(6 of 9)
In most large police forces, a small percentage of aggressive cops do the dirty work. The rest simply punch their time cards, respond only when called and wait for their pensions. "Many cops go their whole careers without making an arrest," says Joseph McNamara, a former police chief of San Jose, Calif. "The small number of aggressive officers every department has, and needs, are the ones we rely on to clean things up."
It isn't hard to spot the ready-to-rumble officers. In Philadelphia's 39th, it became known quickly that Blondie was such a cop--a man who could do you in even if you had done no wrong. Other officers might cruise through the area and have debris or even rocks thrown at them. When Blondie drove by with his cohort, silence fell on the bleak streets. "Cross those guys, and they'd whack you upside the head," says Cory Brown, who now lives in the house where Arthur Colbert was beaten in 1991. "We had our times, Blondie and me," says Brown. "He busted me for having a gun, and I was lucky to get off with probation." No hard feelings, says Brown. "I didn't have no permit for the gun." More important, says Brown, "you got to say that Blondie and them kept a lot of the worst of the stuff around here down, no matter how they went about it."
Far away in that federal prison, Blondie doesn't remember Brown, but he takes his point. "You've got to show who's boss on a daily basis," he says in the deadpan, laconic manner that became legend in the 39th. "That wasn't and isn't the kind of area where you walk a beat and make nice with the residents."
But many of the residents were (and are) "nice," and they were the ones who screamed loudest for the police to crack down on the crime wave. "The bosses would come back from community meetings with a string of complaints, and we were told to get on it--just get it done," says Blondie. Police supervisors, he says, had other pressures too: "Above the rank of captain, you get promoted mostly by who you know on the force and in politics. And the politicians scream as loud as the residents. Can you tell me when you ever heard a politician say he'd get tough on the cops for violating the civil rights of drug dealers?"
Five Squad was a coveted assignment. The officers kept their own hours--although there was always a designated eight-hour shift. "That was so we could make arrests at the end of our tour and get overtime doing the paperwork," says Blondie. In a typical year, he and his fellow Five Squad officers made $60,000 or higher, more than double their salary.
The way "it's supposed to work is something like this," says Blondie. "You're supposed to go to a crack house and make a buy, or have someone make it for you via a 'controlled buy.' To do that, you've got to strip the guy beforehand to make sure there is no other money on him. Then you give him some money and he makes the buy, and you strip him afterward to make sure he has no more money." Do it like that, he says, and the buy and subsequent arrest are legal.