Detective: The Story of an Unfortunate Cop Who Let the System Wear Her Down

   I’m making a nasty joke here, folks. The actual title of this book is Detective: The Story of a Trail-Blazing Cop Who Wouldn’t Quit. But I have a whole lot of issues with this book, not the least of which is the incredible bias of the author, followed by her self-indulgence. While her story is an interesting one, and covers many important issues of the NYPD, I found that her incredible bitterness ruins it.

   Kathy Burke became a New York City cop in the late 1960’s. It was right at the time where the women officers were going from the job of matron, who booked and searched women suspects, to doing real police work. According to Burke, there were a sizeable number of women detectives in the department, and the main reason is that the women were needed as bait. She ends up masquerading as a college student, drug user, high school kid, and other characters in order to catch drug dealers. The problem is that the men who were supposed to be watching her goofed off, and she get stabbed. Several lessons were learned that day; first, the women were disregarded, and second, the worst thing you can do is let your colleagues get in trouble. But that incident had one advantage - it got her a detective’s shield!

    Ironically, Burke was facing far more dangerous work than any of the male detectives. She didn’t have any advantage of size, wasn’t a skilled fighter, and was in the type of undercover work that could get her killed. In her 20 years in the NYPD she dealt with dealers, bank robbers (including a six-foot-ten that she collared twice) and others. Unfortunately, she dealt with a lot of sexual harassment from her supervisor, and that led to her suing the NYPD over withheld promotions. She won the lawsuit, and soon afterwards the NYPD stopped using the terms patrolman and policewoman, opting instead to call them all police officers regardless of gender.

    My problem with her story is that she has annoying prejudices against the people she’s dealing with. In the earlier part of her career, she went undercover to bust a lot of teenage drug dealers, usually going into the schools, taking advantage of her youthful appearance. A lot of the teens she found dealing were from well-connected families; one of them was the daughter of a district attorney. But then she starts saying that she despised these teenage dealers, and it’s clear that she still does. I would like to know why she despises the kids, not the parents who let them do it? She also writes about how the patrolmen who arrested her would make lewd remarks about her in the car. Why doesn’t she despise those men more than the teenage pot dealer?

    The ending of this book takes the cake. She and her colleague get shot while doing surveillance of a Mafia gambling operation; he dies, she gets blames by everyone for her his death, and the mob gunmen who did it are acquitted. Everyone (including the prosecutor) makes her out to be a pushy woman getting above herself, and she leaves in a big huff. The problem with this is that there are too many unanswered questions. Firstly, a cop doesn’t normally get the blame for another’s death if she too gets shot, so why was everyone so quick to blame her? Secondly, she says that she was harassed by cops who wanted her to drop the charges against the men who shot her, and that doesn’t make sense. Lastly, when I looked up this story online (including the book’s reviews) I found so many cops who disputed her version of the story. They all say she fled in the car and left the other cop to die. If they are in fact wrong, what incentive do they have to say those things? One of them suggested that her husband, a high-ranking NYPD captain, helped cover things up. Someone here is not being truthful, but who?

    I don’t know how to categorize this book. Should I call it a woman’s memoir of the NYPD? The change in the NYPD’s attitude to women officers? A book about sexual harassment? I hope things have changed in the department, at least in comparison to what she went through. Other than that, there isn’t really much to learn from this book. There’s another autobiography by a former decoy detective named Mary Glatzle, AKA “Muggable Mary,” with similar stories of working undercover, yet the latter was a lot more enjoyable. Also, Detective Glatzle doesn’t have the huge prejudices that Burke has of her days in the department.

When Do the Good Things Start?

    I grew up with relatives who were just like Lucy in The Peanuts comic strip. They would insult people, shirk responsibility, chew people out, and in the end, they always found ways to justify their behavior. Eventually, I realized there was only way out, and that way was to avoid them. You can never win an argument with a narcissist, because they believe their own lies. In this book, Dr. Abraham Twersky uses Lucy, and other Peanuts characters, to illustrate the mentality of addiction.

