. I should also add that I never received any type of training at all for this assignment, I was just dumped there one night, so it shouldn’t be surprising that I made an occasional mistake while assigned there. 

One day shift I was called over to the US Air Service Counter and told that a passenger who was in a hurry and a bit irritated that he had to go through the screening process had made a sarcastic comment about carrying a bomb with him. The airline station manager requested that I go onto the plane and remove the passenger. I radioed in to the station what I had and what I was about to do. They sent a patrol sergeant out to the airport. I did as requested, and escorted the passenger back into the terminal. I questioned the passenger about the bomb comment and he admitted to making it and told me it was just a joke. In the meantime, the airline banned him from flying with US Air, and because of this he never did make it to Florida that day to join other family members for a vacation. I ran the passenger for warrants, he had no record, so I cut him loose and wrote a detailed police report. All this was done with the approval and oversight of the sergeant who was now on the scene. End of story, so I thought at the time. 

That day was the last day for that airline station manager in Manchester. The next day he started at a new assignment at Logan Airport in Boston. But he didn’t leave without trying to screw me. It turned out that his final act as station manager in Manchester was to file complaint against me with the PD. The station manager said I was derelict of duty, didn’t know what I was doing, failed to enforce federal law and a few other things I can’t remember. 

The next day I was called into the captain’s office and read the riot act. More than that, he told me that the department had opened and internal investigation on me and that I was in a lot of trouble. He also gave me a good ass chewing for good measure, then sent me back to the airport. Shit, I thought. I’m fairly new on the job and I’m already on my way out and I didn’t even know what I had done wrong! Furthermore, even though I had joined the union, as a probationary patrolman the union, as a matter of policy, refused to represent me during the internal. To make a long story short, the station manager’s major complaint was that I hadn’t arrested the passenger that made the joke about having a bomb. What did I know? He didn’t commit a violation of any New Hampshire law that I could determine, and since it wasn’t a criminal threat, I didn’t know of any circumstance where I could have arrested that guy. I pulled the guy off the flight, served him notice that he was not allowed to fly or come on to US Air property in the future and completed a detailed report. I believe the thing that saved me at MPD was that a sergeant was present and approved of the action I took. I believe he even suggested to handle it that way. I was told later that I should have arrested him, but no one was able to point out any law or statute that covered that incident. 

Bottom line was, I now knew how difficult policing the airport could become, and I went back to review and learn every law, local, state and federal that applied to airports. And I vowed never to find myself in a similar situation again. I also learned another harsh lesson, and that was, no matter how friendly all the airline employees could be, I could never trust them fully. Any one of them would be happy to bury a knife in my back if given the opportunity. 

One day the airport director sent for me, and he took me to the areas around the terminal where the various airline employees were parking their cars illegally. He pointed out that these employees were parking in a posted no parking area regularly and he wanted me to tag each vehicle. I refused to, telling him since they’ve been parking there all along, I would first go to each airline and tell them that effective the next day, I would be tagging any car that was parked those spots. Needless to say, they weren’t happy. I apologized but I laid down the law.

The airport director was livid that I wouldn’t tag those cars on the spot, but I held my ground. Needless to say he made another complaint against me. My next shift I returned and the same cars were parked in the same spaces. I tagged each one of them. The airline employees, as a group, refused to talk to me after that unless it was business related. Oh, well, screw them all, I thought. I was nice enough to give them a warning which they declined to heed. Meantime I was called in for another inquisition. Surprisingly, the PD backed me up saying as a police officer I had the discretion to issue the tickets or not to issue them. But the fun continued. 

One afternoon, I was sent to the UPS facility located on Airport property in which a worker had been struck and run over by a forklift. I responded to it like I would to any motor vehicle crash involving injury. Once I got to the scene I watched, with both wonder and amusement as the following entities rolled up to the scene, lights and sirens wailing. They included Manchester Fire, Manchester EMS, Londonderry Police, Londonderry Fire, Derry (NH) Fire, East Derry EMS, Airport Crash-Fire Rescue (both engines and ambulance) and for good measure, the Hillsborough NH Sheriff’s Department. So, as I was taking all this in, a sergeant from Londonderry PD walks up to me and in sort of a confrontational way tells me “Hey! You know this accident is ours, right?” No “HI, how are ya?” No civil greeting one cop would expect from another, just a forceful declaration that the Londonderry Police Department  demands to take this accident. Now the last thing I wanted to do was do this accident and report so it certainly didn’t hurt my feelings any. I said “Sure Sergeant. Absolutely! If you guys want to take it, it’s all yours!” I then watched as that sergeant grabbed another forlorn Londonderry patrolman and ordered him to take the accident. The Londonderry guy shot me a look that was half helpless and half angry. I can only figure he thought his own sergeant just screwed him by sticking him with this accident. I giggled to myself and went back to my cruiser and got the hell out.

So, my days and nights at the airport droned on and I did the best I could to amuse myself and make time pass. I had my own cruiser there. I had to carry two radios on me at all times, one for the PD the other for the airport authority. I could talk to the FAA and the tower on the second radio. I was incessantly tortured on the airport authority radio as the second in command at the Airport drove around and constantly demanded I respond to wherever and write parking tickets whenever he saw someone parked illegally. Because I was tagging so many airline employees for illegally parking their cars, they really started to hate me. I mean, it really created problems for me with the airlines. 

I was regularly being called into the captain’s office to answer complaints made about me by both airline employees and patrons who were angry I tagged their cars. Meanwhile, the airport director complained I wasn’t writing enough parking tickets. I felt like a ping pong ball getting whacked back and forth as each complaint went on my monthly evaluation. One night a sergeant approached me and told me the Mayor was getting complaints from the public and he wanted us to write less parking tickets to keep the airport ” customer friendly”. “Which is it?” I respectfully asked. Who did I work for?-I didn’t get an answer. 

Soon I started to get tired of everyone. The patrons who thought that the parking rules were for everyone but them, the airport director and assistant director, both of whom went out of their way to make me miserable while thinking I worked and took orders from them. The airline employees who came to despise me for enforcing both local and federal laws, especially parking regulations. In fact, the only people I got along with were the people who screened luggage at the gates. This was pre TSA, but I found that many of the travelers didn’t like having to go though the screening process, which was much simpler than today, so my presence at the gates was always appreciated. 

During that time period, one of the things that Manchester Airport always was proud of, and something they always bragged about was that they were the Airport that never closed. Winter storms, in particular, no matter how bad the blizzard was, Manchester kept their runways cleared and never, ever closed. That was actually kind of a disingenuous claim on their part because whenever a particularly bad storm hit the Northeast, every major airport around normally closed and had long delays, so it really didn’t matter if Manchester was open because everywhere from Chicago to NYC to Boston was closed, so no one was flying in or out of Manchester in any case. But, they did stay open. Until one day shift after I came on duty.

Daily I reported for duty, went through the motions as the clock slowly clicked away, hoping that maybe I could snag an overtime shift on the street that night, lest my street skills start to deteriorate.

One day a taxi driver approached me and pointed out an apparently abandoned suitcase he’d seen sitting on the pavement outside the terminal entrance. I thanked him and stood for a minute and sized up the situation. I know what I did next was not the smartest thing I did during my police career, but I really didn’t think that this piece of baggage was actually a bomb or a threat to anyone’s safety. I just figured some unfortunate traveler set it down and left it behind. Of course, this was well before 9/11, so terrorism in this country wasn’t as big a threat as it has been since. At least we didn’t think so, especially in Manchester, NH. I picked the bag up, and carried it inside to one of the screening points and had the bag go through the X-Ray machine. That’s when the real trouble began. 

I looked at the X-Ray and there was one prominent feature that jumped out at me. It was some kind of a stick-like device with a wire wrapped around it. This certainly caught my attention. I asked the person doing the scan if he would call this item suspicious. Now you have to remember this was before the advent of TSA and the screeners worked for a private security company hired to man the passenger gate and screen luggage. The screener refused to commit himself. I asked him several times, I wanted him to confirm or at least validate my feeling there we now had a problem that I needed to take action on. He refused to do so, telling me he was not going to offer an opinion. I sarcastically thought that if the thing blew up while we were standing there, he might have wished he had offered an opinion. I finally asked him whether or not, if I wasn’t present, and he ran this suitcase through the X-ray machine and saw what we were looking at during that moment, would he deem the suitcase suspicious and would he conduct further screening? It was like pulling teeth, but eventually he reluctantly told me “probably”. So, it was not only my opinion, and at the time that was important to me.  

So, having read all the airport and FAA regulations, I knew what I had to do, and much to the chagrin of the airport authorities I swung into action. The first action I took was to contact the tower and immediately close the airport to both incoming and departing flights. I also notified the airport crash-fire department. That really caught the director’s attention. He already hated me enough before I shattered his record for never closing. As far as he was concerned, this was the last straw. 

The next thing I did, and I kid you not, I followed the FAA procedures and carried the suspicious item (and potential bomb) out to the middle of a runway and placed it there after getting everyone and everything off the runways and tarmacs. Sounds foolish now, that was the standard procedure back then. 

As I gingerly placed the bag on the pavement I slowly backed away from it trying my best not to trigger the explosive device that may be wired inside. After cordoning off the area, I contacted MPD by phone (i knew enough not to make any radio transmissions that could detonate the device. I was taught that much during my training) and informed them what I had going on. The shift commander grabbed the phone and told me not to do anything until he sent a sergeant out to take charge. 

Too late I somberly but somewhat gleefully informed the captain. I got the bag isolated and airport shut down tight as a drum. All this while the airport director and his assistant were screaming at me in the background demanding to know where I thought I got the authority to do what I did. As any good cop, I was able to quote him the FAA regulation I was following along with his own airport SOP for such an incident. He was beside himself, and apparently not al all concerned about the safety of his employees or travelers. All he cared about was that his reputation, commercials and advertisements proclaiming that Manchester Airport never closed were now worthless.

The sergeant arrived, and he was none too pleased that I had taken this action on my own. Most bosses at MPD at the time never wanted us to act on our own, especially if that action could turn into something controversial. After all, I’m a lowly patrolman and a fairly new one at that. 

However after pouring over the relevant regulations and SOPs, he called the shift commander and told him that I had actually taken the correct actions once I determined, with good reason, that the bag was indeed suspicious. The shift commander was appeased for the moment and told the sergeant to carry on. So, the next thing he did, since we did not have a bomb disposal unit in Manchester, was to call the New Hampshire State Police so they could activate and send their bomb unit to Manchester.

While waiting for SP to arrived, I was called to the terminal entrance to speak with a woman. The woman told me she had left her bag at the terminal and she came back to see if perhaps someone had found it. I did not yet tell her that someone had indeed found it, but got a description of the bag and because it matched, I took her to a building and handed to a pair of binoculars and asked her if she could identify the bag laying on the runway all by itself.  

YES, she exclaimed, with a combination of relief and curiosity. What was her bag doing out there? She didn’t leave it there, she left it at the terminal. I ignored her questions for the time being and asked her if she could remember what was in the bag or if anyone had given it to her to carry etc. etc. Somewhat annoyed, she ticked off a list of items she thought she may have packed, and when she was done she added, as an afterthought, “Oh Yeah. I also packed my curling iron in that bag. I need that and I certainly hope you haven’t lost it…” 

Well as you can imagine, after a safe and complete inspection of the contents of the bag by the experts summoned to the airport, it was determined that the suspiciously wired device that I had seen in the X-Ray was in fact her curling iron with the cord and plug wrapped around it. Who knew? Certainly not me. But, the incident did add a little excitement to the day and my shift mercifully came to and end. She got her curling Iron back and I never did pick up an overtime shift that night. But, that wasn’t the end of that incident. 

