Paul Bacon (0:00)

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Dan Kennedy (0:29)

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Bakara La Genre (1:40)

Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. Our first story this week is from storyteller Paul Bacon and it was told live here in New York City in 2006. 7 Such a fun story. The theme of the night was the Late Late show stories of Life After Dark. Here's Paul Bacon.

Paul Bacon (2:08)

Okay, so I used to work as a police officer here in New York City. I was a patrolman in Harlem at the 28th Precinct and I worked the 4pm to midnight tour. And at the end of one of these tours I was told at the very last minute that I had another tour to do from midnight until 8am so it would be a double shift. This is the kind of thing that happened when you're a rookie. You always get the last minute crappy job. So I got in my patrol car and I drove down to One Police Plaza, which is the police headquarters in downtown Manhattan. It's a large campus. It has lots of different security booths around the outside and my job was to sit in one of those security booths all night, which sounds easy enough, but I was dead tired. And I also had. I had a partner that I was going to be in that booth with the whole night. And we had two different meal times. His was at 2am mine was at 3am so that there'd always be somebody at that post because, you know, we're basically guarding the police department at this point. And so there has to be somebody on there. And so. And also as to what constitutes a meal hour at 2 or 3am it's, of course, as you might expect, a sleeping hour, but that's totally prohibited. Nobody. We're not allowed to sleep, but of course everybody did. And the punishment if we were to get caught for sleeping on the job, it's a minor violation, but the job, they take away your vacation days. It's like the worst thing they could do to you when you're working as a cop, to have to work more as a cop. So if you're late one day, maybe they'll take one vacation day. If you get caught sleeping, you know, they take a few vacation days. And I imagined that getting caught sleeping when your job was to watch the fortress, I figured that would be like five, ten vacation days. So when it came my turn to sleep at 3am I got in my patrol car and I just sort of parked in a parking lot that was next to the security booth down a hill and around a corner a little bit, and I found a slot between two other police cars. And I just parked, parked in there. And I thought, you know, nobody's going to see me. This is going to be fine. I'm in the tall cotton here. Nobody's going to see me. But excuse me, I just need some water. So I'm going to try to sleep in my car, but I can't sleep in the front seat because I can't sleep sitting up. I've never been able to sleep on airplanes. So I figured, well, you know what? I can stretch out in the backseat. So I get in the back seat, close the door, lay down on my side, and I'm out like that because I've been so tired. And I set my alarm for 4am but like I do sometimes, I woke up just a little bit before my alarm, and it was like. It was a chilling revelation inside of a dream. I didn't realize until I dreamed about it what I had done is I had locked myself inside because this is the backseat of a police car. And I knew that what it's for because I Transported prisoners before in the back there. I know that we always have to let them out. And there are door handles. There are door handles on both sides, but they're purely decorative. And if my partner could see me, if I could get his attention, he could just come let me out. It's really easy. But he's close enough that I can see him and I can see what he's doing. But he's far enough away that he can't hear me screaming at him, and he can't even hear me banging on the windows. And I get my flashlight off my belt and I try to. Try to catch his attention, you know, just lighting up the side of his face. He's not seeing anything. Maybe he's sleeping, too. Basically, he's out of the picture. So I think, well, usually when I'm in trouble, I go right for my radio when I reach for my radio, but it's not on my hip. I had left the radio in the front seat when I went to the back to sleep, because I knew I was going to lay on my side. So I just took off my radio and my gun and I placed them in the passenger seat. And I can see them. I can look through the compartment. There's plexiglass. I can see my gun and my radio. The two most important things in my whole life right now. Out of reach. And about this time, a Pepsi distributor truck pulls up in front of the parking lot. And I think, oh, this is great. I'm going to be safe. So when the driver gets out of the cab, I knock really hard on the window, and I get his attention right away. And he looks in my direction. Now, remember, it's really dark where I am. It's just like a darkened parking lot. And he doesn't see me. I can tell that even though I'm making a lot of noise. So I take the flashlight again and I point it like this. This. This makes the man very scared. And there goes my only way out, because he gets in his truck and he drives away. I realize I can see, you know, now I can see. I should have shined the light on my past. Like I'm a police officer on my shield. But no, I'm the face. It must have looked like a Jack o'lantern Never saw him again. And I didn't think I was going to see anybody else, because it was like. It was like now, four in the morning, it's the financial district, so it's Sunday. There's nobody out. So I do have my cell phone on my belt. And I pick it up and I think, well, it'd be great if I had my partner's phone number up in the booth. Maybe I could wake him up with a little ringtone. But I don't even. I just met him that night for the first time. I don't have his cell phone number. I can't call him in the booth because I don't know the booth number because I don't work in this precinct. But I think maybe I could call my own precinct, okay, up in Harlem. It's about eight miles away. And I'd have to really sweet talk somebody into coming in and coming all the downtown to come. Let me out of the car. And I know that if I tell anybody what's happened to me, I'm never going to hear the end of it because I'm already a rookie. So, you know, you get a hard time just for showing up. And then I also happen to be kind of a liberal. And in the police department, you know, being a liberal, it's like it's impossible for you to do your job and be a liberal at the same time. It's