The Guido had told us his story. "I was in my car, fuckin' just smokin' a joint and these two DTs [detectives] rolled up on me ... and they bring me in for this shit. It's not the blue and whites [squad cars à la Moukazis and Pena] -- them I don't mind, they don't bother you. It's narcotics, the undercovers, that's the problem. Narcotics just wanna make their quotas, make that overtime."
Overtime. In December 2000, the New York Daily News investigated the NYPD's quality-of-life crusade, singling out what by then had become something of a key zero-tolerance program, the much ballyhooed Operation Condor. Condor funds overtime for detectives pursuing small-time drug buy-and-busts and quality-of-life offenders like evil types who pee on trees.
The NYPD spent a record $247 million on overtime during fiscal year 2000 -- some $39 million of which went to Condor, according to the News. Not all the officers in narcotics, the News also noted, were happy about the program.
"Cops are flooding the system with minor stuff just for the overtime," a high-ranking narcotics officer told the paper. "But we are ignoring the big investigations for the little fish at the bottom.
"That's all Condor-detail cops are catching," the officer added. "The little fish."
The Condor program made the papers in a big way earlier that year, in March 2000, after two Condor undercovers looking to make a marijuana bust shot and killed 22-year-old Patrick Dorismond, an off-duty security guard. The detectives had asked Dorismond, who was standing outside a cocktail lounge in Manhattan, where they could find some dope. Dorismond, in what were later hotly debated circumstances, essentially told them to step off. A scuffle ensued, and shots were fired.
(Calls to the NYPD central public relations office regarding the Condor program were not returned.)
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At 9:45 a.m., we get an egg sandwich, soggy in grease paper; the jailers yell, "Moving to the court soon. Wake up." Hot orange juice; voices in the cell: "Yo, they microwave this juice?" Echoes of plastic bottles on floors. We are led, feeling tall and happy; we're moving, we're out, we're out of here.
We go by van, chained three together, to a court in Red Hook, the Red Hook Community Justice Center. We're divided up, Syringe disappears, still nameless -- I never found out what happened to him -- and then new faces and old: Santiago Lugo; a scowling 16-year-old; a midget with wine-stain knife scars on his cheeks; Justin; the Guido. We land in a 20-by-20 windowless basement pen; payphone in one corner, toilet. The elation of air, movement, progress, process now very gone. Now we wait to see the judge, and who knows if he'll get to all the cases by 5 p.m. If he doesn't, then it's night court and Central Booking.
"I don't wanna even consider that shit," says Eric, in for a joint, 27, dark-faced and lid-eyed and wary; a caricaturist would make him a panther. Eric grew up in the Red Hook projects, the son of Puerto Rican immigrants; he's done the process many times. "Drug charges, mostly," he told me. "Assault, once."
He stretched on the floor and closed his eyes and tried to sleep but couldn't. "Yo, this shit is sticky." He shifted two empty, plastic pint water bottles under his neck. "Not near as sticky as Central Booking, I'll tell you that," he answers himself. "That's 300 niggas, 50 to a room, and those rooms no bigger than this one. Central Booking! Cockroaches big as fingers, that's a dungeon, yo. We go to booking, we start all over, right at the bottom."
"Start over?" someone said.
"You got three levels in Central Booking," Eric went on. "It's like a fucked-up cake. You got night court up top, but you waitin' 20 hours to get there. They bring you in that first room, the sub-basement, you wait six hours. Then you go up one floor, little cages, rats over your head rattling the metal, you think they gonna drop right down on you. Six more hours. Then you got the cells on the third floor, even smaller, you all tight in there, elbows and no layin' down. Night court means what it says: You stayin' the night. This judge here, I say he'll do five cases an hour. And we got 15 in this room, about 20 in the other room, more coming in throughout the day. What time is it?"
"Eleven fifteen."
"Yo, 11:15. That's not good. That means we got 35 niggas who need to be processed by 5 p.m. Five an hour, we need six hours, a little bit more, and we not gonna have six hours, not by a long shot. That judge goes to lunch at 1 for an hour and a half, court doesn't reopen till 2:30. So from now until 5, that makes four hours of court time. Now it's all how the cards come out; now you just wait for your name, and you hope."
There were groans throughout the room; slouches, spit, socks being smelled. Minutes later, as if out of cruel contradiction, a name was called: The Irish Guido stood up -- bounded up -- and went to the bars, where a man in a suit said, "They're giving you an ACD."
"I'll take it, I'll fuckin' take it, yes," and with that the door was unlatched; the Guido was gone.
"ACD!" said Eric, sitting up.
"ACD, yo," said Santiago.
"What's an ACD?" said Justin.
"That"s Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal," Eric said. He enunciated, slowly and contemptuously. "That shit means your case be dismissed 'cause it was bullshit in the first place."
"ACD," said Santiago. "That's what we all looking for here."
So there were mutters of ACD all around, people said, "We movin' now," and indeed, soon we were moved out of the cell and down a hall to be photographed again -- for what reason I couldn't figure out -- standing in line with our arms behind our backs, flash-bulbed front and side.
Then they brought us back to the cell. And for hours, there was no movement.
Next page: He put the wet phone to his mouth and wept and no one in the cell moved or spoke