The Secret Weapon of the Undercover Cop: Attitude

Marco Conelli (Guest Blogger)

When I look back at my police career, I dwell fondly on my time as an undercover police officer in the Bronx Narcotics unit. Many people commonly confuse undercover cops with plain clothes officers. Big difference. As a true undercover you revoke your identity and no one knows who you are.

People who have read Matthew Livingston and the Prison of Souls have told me they enjoyed the way the characters could be identified with.
When Matthew, Dennis, and Sandra have to confront their criminal in an abandoned church, they are not overly confident or sure of themselves. They are much the way I was the first time I “stepped out” with a body wire taped to my skin and carbon paper smeared into my hands and face to make me look “dingy.” They are scared!

Matthew, Dennis, and Sandra used the very tool we should all exercise, common sense guided by good judgment. I remember the first time I locked stares with a drug dealer; I didn’t have my legs underneath me. I had entered a small apartment building, stepping from the bright summer sun into the dark lobby inside. By the time my eyes adjusted I was faced with three nasty fellows who were quick to inform me, “We ain't never seen you before.”

While I stammered through a defense indicating that I had been there plenty of times, the next question was fired at me twice as fast. “If you were here before, what color did you buy?” Well, the intelligence I had received before I went to this location informed me that they sold vials of crack-cocaine. In this section of the Bronx, crack vials were identified by the color of the cap. I quickly looked at my surroundings to see how much room I had if I ended up in a fight.

When my eyes scanned the floor I saw empty vials and a few green caps. All I had to do now was sell my performance. I looked at the three of them, who were growing nastier by the second, and replied, “Come on, guys, I always buy green tops here.” After that they felt a bit more relaxed and proceeded to high five me and sell me three vials for $9. Five minutes later they were in the custody of my backup team, none the wiser.

When I look back at barely being 23, I see how my confidence grew daily with every undercover experience. I value those experiences and pass them along to my teen age sleuths. Somehow they are each a young version of myself. By the way, would you like to know what gets an undercover transaction completed successfully? You can take all the disguises, stories, and unique “non cop” looks and throw them out the window. The thing that gets you over is...attitude! And there is nothing the bad guys can do about it.

Marco Conelli is the author of the young adult mystery Matthew Livingston and the Prison of Souls. He is also an active Detective in the NYPD, in his 18th year of service to New York, or as he puts it, “this great city.” In addition, he’s a songwriter and musician with several CDs to his credit. However, he says, “You mystery folks are much more interesting than those hot headed musicians.”

POPPA

Elizabeth Zelvin

When I set out to write Death Will Get You Sober, I chose an amateur sleuth as my detective because I knew next to nothing about cops. I had read plenty of police procedurals, but not for the police procedure. I followed fictional favorites like Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe, Julie Smith’s Skip Langdon, and Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti for their personal lives—in other words, character development. But I had no sense of real life police officers as people.

That changed in 2003, when I was invited to take a part-time counseling job with a New York City outfit called Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance (POPPA). Founded in 1996 in response to a double-digit rash of suicides in NYPD as a resource by cops for cops, POPPA had just obtained funding to reach out to the thousands of officers affected by 911 and its aftermath. Active and retired police of all ranks had already been trained as peer counselors. They staffed a 24-hour hotline, known only by word of mouth, on a volunteer basis. Now they joined mental health professionals like me in teams that visited every command in the five boroughs to educate uniformed police about how emotional fallout from 911 might be affecting them 18 months later and to tell them how POPPA could help.

The way we operated was counterintuitive for us clinicians. We didn’t make the groups we addressed sit in a circle and share about their post-traumatic stress. We had five or ten minutes—right after roll call, when the cops had received their day’s assignment and were eager to get out on the streets—to say our piece and invite anyone who wanted to call the hotline, anonymously if they wished, and talk further with a cop who understood and was not affiliated with the Department. At the beginning, even the clinically savvy POPPA administration hardly let us open our mouths, so sure were they that only cops knew how to talk to cops. Gradually, the counseling cops we worked with came to trust us. And for me, the human beings inside the blue uniform—at least a thousand of them in the nine months the job lasted—came into focus.

The courage of these dedicated men and women was profound and deeply poignant, as was their pain. In a profession where toughness and fortitude are prized, many of these officers were carrying a heavy emotional load in silence. Later on, when we were allowed to spend a more extended period—30 or 40 minutes—with groups of cops assembled for inservice training—we were able to distribute an anonymous questionnaire, a PTSD checklist. In every group, at least one person suffered from one or more major symptoms: intrusive thoughts, nightmares, rage or irritability, inability to concentrate, avoidance of or panic response to stressful situations, increased alcohol use, marital conflict, feelings of despair and hopelessness. Yet these officers were still working, dealing with 12-hour shifts, cancelled weekends and vacations, and such duties as patrolling the subway tunnels with inadequate protection against possible dangers such as biological weapons. They also faced the hostility or indifference of a civilian population that had long since ended the love affair with the city’s police that had bloomed for a few months after 911 itself. All were required to attend training in counterterrorism measures. All believed terrorists would strike at New York again sooner or later.

In mystery fiction, we meet mostly detectives. Too often, we ignore the uniformed officers who risk their lives as first responders to a crisis, whether it’s a case of domestic violence, rape or murder, or the unimaginable, like the toppling of the World Trade towers. Let’s not forget the ordinary cops, young and scared but not allowed to admit it even to themselves, who run toward danger when the rest of us are running away.