Great article I saw today. Shows a side of law enforcement work that makes me appreciate our LEOs all the more.

Angel in Shoe Leather
Learning from a street cop
Steve Cohen
December 24, 2017

As an attorney, I’m supposed to be tactful by training and tradition. But “knucklehead” is the kindest and most diplomatic word I can use to describe both my client and his supposed adversary—the mother of his baby. What brought them together—sadly but not surprisingly—was child support.

These two “kids” are unmarried, barely educated, and grindingly poor. My client, the father, is now in the military, and soon to be shipped overseas. All told, this situation argued against a successful outcome. And now we were in Family Court, a cathedral of misery. What could possibly go wrong?

We were there to get a child-support order in place. And if we were really lucky, we might also get the 21-year-old parents to agree on some workable parenting plan—not even a custody arrangement. All we were seeking was a simple agreement about how often and where the father would spend time with his child. But as the two one-time lovers sat down on the waiting room bench, a great freeze of hostility descended on them. They wouldn’t even look at each other.

I was representing the father on a pro bono basis, through one of the many volunteer programs that lawyers participate in to help poor clients. The mother didn’t have a lawyer with her, but she was accompanied by her own mother: a smart, tough woman who would have been a formidable opponent even if the law had been at issue. But it wasn’t; this was about getting two 21-year-old kids to act like adults.

My client, the baby’s father, said that he wanted to do the right thing, not just financially, but as a participant in his son’s life. Anyway, the money part was easy: the father was serving in the military, and he wanted the support payments—which the judge would set, based on a simple formula—to be automatically withdrawn from his paycheck and sent to the mother.

The hard part would be visitation. The parents sat on a bench with their backs to one another, separated not just by three feet of dead air, but by a cloud of visceral recriminations, fears, and uncertainties that I couldn’t begin to understand. I couldn’t even get them to begin to articulate their concerns about each other’s parenting skills or home environments. It was looking to be a long, sad day.

Then, from over my shoulder, I heard a whisper. “Can I give it a try?”

In addition to meeting my client for the first time that morning, I had also just met my legal intern: a thirtysomething NYPD officer in his third year of law school. In New York, law students are required to complete 50 hours of pro bono work before they qualify for the bar.

Clearly, I was far from getting these two late-adolescents to make any progress on a parenting plan, so I was happy to let my new intern take a shot. With a confidence borne of scores—perhaps hundreds—of doorway encounters and interventions, “Tony” spoke to them with a kindness, toughness, and street-smart savvy that could be gained only on the job. Tony was an Iraq War veteran, too, and that helped him connect with the father. For the first time in an hour, both parents started to pay attention.

Tony was good. I’m not sure why I was surprised, but I was. He had none of the pretensions common to interns from prestigious law schools. Instead, he had a quiet seriousness that got these kids to speak, and more important, to listen. Tony wasn’t in uniform (wearing “the bag,” as cops put it). And though he wore a nondescript suit and an uninspired tie, his shoes were meticulously spit-shined. Our problem couple turned their heads—and imperceptibly their bodies—toward him. In a silent moment, Tony turned to me and whispered, “Take the father out into the hall. I want to find out from the mother and grandmother what their real concerns are.”

So, under a pretext, I ushered my client out of the waiting room and down the hallway. When, about five minutes later, we returned, Tony nodded and whispered, “I got it.” In another ten minutes, we had a parenting plan that everyone seemed happy with.

The hearing itself was quick and anticlimactic, albeit confusing to the young parents. Unfortunately, the process wasn’t over. In another room inside the courthouse, the clerk gave the mother a 45-page questionnaire—necessary to get the support payments flowing. Overwhelmed by the paperwork, the mother was ready to bail. And that wouldn’t help my client, who was about to be shipped overseas.

Tony stepped in and began filling out the form for her. Accustomed to the NYPD’s voluminous paperwork, he joked about this form’s unnecessary obtuseness. Again, everyone calmed down. Then it was back up to the courtroom for more paperwork and a different clerk’s confusing next-step instructions. As a group, we schlepped four blocks to the Child Support Enforcement office, a state agency even more depressing and bureaucratic than the courthouse. And again Tony intervened when the clerk wouldn’t speak with the mother and father at the same time—standard operating procedure because warring parents might get into a fight. Standing between them, Tony got the clerk to repeat his instructions slowly, making sure that both mother and father understood the process.

I then had to step in and explain some Old World basics to my client: yes, he had to go to a bank and get what was known as a checkbook. Then he would have to mail the thing—in an envelope, with a stamp—to a Post Office Box in Albany. The twentysomethings seemed to understand, and reasonably asked why this couldn’t be done from their cell phones. Good question.

So, fully six hours after we had arrived at the courthouse, the pieces were in place. We all shook hands, and the mother and father headed north on the avenue, talking to each other for the first time in who knows how long.

I turned to my intern, and thanked him. Not just for defusing a tense situation, but for helping seemingly hostile parties get to “yes.”

“It’s what I do every day as a cop.”