The next day, I was called into the office of the MPD captain who acted as the liaison between the Manchester Airport and MPD. He went up one side of me and down the other. He told me that the airport director had made a formal complaint against me and the actions I had taken without any proper guidance. He further told me that I didn’t have the authority to shut down the airport. He told me I should have done nothing until I notified both the airport director and MPD. He also said a full blown internal investigation would be conducted and opined that this was the last stunt I would ever pull and I might be done. Apparently I had aircraft circling the airport, unable to land all afternoon and flights and airspace backed up between Chicago, New York, Boston and Montreal. I hoped he meant I was done at the airport but I had the bad feeling he meant my new police career, was done. I hadn’t been around too long, but I now found myself being the subject of another internal investigation, one of the biggest fears any policeman has. 

I tried to defend my actions, and respectfully explained the regulations I had followed and why I did what I did, when I and why I took each step. The captain wasn’t impressed. He sent me away telling me I had done it now. I was felling low, but at the same time believed I had done what I was supposed to have done. 

Sometime later, maybe a week our more, I was called back into the captain’s office. Have a seat, Marty, the captain pleasantly greeted me for once. He went on to tell me that the internal investigation was now complete. He stated the investigation showed that I followed all guidance and SOPs in effect, and that I had taken the appropriate actions therefore the complaint was closed as unfounded. Next time call a supervisor first. “Really? I should wait for a supervisor to show up and hope the bomb doesn’t go off in the meantime?’ I thought wise to keep that thought to myself. So, now this complaint was now added to my personnel file for doing nothing more that my job. 

In fact as time went on I  found that the first thing many patrons did after arriving at the airport or picking up patrons, after trying to talk me out of or intimidate me into taking back the parking tickets I wrote was to go to MPD and file a formal complaint. The conversation that followed usually went as follows:

Complainant: The officer was rude and unprofessional. Q: Well, did he use profanity? Answer-Well no, not really, Q-Did he raise his voice or threaten you in any way? A- No, not really. Q-So what did Officer Swirko do that was unprofessional? A-I just didn’t like his attitude. But the real reason that those people were complaining was because I wouldn’t take the ticket back, therefore I had a poor attitude. I could arrest someone, write them a $72.00 ticket for speeding with no reaction, but nothing set off otherwise law abiding citizens and tax-payers more than a $10 dollar parking ticket. They considered it a gross abuse of authority and their constitutional rights as American citizens. Result in every case-Unfounded! But you can believe each complaint went into my personnel file and monthly evaluation regardless whether they were unfounded or not. Here I had a year and a half on the job and at first glance at my file one would think I had an incredible discipline problem. 

Getting back to closing the airport, the captain did tell me, off the record, that I probably used poor judgment by picking up the bag and having it X-Ray’d. I knew he was correct but at the time, I wanted to determine if the bag was a genuine threat or not before I took drastic action.  Besides, can you imagine the airport’s outrage if I had shut the place down, without taking the X-Ray?  

In any case, I was cleared of all charges and vindicated once again. You’da thought that captain, the airport staff etc. would know what their own SOPs were for that type of incident. But it took an investigation to figure that out. Several weeks later, that same captain called me in. Suddenly I was doing a good job (the airport director didn’t think so) so he was planning on sending me to the FAA School out in Oklahoma City with a few other guys and then I’d be assigned permanently to Manchester Airport. He said this like it was a good thing! No, No, I begged. Not that. I finally told him that if I got assigned there permanently I’d resign and get my old job back. And I meant it. Fortunately, I never did get assigned there permanently, but for the next couple of years I worked there off and on, more than I would have liked to. It was only when the airport director had enough of me (I just started to ignore him and had a few public scenes with him and one day I threatened to lock him up for disorderly conduct) he told MPD he didn’t ever want to see my shadow again. Thankfully, I was banned from airport duty. Eventually, the Rockingham County Sheriff’s department took over policing the airport and I never had to go back there to work again. 

One last thing. That airport director, who I came to despise due to the way he treated me, eventually left Manchester and became the director of a major airport in a major city in the Northeast. Imagine my delight when I read a short time later that he had not only been fired from that job, the city police had to respond and forcibly remove him form his office and airport property. I only wished I had the chance to do that! Since then I’ve come to believe what goes around comes around. And my closure of that airport became part of department lore. The story was told many times along with tons of laughter. “Remember the time Swirko closed the airport and all the trouble he caused…?”

(After all, I was OFD…)

By Detective (Retired) Marty Swirko, Manchester, NH Police Department

I had made it through my freshman year at Northeastern University in Boston, but just barely. My lifestyle had started to take a toll on my studies. It wasn’t because I was partying or having fun. It was just the opposite. I got to the point where I was becaming very resentful of the students that I had gotten to know that had their way paid, living on campus, having a good time and not really putting a lot of emphasis into their studies. Was I envious? Absolutely! But there wasn’t much I could do about it. I didn’t feel sorry for myself, but I was never a kid that quit when things got tough, so the decision to leave wasn’t easy for me. 

I was carrying a full academic load, I believe it was either 4 or 5 classes per semester, and I was working two separate part time jobs as well. At one point during my second semester I became homeless again, and this time it appeared as though I was truly out on the street. I had parted ways with most of my high school friends so “couch surfing”or in some cases car surfing for days at a time at their homes was no longer an option. To add to all these problems was the fact that I had to commute to and from school and to my jobs by subway, adding hours onto my days that were already full. 

Anyone who has read some of my earlier stories knows that one of my jobs was with the Grocery / Dairy chain in the Northeast and Florida called Cumberland Farms. They would also know during that year in college I was robbed at gunpoint twice, and in both incidents hostages were taken and to this day I feel fortunate that we all survived those incidents. 

My second job, which the university obtained for me as part of their co-op work study program was as a security guard with the former Burns International Security Corporation. That job had me doing overnight shifts each Friday and Saturday at a women’s residence in Boston. My plan was to study during those shifts, but like many things the job didn’t turn out that way. When I wasn’t making rounds I had trouble staying awake at my post in the lobby. Saturday mornings I got off, took the subway to Cumberland’s in Quincy Point and open that store  for the day. 

Sunday mornings I’d get off duty once again, take the subway home, sleep until two and work at the store from three until 9 PM when I closed it. Then it was back to Northeastern first thing Monday mornings. In addition to supporting myself, there was tuition and related expenses which is why I had to keep the two jobs. 

I also went out for both Cross Country and Winter Track, which was the main reason I chose Northeastern University over my other opportunities. However, the coach had very little sympathy for the fact that I had to work and couldn’t devote enough time to practice every day, so ending what had started as a promising collegiate career as a runner was the first casualty of my post high school plan. By the spring of that year I knew something had to give, and eventually I decided it was going to be college.

I decided not to go back to school the following September. It wasn’t really a hard decision to make. I still owed Northeastern money (as it turned out, I wasn’t able to pay them off completely for a few years after I got married) and my academic achievements, although satisfactory, weren’t outstanding. So, I was done with college and at the time I figured if I ever got myself stable, I could always go back. As an aside, I will mention here that during my time at Northeastern I took mandatory courses in both Economics and Political Science, and surprisingly I found both interesting and I’ve always had an interest in both subjects during my entire adult life. Also, the credits I did earn I was able to apply to my promotional packets during my time in the Army, so my single year in college wasn’t a complete waste. 

During that timeframe I met a guy working at Cumberland Farms that I would go on to become a life long friend with, and we were close for many, many years, until his untimely death a few years ago. Patrick Houston and I finally got an apartment together in West Quincy (Massachusetts) And so began one of the strangest and life defining years I may have experienced during my entire lifetime. That year took many strange twists and turns. I was 19 years old when that year began, and I found myself trying to scratch out an existence and figure it all out. Looking back on that year, it seems as though I was at rock bottom in life, then somehow I soared to new heights and the beginning of what became the life I enjoy today just 18 months later!

Pat and I got an apartment, and because I was going to work full time, I needed a car to commute and I was eventually able to accomplish that. I asked my supervisor at Cumberland Farms if I could go to work full time. He thought I was a good part time employee, dependable, hardworking and honest so I had no problem there. I’d been with the company for about a year so he brought me on for the summer as a Vacation Manager and committed to me that if I worked out he would recommend I become a regular full time manager somewhere. That was fine with me. I had my next plan.

My first assignment was to run a store in suburban Rockland Massachusetts while it’s manager took his vacation. It was a beautiful store, friendly people, modern, clean, actually air conditioned and running it was pretty easy. This store was not like the older stores located in crime ridden neighborhoods within and around the city of Boston. Already a veteran of two armed robberies, if all my assignments were like this I thought, I’d have it made. But it wasn’t to be. 

One nice thing that happened during my time in Rockland was that I met a woman named Diane who was also a Cumberland Farms store manager in a nearby town. She was a few years older then me, pretty, and she walked in wearing jeans and a halter top. I found I liked her and liked being around her. One afternoon she stopped in the Rockland store on her way home from her store, struck up a conversation with me, hung around and finally when I was relieved she offered to give me a ride to the bank with my daily deposit. I said sure, why not? 

I climbed into her red Mustang convertible, top down, and headed to the bank. After making the deposit, she then informed me that she was kidnapping me and I was stuck with her for the night! I was still pretty shy around women, but I knew a good thing when I saw it so we hung out together for the rest of the evening. We hit it off immediately, and we dated for a bit. She was fun loving and for some reason she liked me. We had a good time. One day I told her that I really liked her a lot, and her response to me was “Marty, I like you. I like you a lot. I love hanging out with you and you’re a lot of fun. But I have no interest in becoming involved in a serious relationship. And that was the end of that. She left me shaking my head, but we remained friends especially since we worked for the same company. I know she left Massachusetts shortly after that and I never had any contact with or heard anything of her since. They say things happen for a reason, and in this case, especially when I look back on it today, I came to believe it. Later that summer I met a woman I fell in love with whom I would marry and am still married! 

I think my time running the Rockland store was a test, and when I was done I was sent to store number 3418 (I don’t know why I remember all these store numbers but I do) which was located on Hyde Park Ave in Roslindale, which is a neighborhood in the southwestern part of Boston. The previous manager had been fired and I was made the temporary manager there and asked to clean it up and get it running good again. Another test. I was fine with that and did my best. All the inner city stores at the time were open from 9AM and closed at 7 PM, and this store was no exception. The crime rates in these areas at that time were so high that we had to lock up the store, steel grates and all and get out of Dodge before it got dark. Apparently, I did a decent job because my supervisor used to bring supervisors in from other areas to see my store and brag to them about the job I did. He also took credit for finding me. The truth was I loved running that store and I really bought into working for Cumberland Farms during that time. 

I was lent out to different supervisors and sent to stores that needed to be cleaned up, and to hire and train employees at those locations. It was a lot of responsibility for a 19 year old, at least I thought it was. As time went on, I was sent to the Cumberland Farms Corporate Manager Training School, and after completing it, I was assigned as a real, full time manager, commission and all. The only problem was that I didn’t stay in Roslindale. They moved me down the street to a tiny, filthy, low volume store, located on the same street, Hyde Park Ave, but in Hyde Park. 

Store number 3398 was on the corner of Hyde Park Ave and Arlington Street. It had been run for many years by an old timer, but he was very unorganized and had lost his edge. They moved him out to another assignment and decided I would be the one to clean up and get this store back up and running to company standards. Old Joe Driscoll was a character. He’d been around for a long time. He had been shot three times during armed robberies, and led the district in armed robberies which was saying a lot! One time, a local kid came in and tried to stick Joe up with a shot gun. Joe recognized the kid, despite the mask he was wearing, then dumped his trash can over the kids head and chased him out the door telling him not to come back! I asked Joe about that incident and he just told me he knew who the kid was, so he just chased him out. He said the kid was harmless! 

I was disappointed about losing the Roslindale store, and even more disappointed with this dump, especially after having worked at such a nice store in Rockland during the summer. But, I sucked it up and did my best. In fact, I had done so well that after a few months they decided to move me back to 3418 in Roslindale, and I was ecstatic about that!

My “managerial” career took a strange twist. We had stores all around Boston that were very difficult to run. Dishonest and lazy employees, high crime rates, shoplifting, burglaries and armed robberies were common. So, throughout my time running the Roslindale store, I would be sent for a week or two at a time to a problem store, hire a staff, clean it up and getting it running well again. Managers that were willing to work in my store, often would refuse to work in these stores that were in pretty bad neighborhoods throughout Boston. I came to embrace this role and became to be known as the district store fixer. The bosses would send a temporary manager to my store, I’d go to the problem store, get it up and running and still get the sales commission for 3418 that was increasing steadily. 

Things were getting crazy in Boston. Forced bussing started that year, our store on Blue Hill Ave near Morton Street was firebombed one night while it was closed and burned to the ground. We lost another store to a fire on River St. in Hyde Park, a store manger in the other Roslindale store on Washington St and Archdale Rd. was shot and killed during a hold up. If that wasn’t enough a customer had been shot and killed in one of our stores on Bussey St. in Dedham.

There was another store in particular (one of many) that was an on-going headache for the company, and it was store number 3374, which was located in Codman Sq. in the Dorchester section of the city. Most managers refused to work there, and the few that did either quit after a week or two, or, if they stayed on for any period of time they would eventually get caught stealing. So, I was asked regularly to go down there and “clean it up”. So I did.

3374 was located in an all black neighborhood. Like all the Boston stores it was open only 9AM-7PM, which was a good thing.  It was small, newer than my stores either in Hyde Park or Roslindale but cramped for space and although newer, appeared tired and worn out. It did have an incredibly high sales volume. It was located in a small strip mall on Washington Street across from Robert Hall’s Clothing Store and the next unit contained Lawson’s Barber Shop. The proprietors and customers were all black, and after they got to know me we all got along well enough. In fact, every time I came back to clean up the store, the owner and barbers would greet me and welcome me back to the neighborhood. We often talked about the problems we had in common operating in that location and as a result became pretty friendly.

The first day I arrived and opened the store I realized that with the exception of a few employees from near by Dorchester District Court during court hours, I would not see a white customer from open to close. It was an adjustment for me, but I had no problem with it. The other stores I had worked at were located in low income and often mixed neighborhoods, but here in addition to the operational problems I was faced with, I had to get used to the idea that I was the only white guy around.  I immediately saw how challenging this would all be. All day, I had to chase the local kids around the store as they attempted to steal from it, and I figured they were testing me. The customers were, at first, mostly unfriendly, not really rude but cold and clearly not welcoming.

That first day, as I locked up the store and headed out, I got stoned by a bunch of black kids who were on the roof of the store waiting for me. They threw rocks at me and my car, calling me honky and white MF and telling me not to come back. Where they got the rocks from I don’t know, but they had quite a supply of them on the roof which they generously showered me with. I got out of there fast! I now understood two things: One, I knew why no one would work there, and Two, if I was going to hire a manager and part time employees, they had better be Black. At least that was the conclusion I came to. The kids who stoned me were about 12 or 13 years old at the most. They were mostly the same kids that busted my balls all day.

As unhappy as I was, I went back the next day and the day after that, and each day became a challenge in itself to get through. I guess I was too hard headed to be intimidated. As time went on, and after me chasing those kids around and threatening to kick their asses, they started to behave themselves and once they realized I was staying, they’d eventually come and go without giving me a hard time. I also had to get the various vendors in line as they were used to having their way with whomever happened to be running the store up to that point. 

The regular black customers become a bit more friendly and accepting, and it didn’t hurt when I started stocking various items that black customers preferred that we didn’t usually carry in white neighborhoods. Customers would ask for something, and when I got it, it really helped. I remember that grooming and hair products that were marketed specifically for Black people along with certain foods and snacks were some of the things I was able to stock that previous managers did not, and the chain never carried in their stores located in white neighborhoods. I got a little help from the barbers next store, introducing me to their customers and so forth. 

As far as the kids went, they eventually became less hostile and often stopped by multiple times a day just to hang and chat. Things started to calm down but it was still a tough place to run and I wanted to get back to my own store, the sooner the better. I did several stints at that store throughout the next year, so I was never a stranger when I did return and the locals would often ask me where I’d been, sometimes with a twinkle in their eyes.

One Saturday morning I opened the store, and by this time things were running smoother and I was looking forward to my next day off. Around 10 AM a black guy I had never seen before came in and asked me for a pack of Kools (cigarettes). Kools were the highest selling brand in that particular store, and I turned, got his pack from the cigarette rack that was behind me. When I turned to hand them over I was facing the business end of a .38 Caliber revolver. Here we go again, I silently thought. I’m not sure how many times I’d been robbed before that day, there were the two times in Quincy, for sure. 

Much to my surprise, the robber was very calm and collected. He told me everything would be OK as long as I did what he told me to do. He told me he wanted all the money in the cash register and in the safe. I emptied the register and put the money in a paper bag as he directed. At that exact moment the group of kids that threw rocks at me on my first day and I became friendly with burst through the door. They looked at the scene that was unfolding and one of the kids ran out the door screaming to announce “THE DUDE IS RIPPING OFF THE MAN! THE DUDE IS RIPPING OFF THE MAN!’ More kids then flocked to the store. And as I opened the safe and emptied the TOP compartment only, the kids all lined up and started giving high fives to the gunman who, with one hand kept his gun pointed at me, and returning the high fives with his other. 

After the celebratory greetings slowed down and petered out the gunman calmly told me to walk to the back room, not turn around and count to ten before I came out. 

I started to walk as he directed when suddenly one of the 12 years old burst out with this beauty “Make sure you get he money from the bottom of the safe! Thats where they keep it!” The gunman then yelled at me, no longer calm “FREEZE MOTHERFUCKER!” I froze, put my hands up, cringed and waited for the bullet which was surely coming to my back. I truly believed for that moment I was a dead man. The gunman paused for what seemed like an eternity, then exclaimed “FUCK IT” and ran out of the store. I was spent. My hands started to shake and I was some kind of pissed at those kids. They took off and I called the police. Eventually two Boston cops showed up. They sauntered in and gave me the impression I had intruded on their coffee break and passively listened to my tale. 

After What I had dealt with previously, in Quincy with the Quincy cops, as well as Boston cops at other stores, I was a bit taken back by their attitude and behavior. Clearly they had no interest in what had just happened to me, took my information and the only words of consolation they had for me was to chastise me for working there and inferring that I brought this upon myself. “What did you expect, working here” they asked me. They took my information and left. That was the only thing I ever heard about that robbery. To be fair, I figure those cops were probably burned out working in a tough neighborhood, but still their attitude and lack of empathy for what I’d just been through irritated me. I always remembered it later, during the 28 years I spent as a cop.  

I went back to work there that day and a few more times after that. When I saw the kids later I was kind of pissed at them and told them they could have got me killed. That didn’t seem to bother them, but they did ask me what I expected them to do? And anyway, It wasn’t my money. Talk about a blasé attitude. 

Well, I continued to work for Cumberland Farms but eventually left them due to a pay dispute. But it wasn’t before I was robbed several more times and got into confrontations with various characters that, when I think about it today, I feel both lucky to have survived each of those robberies. At the same time I shake my head about some of the crazy confrontations and things I did to keep those stores running and protecting them. I would never say I was fearless back then, but I was certainly more than happy to take on and challenge all the local thugs in those neighborhoods.

I was never a tough guy by any measure, but after all, I was OFD (Originally From Dorchester) and spent my teen years in Quincy Point. Maybe, for those reasons and a few more, it was just in my DNA… 

By Detective (Retired) Martin Swirko

Manchester, New Hampshire Police Dept.

I certainly don’t have to tell anyone that’s spent anytime on the job that the job itself is full of both hight points and low points during your career. Looking back, I’d venture to guess that, depending on a cop’s assignments during his or her career, the lows probably outnumber the highs. At least that’s how I feel when I look back and take stock on my own 28 year career. 

Don’t get me wrong, I do look back at my career very fondly, and I’d certainly do it all over again if I was transported back in time and got the chance to repeat my decision. I don’t think I’d do that job today, but that another discussion for another time. 

As my career progressed, I came to a few conclusions about police work, generally speaking. As far as working in Uniform Patrol on the street I found that I spent much of my time being a street historian (if I can borrow that term from one of my former partners) writing police reports that ranged from people shoveling snow into their neighbors back yard, local disputes all the way up to homicides and everything you could imagine in between. You get to see and report on incidents that are monotonous, repetitive ho-hum events, then suddenly, and often without warning you find yourself in a ghastly harrowing situation. Many of the reports I had been required to write didn’t even involve criminal acts. Spending my career in Manchester NH, being as busy as it was, afforded me the opportunity to make multiple arrests during any given shift. Despite this, over the years, like all Manchester cops, I made many meaningful arrests while working in patrol.

However, as time went on, I came to the conclusion that as far as really doing meaningful police work, that is, being able to really help a member of the public in a significant way, well, I was lucky if I got the opportunity do something I felt was consequential happened only once in a while. Furthermore, I came to the conclusion that a significant percentage of what we did on a daily basis amounted to pure bullshit. I guess we can argue what that percentage was. Naturally, being visible out in the community had a value. And we tried our best to keep the local criminal population from killing each other, as well as robbing, stealing from or assaulting innocent persons and taxpayers as well. I felt early on that I was acting more like a circus lion tamer on the street keeping the animals at bay than a peace keeper. Now I know that sounds very cynical, and maybe it is to a point, but it’s how I began to feel after a few years on the job. That was especially true as I spent so much of both my work days and days off in the courts, often leaving court shaking my head.  

I don’t think there was ever a cop who did the job for any period of time that didn’t, at least at some point, question the value of what he or she did day in and day out. Despite this, I don’t think there is a cop, boss or citizen out there who knew me that can claim I ever developed a bad attitude on the job. At times, It was hard to keep from becoming hardened to the things I saw on a regular basis, but I always had and still do possess the attitude that no matter how I felt personally, I would never, ever tarnish the badge I wore or profession I still loved and respected. I always tried my best to appear approachable and professional to the citizens I had sworn to protect.

Getting back to the highs and lows, I am reminded of a day early in my career that serves as a perfect example as to how things can go on any given day on this job. 

One Saturday Day shift, I was assigned to a walking route which at that time was called Route 9. For anyone who is familiar with Manchester, Route 9 back then ran roughly form Bridge St to Hanover St, and Beech St to probably Lincoln St. Central High School was located approximately in the center of the route, but that’s not why the route existed. Route 9 was never listed in our two-volume SOP for MPD. Rather, it was created, informally, to offset the spread of drugs, prostitution and other accompanying street crimes as the drug problem started to spread outward from what was then called the Center City or the “Zone”. 

Specifically, in the early 90s the drug trade and active drug houses started to pop up around the intersection of Lowell and Maple Streets and the immediate area. After the five biggest banks in New Hampshire collapsed, there were many, many tenements that had been repossessed by those banks, become abandoned, and suddenly no one owned them anymore. Those building were becoming “Shooting Galleries” and places where vagrants moved into. Plumbing and anything of value had been stripped from them, and addicts went to “use” and prostitutes sometimes turned their tricks inside of them. Since there was no plumbing in these places, the occupants urinated and defecated on the floors, left rotting food around and occasionally died in them. For all these reasons, what was called Route 9 during that time was created to try to combat these issues whenever there was an extra body on any given shift. 

That morning, after Roll Call, I gathered my equipment, including the bank bag I was issued that I was able to carry all my paperwork and slid nicely into my back uniform pants pocket. In it I carried Field Cards, a book of parking tickets, several motor vehicle summonses and anything else I might need while I was on my own roaming my beat.

The weather was pleasant, warm enough so that I could wear short sleeves without a jacket. Saturday mornings were usually quiet. I always liked that on Saturday and especially Sunday mornings everyone was either hung over, in jail or in the hospital from the night before. This Saturday was no different as I had my cup of coffee at the local Cumberland Farms on the way to my assignment. I strolled through the neighborhood, spinning my nightstick (PR-24 that certain LAPD Officers made famous with Rodney King) short handle in my hand, trying to imitate old time cops walking the beat I saw when I was a kid in Dorchester. I meandered about, sometimes keeping time by striking a stone wall or fence with my baton, listening to the radio while hoping that maybe there would be a call nearby that would give me something to do. Needless to say, except for perhaps writing a parking ticket or two, and stopping to chat for a few minutes with whomever, my morning passed serenely. 

Around noon time I stopped into a local pizza place, just to show my face, and I found there was birthday party going with a bunch of kids and some adults. I’m guessing the kids and the birthday boy were probably around 7 or 8 years old. Immediately. I was surrounded and serenaded with the cry I heard from kids regularly while patrolling the alleys and streets of the inner city-“Hey Cop- Have any Stickers?” It was more of a defiant demand than a question.  Well, I did carry a supply of MPD police stickers in that bank bag, so I gave them out to all the kids. Suffice it to say, the kids, most of them were delighted. So were some of the parents, some of the others, not so much.  

Back then, we had kind of a weird relationship with the kids who lived in poor and high crime neighborhoods. We had Officer Friendly assigned to the various elementary schools throughout Manchester, but for some kids it was a hard sell when Officer Friendly reached out and tried to convince the kids that the police were their friend when the night before Dad beat up Mom, Mom called the police, police showed up, Dad fought with the police, Dad got the worst of it and after a violent fight with several cops got dragged away in handcuffs, not to be seen for several days. For many inner city kids that was a reality that happened all too often. I’ve responded to calls where I found young kids hiding under the bed or in a closet, not because they were afraid of whatever brought the police to their house to begin with, but they were hiding from the police because thy were afraid of the police! I never got used to that dynamic, but I did come to accept it as reality.

On this Saturday afternoon, after dispersing my supply of stickers, joking and playing around with the kids they all seemed to warm up to me. That was nice. Eventually I managed to break the ice with the parents as well, chatted and joked with them about whatever, and I was invited to join them for lunch, have a cold drink and share in a piece of cake. I took a small piece of cake as the parents insisted, and when I left a short time later, everyone thanked me and shook my hand. I walked down Maple St. feeling pretty good about myself and truth was, I enjoyed being a part of the kid’s party. It was a beautiful day, and I was in a good mood. It wasn’t to last. 

Another cop was assigned to the Route Car which included Route 9 that day, good guy who eventually left MPD and went on to a career with the New Hampshire State Police. I got along good with John B or Jonny B as I called him, and he stopped to ask if I needed anything, or just wanted to sit for a few minutes. I just stood outside his cruiser leaning on the door and we talked a bit about whatever. After a few minutes John got a call for a stabbing or possibly an attempted suicide on the 1st Floor of a large apartment / tenement building on the corner of Amherst and Maple St. We were a couple of blocks away, and we were told that both EMS and the Fire Department were en-route. Back in the Police Academy, when we were learning First Responder medical skills, the police instructors would talk about the ABCs of first aid, and often joked that the ABCs of First Aid stood for Ambulance Before Cruiser. And in Manchester during my career that was usually true. With the various fire houses located throughout the city, by the time we got to a medical call, the paramedics and firefighters were usually there first. Benefit of working in a city, I guess. Besides, if someone was near death and they had to depend on me to save their life, they were in a bad way, or so I always thought. 

It didn’t work out like that on this day. John took the call and also informed dispatch that he was taking Route 9 (me) with him. For that reason, a back up officer wasn’t assigned to the call. John hit the blue lights and siren and away we went. John slowly picked his way up the wrong direction of a narrow one way-side street while the siren wailed. As we did this, we saw an ambulance, also with lights and siren going in the opposite, incorrect direction. John slowed and let the ambulance fly by us. I don’t know if the ambulance crew wondered where we were headed, but the ambulance was headed away from the house! I’d been around long enough to know that was a bad omen. And it turned out to be just that. 

We pulled up, and sure enough we were the only responders there. No ambulance, no fire department and no other cops. On top of that we were greeted with one of the most bizarre scenes I’d ever come across, at least up to that point in my young career. The front porch, and the street in front of the house had all kinds of silverware strewn about. Knives, forks, spoons, can openers you name it. They were all over the place! But we didn’t have time to try to figure out what was happening.

As soon as we got out of the cruiser, a hysterical woman screaming at the top of her lungs ran towards us. She was covered with blood, so much so that I first thought she was the victim. As she lunged at me, arms wide open, I deftly side stepped her and she grabbed on to John. I looked briefly at John and saw that he and his uniform were now covered with blood. We tried to make sense of her delirious ravings, and what I was able to figure out was that her husband was inside the apartment and was stabbed and needed help. I asked the woman what her husband’s name was, I think it may of been Bill, but I don’t remember. I told John to call for back up and ask for a Code 7, which closed that radio channel to all traffic and communication except for the units at this call, which at that time was just John and I.

I drew my pistol because I really didn’t know what was going on, and cautiously headed inside. There was no time to wait for back up. I did know someone was hurt badly, but beyond that, who knew? I entered the dark hallway leaving the bright sunshine outside. John was outside behind me trying to free himself from the unhinged woman who was completely out of control. What I saw once my eyes adjusted to the darkend shadows resembled a bad horror movie. There seemed to be blood spattered and spread everywhere, on the wall, and the floor. I also saw a bloody steak or kitchen knife or two on the floor. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a man appeared. He was more like an apparition, covered from head to toe with blood, and his appearance only added to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie vibe. I pointed my pistol at him, and ordered him to show me his hands. I still didn’t know who or what I was dealing with. He sort of complied, but not really. He just stood and stared at me. Seeing that he didn’t appear to be armed I lowered my pistol and asked him several times who stabbed him. I asked him his name, and I repeated more than once “Who did this to you? Who stabbed you? Is he still inside?” 

The guy just looked at me with a queer and unsettling expression on his face. He never did respond to my queries then suddenly flashed me one of the strangest grins I had ever seen, blood encrusted teeth and all. He then turned and stumbled back into the apartment. I holstered my pistol (looking back on it, as I write, that may have not been the smartest thing to do at the time) and followed him inside. I followed him through the apartment, trying to talk to him as I did. I believe he was actually trying to flee out the back door. He made it to the kitchen then collapsed on the floor right at the rear door which was now stuck in the open position.

I rolled him onto his back and looked at him and knew right off he was dead. I’d seen enough recently deceased people by then to recognized lifeless eyes that are left behind after both the last breath and soul leave the body. As real as some movies try to get, they can never really create or mimic actual appearance of those eyes in a lifeless person. Suddenly, I realized that John was standing behind me. Also, we were surrounded with several members of the decedent’s family as well as neighbors who had gathered to see the spectacle that was unfolding. I noted then that the newly deceased also had a couple of stab wounds to his throat and neck, and in addition to that, his throat was cut, almost completely from side to side. 

As I said, I knew he was dead. There was no need for me to look for a pulse. I also had no intention of handling this guy any more than need be as he was covered with blood, if I could help it. But, his family was there and they were begging, pleading, demanding that I do something. I knew any attempt on my part to revive this poor guy would be futile. Another concern I had was contracting AIDs from all the blood and other body fluids (remember this was the early 90s when AIDs was still a death sentence and cops always worried about this possibility) however I couldn’t just kneel there and do nothing.  For the families sake, and maybe my own, I had to appear to try to do something. I always remembered that from my days at the police academy. Let the family see you trying to help. I silently cursed EMS and the Fire Department for still not having arrived, and I went to work. 

“John” I said in the most authoritative, loud and measured voice that I could muster, “go…out…to…the…cruiser…and…get…the…first…aid…kit!”, placing emphasis on each word as I said them. I looked down at the victim who was wearing what appeared to be a white T-shirt that was now soaked red with blood. As I looked at the several crescent and oval shaped stab marks on his chest (yup, just like all the photos of various stab wounds I had been shown at the police academy and all that I’d seen since) I immediately thought his chest looked like red whiffle ball, the kind we played with when we are younger. The oval holes through the shirt and into his chest actually reminded me of that! I certainly didn’t share that thought with anyone at the time. My plan was to put pressure bandages on the wounds once John arrived with the first aid kit, although the spurting and streams of blood coming from the various wounds had already stopped. 

I asked a guy standing next to me who he was. The guy answered he was Bill’s brother. “Good” I said. “You can help”. I had him get a pair of scissors, that were miraculously still in the kitchen. We cut the Tee Shirt off and I examined the multiple knife wounds in his chest. Like I said, he was no longer bleeding, but I figured the civilians and family members didn’t know that. By that time, John had returned with the First Aid kit John helped me while I applied  several bandages, covering the many wounds and placing direct pressure on each. The brother helped me since there were more wounds than I had hands. Thankfully, the Firefighters and Paramedics finally swarmed into the apartment. I don’t know where they’d been, but I was relieved as hell that they had arrived. I backed away as they took over. I didn’t say anything to them, keeping my non-scientific but utterly reliable determination that our victim was DOA to myself. 

Meanwhile, the Firefighters and paramedics went to work. They immediately started breathing for him by inserting an airway, placing a mask and oxygen ball over his face and manually squeezing the ball in a regular, timed cadence to get air into his lungs. Another bad sign I thought to myself. Up until that point, I had never gone to a scene or medical call where once the FD started that rescue breathing, that person would survive. Meanwhile, the poor wife, brother and other family members and neighbors were all very upset at the scene that was playing out in front of them. The victim showed no signs of regaining consciousness or even breathing on his own. Once he was “stabilized” by the Paramedics, he was taken out to the ambulance and taken to the hospital. Now I was pretty sure the victim had died in my presence, but I hadn’t got the official word on that, so I continued on as thought he was still alive. As the firefighters wheeled the victim past me, one of them looked at me rather severely and shook his head just a bit subtly letting me know there was probably no hope. Despite that, they all continued to try to provide life saving treatment. Now it was time to conduct my on scene investigation. We had to calm everyone, interview each person and protect what may have been a crime scene. No easy task that day. 

