Memoirs of a Mall Cop

Fountain Dancer

I overlooked the courtyard from my perch on the promenade level, shaded by the pergola of a sitting area now deserted that once belonged to a restaurant. The restaurant had been long gone, along with several other retailers. The mall was slowly dying from a lethal cocktail of economic downturn, a homeless surge in the center across the street, delinquents from the high school a block away, poor management, a new luxury mall competing just a few blocks away, and a crumbling infrastructure from construction performed too hastily. And I mean literally crumbling. Even the concrete/stucco wall I was leaning over to glimpse the fountain at the center of the courtyard was rippled with divots. A massive infusion of cash couldn’t save it. Not without a proper management team and a re-evaluation of how to bring back more tenants.

The mall was a hotbed of refuse. It was built on the fringe of downtown, the outskirts of the epicenter. Of course, it was conveniently located right off the freeway. Accessibility was its only advantage, however. When first constructed, it attracted hundreds and thousands of visitors daily. People braved the unbearable parking garage shuffle, circling for half an hour like carrion fowl, eyes frantically searching for that one open spot. They even tolerated the panhandlers on every corner, dropping loose change from their pockets into gas-station cups. The fountain at the north end of the outdoor mall played every half hour to different patriotic theme songs, sometimes colored by lights flashing beneath it. When performances weren’t going on, children would play in the spurting water.

It had a good run for a decade. One measly decade. Then it started to collapse. