Advertiser 2 (24:59)
How you doing? My name's Steve Osborne. I was a New York city cop for 20 years. Now, a few years back, I was a sergeant in the fugitive division. Now our job was to go out and hunt down and catch the most wanted fugitives. This was the greatest job in the world. I love this stuff. I used to love hunting these guys down, tracking them down wherever they would Try and hide, you know, we'd find them, we'd catch them, jump them, handcuff them and drag them in. It was loads of fun. I once tracked the guy down to the maternity ward while his wife was giving birth. Now before you go ooh and ah and all of that, he shot five people. When you start shooting that many people, I'll get you wherever I can get you. You know, all's fair. Now, we would start work at 4:30 in the morning and I would come in. And the reason that we did that was because we wanted to catch you in bed, sleeping. You were tired, you were groggy, and you were less likely to go for a gun or a knife. Try something else stupid. Now, when we would come into work, I'd grab my coffee, I'd sit at my desk and there'd be a stack of warrants on my desk, like five, six, seven of them, the guys that we were going after that day. And they'd usually be in priority order. The worst guy would be on top. Now the guy on top this day was this kid by the name of Hector. Now, at the age of 26, Hector was already a hardcore bad guy. He'd been locked up a whole load of times, everything from like smoking weed to assault to robbery, criminal possession of a weapon. And his latest collar, an attempted murder. That was the one that I was concerned with. Turns out he gets into a beef with a guy, pulls out a gun and shoots him. The guy didn't die, so attempted murder. He gets arrested. You know, he goes through the system and he goes to his arraignment. And the Bronx being the Bronx, the judge lets him out on bail with a return date of 30 days later. Well, surprise, surprise, 30 days comes and goes and Hector's nowhere to be found. Judge gets pissed off, issues a warrant for his arrest. Now he's my problem. Now I gotta go find him and bring him in. Now, every warrant that comes, it comes in a package. There's the warrant itself, signed off by the judge. There's all the guys, arrest reports. And stapled on top is a mugshot. Now you've all seen police mugshots, you know, a guy standing there with the numbers across his chest. It's the worst possible photo that anybody could ever take. I don't think Pamela Anderson, topless, could take a good mugshot, you know, maybe hall, but really, I don't think anybody else. So I'm looking at this kid's photo and he's sitting there and he's looking at me. You know, he's got the numbers across his chest and the profile with the numbers, and he's got these. And I could just tell by looking at him. I've been doing this for a long time. I made hundreds and hundreds of arrests. And I could just tell by looking at this kid's face, he is going to be a pain in the ass. He had these little black beady eyes staring at me. And he had these high, bony cheekbones and his pointy cheek and his scraggly goatee and his pockmark face. And he had a scar under his eye. It looked like he had gotten cut in a fight. Believe me, it was a face that only a mother could love. So now it's time to get to work. So I go through my checklist. I got my vest, gun, backup gun, handcuffs, flashlight, all the tools of the trade, everything you need for hunting down bad guys. So I get my team together. I got six very talented detectives, and we head out the door. And I got that spring in my step, like, I love this stuff. So we head over to his building, real bad building. I mean, I've been there a couple times before. Every time we go there, there's always a problem. Either they're throwing bricks and bottles off the roof at us or perps are fighting with us. It's always a problem. But it was early in the morning and everything was quiet. So I was hoping to slip in, get this guy, and get the hell out before anybody even knew we were there. We go through the front door, we go into the lobby, and it's a dump. There's bullet holes in the wall, there's graffiti on the walls, there's cracked vials on the floor, empty beer bottles, urine in the corner. The place is a mess. So he lives in apartment 4B. So we figure out the B apartments face front. So I tell two of my guys, cover the front window. Now, you might think, like, who would jump out a fourth floor window and try to escape, but I'm telling you, desperate men do desperate things. And I guarantee you, if he jumps out that window and kills himself, his family's going to be on the 6:00 news that night, swearing to God that I threw him out the window and trying to sue the city for $50 million. So two guys covering the window might save me a little bit of aggrav. We go up to the apartment and it's like it's choreographed. We do this every day. I take one side of the door, one of my guys takes the other side of the door. And we listen. And we're listening for anything, you know, voices, tv, radio, playing kids, a dog barking, anything that might give us a clue, you know, what we're walking into. So we listen for a minute. Nothing. Everything's quiet. So it's time to hit this thing. Now, the last thing I always do before we hit a warrant is I take the mug shot out and I study it. You know, I look at that face, and you just commit it to memory. Because a lot of times you go into these apartments, it's dark, there could be a lot of confusion. The family may be fighting with us. Somebody could be going for a gun or a knife. And there may be a brother, a cousin, an uncle, a nephew, somebody that looks just like them. So you want to know exactly what your bad guy looks like. So I take out the photo, and I'm studying it, and I'm looking at it, and I see them little black bottom, beady eyes staring at me. And that pockmark face and that goatee and bony cheekbones and that bony chin and the scar under his eye. So I take the photo, I hand it off to the next guy. He does the same thing. Everybody passes it around, and I stick it back in my pocket. Now it's time to hit this thing. Now, you might think that we knock the door down, but we really don't. We knock. You know, if I have to, you know, I got a battering ram and sledgehammers and stuff in the car. I'll go down and get it and I'll knock your door down. But usually knocking works. So I knock on the door, listening. Nothing. I knock a little louder, knock a little