Close to home

I'd much prefer this were one of my usual sarcastic, snarky posts with a snappy end line. We'd all have a good laugh, then get on with our day.

Sadly, not this time out.

Last week, a school friend of my son's committed suicide. He was only four months older. They were in a rock band together for awhile.

This young man had been somewhat of an outsider. He wound up leaving my son's school and going to a performing arts school three and a half years ago for various reasons, one of which is he was an extremely talented musician. Everyone at school, his bandmates as well as several professional musicians respected and envied what he could do on the guitar. His guitar teacher called him the next Jimmi Page or Joe Satriani.

It was a road filled with promise and wide open to him.

When we got the call and told our kids, they were both understandably in shock, as were we. My son said it's the first person he's known who's ever killed himself. I hope he never knows any others. He asked me if I've ever known anyone who's taken their own life. I've known two - a creative director and an actress. But I only knew them in passing, and would never say I was close to them (which of course doesn't make it any less tragic).

My wife and son went to the funeral last week. And while this is the part where normally I'd crack wise about putting the fun back in funeral, there's nothing funny about it. According to my boy, it was extraordinarily sad. Both the funeral and the reception were uncomfortably silent. You couldn't mention what had happened, and you couldn't not, so no one said anything. It was a silence you could feel.

I can only imagine that in the aftermath his parents pain is more than anyone should have to bear. The details don't matter. What's important is a talented young man, who's life had barely gotten started, was in so much pain he thought taking his own life was the only way to make it stop.

I don't have any wisdom or insight here. All I have are the truisms we all recite by rote and take for granted, until something like this happens.

Pay attention. Watch for signs. Love and hug your kids. Let them know the lines of communication are open whenever they want to talk. Make sure they understand no subject is off the table.

And let them know as unfair as it is, they'll have to live with the fact that sometimes there's no answer for why.

Wrongful Termination: Chapter 3

Any similarity to persons living or dead, locations or incidents is purely coincidental.

As he walked the hall towards Dean’s office, he passed framed copies of ads Cressman/Krate had produced. Sheridan was amazed that this brain clutter could be displayed with such misplaced pride.

There was an ad for a gas station convenience store showing two just regular blue-collar guys enjoying a beer. “I love it when they make it easier for people to drink behind the wheel,” Sheridan thought. There was an ad for a tennis shoe manufacturer he’d never heard of, a Nike wannabe, showing an extremely buxom girl spilling out of her ridiculously short tennis outfit. The headline read “Love All.” The last one before he turned the corner was a public service ad for a needle exchange program. It showed a drugged out heroin user balancing awkwardly on his knees in front of what looked like a Greyhound station men’s room toilet, throwing his guts up. Even Sheridan had to admit it was a powerful visual. The headline read “Without clean needles, you never know what position you’ll find yourself in.” It was a good message. Didn’t change his opinion about ad people, but still, a good message.

Sheridan walked into the corner office that had belonged to Dean Montaine. The first thing he noticed was the spectacular view overlooking the Santa Monica mountains to the north, and a glimpse of the Pacific ocean to the west. For the last thing Montaine ever saw, he could’ve done worse.

He stooped down next to the body that the coroner had cut down from the light fixture, and was now lying on the industrial carpeted floor covered with a sheet from the knees up.

Montaine’s boots were sticking out the bottom.

Sheridan pulled back the sheet. What he saw was pretty routine as far as hangings went. The head was sitting on the neck at a fifty degree angle, as if he’d been straining to get a better look at a girl in a short skirt walking away from him, or on the phone too long with the receiver between his chin and shoulder. Clearly some additional force besides gravity had been used. If, and it was a preliminary if, it had been murder, then judging by the ransacked looks of the office it appeared as though Montaine had fought the good fight against being placed in a noose and hung from the light. Putting up that kind of resistance, the murderer would have had to use force, yanking him down and snapping his neck. On the other hand, if it did turn out to be suicide, it meant Montaine literally would have to have taken a flying leap off his oak-grain desk with considerable force to do damage like this. His eyes, bloodshot and blank, had popped out of his head far enough for the corneas to touch the lenses of his Coke bottle, tri-focal glasses. His swollen purple, black tongue was sticking out and down to the left side of his mouth, with a thin thread of spittle running down it. Hanging was never a very dignified way to go.

Sheridan also made some personal observations. Montaine was in his late fifties, about six feet tall, hundred seventy pounds. He had a beer gut, and broken blood vessels all along his nose and cheeks. Hard drinker. His hair was straight, long and greasy. His glasses were Jean Paul Gaultier, very expensive, very fashionable. Round in a way that reminded Sheridan of John Lennon. Montaine was wearing stonewashed blue jeans, which had a large wet spot on the front where he’d pissed himself, though it was hard to say if he’d done it before or after. His fingers were stained yellow. His teeth were yellow, brown and decayed from years of alcohol and cigarettes. And probably other things as well. All in all, Sheridan thought, not an attractive man.

Looking at the desk, he noticed Montaine had a small plaque framed in shellacked driftwood branches. It read “Old hippies never die.”

