Death On The Beat

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    As this one turns out, there was no weapon or drug stash under the seat. Masino releases the passenger, telling him to stay home next time he wants to drink. The kid makes a rude gesture. "Nice doing business with you," Masino says.

    Detective: "So, then you were the one that killed the officer, kid?"

    Suspect: "Well, yeah, there's no other. How can I tell you?"

    Detective: "Are you afraid?"

    Suspect: "Well, yes ... I didn't want to do that. I didn't even think that he had died, but I know that I deserve my punishment."

    The interview with Felipe Petrona-Cabanas, 17, took place the night of Atkinson's murder. On April 5, a Maricopa County grand jury indictment charged Petrona-Cabanas, his 18-year-old cousin and a third man, age 21, with first-degree murder. The 17-year-old will be tried as an adult in what will be a potential death-penalty case for all three. They have pleaded not guilty.

    The first week was hard on little Jeremy Atkinson, and he cried a lot. Whenever the garage door opened, he got excited, thinking it was his father. Now nine months old, Jeremy has just awakened from a nap, and Karen Atkinson, who has only recently returned to her job as a nurse, goes and gets him in their two-story house north of Phoenix. Marc's squad was right. Jeremy looks just like him. Sky-blue eyes, hair the color of straw.

    When Marc talked about his work, it was mostly about the kids he would see. "He'd go into a house to arrest the parents for drugs, and he'd see a two-year-old, naked, needing a diaper, and the kid reaches up: 'Please hold me.'" At home, Atkinson was on a mission to have Jeremy's first word be Dah-dah. He'd hold him close, look into his eyes and repeat it over and over. But Jeremy never responded. And then shortly after Marc's death, Karen was awakened one night by Jeremy's voice on the intercom: "Dah-dah, dah-dah, dah-dah..."

    Take all the problems of the day--drugs, gangs, the politics of immigration--and Manny Davila has an answer for them. Not a police roundup or a new law. A trip to a school. Here is Davila eating a cafeteria burger with the boy he has visited once a week for the past year in the Pathfinder program he volunteered for. He chose Andoni, 11, because he sees some of himself in the boy. Andoni was born in Mexico too. After lunch, in 98-degree heat, Davila organizes a basketball game on the playground. "He works with the whole class," says Nicole Liggett, Andoni's fifth-grade teacher. "He reads to the class with me; he plays with the kids at recess; he brings stickers, candy, ice cream."

    In his three years as commander of the Maryvale Precinct, Davila and his officers have given up nights and weekends to help people paint, mend fences, organize anti-crime marches. On the streets of Maryvale, residents frequently refer to "my police officer," and the officer refers to "one of my people" getting robbed.

    At the Woodmar apartment complex, Masino is seen as some kind of alien force by a woman whose name is being withheld to protect her from gangs. "I thought he was crazy, the way he just walked through here by himself at night," says the grandmother, whose phone lines were cut when she began snitching on dealers who had turned the complex into a drug emporium and shooting gallery.

    In February work by Masino and other officers resulted in 18 arrests. To keep the gangsters from returning, Masino and officer Brian Kornegay opened a substation in one of the units. They gave a cell phone to the woman whose phone lines had been cut. When Masino pulls up now in his patrol car, that woman's seven grandchildren, no longer confined to the house, climb into his car to play with the lights and loudspeaker.

    This kind of work provides a vital, unseen ballast as Phoenix is rocked by Atkinson's murder and by the ugly reaction from some quarters that there should be a crackdown on "the Mexicans" who should be sent packing. What could be a breakdown in race relations is defused by a quiet, powerful counter-demonstration--a defining moment in city history.

    In response to the racist outbursts on talk radio, Hispanic leaders called for a peace march and a prayer vigil for Tuesday evening, four days after Atkinson's murder, with such short notice that no one knew how many people might show up. At 6 p.m., they started to gather in a field not far from the bar where Atkinson's chase had begun: adults and children, first in a trickle and then in a swelling stream. Michael Hernandez Nowakowski, a radio-station general manager, had bought hundreds of candles, and people began lighting them.

    By 7 p.m., 800 people had gathered, and now police officers were joining in, clearing a path for a twilight procession along the course of Atkinson's pursuit. Children carried photographs of Atkinson. A mariachi band played De Colores, a song about the rainbow after the storm.

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