Free Hero To Zero 2nd edition by Zach Fortier Page A

happy, because they had already established in their minds who he was before he ever met them. Scott watched the rioters and thought, “So that’s how I fight back?”
    The next day, he and some friends were playing on a corner when one of the city cops drove past. The cop stopped and waved. Scott unleashed all of his frustration on the cop, and started calling him names and throwing rocks at the police car. The cop was dumbfounded, and then really pissed off. He jumped out and started to chase Scott and his friends. He didn’t catch them, and Scott said that for the first time, he felt empowered. It felt great to fight back against “them,” the authority figures.
    Several weeks went by, and Scott was on the same corner, playing alone. A car pulled up and he looked up. It was the cop he had thrown rocks at a couple of weeks earlier. The cop got out of the police car and said, “Hey kid! Come here for a minute.”
    Scott could tell by the cop’s body language he was angry. Scott stood his ground, already stubborn beyond belief. The cop grabbed him and beat the hell out of him, right there on the corner, in broad daylight. Scott said that all he could do was try to cover his face to protect it from the blows raining down on him—and then suddenly he was air born, flying through the air into a nearby shrub. The cop got back in his police car and left. Scott said it took him several minutes to get out of the shrubs, as he was pretty badly beat up.
    The incident left an impression on him. Cops were the enemy, one of many enemies in his life. Scott said that as an adult, he understood that he had caused the incident, but he still hated cops, period. I was stunned at the story but even more perplexed at how this angry kid had become a cop himself.
    Scott said that he had gone into the military after high school, and that the recruiter he talked to showed him a recruiting video of a military cop working on a base. The cop had complete autonomy, and was basically left alone unless something went to shit. Then he would arrive at the scene, deal with the problem, and leave. Basically, the cop was in charge, and no one was in charge of him .
    Something clicked in Scott’s head. Here was the answer he was looking for. Instead of always fighting authority figures, he would become an authority figure. He signed up and spent the next six years in the military as a military cop. The fit was perfect. He had found his niche. A huge contradiction …a cop who hated cops. But it worked for Scott.
    Scott excelled in the military, and for the first time in his life he was out from under Mike’s toxic shadow. Scott received a couple of medals for excellence, and two early promotions. When his enlistment was up, Scott came home and jumped through the hoops required to become a civilian cop. But he had forgotten what it was like to be in Mike’s shadow, and was soon to get a reality check.
    Everywhere he applied for cop jobs he had to answer the question, “Are you related to Mike Preston?” When he answered yes, the interview would go south, and it would be obvious that he was not getting hired. But Scott was determined to prove himself.
    Eventually, he was hired—by the same department where Mike was. Scott said that he purposely chose to apply there to show everyone that he was not Mike. That there was one Preston who would work his ass off, and do more than talk.
    Where Mike applied and was rejected for almost every specialty in the department, Scott doubled down his efforts and did get accepted onto the SWAT team. He was a K-9 handler as well. He got assigned to Detectives, and also had a very intense and productive run in the Gang unit. Scott hopped from specialty to specialty; some units even tried to recruit him into their unit. The narcotics sergeant and lieutenant both asked him to come to their strike force; he told me he’d refused.
    Scott felt, as I did, that the narcotics unit had been compromised, and that there was too