PAX Centurion - January / March 2016

www.bppa.org PAX CENTURION • January/March 2016 • Page 45 wearing a superhero shirt became my good luck charm, much like it had been when I was a cadet. Now is about as good of a time as any to bring up my ritual for wearing the shirts. When I first joined the Chicago Police Department I had fifteen shirts that featured a superhero symbol or a related design. Four shirts hadAvengers-related symbols (Iron Man, CaptainAmerica, Hulk, and Thor), four had X-Men related symbols (Wolverine, Cyclops, Deadpool, and Quicksilver), four had DC-related symbols (Batman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and The Flash), one shirt had the blood-stained smile symbol fromWatchmen, one shirt had the Marvel Comics logo, and my last shirt was my Superman shirt (my personal favorite shirt). I had a specific pattern for when I would wear my shirts. On the first day of a new cycle I would wear anAvengers shirt, the next day I would wear an X-Men shirt, and the next day I would wear a DC shirt. When this pattern repeated twice I wore either myWatchmen or Marvel shirt. Working five days a week meant that I would wear all of my shirts in a three week span, besides the Superman shirt. That one, being my personal favorite, I saved for days when I really needed luck on my side, such as my first day as a Chicago Police Officer. That day conveniently was the day of my first arrest, when I chased down a man who was assaulting a young woman when I was wrapping up my first patrol shift. Chicago is arguably the most dangerous city inAmerica, with 450 homicides in a year and street crime beyond control. If any city was in need of a hero it was Chicago, and I was ready to be the hero the city needed. So why have I been going on about superheroes and shirts for all this time?Well there’s two reasons for that. Every police officer carries three things: a badge, a gun, and a piece of their identity. Being a police officer isn’t like most other jobs where you can wear a mask for eight hours and clock out. In order to convince the world, and yourself, that you deserve the authority you wield, you have to present yourself to the world as if you’re on duty every waking moment. This makes it fairly easy for one to lose their sense of self, because being in “cop mode” all day leaves little room for time for yourself. Part of the reason so many guys have those good luck charms or perform superstitious rituals is because whatever they carry, be it a tangible object or just an idea, becomes a part of themselves that they always carry with them, in theory never leaving themselves behind. My shirts were essentially like that. My love of superheroes defined my childhood, gave me my first idea of a hero, and indirectly led me on the path to becoming a police officer, so it’s easy to see how much my identity is tied into superheroes. Every time I had CaptainAmerica or Superman under my police shirt I was carrying with me a part of my humanity that I couldn’t afford to lose. I felt like it was important to talk about, so that’s the first reason I talked so much about the shirts. The second reason was I wanted to stall, because I’m dreading having to talk about what happened on May 19 th . When I first entered the Chicago Police Department I was initially just a patrolman. Six months into my rookie year I was assigned to the CPDYouthViolence Strike Force. TheYouthViolence Strike Force is otherwise known as the “gang unit” because most of our duty revolved around investigating and preventing gang related crime in the Fuller Park neighborhood. Our primary targets were the Latin Kings, the largest Hispanic street gang in the country. With 45,000 members nationwide, 25,000 in the city of Chicago alone, it would be impossible to take down the entire operation. However, whenever we can take out one of their high-ranking leaders we pounce on the opportunity. This time we had the chance to take down Fuller Park Chapter leader Felipe Mariel; to give you a short summary of this man, if he were off the streets there would be at least 50 less murders in Chicago, such is his influence as a leader of the Kings. He and his associates were spotted buying $1,800,000 worth of cocaine over the course of a year, which gave us probable cause for a sting operation. Sting operations on large scale gangs are incredibly challenging because they are always prepared for a sting. Mariel and his men were holing up in a cul de sac, which can only be raided by coming in through the street, and that kind of openness is not ideal. In addition, the one entrance was heavily surveilled by two guards, and each guard was swapped out at different times so we never had any moment of zero surveillance. We decided our best course of action was to enter late at night, around midnight, when the guard closest to our point of entry would be leaving. That still meant the other guard would have been watching us, which was less than ideal but if we moved quickly and with precision we thought we could have made it. The only way this would have worked was with all the luck in the world, so to me this was the perfect day for my Superman shirt. What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t have known, was that this would be the second to last time I wore that shirt, or any of my other superhero shirts for that matter, while on duty for the rest of my career. Looking back at what happened I can tell you that there were two mistakes made that day. Our first mistake was getting spotted by one of the King’s guards (though even with all of our preparation we knew that was a likely outcome), and the instant he spotted us he ran back to the main house to alert the rest of the gang. Our second mistake was not retreating once we saw the first King come out brandishing a pistol. Our first instinct was to approach the house and make an attempt to subdue the King, but we were quickly outmanned as twenty gangbangers emerged from the house, including our main target, Felipe Mariel. My partner (Officer Hart), myself, and the driver of the second car barely had enough time to take cover behind See Superman on page 44