louder. Finally, I hear a woman's voice on the other side of the door. You know, who is it? What do you want? So we tell the police, we got a warrant. Open the door. So I hear on the other side of the door, click, click, click, click, click. You know, she's got like 20 locks on this door. As she's doing that, you know, we're turning on our flashlights, we're unholstering our guns. We're getting ready. The door opens up, and there's this little Hispanic woman standing there with this pink fluffy robe and these little pink fluffy slippers. She's like late 40s, early 50s. And I tell her, I says, police, we got a warrant. We're coming in. And we kind of push our way past her. So we go into the apartment and we do our thing. And we're going from room to room. We're tearing the place apart. You know, we're flipping up beds, we're tearing clothes out of the closets. And the reason that you do this is because these guys will hide in the most. On the tiniest, most unbelievable places. So you gotta be thorough. So we're tearing the place apart looking for them. No sign of them. I go back out to the living room, and I grab mom, and I says, ma, I says, where's Hector? I gotta talk to him. And she looks at me with this kind of, like, confused look on her face, and she says to me, she goes, my son's dead. So my first reaction is, bull. Don't lie to me. You might think that I'm being a. But I'm not. Believe me when I tell you I've had little old ladies with rosary beads and Bibles in their hands, swearing to God that they haven't seen their little Johnny in months. Meanwhile, the. Behind the bedroom door with a butcher knife, waiting for us to come in. You know, it's dangerous work, and I trust nobody. So I tell her, I said, look, you're not helping him. Tell me where he is. Don't make me hunt him down out in the street. That's how things happen. Tell me where he is or get him to turn himself in. With that, the daughter comes out of the bedroom and she grabs her mother and they kind of like interlock their arms, and they kind and like hugging each other. They're scared. They're nervous. You know, it's understandable. The cops are busted in their house early in the morning, tearing the place apart. So I said to the girl, I said, where's your brother? I gotta talk to him. And she looked right at me and she goes, my brother's dead. She goes, he was shot and killed last week down the block. And with that, she goes over to the refrigerator and she gets this business card, and she hands it to me. And she says, here, talk to this detective. He's got the case. He knows everything. So I take the card and I hand it to one of my guys. I said, make a call. So we make a couple of phone calls, and sure enough, everything checks out. Hector was a homicide victim. About a week earlier, he got shot and killed down the block. So everything checks out. So I tell Mom, I says, look, I'm very sorry for your loss. You know, I'm very sorry the way we had to bust in, the way we did. But, you know, we had a warrant and this is the way we do things. And I go on to explain. I says, look, I'LL go down to court, I'll get the warrant vacated. I'll make sure that nobody comes and bothers you again, you know, I'm very sorry. And with that, it's time for us to go. You know, in reality, I got five or six more hectares. We're going after that morning. But before we leave, I take the mugshot out of my pocket. Just want to make sure there's no mistaken identity. You know, we're talking about the same kid. We're in the right apartment. So I take the mug shot and I show it to her. And I says, is this your son? She takes one look at the photo, and tears just start rolling down her face. And she starts sobbing like that, really like, deep, mournful sob, like only a mother crying over her child would. So I believe her. I mean, obviously, this is her son. This is the apartment. You know, we're all on the same page. We're all talking about the same kid. So I take the photo, I stick it back in my pocket, and I tell her again, look, I'm very sorry for your loss. And we turn to leave. And as I turn to leave, she says to me, can I see the picture again? Now I'm a little bit confused. I'm like, this. This picture. Now I'm confused. I'm like, didn't she get a good look at it before? Is she not sure? I'm not sure where this thing is going now. So I take the photo out and I show it to her. And she reaches out and she takes it from my hand, and she clutches it to her chest, and it's like she was hugging him. And she says to me, can I keep this picture? So I'm like, that picture? You want to keep that picture? So I tell her, I says, look, you know, I says, you know, it's police department of property. I says, we don't. We don't normally give them out to the public. You know, we don't hand these things out as souvenirs. So she goes on to tell me this story that she has no photos of him. He was never around, you know, his old adult life. He was either out tearing up the streets or he was in jail. He never really came around for Mother's Day or Christmas or anything like that. And she had no photos of him. She had nothing to remember him by. So when she tells me this story, I feel terrible for her, you know, I'm like a hardcore guy, but my heart's breaking for her a little bit, you know? And she seemed like A nice lady. I mean, this building was a dump. And the apartment, she kept it clean, you know, she put that thick plastic on the sofa, you know, so that, you know, wouldn't get dirty. And she wasn't cursing me out like a lot of other mothers do, you know, blaming me because their son's got a warrant, he's got to go back to jail. She just seemed like a nice lady who lost her son to the streets, which in that neighborhood happened a lot. So I told her, I says, okay. I says, if you got nothing else to remember this kid by, go ahead, be my guest. It's yours. And she reaches out, she shakes my hand, and she's thanking me. And with that, she's clutching her robe shut, and she had those little pink fluffy slippers, and she shuffles across the room, and she goes over to this bookcase against the wall that had all these family photos, you know, in these nice silver and gold frames. You know, there was grandpa in his World War II uniform and wedding photos and graduation pictures, you know, with the cap and the gown. And very lovingly and very tenderly, like only a mother would do, she took that mug shot and she placed it right in the middle of those family photos. Thank you very much.
