Steve Osborne - The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop

Im not quite sure how it happened, or even why, but a few months after retiring from the New York City Police Department, I picked up a pad and pen and started writing. Like most cops, I had stories to tell, and for some reason I cant explain, I felt the need to put them on paper. I had no training in writing, other than police reports, but that little voice in the back of my headthe one that kept me safe all those yearswas now nagging at me to tell my stories.

For twenty years my family and friends really didnt understand what I did for a living. It was like I was living a double life, and they only knew half of it. I would go to work early in the evening, and most times I didnt return till early in the morning. Of course they knew I was a copbut what did that mean? Most civilians get their information about police work from the newspapers, which barely get half the story right, or they get it from television shows that are ninety-nine percent pure, out-of-this-world fantasy.

Sometimes I would share some of the funny stuff about the job, but the blood and gore, and especially the danger, I needed to keep to myself. When my wife would call me at work and ask how things were going, I would always tell her I was having a nice quiet night. Even if I was sitting on some dark street, armed with two guns strapped to my hip, waiting for some perp wanted on a homicide to show up so we could jump him. My answer was always the same. Im having a nice quiet night.

Once I was sitting in my office talking to her on the phone and there was a shooting right on the station house block. The sound of gunshots boomed and echoed through my office window, causing me to duck. This might sound unusual, a drive-by shooting right next to the station house, but at the time I was working in the Bronx, and in the Bronx, shit happens. I had to put my hand over the receiver so she wouldnt hear the gunfire and go nuts worrying. When I tried to hang up so I could run outside, she got mad at me. She was busy telling me that the bills were killing us this month and we had to watch the spending. I wanted to tell her that I had to go, because I thought something else just got killed down the block, but I couldnt do that. Instead I think I told her my stomach was upset because I ate some bad rice and beans, and I had to go to the bathroomnow! A few seconds later I was charging down the block, gun in hand, running into who knows what. The credit card bills and the mortgage were going to have to wait.

I wanted to write some of my stories down just in case I dropped dead or I crossed the street one day and got run over by a bus. I didnt want them to die with me. I dont claim to be anything special, and my experience is no different than any other cop out there. I just took the time to write some of it down. When I would get together with my buddies, mostly other retired cops, it wouldnt take long before the tales started flying, and each story was just as incredible as the last.

When I entered the police academy an old-time instructor told me, Kid, you just bought yourself a front-row seat to the greatest show on earth. What he was telling me wasnt anything new. I think every old cop has used that line on every new cop in every city and every small town in every corner of the country. And the reason its used so much is because its trueevery word of it. I dont care if you work in Manhattan or in some tiny village out in the middle of nowhere with just one lawman in it, we all have stories. I wish all of us would put them on paper, because theres nothing funnier or more terrifying than a good cop story.

Like most active cops, Ive forgotten much more than I remembered. When I was in uniform it wasnt unusual to handle twenty jobs a night. And when I was in plainclothes, my team and I would make several felony collars a week, mostly robberies, assaults, and gun arrests. I wish I would have kept a diary or taken more pictures, then maybe I could recall more, but some stories stay with you forever. Some you never forget, no matter how hard you try.

When I was a kid my father was a cop. Not the easiest childhood in the world, but it was interesting. Whenever I would do something bad, and tried lying about it, he was always one step ahead of me. He was used to interrogating murderers, so getting the truth out of me wasnt that difficult. I usually cracked under the pressure in about ten seconds.

I grew up in a no-nonsense blue-collar neighborhood where toughness was valued as much as, or more than, anything else. And in that neighborhood, the old man reigned as king. You either loved him or feared him, and he really didnt care which it was. He was also the neighborhood problem solver. Once some pervert had flashed one of the neighborhood teenage girls and it was brought to his attention. This was the old days, so not everything was adjudicated with an arrest. When I asked him how he handled it, the only thing he said was Hell never do that again. Im not quite sure what that meant, but the guy was never seen or heard from in my neighborhood again.