No incident to report CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Alicia's cross the hall friend is another single mom, a tall thin young African American woman named Shameka . Shameka works data entry for Silverman Sacks on Liberty Street on the graveyard shift. She actually works for a temporary employment agency but she's been assigned to Silverman Sacks for over a year now. Anyhow, she gets out of work at four in the morning and heads straight home. She walks to the subway with some other women and she usually catches the crosstown bus at Lexington and One Sixteenth and gets on the elevator and starts being a mommy. Latoya, her five year old daughter, sleeps over at Alicia's. It's like a tag team. Shameka takes over in the daytime. She dreams of deep uninterrupted sleep and someone, anyone, to help out. In the daytime. Thank God Hector is not too much of a rough-houser and Latoya gets along fine with him.
Pleasant Avenue Houses is one of the safest Housing Project in the city. The cops have cameras in the elevators, the staircases, the hallways and the lanes, the playgrounds and parking lots outside. You never see a routine Housing Police patrol but maybe that's because there isn't all that much crime.
They keep the maintenance so-so to okay at Pleasant Houses. Each building has 21 floors of apartments, thirty-two apartments on a floor. Boys, of course, will be boys. What man who has grown up as a latchkey kid can say that he never did shit when he was a boy? And so some boys will fool around in the elevators. Stuff like pressing every stop, climbing up through the escape hatch and stopping the elevator.
So sometimes the elevators break down from both use and abuse. Alicia believes that the contractors that fix the elevators when they break down don't do a good job on purpose so that they can come back because it's all about the Benjamins. Usually it's just one elevator is out of order. That leaves one good elevator. Sometimes it's both elevators that are not working. This morning it was both elevators.
What goes for the elevators also goes for the building entrances. Sometimes the lock doesn't lock so just anyone can get into the building.
A trifecta of bad luck
This early morning saw a trifecta of bad luck. No running elevator, an unlocked entrance and an unwanted visitor to the building.
Shameka climbed a stairway up into that bad luck. An arm grabbed her from behind on the fifteenth floor and she was flung down to the fourteenth floor. She screamed. Her blouse had been torn open and her skirt had been lifted up. Shameka had been raped and battered. This was duly recorded on two NYPD video cameras, so they know that it really happened.]
NYPD Rubber Gun Squad, guardians of public safety in the projects.
Here is a partial transcript of the video of NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau Detective Chip Santiago interviewing Patrolman Eric Budos:
CS: At five twelve am or 0512 hours on the morning of August 14, 2010 where were you assigned to be?
EB: I was assigned to Housing District J's video cam watch.
CS: Where is that assignment located? Is it an outdoor post?
EB: It's an indoor post located in room 3J55 at NYPD Tech Center. But I...
CS: Were you at your post at that time?
EB: No, I was standing in front of Tech Center having a smoke.
CS: And sipping some beer from a concealed can?
EB: No, it was soda, a Doctor Zip Sugar Free.
CS: And the can of soda, was it exposed or concealed?
EB I don't remember.
CS: We have a video of you standing there at that time. You are depicted holding a brown paper bag with what looks like a beverage can inside it. Did you know that the entire building and the space around it is under surveillance?
EB Yes.
CS: Had you been properly relieved of your post when you left it?
EB: Ummmmm what do you mean?
CS: Had your supervisor given you permission to leave your post. Had she put another officer in your post to cover it?
EB: No, I didn't know you have to get permission for that.
CS: When was your duty at the post over for that morning?
EB: Six hundred hours.
CS: And what did you do at six hundred hours?
EB: I made a final entry into my log book.
CS: And what did that entry say? I mean the one you wrote?
EB: No incident to report.
CS: For how long have you been assigned to the video squad?
EB: Since April 12 1995.
CS: How did you get this assignment? Did you put in for it?
EB: No.
CS: Was there an event that resulted in you obtaining this assignment?
EB: I don't know.
CS: Are you authorized to carry a firearm?
EB: No.
CS: Have you noticed if any of the other patrol personnel carry weapons on this post?
EB: Only the sergeants and the brass.
CS: That's odd, isn't it? I mean for a cop not to be allowed to carry a weapon? Do you know why you aren't allowed to carry a weapon?
