KIND OF sad, the news about Brookline policeman David Ealey. The 17-year veteran of my town's police force was found guilty this month of insubordination and conduct unbecoming a police officer. The Board of Selectmen suspended him for three days and docked $420 from his pay.
As I say, sad — because three days' suspension and the loss of $420 is scarcely a slap on the wrist. I'd feel a lot happier if Ealey had gotten his rear end kicked from here to the middle of next Tuesday.
At issue was a spitting match Ealey had gotten into with his superior, Sgt. William Miller, in May. The two squabbled over the way in which Ealey had requested relief from a Route 9 traffic detail he'd been assigned to. When Ealey subsequently showed up at the police station, Miller tried to talk to him.
Ealey responded: "I'm not on duty, so I don't have to listen to your s***."
From a news story in the Brookline Tab:
"Ealey then left the police station and got on his motorcycle outside. Miller followed. Miller contends Ealey then said to him, 'I'm not on duty, so get out of my f****** face,' before driving off."
Sounds like Ealey to me.
I've had my own encounter with the man. Two weeks after my car was stolen from a Brookline parking lot in April, and a week after it was found, chopped, in Roxbury — I called the Brookline police to ask what was being done about the crime. Ealey told me I'd be notified by the Brookline police as soon as my car was found. When I observed that the car — or what remained of it — had been found, he seemed to think that concluded the matter.
Let me reconstruct the conversational highlights:
"What else do you want?" Ealey asked me.
"Well, I'm wondering what the Brookline police are doing to follow up on the theft."
"Your car was found, right? You were notified, right? So I don't understand the point of this call."
"Officer, the point is that I'm the victim of a serious crime which took place one block from your police station, and I'd simply like to know what you're doing to find the criminals."
"You've been notified. That's all we do. What the hell else do you want us to do?"
I asked him if the car had been checked for fingerprints. If a detective had been assigned to hunt for witnesses. If the M.O. of this theft had been compared with that of known car thieves. If any Brookline police officer had, in fact, done anything at all except take my statement on the day the car was stolen.
"No," said Ealey. "We don't do that s***."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said, we don't do that s***."
"Why not?"
"Look it's a common crime," Ealey snapped, in roughly the tone of voice — exasperation mingled with contempt — that Michael Dukakis used to employ when asked why he didn't cut spending instead of raising taxes.
"You mean," I asked, "that Brookline's police don't do anything about common crimes? Only uncommon ones?
"Don't be a lawyer on me," spat Ealey, and slammed down the phone.
OK, call me naive. In my innocence, I had imagined that when a police officer with 17 years of experience talks with resident who has just suffered the theft of property worth thousands of dollars, he would show some concern, express a word of sympathy for the victim's loss. Instead, I got an earful of expletives from a uniformed jackass who belongs in therapy, not a police station.
Ealey's record includes 43 citizen complaints (call this No. 44). He was brought up on charges in 1983 for carrying an unlawful weapon. At one point, he was barred from street duty for five years. Now he's been tried and convicted by the town's board of selectmen.
Well, that's cops. Daryl Gates, "Sonny" Hall, Gerald Clemente, David Ealey. Differences in degree, maybe, but not in kind.
I have a theory about cops. It is that police work is especially attractive to a certain type of personality: the type that gets off on wearing a uniform, carrying a gun, brandishing a nightstick, and ordering people about.
The insecure bully type.
Yes, some policemen are courageous and self-sacrificing, the "thin blue line" that protects the law-abiding from the lawless. Those are heroes like George Hanna, Frank Serpico, David Toschi — for such police officers, I have nothing but respect. If I'm ever privileged to meet one, I'll tell him so myself.
But far too many of the cops I've encountered over the years have been sullen punks with badges; they do exactly as little work as they can get away with, and have only disdain for the citizens who pay their salaries.
When a 14-year-old girl was raped and stabbed in a High Street apartment house last week, it was another tenant, not the Brookline police, who responded to her screams. When a gang shooting took place some weeks back on Cypress Street, literally around the corner from police headquarters, the cops were nowhere to be found.
But leave your car on a Brookline street overnight — no matter how remote the street or inconspicuous the car — and a cop will find and ticket it. Even in Brookline, the police are diligent about some things.
Jeff Jacoby is the Boston Herald's chief editorial writer.
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