Officer Brassfield

 Officer Brassfield








   A parable of  paradise lost and found on the mean streets of South Gate and a wonderful porcine comeuppance. Mentioned before was the small privilege of southeast connections where unnoticeable strings could be pulled to change your destiny. I was still a punk kid driving a VW bug with an often blaring 8-track tape player on the blacktop of my hometown.  During that time I often visited the home of Mayor John Francis Sheehy in his first stint as "the Boss Tweed" of South Gate" as his youngest son liked to call him. One of the chief relationships I had with Mister Mayor was handing him a butt out of my pack of Tareytons after he enquired "you got a  smoke on you Spanky?" My Mom always said "Johnny smokes O.P.'s" or other people's cigs. It was Summertime and I was feeling my youthful oats and left McNerney heading toward Tweedy then made a right on Missouri to avoid traffic on the main drag. It was always a somewhat stressful road to take since you hopped up and over many side streets but I was just believing my young flesh to be bulletproof as I roared east toward Annetta steet. Five or six blocks down I noticed police car lights in my rear-view mirror and pulled over. I was brusquely ordered out of the car and pushed down on the curb where a SGPD officer began upbraiding me for not pulling over immediately. I really and truly just never looked in my rear view.  It was obvious he was irritated but the whole scene was over the top in which he shouted I looked like a thief fleeing the scene of the crime and some kind of stuff about child molesters. A small neighborhood crowd gathered to look at the desperate criminal who was slumped at the curb. Eventually, he wrote me a ticket for speeding, reckless driving and evading arrest. I was in shock and just drove slowly back to the Sheehy's where I told the mayor about my experience. He asked to see the ticket and I assumed my next step was to plead my case in court to answer these extreme charges. The weekend passed and on Monday I was home when the phone rang and a South Gate Police department captain asked to speak to me. He asked me to recount the events and when I did he let me know he would deal with the officer. Apparently, the mayor was tight with the chief of police and after his intervention the chief spoke to the captain about a certain  Officer Brassfield. The following day I recieved a call from that same officer who apologized for his behavior and let me know the charges would be dismissed. The weight of the Mayor's power had tilted the scales of justice in my favor.


                                                                 dangerous criminal



                                     

                                                          
                                                               Boss Tweed

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