EB: I don't know. This isn't fair. What's the big deal here?
Here's a partial transcript of the video of Internal Affairs Bureau Detective Alphonso Alphonse interviewing patrolwoman Janice Steele:
AA: What was your assignment at 0512 hours on the morning of august 14, 2010?
JS: I was assigned to sweep building one staircases from bottom to top and top to bottom staircases A and B in Building One.
AA: Did you understand that assignment when it was given to you?
JS: Yes Sergeant Schwartz told me that Lieutenant Ramirez was pissed at me so I was going to do some climbing for a while.
AA: Did you carry out that assignment?
JS: No.
AA: Why?
JS: It wasn't fair to make me climb all those steps. The elevator was broken anyhow.
AA: And what did a broken elevator, two broken elevators in fact, have to do with this?
JS: Usually patrol personnel on this assignment take an elevator to the top floor and walk down the stairs, not up them. The team splits up one does stairway A the other does stairway B.
AA: What was your assignment on August 13th?
JS: Staircase sweep bottom to top, top to bottom in Building Two at Pleasant Avenue PJ's.
AA: Did you perform that sweep?
JS: I don't recall.
AA: Did you make any official entry into any record regarding the sweep of building one on the 14th of August?
JS: I don't recall. I must have.
AA hands a document to JS.
AA: Does this look familiar?
JS: It looks a little like my handwriting. I'm not sure.
AA: Can you read me the words over the signature?
JS: It says: Sweep complete. No incident to report.
Shameka Jones spent three days and three nights in Metropolitan Hospital trauma ward. If you know your New York history, there once was an Hispanic looking white young woman who was attacked and left bleeding in Central Park. She had no identification on her. Being a person of dark complexion (for a Caucasian) it was assumed that the Central Park Jogger was a Puerto Rican woman and she was taken by the ambulance crew to Metropolitan Hospital. When the woman's identity was uncovered (non Latina white) Mayor Slim was told about this and he is said to have blown a fuse and he ordered her to be sent to "A decent hospital." I don't know if that's really what happened, it's just something that some people believe they heard on the news. Actually Metropolitan is pretty good especially for trauma.
The next day Shameka went to the Special Victims/Sex Crime Unit Office uptown on Broadway. A detective looked up from his coffee cup and told her that the case belonged to Detective Colon. Colon was on vacation and the detective didn't know when Colon was coming back. "The best thing for you to do is call in every day till you catch her and make an appointment."
"But I was raped and beaten and thrown down the stairs in front of two police video cameras. Don't you have any questions for me to answer? Don't you have anything to say to me?"
"Lady didn't a cop just tell you what you have to do?"
Shameka sat there for a minute pulling herself together.
Back home Andrea had cooked a Puerto Rican favorite asopao, a gumbo, thicker than a soup but not quite a stew. Andrea's asopao is a favorite with Shameka and the kids. (Andrea is quite a cook but The Greek prefers that she wait tables. She's a magnet for business.)
Shameka told about the visit she had with the Special Victims Squad.
Of course everyone at the table commiserate with Shamika. And of course what concerned everybody is the fact that there is a rapist on the loose, probably in the neighborhood.
Billy had an idea as to what to do next. He said "I know this sounds crazy but I want a bunch of people go back to Special Victims Squad with Shameka. I even want to ask the quiet lady to come with us. She has a hookup you know with the city council or something. The best one to ask her to help is Shamika."
Billy was alone in his plan. Next day Shameka called Special Victims asking for Detective Colon. Colon was put on the phone after a few minutes on hold. Shamika explained who she was and what she was calling about.
"Oh yeah. I remember, that illegal entry and criminal mischief case. Those are misdemeanors you know. We transferred the case to your Precinct."
"Criminal Mischief? Criminal Mischief? I was raped. I was thrown down the stairs. I was in the hospital for 3 days. This must be a mistake. You got me confused with someone else"
" I interviewed you while you were in the hospital myself. You never said anything about being raped and there is no rape kit. Let me look it up now. Yeah, Detective Fino has the case at the 25th precinct. if you think you have any information that will help the investigation you should get in touch with her."
"But they had me all doped up in the hospital. How could you interview me?"
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