Dr. Twersky (MD/PhD) is an interesting character; a Rabbi and Psychiatrist, specializing in addictions, he’s worked with every class of addiction you can think of, be it drugs, alcohol, sex, food, rage, or just plain procrastination. He mentioned in The Jews of America that he sees the traits of an addict in himself, describing it as “I’m a procrastinator, I crave instant relief.” One of the points of this book is that the need for relief is not a cause or symptom of addiction, but part of a spectrum of problems you see in addiction.

One of his examples is the dynamic between Lucy and Schroeder. We’ve all read the strips, where Lucy leans on the piano, crooning to the boy while he ignores her. Nothing he says or does, no matter how dismissive or just downright hostile, can make her go away. He looks right through her, and she can’t see that he’s ignoring her. Then there are Lucy’s victims, the people that good-naturedly listen to her while she raves, rants, vents, and lies. She’ll miss a fly ball because she’s drawing in the dirt, and when Charlie Brown gets mad, she’ll say, calmly, “A good coach doesn’t yell at the players.” She goads people into getting angry so she can criticize them, and it’s a way for her to feel superior. We wonder when Charlie Brown will get it into his head that Lucy can never be trusted, wishing he’d give Lucy her comeuppance.

The book begins with the mantras for Alcoholics Anonymous and 12-Step, and one of the most well-known is that you have to admit you’ve lost control. You have to come out and say “I’m an alcoholic, and I have no control over myself anymore.” From there, you build back up, and you look into how your addiction started and how it altered your life. In the Peanuts comic, Charlie lets people drive him crazy, but won’t face the fact that he needs to avoid them.

On the subject of addiction, I recall the movie The Lost Weekend, where the alcoholic writer drags everyone down with him. I asked an addiction counselor how much of it was realistic, and he said “everything,” and how he could relate to the guy being desperate for another drink, waiting desperately for the pawn shops to open, lying constantly to his loved ones. But there was one highly unrealistic part, and that was the end. There are no epiphanies in addiction; the only way an addict gets clean is when he hits rock bottom, and rock bottom is when your friends and family cut you off.

Unlike another Rabbi/therapist name Shmuley Boteach, Dr. Twersky doesn’t get as much attention. He’s not a media hound, but he is well-known to people who really want to recover. If you watch him on youtube, you’ll see that he doesn’t go for instant relief, and you’ll have to have patience to watch and listen to him. If you want instant relief (whether it works or not) then you can watch Dr. Phil. One of the aspects of the Peanuts comic that kind of mirrors Dr. Phil is the way Snoopy decides to eat to forget. Instead of facing his problem, he decides to eat until he no longer thinks about horrible things, and ends up obese. Saying “hooray, I’ve forgotten her,” does not mean anything. There’s no magic pill.

I recall a Mad Magazine parody of Peanuts, where Charlie Brown finally deals with his frustration. In that parody, Lucy says she’ll hold the football down, while Charlie runs up to kick it, and we all know how this always ends, right? Well in the next panel, Lucy is on the ground, nursing a big bruise, and says “I know I deserve something for always pulling the ball away, but why did you have to kick me in the head?” Charlie responds “because the way you were facing, I couldn’t reach your butt!” Though the reader wishes this would happen, it wouldn’t work. Lucy would never learn from something like this. She’d go around telling everyone that Charlie was the aggressor. Unless, that it, Charlie cut all ties with his social circle, because then it would make no difference what they thought of him.

Perhaps one of the first things about recovery is leaving the people with whom you are addicted.

The Truth About New York

    Amir Said starts with basic info about the five boroughs; how Manhattan is an island with a grid, how Robert Moses plowed through the Bronx, how Staten Island is a mob residence, how Brooklyn is getting more love than ever before, etc. Some things in here I don’t believe, like the part about NYC being the place for jobs. Illegal immigrants take a lot of the jobs in restaurants and construction, and most of the tech jobs are done by unpaid interns. Obesity is not a major problem here, because everyone has to be on their feet.