Normally, at a scene like this detectives would have arrived to review the scene and decide whether or not they should take over the investigation, just in case a serious crime had occurred. We only get one shot at a crime scene, and once you make the decision to release it, that shot is gone forever.  For some reason that I don’t recall, that did not happen on this afternoon. I don’t know whether that was due to being shorthanded on that afternoon or if those detectives on duty were involved in other stuff. But a Patrol Supervisor eventually arrived to oversee what was happening. The occupants were removed form the immediate area and a crime scene was taped off. I, along with John and a few other officers that came to the scene learned the following information from various family members and friends: 

The victim had gone to the local mental health center the previous day to try to get help because he was feeling suicidal. At some point that was confirmed. After an out-patient evaluation, the people at the health center deemed his suicidal threats to be not genuine, then sent him home with a recommendation that he seek help from a local counselor or therapist. That was pretty common during my police career. The victim, after returning home however, still talked about killing himself, so the next day, meaning that Saturday morning, his wife brother and other relatives came over to try to talk him into going to the emergency room to seek help. They took his threats seriously, and were none too happy that he had not been given the help they thought he should have received. At some point, during this family “intervention’ the victim grabbed a knife out of the silverware drawer in the kitchen, announced his intention to kill himself then started to plunge the knife into his chest repeatedly.  His brother and family members jumped on him and wrestled the knife away from him. Unfortunately, the victim seemed pretty intent on completing the job on himself right there in front of everyone.

After getting the knife away from the victim, the victim got a second knife, continued to poke holes in himself. The wrestling match continued and after a third time someone got smart and pulled the entire silverware drawer out of the cabinet and flung it and it’s entire contents out the front door onto the street. This explained the silverware we first saw when we arrived all over the ground. 

During the struggle that continued, as the wife and brother tried to disarm him, that also explained the fact they, especially the wife were seemingly covered with blood. We were pretty much able to determine all the blood we saw came form the victim during his various suicide attempts. No one else was injured or bleeding. Each time the victim got his hands on another knife he would continue to thrust it into his own chest, and at one point, apparently not satisfied with the damage he was doing to himself, started stabbing himself in the throat and at one point he sliced his own throat horizontally, causing a wide gaping wound on his throat. Needless to say, these injuries caused a massive amount of bleeding and loss of blood until he finally collapsed to the floor in front of me. To this day, I still figure he was dead by the time he hit the floor. 

At one point, I was called on the radio and instructed to talk to a detective on a different channel. The detective asked for a quick briefing on the incident, and basically, I told him that based on my interview, I believed the victim had committed suicide and there had been no crime. The detective who was kind of incredulous at my explanation got a little sarcastic with me, and said something to the effect of “So your trying to tell me this guy stabbed himself in his chest a dozen times, and slit his own throat and he did it to himself?” Oh great I thought, now I got these guys are busting my balls over the air. 

I responded in the affirmative and his response to that was “yeah. Sure. Ok.” Their response were just dripping with sarcasm. The sergeant at the scene was a bit more circumspect. In the end, I believe a team of detectives did respond and took over. Later I learned that the victim was dead on arrival (DOA) at the hospital. None of the efforts we made helped. I also learned that all of the self inflicted woulds were superficial, with the exception of when he cut his throat, that knife slash severed his jugular and that sealed his fate. Eventually, the medical examiner ruled the case a suicide and I felt somewhat vindicated that the conclusion I had come to was confirmed. Nevertheless, I was amazed at what this guy had done to himself, all in front of those who were closest to him. 

Eventually, thankfully, I cleared the scene, got a ride back to the station where I began to write the initial police report and complete the mountain of paperwork that came along with it. I didn’t complete my reports for the day until well after my shift ended, but, even going overtime, my day wasn’t yet done. 

You see, I had previously picked up and extra detail, overtime for a show that evening. Like it or not, I was committed to pulling the shift. The artist appearing in Manchester that night was the comedian then known as Gallagher. If any of you remember Gallagher, his act usually included a bit about different words and meanings in the English language, followed by a finale which consisted of slamming various fruits and vegetables on stage with a sledge hammer he called the Sledge OMatic. The people in the front rows wore rain gear and were provided with plastic and other coverings to shelter themselves from the deluge of fruit and vegetables that would pelt them from the stage.

I’d seen Gallagher and his act on TV several times. In fact he was one of my wife’s favorite comedians, and because of that I caught his show whenever he was on TV, watching with my wife. Aside of that, I always kelp a clean uniform in my locker for just such days, and after I finished my reports it was almost time to report for my Job at the show. I didn’t have time for a shower or dinner (not that I had much of an appetite anyway) but I did scrub my hands, arms and face thoroughly as I could, and then rushed over to the Center of NH where the show was held. 

The audience was very well behaved and I had no problems that night. I stood a distance away from the sledge hammer part of the show, and in between walking around and stopping to watch, for the most part I enjoyed the show and the assignment. I even laughed a few times. It turned out to be a good way to wind down form the earlier part of the day.

After the show, I got to meet Gallagher and chat with him for a few minutes. He was very pleasant, thanked me for working the show and told me he appreciated all that we (Cops) do on a daily basis. I told him he was my wife’s favorite and joked that because of that, it meant that I watched him regularly with my wife. Basically, I said that because my wife was a big Gallagher fan, that pretty much made me a Gallagher fan. He was gracious chuckled, and he gave me a Gallagher tee-shirt which he autographed personally for my wife. After that, I left and headed home. It was probably sometime between 10 and 11 PM at this point. It had been a long hard day that started at 6AM when I got up for work that morning. My wife was very happy that I got her the autographed shirt. As for me, I was pretty exhausted ,both mentally and physically. To add to that, I had to be up a 6 the next morning for day shift again. 

Before I hit the sack for some badly needed rack time, I took off all my gear and stripped down and took a shower. After the hot water started hitting my head and face, I just stood there for a bit and let it wash all over me. While I stood there enjoying the cleansing, I thought about the remarkable day I just had. It started at roll call, from there to a children’s birthday party with smiles, presents and games. Almost directly from that party I found myself in one of the bloodiest, chaotic situations that I’d experienced up until that point in my short career. I hoped I had done everything right. Especially for the family. 

As I thought about it, I knew that there was nothing I could have done to save that man’s life or even extend it for a few seconds. I had already accepted that conclusion and I was ok with it. The scene itself, I never forgot. Finally, I contemplated on my meeting Gallagher and the show which had put a well needed smile on my face. And to boot, I was paid OT to work the show!

I thought about what an amazing day it had been. I’d experienced or observed most every human emotion there was that day. I leaned forward and as the shower continued to rain down upon me, I could see and feel it wash all the sweat, grime, dirt and blood (both real and imagined) off of me and watched transfixed as it all swirled around and oozed down the drain. Watching the water disappear made me finally start to feel somewhat cleansed and even a bit respectable. It felt good, really good. That serine feeling soon dissipated as I dried myself off and literally fall into my bed. Tomorrow would be another day. 

By Marty Swirko

I have previously posted a story about this incident on this site a while back, but more recently I was thinking about my 13 year career in the convenience store industry which dated back to the spring of 1973. That year I first got hired as a part time relief manager at the Cumberland Farms store which back then was located in Quincy point, Massachusetts. By 1991, with a few breaks in between to sell soda, drive a taxi in Boston and go to Basic Training and Infantry School after I joined the US Army Reserve. I had worked my way up to Director of Security of a now defunct chain of Grocery stores known as Christy’s Markets. At the time, Christy’s had 150 store in four states. In 1991, I left that job to become a cop.

Recently, I was thinking back on those days, and I decoded I might write and post a few more stories about my time at Cumberland’s and even one two about my time at Christy’s. For some reason, I re-read this story, which I had posted on this site some time ago, and I decided to clean it up a bit, re-write it and post it again.

Previously I have written and posted two stories on this site of the first two armed robberies that I had become victim to at Cumberland’s, and for those of you who haven’t read them, I’ll tell you here that in both those cases, I was robbed by the same guy, and in both cases customers who were unfortunate enough to be in the store when those stick-ups occurred, they were taken hostage (two children in the first robbery and a 16 year old young lady during the second) at gunpoint while I complied with the robbers demands. As far as I know, no one was ever identified or charged for those robberies. So, what follows below is one of my older stories, cleaned up and re-posted for anyone who is interested, or anyone who may not have seen this original story back since I posted it. At some point, I’ll add some more accounts of my exploits while working in the local convenience stores to my tales about police work and my time in the military. Here it is…

As some of you who know me may know, I worked for a chain of convenience / dairy stores called Cumberland Farms for three years after I got out of high school. That would have been from 1973-1976. Cumberland’s, which still exists today up here in the Northeast had something like 1800 stores in New England / NY / NJ area and more in Florida at the time. Cumberland Farms itself, has a rather interesting history, but that was all before the company who currently owns the chain ran the chain.

I worked mostly in their older inner city Boston stores during my three years with them, occasionally working at saner and newer stores just outside of Boston. Sometime in 1974, I became the manager of store 3418, one of their stores located in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood, a bit poor and definitely blue collar / working class area on the Southwest part of the city. The store was older, therefore had problems associated with its age and set up, but I think I enjoyed this store and that neighborhood more than any other I had worked at. And I worked at a lot of them. 

One problem I had to confront was that the convenience stores in the area, which became known as local Stop and Robs, were getting held up all the time, and my store was no exception. There were several other Cumberlands in the nearby area, as well as competitors such as White Hen Pantry and Li’L Peach stores. We were all regularly being clobbered with armed robberies. It was so bad that the manager of a nearby Cumberland Farms, also in Roslindale was shot and killed during a hold up on Christmas Eve Day, and I believe it was that same year. Also during that time period a customer in the Cumberland Farms in the nearby town of Dedham was shot dead during a hold up. He unknowingly walked into the store during a hold up with the intention to buy some model glue to use with his son on a model at home. Apparently the Dad surprised the robber when he walked in and the robber turned and shot the poor guy dead. Wrong place at the wrong time. As for me, by the time I was working in Roslindale, I was unfortunate veteran (or maybe survivor is a better word) of a few armed robberies by that time, including the two in Quincy Point. 

The Boston Police Department was under a lot of pressure to take action to curb these robberies. They came up with a plan. The old Tactical Patrol Force (TPF) was a special city-wide unit within the BPD. As their name infers, they were the department’s ass-kickers (at least in my opinion) and sent in to tackle problems and stop the bleeding (figuratively and literally) in high crime neighborhoods as well as the never ending civil unrest in the area due to things like the Vietnam War, riots following the murder of Martin Luther King and in the 70s forced bussing. Not long after this event, however, they were disbanded due their involvement in the raid of a certain bar in South Boston.

The TPF’s plan to combat the rash of stick ups that were occurring regularly and all over Roslindale and Hyde Park at the time was an alarm system. They selected convenience and Mom and Pop type stores in a fairly close, geographical area that had been targets of robberies. They placed the alarms in the stores at no charge, with the consent of the owners. I happily agreed to co-operate and I had permission from Cumberland Farms. The alarm had a clip which was placed into the $20.00 bill slot in the cash register, and a single dollar bill was placed into it. We would then place a $20.00 bill on top of it, hiding the clip from view. Once the hold up man ordered the clerk to give him the money, the clerk would empty each slot in the tray and when he pulled the bill out of the clip, the two metal clamps would make contact, which then sent a silent hold up alarm.

The alarm was transmitted out of the store electronically through a flat antenna, which was inconspicuously placed near the register on the wall. It was unremarkable and unnoticeable to even the most experienced stick up man. No buttons to press or step on. When the robber ordered you to give him the twenties, once you complied it set off the silent alarm. Remember, this was back in 1974, and police did things differently that we did during my time later as a cop.

