Beat Cop Quotes

“There was no such character as “the kindly cop on the beat” in New York in those days. The cops were sworn enemies. By the same token we, the street kids, were the biggest source of trouble for the police. Individually and in gangs we accounted for most of the petty thievery and destruction of property on the upper East Side. And since we couldn’t afford to pay off the cops in the proper, respectable Tammany manner, they hounded us, harassed us, chased us, and every chance they got, happily beat the hell out of us.
One way, the only way, that all of us kids stuck together regardless of nationality was in our cop-warning system. Much as I loathed and feared the Mickie gang or the Bohunk gang, I’d never hesitate to give them the high-sign if I spotted a copper headed their way. They’d do the same for me and the other 93rd Streeters.
The cops had their system, too. If a patrolman came upon a gang fight or a front-stoop crap game and needed reinforcements in a hurry, he’d bang his nightstick on the curb. This made a sharp whoinnng that could be heard by cops on other beats throughout the precinct, and they’d come a-running from all directions, closing in a net around the point the warning came from.
In my time I was grabbed, nabbed, chewed out and shin-whacked by the cops, but never arrested. This may sound miraculous, considering all the kinds of trouble I was able to get into, but it wasn’t. My Uncle Sam the auctioneer, don’t forget, was a wheel in Tammany Hall. Nephews of men in the Organization did not get arrested.
For another thing, the cops went mostly for the gangs, the most conspicuous targets, and I was not a gang boy. I was a lone wolf. This made me, in turn, more conspicuous to the gangs. Gang boys couldn’t tolerate loners. They called me a “queer” and worse. Today, I guess, a kid like me would get all kinds of special attention from the authorities. They’d call me an “antisocial nonconformist”-and worse.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!