    

    He does give some humorous pages to renting an apartment in the city, with all the down-and-dirty about rent control and how the landlords try to scare away tenants. He advises the renter to discard the dream of a spacious apartment, and avoid any place with a commute of more than 45 minutes into Manhattan. Stay close to a good public library (decent people in the area) and avoid police stations (they’re placed in high-crime areas.) The subways are how people get around, but they are unreliable, filthy, overcrowded, and prone to delays.

    The book goes on to cover dating, food and dining, nightlife, culture, education, and religion. Sometimes the writing goes too far, some parts are too long, each chapter could be its own book. Some parts, like the one on schools, would be better if they included interviews with parents, maybe have a part about schools where the White kids are a minority. 

The Spanish Fantastic: Contemporary Filmmaking in Horror, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi

   Film critic Rowan-Legg begins with the same question that I asked when I saw Devil’s Backbone; why have Spain’s horror-thrillers only gotten attention in the last 15 years? What was their standing before that? Why were Armando D’Ossorio’s horror films ignored? His Tombs of the Blind Dead and subsequent works are so obscure, not to mention his other films. If Spain was renowned for Pedro Almadovar’s neurotic-woman comedies, why not horror?

   

  It seems that D’Ossorio’s movies were meant for the kind of people that liked Dario Argento’s Italian gore fests. When it comes to Spain’s late development in the horror film genre, the author blames it on the country’s instability. First there was the civil war of the 1930’s, when few theaters were functioning, then the country’s strict censorship, then the strong influence of the Catholic church, and finally the Franco regime’s dislike of foreign influence. As time went on, the country’s filmmakers created celebrations of the country’s music and dancing, which were more acceptable to the country’s conservative leaders. Franco’s death in 1975 flooded Spain with American movies, so what use was there for poor-quality native cinema?

    When the Spanish horror films began in earnest, the directors like Franco, Martin, and Naschy took their cues from Britain’s Hammer horror films, hiring actors like Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. The use of American and/or British actors did help get them some exposure outside the country, but even that was limited. Franco’s movies never went much further than the cult circuit, and they bear a strong resemblance to Argento’s works. Should they be classed as Eurotrash films? If the USA already had enough horror movies to fill a video rental store, what use was there for Franco’s horror films?

Modern Arabic Poetry: Revolution and Conflict

    For her book on contemporary Arabic poetry, Professor Athamneh doesn’t go into all the ancient Arabic works that got catalogued with eastern philosophy. She begins with a chapter on how it changed in the last century, a time that saw extreme change and upheaval in the Arab world. Ba’athism was an inspiration for a lot of these poets, and Nasser’s 1967 defeat made them question their role in society. Now that Ba’athism is dead and gone, they’re questioning their role even further.

    An example of the modern Arabic poet is Iraqi born Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati (1926-1999). He lived in other Arab countries after leaving Iraq, and more often than not he was at odds with the Iraqi government. His works underwent a dramatic change after the 1967 defeat, and he compared poetry to a forgotten man dying in a hospital.

    The poets of Arabia had high standards in the old days. Tribes would compete with their bards, who composed verses on life, war, and the pleasures of sitting among the olive trees (quite a luxury in Arabia, which is mostly desert.) I wonder sometimes if a lot of it had to do with widespread illiteracy in the Middle East. When your audience can’t read, the poems had better be the kind that you can easily remember.

    Another poet whose work is discussed is Ahman Hijazi, born in 1935, also a fixture in the Ba’athist era. While he was in friendly relations with Nasser, he fell out of favor with Sadat. His poem Elegy for a Circus Performer compares the Arab leader (in this case, Nasser) to a circus acrobat on a tightrope. He doesn’t have the option of “stepping down” and certainly can’t fall, because not only would that mean certain death, but it would also disappoint the people who look up to him. 

    Unfortunately for the poets, the Arab world has lost a lot of great leaders. Like Hijazi’s tightrope walker, they walk a fine line between success and being lynched. A leader who was once admired can end up fleeing in a car pelted with stones.