What was unique about this alarm was that was tied into a mobile alarm console which was placed in the back seat of an unmarked TPF cruiser.  That cruiser was assigned to patrol the immediate area and respond directly to alarms when the received them. The alarm didn’t go to an alarm company, or to a police district. It went directly to well armed plainclothes officers that were usually nearby. And, we found out rather quickly, the alarms worked. So, in addition to the alarm in the unmarked cruiser, the cars themselves became virtual war wagons, with well armed policemen to confront and deal with these stick up artists on the scene, who were almost always armed and often violent. 

My store, on the corner of Hyde Park Ave and Mt. Hope St. was only open from 9AM-7PM. It was usually advisable to close up and get “out of Dodge” before dark in some of those Boston neighborhoods. My store also was getting stuck up regularly despite closing at 7PM, and was also getting robbed during the day as well as just prior to closing. I was personally present and held up four times in less than a year at that store. In addition to armed robberies, the store was regularly burglarized overnight despite the fact that we had iron gates in front of the windows and doors. The burglars would just bypass those entry points and enter through the roof and ceiling, causing significant damage well beyond the value of anything stolen by the perpetrators.  

After the alarm system was installed, and after all the employees were trained and familiarized with the BPD system, the robberies continued. During the first few robberies that occurred at my store, the alarm was activated successfully, but I found myself breathlessly waiting for the police to arrive only to have the robber make his getaway minutes before the first police unit made it to the scene. Sometimes alarms came in when the TPF car was just too far away. I had more than one conversation the frustrated plain clothes TPF cops who happened to be at the other end of their patrol area when my alarms came in. 

One night I was held up by a guy with a 45, and he introduced himself to me by announcing “Motherfucker, tonight you’re gonna to die. But first, put all the money into a bag”. I complied, and obviously the robber fled without killing me. (Whew, that was close I thought, as I wiped the sweat from my forehead) That .45 looked huge as I stared down the barrel that was pointed at my face from around six inches away. I had activated the alarm, but the robber made his getaway before the TPF guys arrived. They were pissed and I didn’t blame them. They told me that not five minute before they got my alarm that had slowly driven past my store, then decided to head down Hyde Park Ave towards Cleary Sq, and they were just too far away when the got the alarm. Geographically, Roslindale and Hyde Park were pretty large, so it wasn’t surprising that car may have been too far away when an alarm came in. 

Of course, in addition to responding themselves, they would radio in the alarm and  presumably other cars within the District (my store was located in the old BPD District 5 in Cleary Sq. at the time), but for whatever reason, for those alarms the TPF guys usually arrived first, but after the suspect made their getaway. 

However, as time went on, there were a few robberies at my store when the police they got alarms while they were nearby and they started to make a few on scene apprehensions. During the times I was robbed there, on two of those occasions the police made arrests on the spot. Those are all separate stories in themselves that I may still write about. But getting to my friend…

I grew up with a kid from my neighborhood named Mark. We were very close friends and when we were in 10th grade, he and his family moved to a quiet town south of Boston. However, we stayed good friends and he worked a full time job just north of Boston. I don’t remember which of us came up with this bright idea first, but, I had a need to hire a couple of part time people, including one I could trust to work a few evenings a week, as well as working on weekends. He would run the store, usually in my absence and often close and lock up. I got the brilliant idea that Mark might want a part time job. My store was sorta / kinda located between his job and his home, and anyway, driving from his job to his house during rush hour everyday was not fun, so the nights he worked at my store, he only had to drive half the distance, close the store at 7PM, and when he was done and rush hour was over, and he drove the rest of the way to his home without much traffic. What a match I thought! A dependable friend I could trust, and I could do something good for him with the job. A classic win-win situation, if there ever was one. As it turned out, maybe not so much for my childhood friend. 

Anyway, Mark agrees to go to work for me. He worked a few weeks, maybe even a month or two, I don’t remember how long. It was working out well, for me anyway, while it lasted.  

When Mark came to work for me I trained him and we already had the TPF alarm in place, and the possibility of becoming an armed robbery victim never really bothered Mark too much. That stuff always happens to other people, right? Looking back, I realize I should have told him it was likely that he would get robbed at the store, especially working nights in that neighborhood. I never lied to him, and I told him about some of my own exploits. Anyway, the possibility didn’t seem to bother him. 

Well, one evening, Mark was working, and sure enough some guy comes in, points a pistol in Mark’s face and tells him to give him the money. All the money. Mark complied and also gave him the $20.00 bill, which tripped the silent alarm. The guy took the money, and was gone in a matter of seconds. Typical convenience store robbery, if there is one. In and out, in seconds, unlike my first two robberies that had occurred in Quincy Point. That normally would have been the end of it, but not this night. 

Unknown to both the unfortunate robber and Mark, the TPF cruiser happened to be about a block away from the store, actually on Mt. Hope St. when they got the alarm. The robber fled the store, and turned left and then left again onto Mt. Hope Street. Mt. Hope Street was a narrow one way, going towards American Legion Highway and away from the store.The cops, I assume, decided it was easier to get out on foot and run so they jumped out of their car on foot, ran up Mt. Hope St. towards the store. The cops and the bad guy ran into each other close to the corner, outside the store and a pretty hefty shoot-out (according to Mark and the cops) occurred. Blam, Blam, Bang, Bang! Shotguns and pistols were unloaded. They were within feet of each other. Despite the proximity of the participants, surprisingly no one was hit! 

Meanwhile, Mark is inside the store while all this shooting is going on outside the door. Bullets flying and pinging around, around, cops and robber yelling, screaming, cursing, all while Mark dove face down onto the floor making himself as small as he possibly could. I’m not sure, but I think while Mark was ducking he was doing a bit of cussing himself, and he might have been cursing me as well.  

Suddenly, the shooting ended. Almost as quick as it started it was over. Final score, no hits, no casualties, one suspect under arrest who was pretty shaken up and amazed he was still alive. Too good for him, I thought. I got to talk to those cops a few times not long after, so between what they told me and what I learned from Mark, I feel I have a pretty accurate story about what happened that night. 

The arrest and experimental program was widely publicized in the days that followed. Later that week, the Mayor of Boston Kevin White and the then Police Commissioner Robert di Grazia held a press conference in my store and I met and chatted with both of them.  The Boston TV stations were all present, and I was interviewed along with the Mayor and Police Commissioner. I think the cops who made the arrest were also there. The interviews was on all the Boston stations that night. The only one not there was my friend, Mark. 

As far as Mark goes, considering the circumstances, he took it all in good stride and good humor, although you can be sure he wasn’t laughing at the time it happened. He told me the story that night, as he did several times to the police and company officials. But, in the end, Mark turned over the store keys to me and told me thanks for the job, but, no thanks. He valued his life a lot more that the $2.25 an hour or whatever it was in 1974 that we were paying  him. As he handed the store keys to me I saw that he had a strange smirk on his face. I imagine he was thinking, or maybe he even said it- “Some friend you turned out to be! Please don’t do me any more favors.” He left the store, but I stayed and I was in for many more adventures until I left Cumberland Farms for good in 1976.  

By Detective (Retired) Martin Swirko

Manchester, NH Police Department

It’s been a while since I’ve written and posted anything here, but I do have a few alibis. My main one is that I recently had surgery and its difficult to sit at a desk with a bent knee and type. Also, I’ve been working on a larger writing project seemingly for ever, and because I knew I might not be writing for a while after he surgery, I spent the couple of months before my surgery exclusively working on the larger project. In the meantime, I’ve come up with s few ideas to write some additional short stories about, so I figured I take some time now while those ideas are fresh in my mind. And, starting with the next paragraph and where it leads me just shows how my mind works.

We used to have a really nice kitty roaming our neighborhood, and she’s probably been around for at least ten years now. She belonged to a nearby neighbor, and it was an outside cat, and like I say, it was really friendly. Each day she would visit each house, hang out for a bit with whomever she came across and then went about making her regular rounds. Apparently she liked the attention she received at each stop, so she made herself available for us to stop and pet her or whatever. She even tried to get into my house a few times, but I wasn’t really sure how the resident cats would react, so, we never let her in. 

During the warm weather I would often sit out on my back deck and read the paper and she’d come up and sit at my feet and stay there until I paid some attention to her, and after I did she’d move on to the next house. Sometimes she’d jump up into my lap which was OK with me and keep me company for a while. When I was working, often I’d go out to my car and I’d find her sitting on the hood apparently waiting for me to come out. In any case, this kitty was pretty popular in the neighborhood and just became part of it. 

Recently my wife was outside when she saw this poor kitty get mauled by two dogs. What happened was that a woman we had never seen before was walking two large dogs that appeared to be Alaskan Huskies or some similar breed and although on leashes, they were able to pull away from the woman and severely attack the cat. The woman had a hard time controlling the two dogs, and although no one did anything wrong, the kitty was severely injured and had to be put down. I was a bit sad about that, especially since I really liked the cat. It was a nasty and most violent end for a gentle animal. All this got me to thinking about different animal laws in my community and how I dealt with that stuff when I was working as a cop. 

In Manchester, we have city ordinances regarding dogs that regulated dog ownership. Those ordinances included that any dog, when in public had to be kept on a leash, that anyone walking a dog in a public place had to carry something with them so that they could pick up any material in case the dog defecated, and maybe most importantly, in my opinion, the dog must be licensed by the city. What makes that requirement important is that in order to obtain a license for a dog, you must prove to the city that the dog sees a vet and that it had been vaccinated against rabies. 

Over my police career, especially when I worked in patrol, I came to learn that there are many, many irresponsible dog owners around. These folks obtain a dog wherever or however they can but then they don’t take care of them. Sometimes, when they decide to adopt or otherwise obtain a dog, they didn’t realize what a responsibility it was when they first got the idea. Then, they either find they don’t have to money to care for the dog appropriately, or, they just get tired of dog ownership. Whatever the reason I found that many dog owners don’t comply with the local laws, don’t feed or house them appropriately, and often let them get loose and run around the neighborhood they live often and cause havoc. After a while, I came to develop a certain distain for this type of dog owner, and as I eased myself into what was then my new police career, I found myself taking Dog at Large calls and Dog Bite calls more seriously. 

The Manchester Police Department employed two Animal Control Officers (ACOs) during my time there. Although those officers weren’t fully sworn police officers, they did wear a uniform, which was different than our patrol officers, drive police department vans and were armed with pistols. Their responsibility included enforcing all city ordinances regarding animals, responding to various animal calls, such a as bats flying around inside of someone’s home (pretty common) dogs at large or really any animal from a bear to a snake being found within the city limits.It was always good for us as patrol cops because as long as there was an ACO available, who were really the experts in these things, and also had the proper equipment with them to deal with animals, we would not have to respond and deal with those kinds of calls. Unfortunately, those two ACOs didn’t provide 24 hour coverage, so, when they were not available, patrol officers responded to those calls and had to deal with them. 

In New Hampshire there was, and still is, a law that requires doctors and hospitals to report any person they treated for a dog bite to the local police department, and that department was supposed to follow up on and investigate the circumstances of the dog bite. During my police career, I have seen some nasty, terrible injuries inflicted by dogs upon on people, and whenever I saw a child, or any person, but especially a child injured by a dog I alway felt really bad about it. As a result, whenever a person showed up at one of the hospital’s emergency rooms who had been attacked and injured by a dog, the police were called and an officer was sent to take a police report from the victim. Once a report was taken, normally it would be forwarded to an ACO and that ACO would do the follow up investigation and take whatever enforcement action he or she felt prudent. 

