Do Sergeants Cause Heart Attacks?












             Do Sergeants Cause Heart Attacks?


***by Frank Hickey***

       

     Once upon a time, in a far away land and a nameless city, I check my police patrol car and find a dime on the back seat.
   Everyone is scrutinizing, criticizing and condemning our department. Federal monitors, the Attorney General, the FBI and maybe the
Hungarian Music Copyright Office, for all I know.
  The media joins in the shark feeding frenzy. So do legions of lawyers.
    Maybe some dark agency is setting me up.
   Booking this miserable lost dime will take 30 minutes at least. After the others stop laughing at me.
  But ignoring it might get me suspended for violating one of our four thousand and seventeen unknowable regulations. And sleepless nights.
  Plus some tingling in my cardiac region.
    So, I grit my aging molars and limp into the sergeant's office with a property report plus dime.
    Later, another sergeant, going by the famous last name of X, finds me.
   "Hickey, I wanna shake your hand," Sgt. X spouts. "Booking a dime! That's just great!
  "Also, I got another complaint case to
 investigate," he continues. "You're just a witness, not a suspect. Need your statement."
   "Okay, sarge," I answer, textbook style. "But I gotta check with our defense representative before we talk."
  "Takes too long, Hickey," Sgt. X  says. "If you ask for a defense rep, I'll have to make you a suspect and not just a witness."
 His maneuver violates procedure. It kills my rights. Every cop has the right to a defense rep. We pay eighty bucks a month for our union rights.
   I ask a senior officer about this.
   "He can't threaten ya with that!" the senior yelps.
   "He just did," I say. "And it reminds me that TV and movies get this wrong. Most cops don't die in shootouts. We die from heart attacks.
  "Do you know?" I pontificate. "The average American civilian man scores his first attack at age 65. A police officer, 46."
   The senior shrugs and spits.
  "That same American civilian gotta one percent chance of dying from his first attack," I gas on. "A  cop has a 60 percent chance of checking out
permanent."
 "Hickey, ya tryna get me depressed?" he asks."I know a good defense rep. He'll protect ya. And tell the sergeant to take back his dime."



***Frank Hickey 


Frank Hickey was a cop. Somehow. He writes the Dancing Max Royster crime novels about the world's only ballroom dancing detective.


    

    

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