like I'm a tailor with no hands. And I get a lot of flack for this, constant flack for being. But I was a closet liberal. You know, that's what they were always trying to out me as a liberal because I was always trying to hide it because I just wanted to blend in. So I know I've already got these two strikes against me. Two strikes against me. So the third strike, they're getting locked in the back of the car. It's gonna be, forget about it. I don't even want to call the precinct. I'd rather just perish in the back of this car. And there is one number that I can call. And if I call this number, you know, it's gonna be guaranteed somebody's gonna come help me. But I never really wanted to call 911 as a cop. It didn't seem very professional somehow. But I have no other choice. So I. So I called 911 and I let it ring. And I'm like almost thinking like, God, I hope they don't pick up, you know, but they do. And I say, first off, I say who I am and that I try to sound very calm. I just need a unit to come to my location. Just non emergency, just one car, please. And she says, no problem, officer, what's your location? And I realize I don't know my location. A cop that doesn't know his location it's really embarrassing. I don't know because I don't work in this precinct and I can't see any street signs, but I can see that Pace University. I can see it, I can see the logo on the wall. And I say, I'm near there. And she says, that's fine, that's fine. But one more thing, Officer, I just need this for my report. What's your situation? I say, operator, I was hoping to not have to tell you that. Do I have to tell you? She's like, yes. And she's like, oh, wait, I know. And she seems to get it. She seems like she thinks she knows. She's like, oh, did you lock yourself out of your car? I said, no, I'm locked inside. And she laughs just like that. And. But immediately she's like very, she's very genteel about it. She immediately puts me on hold so I don't have to hear her laughing at me. But the thing is, when she comes back from hold, I hear other laughing. I can hear the whole audience laughing. And she's obviously told everybody in 911, I envision this high tech room with all these operators, these little headsets, and now they're all laughing about me. So, yeah, so I tell her and she's like, don't worry about it, just relax. And I say, okay, fine. And then I hang up the phone and I go, the hard part is over. You know, that was embarrassing. I think that's the worst of it. And then about a minute later, I hear a police siren off in the distance and then another police siren. And I start to see flashing lights, you know, bouncing off of buildings and I'm. What's happened? So I called 911 again and I have to explain my whole situation. I'm that guy who's at the. And they say, please hold. When they come back from hold, they say, oh, well, Officer, your request for an additional unit was transmitted as a 1013. And at 1013 I say, that's the radio code for officer down. That's like a cop has a knife at his throat or he's laying bleeding in the street and he's bleeding into the gutter. That's a 1013, not locked in the back of my car. And not only is this embarrassing because it's blown it up way out of proportion. There's no way I'm going to get away with this now. But it's really dangerous because cops driving around, coming to each other's rescue, that's their favorite thing to Do. It's like the only thing they like about being a cop is when another cop's in trouble and they can rush to their location because there's nothing to stop them. They can just drive as fast as they want. And now this is all happening on my behalf. And I have a vision of, like, somebody getting killed or hurt. And the next day it's going to be on the COVID of the Daily News and the Post. It'll be my ID picture next to some dead person now. And I just think this is all going to be my fault. And so I beg the operator, please call off the 1013. And she says she will. And then I hang up. And I notice that my partner in the booth, he's actually. All this activity has actually gotten him up. And he's moving around now and he's coming down the hill. And I can tell he can't see which car I'm in because he never really paid attention to where I went when I left for meal. So I take the radio off, or I'm sorry, I take my flashlight off the belt and I shine it like I was doing it to before when he didn't see me. I'm, like, really trying to get his attention. And he takes his radio flashlight off and he shines it back at me and goes like this. Like I'm, like having some kind of fun flashlight time with him or something. And he just turns around and walks toward the booth. And I knock on the window. Jesus Christ, I'm still fucking locked in here. Let me out. And he gets the point. He walks down the hill and it takes him two seconds. He just reaches down, lifts up my door handle. That's all I needed, and I'm free. But I'm not exactly in the clear yet, you see, because it's not for another five hours that I learn what my partner then tells me, which is that I'm not going to get in trouble for this. Nobody's going to find out. He insists, because he says, the only person that's going to put you on report for this is your sergeant. And if you get in trouble, your sergeant gets in trouble for something called failure to supervise. Right? So he's not going to get you in trouble. And as for your homies up in the 2 8, they're not going to find out either, because these cops down in this precinct, everybody knows. Now, everybody knows in the first Precinct because it went over the radio. But he says they look out for their sergeant here. They really like this guy. So they're not going to tell him. And then. So when I'm in line to get my overtime slip signed out at the end of the night, where all the other cops are like, oh, I'm gonna make so much money off this. I have to be very contrite and very penitent when I walk up to the sergeant and I hand him my slip, and he looks at my name and he recognizes, oh, that's the kid that was locked in his car. And he signed it, and he goes, here you go, Bacon. You're a legend. That's the only ribbing I get. That's the only ribbing I get. And I know that Nobody in the 28 precincts found out, because I never heard about it, because if one person found out, they'd all find out, and then they'd all dump on me. So they never find out and they never will. Unless anybody here from the 28 from my old squad. I didn't think so. Okay, so my secret's safe, and that's my story. Thanks.