“Guess he was wrong about that.” Sheridan said.

The 77th

I am never complaining about a tough day at work again.

Last Saturday night, I had the privilege of riding along with Sgt. Sandoz of the L.A.P.D. 77th Street Community Police Department. It's located in the heart of South Central Los Angeles, and to say that it's a busy division would be an understatement.

I joke a lot about growing up on the mean streets of West Los Angeles (north of Wilshire). But driving through South Central on my way to the station makes that joke ring incredibly hollow. I was born and raised here, yet I've never been in that part of the city.

Sadly, many residents there have never been out of it.

When I first arrived at the station, Sgt. Sandoz gave me a tour. I met many officers, who were all welcoming and surprisingly upbeat, funny and optimistic given the work they do.

And the high crime area they do it in.

I was shown things the general public rarely sees: the holding cells, all metal - makes it a lot easier to hose down. The watch commander's office. The weight room where officers work off some of the stress of the job. The very overcrowded jail at the station, including the two padded rooms which were occupied.

I was also shown the breathalyzer station, or as Sgt. Sandoz called it "Comedy Central", where drunk driving suspects try to fool the machine. I saw a few suspects try to do just that later in the evening when we came back to the station.

The vial of medical marijuana one of them had probably didn't help any.

Every day, the officers have to check out the weapons and patrol cars. We walked up to a counter in front of a room where the walls were lined with shotguns to get ours. Well, his. I didn't get one. (I also didn't get a bulletproof vest. Forest Whitaker got one when he was there researching a role for a movie. I'm just sayin'.)

Anyway, after Sgt. Sandoz got the shotgun and car keys, we went into the station lot to find our car: number 89173. Here's the thing about the 77th parking lot: sitting in the overhead pipes throughout the lot are giant stuffed animals keeping watch on everything. Don't ask.

We got in our car and were off. I told Sgt. Sandoz I fully expected the four words I'd hear most from him were, "Stay in the car." But he said not at all. I was riding with him as his partner. As far as anyone knew, I was a police officer and I was welcome to be right there with him on the calls.

While we were driving the real mean streets, I got to run license plates for stolen cars on this laptop that sits between the front seats in the patrol car. I actually was pretty good at it. When we'd pull up to a red light, or behind a Toyota or Honda (the most frequently stolen cars), I'd run the plates. Unfortunately I didn't get any hits. I was seriously hoping for a high speed chase. Maybe next time.

I also got to sit in at the 911 call communications center for the entire city of Los Angeles. Listening in on a few of those calls, and the way the 911 operators handle them, gives an entirely new definition to the word "patience".

I'm not going to go into great detail, but here are a few of the calls I went out on:

- A domestic violence call. We parked down the street from the address and waited for another unit to get there before we went in. The woman, visibly bruised and scratched, said her boyfriend was sitting in a car in the back of the apartment with their baby. The officers and I went around back, and saw him with the baby in the backseat of an old BMW. They asked him to come out and he didn't right away. There's a moment where you have no idea what's going to happen, what he's going to do to himself, the baby or us. But eventually he got out, gave the baby to the officers and the police cuffed him and took him away.

- An AIDS patient wanted to kill himself. He very calmly explained to both Sgt. Sandoz and me that he was overwhelmed with his own situation, and that his ailing mother who lived with him was driving him crazy and he wanted to end it - although he hadn't given any thought yet as to how. He was still healthy and showing no signs of the disease. A second unit arrived, and he was taken away for psychological evaluation.

- A man brandishing a gun. This was interesting for a few reasons. The apartment where this happened was at the corner of Florence and Normandie, flashpoint of the 1992 riots after the Rodney King verdict. Up until this point, I'd only seen this intersection from an overhead shot on the news. The man allegedly brandishing the gun was in a back unit you got to by going down a narrow walkway with apartments on both sides. The people he was threatening were family. Several units arrived (mention "gun" and the party's on), and a helicopter was called in to shine some light on the place. Myself and several officers were lined up against a side of the walkway, as they told everyone in the back unit to come out with their hands over their heads. Which they did. They were cuffed, and faced the wall as the officers went into the apartment to make sure no one else was there, and to retrieve the gun. It turned out there was never a gun, and it was an extremely heated family argument that triggered (see what I did there?) the whole incident. Once the situation was under control, we were back on patrol.

Since it was a relatively slow evening, at least the part of it I was there for (7PM-1:30AM), I didn't see anything really hardcore (bodies, shootouts, more bodies). Actually kind of grateful for that.

The real crime happening everyday is the budget cuts to the department that force these dedicated, overworked and underpaid officers to stretch their limited resources virtually to the breaking point. If you're so inclined, and you should be, sending a letter to Anthony Villaraigosa or Governor Brown asking them not to cut the budget where law enforcement is concerned can do nothing but help.

I want to give a huge thank you to Sgt. Sandoz and all the great people working at the 77th, not only for letting me have this incredible experience, but for who they are and what they do each and every day for all of us.

Roger that.