Death On The Beat

(3 of 5)

Phoenix businessman Alfredo Gutierrez, a former state senator, makes poetry of the west side's Los Angelized sprawl. "It's a place with no edges. It bleeds in and out of industrial and residential developments, and there's a creeping invisibility--an anonymity." The weak sense of community makes the area all the harder to police. And there is ethnic fragmentation as long-established Hispanics see new Mexican immigrants moving in next door, calling south of the border for the relatives and parking the truck on the sidewalk.

Davila knew he had a cultural clash on his hands when he took a call from a resident complaining that the next-door neighbor was growing corn in the front yard. New immigrants, Davila says, are "suspicious of cops. In Mexico most of a policeman's salary is from bribes. They think we're going to beat them up or take their money." It doesn't help that while Hispanics make up more than 28% of the 1.2 million residents of Phoenix, they account for only 12% of the city's police.

To all of this, add the drug problem. On May 5, police stumbled onto the biggest drug bust in city history--a ton of cocaine valued at half a billion dollars--and arrested two Mexican nationals. A federal drug official told the Arizona Republic, "Phoenix has arrived...as a drug transshipment point."

And then there's the gang problem. An estimated 300 gangs and 7,000 gang members work the streets of Phoenix, selling drugs, stealing cars and occasionally aerating one another. One day officer Robert Vasquez brings an East Side gang member into the station for a chat--a kid he is trying to rescue after meeting him at an alternative school. The 17-year-old has a tattoo of an X under his right eye and an 8 under his left. It's his gang ID. He runs with Wetback Power's 18th Street crew. "It's crazy out there now," he says. "You could be walking down the street, and some little 12-year-old will shoot you." Last year he was shot in both legs by a member of the Mafia Crip Gangsters, and he pulls up one pant leg to show through-and-through wounds where a bullet skewered his leg.

You begin to understand the frustration police feel when the gang member says that shooting a cop wins you honor these days; that all his contemporaries do is fight and shoot and get high and steal; that he will never identify the kid who shot him because ratting is the lowest; that he burns names under an R.I.P. tattoo on his left arm when close friends die; that he doesn't expect to live to 25; that sometimes he dreams about going legit and getting a really good job. Like what? "I don't know," he says. "Like maybe a telemarketer."

The last line of defense against the barbarians is filing into the briefing room at the Maryvale Precinct, home to 229 sworn officers. Marc Atkinson's old squad is just beginning its 3:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. shift. Sergeant Pete Fenton tells them about a fresh homicide and about a tree that will be planted in Marc's honor out front. A chalkboard advisory warns against dining at a certain fast-food joint because a cook with a grudge, just out of jail, is bound to add special ingredients to any cop's dinner.

Several weeks have passed since Atkinson's murder, but you wouldn't know it to look around the room. Officers wear stickers on their belts or radios: IN MEMORY OF 5930. Atkinson's badge number. And now it hits you that these are kids. The age range is 24 to 34. At 28, Atkinson was the senior officer among 10. The one they looked up to. The one who couldn't die. When he did, they began wondering how they could be crazy enough to do this job. And then three weeks later, officer James Snedigar was shot dead as his SWAT team moved on an apartment in the nearby town of Chandler. Two of his three assailants, one of whom was killed, were identified as members of the New Mexican Mafia.

Out on patrol, Masino sees a car inching along suspiciously, and then suddenly the car speeds up and darts out of sight into a parking lot. Masino finds it, approaches cautiously and sees the driver and a passenger drinking beer. Neither speaks English, and Masino knows only a little Spanish. With TIME translating, we find out the driver has no license, no registration and no keys. He started the car with a screwdriver. When he finds out he's under arrest, he makes a brief move on Masino, then thinks better of it. The passenger's hands, meanwhile, drop down under the seat in the car, maybe to hide something, maybe to get something, and in that moment everything is crystal clear: the potential for the cop to shoot. The potential for the suspect to shoot. The potential for either to die, and for the press, the public and the lawyers to wrestle over the facts for months and never approach the truth.