The only problem with his system was that when a person is bit by a dog, the doctor needs to know if that dog had been properly vaccinated against rabies. The only way to find that out was to contact the owner and get a record of the dog’s inoculations and /or determine if it was licensed. Without that knowledge, the victim of the dog bite would have to begin the long, and I am told, painful process of injections to treat rabies as a precaution. I hated to see someone have to go through that just because we didn’t know if the dog had been vaccinated or not. Furthermore, I started to believe, from an enforcement point of view, that there should be legal consequences for dog owners who did not follow the law and take care of their animals in a responsible manner.

Eventually as I settled into the role as a patrolman and learned what I should and shouldn’t spend my valuable time on (when I retired from the MPD we handled an average of over 120,000 calls for service each year, so time management was key) I decided that when I took a dog bite report, if the radio it wasn’t too busy, and the dog owner (if I knew who it was) wasn’t too far off from my assigned route or sector, I’d complete the follow up myself, rather than to just do the report and have it forwarded to an ACO to act on a few days down the road. The reason for this was so I could try to determine right away whether the victim needed to start rabies treatments or not. If the dog was properly licensed, then I could pass that on to both the doctor and patient. If that saved the already traumatized victim the pain and aggravation of needless rabies injections, or, if it helped determine the victim needed the injections I thought the extra effort was worth it my time.

The bosses were usually pretty good about it, and as long as there weren’t too many calls stacked in my sector or it wasn’t a crazy busy shift, they let me stay off the air long enough to do my follow ups as needed.

After a while, I discovered that often times the victim was attacked while minding his or her own business, either by walking down the street or quite often even in their own yards by a dog who got free from their owner allowed to run “at large”. So, as I started to follow up on these incidents I found more and more that these incidents were caused by owners not controlling their dogs, and I often found that they owners could not prove that the dog was properly licensed, and unable to show if the dog had been inoculated against rabies. As a result of this, I started to take these situations more and more seriously, and I regularly started summonsing these owners to court charging them with Dog at Large and Keeping an Unlicensed Dog violations. Both were punishable with only a fine, but I reasoned that a personal appearance before a judge might motivate that owner to properly care for their pet and prevent needless injuries which were often serious. So, whenever thought it was appropriate, I liberally handed out these summonses and had no problem doing so. At one point, I had a supervisor tell me that I probably issued more Dog at Large and Unlicensed Dog summonses than anyone in the department with the exception of the ACOs. 

A-lot of the cops teased me about writing so many unlicensed dog tickets and on a busy department like MPD, some cops thought it was too trivial to spend their time on. But, I took their ribbing in a cheerful manner (Cops aren’t happy unless they are busting other cop’s balls) and I continued to enforce the city’s dog laws because I thought i was important, especially to the quality of life within all the neighborhoods in the city. I made sure I always had an ample supply of summonses with me, and in later years when I worked as a detective, I always took summonses and parking tickets out with me in case I needed them. 

After completing my follow up, sometimes issuing summonses, I’d report the results to the victim and doctor, who were usually still in the emergency room, write my report and submit it. The ACOs didn’t mind that I did these follow ups since each one I completed was one less case for them. Not to mention, my supervisor was usually happy to see the activity on my daily reports as well. But I also started using the city dog laws as a different tool. 

In the early 90’s we started to have unprecedented gang and drug problems in certain sections of the city. In fact, we started losing one inner city neighborhood after another to the street sales of Crack-Cocaine, and that brought with it the usual problems that go along with these “victimless” (some say) drug sales. These included prostitution, thefts, robberies and other violent crimes that infested these neighborhoods. And of course there was also the accompanying gang as different gangs jockeyed for specific street corners to sell either Crack or Gank (phony crack, usually sheetrock or ivory soap cut up and packaged to appear as though it was crack) depending on who the customer was.   

Not having grown up in this area, I was regularly told by those who had that these problems were unheard of in the 60s, 70s and 80s. These inner city neighborhoods which were once great, blue collar urban communities to grow up in were deteriorating faster than we could respond. Sadly, times they do change. Crack-cocaine had hit the “set” and that contributed to the new gang problem we started to see in Manchester. Or maybe it was the opposite, Either way, we started to see a turf war develop over open air drug markets around Lake and Spruce Streets, between Union and Beech Streets, and it spread from there. By the mid 90’s, we were also losing various older neighborhoods on the West Side as well. Prostitutes roamed the areas from sundown to sunrise, along with the inevitable accompanying crime and at one point there were several shootings and a couple of murders that occurred over turf. Those of us working in patrol regularly came in contact with groups of people, usually young, hanging out and selling crack. This was compounded by the fact that people were coming into the city from all around NH to purchase drugs and prostitutes and naturally, this “demand” made the problem worse. 

One day, I was guarding prisoners in the “cage” at the old district court and I struck up a conversation with a guy from Florida who had been pinched slinging crack. I asked him what the hell he was doing in Manchester. He told me that in Florida, when the cops grabbed him, they not only took his crack but they robbed him as well. He said at least in Manchester the cops didn’t beat him or steal his money and drugs. So, he came up here to sling crack because the Manchester cops were honest? I wasn’t so sure his compliments towards cops in this city was such a good thing and I certainly hoped that he was full of shit about the cops in Florida. But the conversation that day, at least for me, put another spin on the increasing drug problems we were having in this city. 

Another problem we were having was with some of our bosses. Whenever we went out onto our walking routes on the midnight shift (and often in cruisers) we were constantly discouraged by some from making drug arrests. I was personally told, several times those early years, both in Roll Call and individually, that we should leave the drug arrests to the Drug Unit, that’s what they were there for, and our job was to shake door knobs all night and find open doors and business burglaries. It seemed to me that certain people in city government didn’t want to publicly admit we had a drug problem, never mind a growing gang problem.  

We had gangs coming nightly in taxis to Manchester from places like Lawrence, Massachusetts to sell crack because crack was going for $20 a quarter gram, commonly referred to as a “quarter” on the street, in Manchester while the going rate on the street in Lawrence was only $10 for that same quarter gram. You don’t have to be a Harvard Business School graduate to figure out which market was more lucrative. To add insult to injury, we soon learned that because NH had a reputation for sentencing street level drug dealers to lengthy prison sentences (yes, I miss the old days in some ways) something that apparently wasn’t happening in Massachusetts, the gangs in Lawrence (and I’m sure other cities in the Merrimack Valley) were sending juveniles to Manchester nightly in taxis to their corners to sell, and after the night was over, the juveniles would taxi back down to wherever they came from. The reason this was done, was because the dealers in Massachusetts knew that when we arrested a juvenile for possession of sales, normally a felony for adults, they would be held over night, go to juvenile curt the next morning and be released to go home. And, even if those juvenile offenders did come back from out of state to appear in subsequent court proceedings (there was no legal incentive for them to do so) they would be put on juvenile probation at most and escape any meaningful consequences. 

So, in addition to everything else, we in patrol tried to break up and move these groups along the best we could, but in the “Live Free or Die” state, that wasn’t easy. As a result, many of us   harassed these gangs to make life here in Manchester as miserable as possible, as much as the law allowed, and often that wasn’t much. 

One thing I soon noticed about these gangs was they often had dogs, often pit-bulls wearing big studded collars with them, for whatever reason. I figured that may have thought the dogs would make them look tough, or look intimidating, or maybe they even brought them for protection. So, whenever I saw this, I did something I knew I could do lawfully. I could stop and inquire if the dog was properly licensed. Rarely did the dog have a license visible on its collar, and I don’t know where these jerks got their dogs, but when I asked if their dog was licensed they always said they were, but conveniently, they could never provide proof. So, out would come the pen and summonses, and after completing wanted checks and field cards on each member present, and I’d give the person with the dog a summons and a “must appear” invitation to Manchester District Court for keeping an unlicensed dog. This often highly pissed off the gang member / street drug dealer, but often times it was the most I could do to them at the time and they couldn’t say or do shit about it. The summons may not have been a big deal, and I would far rather have caught them in possession or in a hand to hand (sale) but if they ignored the summons, the court would eventually issue Bench Warrants for Failure to Appear, and then maybe the next cop who stopped and questioned them would find the warrant and lock that person up. So, I made sure when I went out every shift I had a good supply of what we called White Summonses with me. I started giving them out like I later gave candy to kids in Iraq. 

It wasn’t a big deal, but eventually I stopped seeing the dogs, and sometimes when they saw me, (the thugs, not the dogs) they moved. You had to take the little victories as they came. It may not have made a big difference in the war on drugs, but I thought anything I could to make life harder for these hoodlums who were contaminating the quality of life for those that lived in those neighborhoods was worthwhile. So, in the end, I handed out lots and lots of Dog at Large and Unlicensed Dog summonses during my career in Patrol, and regardless of some of the teasing I got from both the bad guys and the cops I worked with, including all the Barney Fife wisecracks (Oh Oh, look out! Here comes Barney Fife!) in the end, I just didn’t give a damn. I looked at it as just another tool in my “tool box” the taxpayers paid me to utilize in the battle to keep the street safe. Also, it didn’t hurt that each time I issued one, it really pissed off the gang banger I gave it to. Too many times that was the best I could do. But, there always was tomorrow…

 

My discussion of Audie Murphy’s Famous Book

First Sergeant (Retired) Martin Swirko, United States Army

The battalion commander and executive officer visit the front lines. They want to see with their own eyes what is holding up our advance. They would like to peek into the quarry itself. Excellent and courageous leaders, they pick only four men to escort them up the treacherous hillside… Picking up several hand grenades and a carbine, I trail the patrol up the hill. As I prepare to round a huge boulder, two enemy grenades explode. A machine gun ripples. Silence returns. My scalp tingles as the hair starts rising. That machine gun is only a few yards away. 

I pause, pull the pin from the grenade, and peer around the rock. The Germans have not been overly clever with their ambush. Instead of picking off the officers first, they threw the grenades at the four men, and machine gunning one of them as he writhed upon the ground. 

That was their mistake. Before the gunner could swing his weapon, the officers had tumbled into a shallow hole, where they now lie pinned. The krauts, evidently not considering a rear guard, have become downright careless with their concealment as they attempt to slaughter the officers. 

Grasping the carbine in my left hand and a grenade in my right, I step suddenly from behind the rock. The Germans spot me instantly. The gunner spins the tip of his weapon towards me. But the barrel catches in a limb, and the burst whizzes to my right.

I lob the grenade and grab the carbine trigger with one movement. Before the grenade has time to burst, two krauts fall with carbine slugs in their bellies. I quickly lob two more grenades into the position. Four of the eight Germans are killed; three are out of action by wounds.

The eighth man, a squat, fat man, tries to escape. He dashes down the hill with a waddling gait, like a duck being chased by an ax-man. I line my sights upon his helmet, but hesitate in pulling the trigger. How can one shoot such a ridiculous figure. It is like killing a clown. 

But the clown has a gun and is, therefore, dangerous. I squeeze the trigger. The helmet jumps. The man falls as if struck in the head with a club.

I snap the safety lock on my carbine and turn to the battalion commander. He is as cool as an October morning…We pick up our wounded and start down the hill. A single feeling possesses me. It is one of complete and utter weariness.- Excerpt from the book TO HELL AND BACK

The above excerpt from To Hell and Back is just a small example of Audie Murphy’s unique (in my opinion) style he used in this book to recall and write about his experiences during World War Two. In it he documents what he and his buddies experience fighting their way across Sicily, Italy, Southern France and into Germany. 