I believed him. As we parted ways, I wondered how we attorneys—we typically see ourselves as professionals with unique knowledge and skills—could learn more from these street-smart men and women who face difficult and often dangerous situations every day. I don’t think there is an easy or practical answer. But I’m grateful that Tony is out there, and hope that most of the 33,000 others in the NYPD are half as good.

Steve Cohen is an attorney in New York, and the author of the forthcoming book, What I Wish I Knew Then: Leadership Lessons for the Generation of Leaders.

Thanks for posting that.

Awesome post CoolRich.

An interesting, and all too rare, facet of the "intern" was that he really had been a "street cop" and saw and talked to people every day.

In most cities these days, the cops are all in patrol cars, isolated from the people they are supposed to help and never interacting until there is a crisis. They don't know the citizens and the citizens don't know them under anything but unpleasant circumstances. Too bad.

quote:

Originally posted by Cycler:
An interesting, and all too rare, facet of the "intern" was that he really had been a "street cop" and saw and talked to people every day.

In most cities these days, the cops are all in patrol cars, isolated from the people they are supposed to help and never interacting until there is a crisis. They don't know the citizens and the citizens don't know them under anything but unpleasant circumstances. Too bad.

Have you ever worked a shift in patrol?

That is not meant as some sort of backhanded insult, it is an honest question.

quote:

Originally posted by Cycler:
An interesting, and all too rare, facet of the "intern" was that he really had been a "street cop" and saw and talked to people every day.

In most cities these days, the cops are all in patrol cars, isolated from the people they are supposed to help and never interacting until there is a crisis. They don't know the citizens and the citizens don't know them under anything but unpleasant circumstances. Too bad.

Spoken like someone whose experience stops at Live PD.

Lol, you beat me to the punch.

quote:

I wondered how we attorneys—we typically see ourselves as professionals with unique knowledge and skills—could learn more from these street-smart men and women who face difficult and often dangerous situations every day. I don’t think there is an easy or practical answer.

Ride-a-long programs. Witness being 'in the shit' for 12 hrs, or 8 or whatever.

The city I used to work for had them. Shouldn't be too difficult to start one.

Great post.

quote:

Originally posted by Cycler:
An interesting, and all too rare, facet of the "intern" was that he really had been a "street cop" and saw and talked to people every day.

In most cities these days, the cops are all in patrol cars, isolated from the people they are supposed to help and never interacting until there is a crisis. They don't know the citizens and the citizens don't know them under anything but unpleasant circumstances. Too bad.

Well, I am.

And I call situations like this "Tuesday"

When I was a kid, at the end of, and immediately after, WW2, living in Brooklyn, my older cousin Sol was my hero. Solomon walked a beat. He knew everyone in the neighborhood, and everybody knew and respected Solly. He was the neighborhood problem solver. Altercations would fizzle out when he appeared. He had the knack of getting people to talk to each other.

I remember him as a big guy with a big smile for everybody. He could be tough if he needed to, but he rarely needed to.

I wanted to be a cop like him, but I got sidetracked when I enlisted in the Navy; my life went in a different direction.

quote:

Originally posted by Cycler:
An interesting, and all too rare, facet of the "intern" was that he really had been a "street cop" and saw and talked to people every day.

In most cities these days, the cops are all in patrol cars, isolated from the people they are supposed to help and never interacting until there is a crisis. They don't know the citizens and the citizens don't know them under anything but unpleasant circumstances. Too bad.

Oh, please. What in the hell do you know about law enforcement in general or patrol specifically? What you see on CNN? I've been a police for fourteen years and have met and know cops all over. From one man departments in towns of a few hundred people to guys in agencies of thousands. By and large, they're all the same. They all care about what they do and where they do it. If they seem removed at times, the biggest single factor is work load. They're in that car because their assigned patrol area is far too large to cover on foot and the next call may be across town anyway

Yeah. We average 20-30 calls for service in a 10 hour shift on patrol. There ain’t much idle time kissing babies in the coffee shop on work days.

But we certainly interact with lots of people, and aren’t sitting in a car all shift.

Awesome article and thank you for posting.

As many of us know, and who have worked patrol, we would love to be able to get out and spend more time with the citizens that live in our patrol beat/sector but unfortunately that is not the case.

I tried to get out of the car as much as I could just to say hello, and see how they are doing. I always made a point to stop and check on the older residents whose families lived far away or because of life could not visit as much as they wanted to.

But we all know the radio and calls never stop.

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
Yeah. We average 20-30 calls for service in a 10 hour shift on patrol. There ain’t much idle time kissing babies in the coffee shop on work days.

But we certainly interact with lots of people, and aren’t sitting in a car all shift.

I'll add to my previous post and yours by saying that good cops never miss an opportunity to use a negative start to foster a good relationship. If I first met you because your boyfriend beat you up, or somebody stole your shit, or I caught you driving drink, there next time I see you, I'm going to ask you how you're doing and what else is going on n

We meet a lot of people under unfortunate circumstances, but we form relationships with them nonetheless. Deal with anybody in the hood, even hardcore guys, and there is a street cop or sometimes a detective that they'll ask about, and it's usually out of some sort of respect.