Free Let’s Get It On! by Big John McCarthy, Bas Rutten Loretta Hunt, Bas Rutten Page B

next. I wanted the experience of teaching my two-year-old son to take a football stance and come at me so I could toughen him up, just as my dad had done with me.
     
    I made it through my one-year probation unfazed and graduated to a full-fledged officer, or P2, then moved to night watch. Everything was going fine for the next few months, until I ran into an issue with a new captain who’d transferred into Southwest. We all called him Nick the Knife because of his awful reputation for stabbing everyone in the back. I thought he wasn’t good at his job, and Southwest went downhill fast because of it.
    My partner was accused of mishandling a suspect when we’d been called to a disturbance at a party. The suspect complained that she’d kicked him. Our supervisors both came to us separately, and we told them the truth: yes, we’d stopped the suspect outside the party and searched him, but other than that, nobody had laid a hand on him.
    Nick the Knife called me into his office. “If you need to change your story now, you won’t get in trouble,” he said. He obviously didn’t believe us.
    I knew he didn’t like my partner. She was a tough cop. Nick didn’t like the fact that she didn’t say nice things about him, so if I altered my story it would clear a path so he could punish her.
    Nick tried a variety of ways to persuade me to squeal on my partner for something she hadn’t actually done. He even brought up my dad. “Just because Ron was who he was doesn’t mean you owe it to others to cover up for them.”
    He also tried to get something out of me by telling me about an experience he’d once had. “This drunk spat on me,” he said, “and I went to hit him. My partner stopped me and said, ‘We don’t do that.’ He handcuffed him, and you know what? My partner was right, and I was wrong.”
    I didn’t know whether I was angrier with being pressured to lie or being forced to listen to his stupid story. “If someone spat on me,” I said, “and I went to do something and my partner tried to stop me, the first thing I’d do is beat the piss out of the person who spat on me. Then I’d beat the piss out of my partner for trying to stop me.” I ripped my badge off and threw it at him. “I don’t want your fucking job. You guys are a bunch of candy asses.”
    As I walked out the door, I realized I’d screwed up in a major way. My temper had gotten the best of me. I had more people than just me to think about. I had a wife and son relying on me.
    I was immediately suspended for forty days with no pay and had to hand in my badge. My case was sent to a board of rights, a committee that would decide if I got to keep my job. Three captains listened to my testimony, and I ended up getting ten days of unpaid suspension for blowing my lid.
     
    Next I was supposed to report to Hollywood Division to work the Prostitution Enforcement Detail (PED), a special assignment. However, when Bob Taylor, captain of Hollywood Division, found out I was coming off a ten-day slap on the wrist, he sent me back out on patrol. I will forever thank Bob for making this decision because it taught me some invaluable lessons.
    On my first day on patrol in Hollywood, my new partner and I pulled over a car after observing it swerving in traffic. The driver, a fifty-year-old black man, danced through his sobriety test, and it was my inclination to let him go. But my partner wanted to take him in and have him screened by a drug recognition expert (DRE) at the station because he really thought the guy was on something illegal. Personally, I believed my partner was intoxicated on his own authority.
    It’s true that a police officer can stop anybody for virtually anything. I tried to do so for the reasons I’d been taught, such as for drivers running stoplights or exceeding the speed limit. But I wasn’t the guy to write tickets if I believed I was staring into the eyes of a good person who’d made a mistake. He’d lose money or his car