I read this book several years ago, and when I finally finished it, I put it away and shook my head. It wasn’t a fun book to read, and I thought there was something unusual and out of the ordinary about the way Murphy choose to tell this story. Having been an admirer of Murphy myself and his heroics since my childhood, I knew a lot about him and his travails. But, I found at the time when I had finished his book, it left me less than satisfied. The feeling was something that I couldn’t really describe, it was just there.

Fast forward to about a month ago after I had finished a couple of books I had been reading. One night before bedtime, I found myself in my office at home looking through the collection of books I had previously read but decided to keep, for whatever reason. My eyes settled on To Hell and Back. What the heck, I thought to myself as I removed the book from the spot it had occupied for several years. Let me give it another chance. So, I cracked the book open and began to reread it with an open mind. 

As I followed Murphy and his platoon from his earliest days in combat, I was introduced to his closest buddies. These were soldiers he had lived with, got to know, and they took care of each other. They came to trust each other with their lives despite the fact that when they weren’t under fire they often bickered amongst themselves, sometimes joking and other times insulting each other on a regular basis. Often times they got on each others nerves. Nevertheless, each would lay their own lives on the line for the other. They became familiar with each other intimately and became brothers in a way that only the who shared combat together could. 

As I followed Murphy along in his perverse journey (If ground combat isn’t perverse, I don’t know what is) I was introduced to soldiers and buddies like Beltsky, Snuffy Jones, Brandon, Kerrigan, Novak (the Pole) Johnson, Swope, Horse Face and others. This is a tough, hardened group of men that found themselves together in a lethal environment. Murphy gives no indication how long he has been with this crew because when we enter into his world within the first two pages of the book, a soldier named Griffin was joking around and imitating Rochester, the butler from the Jack Benny show.  A minute later and artillery round hits nearby and Griffin is dead. Murphy lets us know, through the conversation that follows between the surviving members that Griffin was married and had two kids. The soldiers get up, make a few hard bitten, cynical comments to each other, gather themselves up, and moved out. Beltsky lectures the troops about how easy it is to get killed out there (It’s not as if these troops don’t already know that) and inside of the first two pages we have been introduced the Griffin, learn one or two things about him and we never hear of him again. 

And that is how it is as their war goes on. Soldiers, green replacements mostly, come and go. Murphy introduces them to us the way the replacements were introduced to the older, more experienced men. That is, barely, if at all. These soldiers, the young men who have a few weeks of combat under their belt have come to realize that their only way home was to follow orders, fight and kill the enemy, lest they be killed themselves. They have no rotation dates to look forward to the way we did in Iraq. 

When it comes to survival, these men initially strike me as machines who give their enemy no quarter, and expect none be given in return. But as you get to know them somewhat (if they stay alive long enough so that anyone can get to know them) you realize that they really aren’t machines, they are made of flesh and blood, human beings ripped away from all and everything they knew and loved. They quickly become blooded and hardened by their experiences in combat. Hitler got it so wrong when he decided that the privileged, spoiled American youth was incapable of standing up to what he thought was his superior Aryan race of soldiers when he decided to take on the United States Army. Those GIs that survived long enough developed a cold blooded, matter of fact attitude when confronted by the enemy. Like Audie Murphy, most of his comrades are young men who have grown old and bitter long before their time. 

Murphy tells his story, really Their story as much as his, in two ways. First, by relating the conversations they have among and between themselves. Their arguments, both good natured and serious, and in this way you get to know those that come and go. Or maybe not.  Secondly, he describes the deadly combat that they are all involved in. Throughout the book he moves back and forth between the two effortlessly, without any rhyme or reason. As I read the book the second time, it finally occurred to me what is was that made the book unique. Again, this is only my opinion and perception, but is how I came to regard the book.  

Murphy describes the actions he is involved in from a cold, matter of fact point of view almost without emotion. Murphy might as well have been an observer who happened to be present, but not a participant. He sounds more like Jack Webb portraying Sergeant Friday in the old TV show Dragnet (Just the facts please).as he escorts us through his world of carnage, dark humor and the desperate desire to survive another day. And as he does so, his descriptions of these events would have the reader, if he or she didn’t know any better, think that what Murphy was experiencing was just another day at the office. The sad part is that, maybe for him, each event was just another day. But the reader knows better than that. And maybe that’s what Murphy counted on. Or, maybe after experiencing all that he did, this cold, indifferent approach to telling his story wasn’t selected by him at all. Perhaps, I think as I sit here and type, it’s just possible that this method of communication is the only way he knew tell his story, just because of how horrible his experiences were. I think it is possible that Murphy was so traumatized by his experiences (who wouldn’t be) that this was the only way he could communicate his experiences.. 

The reason I started my piece about this book with the excerpt I selected was because I thought it was typical and an excellent example of his writing style in this book. In it Murphy describes  the incident, seemingly like just another day, and he might as well have been chronicling his decision to remodel his kitchen and how he did it. He lets readers know what happened when he decided to take on that job, filing us in on what tools he used, how he used them, and the results of each and the overall outcome, and he does so without any self praise. He certainly didn’t let on that he had any passion for the event (which was bad news for the clownish enemy soldier he describes) nor do I think he used any melodramatic language to keep the reader hooked. Anyone who reads this book is either interested in Murphy’s day to day existence, possibly from an historical perspective or they aren’t interested at all. Other than Murphy’s closing statements, there certainly isn’t any moral to the story, nor any suspense beyond who loves and who dies. 

And yet, in the end, I have to ask, what the reason was that he took the time to write down and share his experiences with us all who read his book? In the paragraph that I shared above, he described the death of several American soldiers, eight Germans soldiers (all eight were killed by Murphy) and the cold calculated decision to kill a terrified, fleeing enemy soldier. Murphy made that decision only after feeling just a tiny, momentary bit of compassion for the retreating soldier. Then in a millisecond he gunned the clownish looking soldier using cold, hard logic to justify his action. To me, his initial hesitation to dispatch that escaping soldier does show that he hadn’t lost all his compassion, at least not up until that time. However, I found it telling that at the end of the paragraph I shared here Murphy describes how he felt after the incident as complete exhaustion, but certainly does not mention whether or not he had any remorse about killing any of those eight men. Maybe that feeling of remorse is a luxury that the combat soldier cannot allow himself.

Murphy doesn’t seem to dwell very long on how close he himself came to death, nor does he seem to bother to mention that fact that he saved his battalion commander and executive officer’s lives, as well as the wounded American soldiers. It’s as though nothing really special happened that day, and this is the method Murphy uses pen his story. 

Murphy, the most decorated American soldier during WWII, and arguably one of the most decorated soldiers in US history, fails to mention the fact that he receives any awards during his extraordinary saga, much less the Medal of Honor. Furthermore, as for the various citations to his awards that I have read over the years, Murphy certainly downplays his accomplishments in both the book and the movie that followed. No, the book was as cold and matter of fact as a algebraic equation or scientific description of what he experienced and survived. 

The day by day, hour by hour conversations between the squad and platoon members which make up a large part of the book are told, I came to realize, in vernacular of the time, that is, probably the way and manner that regular folks talked and used various expressions back in 1944. It was, I am guessing, how people and soldiers talked to each other then and certainly not exactly the same language that we soldiers used with each other in 2006 or even today. For example, when Kerrigan tells Horse Face “you horse’s patoot, pass over my dough” todays equivalent might be “You asshole, fork over my money!” Once you realize that, you can also recognize the historical accuracy of the book, a moment in time, while at the same time you are able to translate, in your mind, what each solder said to each other into todays language. When you do that, you can both enjoy and appreciate the egging on and kibitzing these guys are going back and forth with. One message does come through, despite Murphy not saying it outright, pains in the ass or not, Murphy loves them all. 

As Murphy’s story continues, officers and leaders come and go, most killed or seriously wounded, but the focus remains on the soldiers to Murphy’s left and his right at any given time in the book. One minute a soldier is sitting and talking, the next minute he is dead, sometimes literally blown into pieces, while the soldier sitting next or laying next to him escapes without a scratch. As a combat veteran myself, I know that we can drive ourselves crazy if we think too much about ‘Why him and not me? Why am I still here?’ I can’t help wondering what those soldiers, the ones who survived, experienced after they retuned home. 

Murphy’s story goes on, as he and his soldiers slog their way across a miserable landscape, fighting not only the enemy but the terrain and weather which are almost as deadly as the enemy. Both torment the solder almost as much as the enemy, as only an infantryman can be tortured.

One by one, many of the “old men”  the veterans, die off. Some die instantly, others taking time for the life to bleed out of them. Some, the luckier ones, suffer wounds that remove them from combat, maybe even send them home. Some of those wounds included the loss of limbs and other life changing injuries. But sadly, many of Murphy’s friends die. One minute they are there, the next, gone forever. This book is certainly not a “Feel Good” story. Anyone feeling like reading that type of story can take a pass on this book. other than Murphy’s survival, there are no happy endings.

Murphy of course continues to survive, and as he does he introduces us to a never ending stream of soldiers who come to his platoon. Sometimes he talks a little about them and some of them survive long enough that we get to know a little about them. Some of the old timers who last well into the book, the ones you do get to know, end up dead. As a reader, I imagine that I felt just a bit of what Murphy must have felt as his closest friends disappear from the battlefield. While that goes on, we meet new guys like Steiner, Thompson, Jackoby, Owl, Barker, Paderwitz and a host of other young men. They come and go, to and from the platoon as it fights its way across Europe. Some you get to know a bit, others not. 

As the replacements come and go, the more experienced men do their best to mentor them. The old timers themselves initially keep their distance from the replacements. They’ve all lost too many friends already and try not to get too close to anyone. In their minds, they think by becoming more aloof, the pain of losing those newer men won’t be as devastating. However, to their credit, once the newcomers are involved in combat and overcome their fears, do their job, once or twice, the old timers consider them combat veterans like themselves, and consciously or not, they ultimately accept them into their brotherhood. 

As far as Murphy’s transition goes, he is regularly promoted and eventually earns a commission and becomes an officer and platoon leader. As he rises in the ranks as a NCO and then an Officer, while mentoring and encouraging his troops as best as he can, he also, out of necessity, makes cold, hard, on the spot decisions about his men. Many of these decisions can and often do take on the importance of life and death. His reasoning seems simple and to the point “we have a job and you’re (we) we are going to do it. Failure is not an option”. 

Having been a combat veteran who saw more than enough butchery myself, the amount of carnage and loss of life that Murphy describes in his dispassionate style is both staggering and astonishing. I think that most of us know that Audie Murphy survived the war and became a well known actor and played himself in the movie named after his book. Whatever good things happened to Murphy during the remainder of his life, the cost he paid for it was enormous. I can say with certainty, that Murphy, both in his book and in the movie severely understated his accomplishments as a soldier during that war. He truly spent time in hell. Sadly, it wasn’t without consequences.Despite this, Murphy ended his book, or tried to end it on an uplifting note. 

In the end, after thinking about his book, I come to the conclusion that he wrote the book not about himself, but about those brave and sometimes flawed soldiers he had worked with and wanted to make sure none of us forget the sacrifices made by those men for our country. I don’t think he wanted to talk about himself, but the only way he could get his message across was to tell their stories as seen through his eyes. He couldn’t have done it any other way. In his own way he is able to condemn the concept of war by starkly describing combat for the soldier on the ground without lecturing or moralizing. His crisp, gloomy and somber narrative should be all anyone needs to experience to come to the conclusion that war truly is hell on earth, and Audie Murphy truly went to Hell and Back.