Jan Ken Po: The World of Hawaii’s Japanese Americans

    Japanese Hawaiians are strangers everywhere, says the author; in Japan they’re typical American tourists with foreign airs and big appetites; in continental USA, they’re bumpkins with funny grammar. It was during World War II that the Hawaiian and Californian Nisei encountered each other in the 44^th Combat Team, and the two sides got into fights. The Hawaiians thought the mainland Nisei, or “Katonks,” were snobs with fancy accents like the Haolis (Caucasians) back home. The mainland Nisei couldn’t understand (then or now) why Hawaiians like to eat Spam and canned Vienna sausages. In California, then as now, canned meat is not a delicacy, but synonymous with poverty.

    Mainland versus Continental conflict aside, Dr. Dennis Ogawa devotes a chapter, and a humorous one at that, to the intergenerational conflict. On one hand you have the reputation-obsessed parents, while on the other, you have the American-raised kids. Everything is about honor or shame to the older generation, while the kids born after 1950 have an “anything goes” attitude. The Sesei (third generation) daughter who dates a long-haired boy that her parents don’t like, or the college educated daughter who moves out before she gets married, these things will shame the parents. Dr. Ogawa attributes the low crime and divorce rates among Japanese Hawaiians to this. If you get divorced, the neighbors will think you can’t handle life.

    Geography also comes into play in this book, since Hawaii is a group of islands, and you can’t move away easily to escape shame. Close proximity means everyone has to get along. Though the author doesn’t mention it, parts of Hawaii are separated by mountains, so the towns may be isolated from each other unless you travel by water. I don’t know if rail travel came to any of the islands, and there were no little puddle-jumping planes until the 1930’s. The Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese,

    Occasionally, I find a forgotten book, and sometimes, the story isn’t outdated. Jan Ken Po is 40 years old, and it’s the kind of book that probably wasn’t read much when it came out. The author is (or more likely was) a professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii, and according to his writing, he probably wasn’t well known off-island. He drops hints here and there that Hawaii’s college graduates usually stay in the islands, so I doubt his work reached far and wide. Regardless, Dr. Ogawa’s book on Hawaii’s Japanese Americans is enlightening. I would read this in conjunction with two recent books about Hawaii; Captive Paradise, about the colonization of the islands, and Charlie Chan & Chang Apana, about Hawaiian history told through the stories of two popular characters.

    My only suggestion to the author would be an update, because Hawaiian life has definitely changed since the book was written. The media image of Hawaii is different now too, and there have been a few decent movies (like The Picture Bride) that portray the state’s history. Unfortunately, too many of us only know Hawaii from the Dog The Bounty Hunter tv series, and the image isn’t good. I’d also like to know if there’s any class conflict between the Japanese Hawaiians and the natives, Tongans, and Samoans who now live on the islands.

Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine

    Here I go again, fascinated with forgotten books. Written in 1958, read in 1988 (when I was in 4^th grade) and no longer read by kids of any age, this book sits on the ash heap of literature. Maybe it’s been replaced by more “relevant” books (like the Hunger Games) or maybe this Eisenhower-era science fiction book is of little interest to the sex-obsessed youngsters of our time? Or maybe the book’s fantasy plot – kids using a machine to do their homework – is dated now, since all kids are downloading their homework. But there is something in the story that’s relevant now even to today’s audiences; all kids hate homework!

   In the first scene, Danny and Joe (aged about 12) are looking for ways to do both of their math homework assignments at the same time, and then they’re finding ways to make the two handwritings look less similar. As the book progresses, they come across a machine that can do the homework for them, then they get caught, and then the teacher looks for ways to outsmart them. Back in the 1950’s, I’m sure the lesson for kids was that you should always shut up, do your work, and listen to the grownups. But in this day and age, I’m not sure if that’s right.

   Look at today’s kids; they spend all day learning to take exams, and they have no outdoor recess, which is why they can’t sit still or pay attention. When you ask the principal why there’s no outdoor recess, she’ll say “it cuts into the time we need to spend learning for the exams.” I’ve seen 4^th graders who can’t even do current events or book reports, and when I ask the stressed-out teacher why, she’ll say “we have to prepare for the state exams.” Then there’s the homework that loads the kids down, and keep in mind that this is after a long school day with boring work, bad food, and no recess.

    I find Danny’s homework machine hijinks relevant today because the boys in the story are not lazy. They’re not looking to shirk their schoolwork so they can watch TV (there wasn’t much to watch at the time) or surf the web (didn’t exist.) They want to do healthy things, like play ball, ride bikes, fly kites, read their books, do their own science experiments. They want to do the kind of things that boys their age should do, and homework gets in the way. Think of it in terms of your job; if you spend all day in an office doing paperwork, do you want to spend the evenings at home practicing how to do the paperwork?

   I wonder sometimes, are we demanding that our children do things that we don’t have to do? That we don’t want to do? That we hated doing when we were young?

Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family

   In a 2010 article, Dr. Haynes recalls finding the portrait of a long-dead ancestor in his parents’ attic. He was a respected Black leader, and the portrait was part of a series for the White House, somehow lost from the others and consigned to storage. Why was the portrait forgotten, he wondered, and why did his parents leave it in the attic for so long? Throughout the book, the author studies the same issue regarding his parents; why did this respectable family fall into reclusivness, and why did they stay in Harlem?

    Haynes (born 1960) comes from an unusual social class, the Black Harlem gentry. He, his parents, and his two older brothers lived in a stately Harlem townhouse that alternated from being subdivided into apartments and returning to its one-family state. Though his parents considered themselves the cream-of-the-crop, they let their home fall into ruin. He describes the house, with beautiful woodwork and period décor, as being a dump that rivals the Collier Brothers. Garbage piled up, they never threw anything away, the roof leaked, and eventually his parents physically separate while living under the same roof. From childhood to age 18, he doesn’t seem to have enjoyed being home. Neither did his two brothers.

    In some ways it’s a story about people who straddle two worlds. Haynes mother was a social worker with an office in the World Trade Center, fashionably dressed, held court at downtown restaurants, but she didn’t have these friends over to her home. It’s not clear if it’s because their house was in a state, or if they let the house become a hovel because they couldn’t have visitors. Harlem, by the time Haynes was ten years old, had become unsafe, and he says that when he was growing up no white kid could walk in those streets. His older brothers, born 1950 and 1953, also suffered from street crime. I doubt that any White person visited their Black friends in Harlem by the late 1960’s.

    Haynes’ pretty much loses his brother over the years. One of them gets killed at work, and the police make little effort to find the killer. His oldest brother joins the Nation of Islam, suffers when the break up after Elijah Muhammed’s death, and gets into drugs and several mental breakdowns. The saddest thing is that he learns about his brother’s murder while sleeping over at a friend’s house, and says he’d rather stay there than head home. He clearly felt more comfortable with the White kids at the private schools he attended than in his own home and neighborhood.

    This book paints a really weird portrait of the Harlem that the author knew as a boy. There is a funny part to this story, in the way that gay men were accepted there. He recounts a transvestite who ran a newsstand, and the hair salons were run by men with effeminate mannerisms. He theorizes that with so few decent men in the community, nobody cared if a guy was a sissy, so long as he pulled his weight. In the 1980’s these men started dying off thanks to a little-understood disease.

    I wonder if Down the Up Staircase is a study on downward mobility? This was a family with well-educated parents, refined and elegant, whose world always seems to crumble around them. The author says that his father, a parole officer, could have done a lot more with his career, and hints that the man was a bit of an underachiever. His oldest brother slides further and further down into an abyss of drugs and the wrong crowd, further and further away from his parents’ values, never climbing back up. Then his next oldest brother graduates high school, marries his teacher (?!?) and goes to work in a bicycle store, where he gets killed. By the mid 1990’s, the elegant townhouse is in a terrible state of repair, and it’s a wonder it didn’t get condemned. Thankfully, he took his teachers’ advice, to find a rural college that would give him a full scholarship, and leave the city.

   The house was sold in the 1990’s, and at this time it’s probably occupied by a White family and would sell for a million dollars. The old Harlem elite is gone, and Dr. Haynes admits that today there is no way he could afford to live in Harlem.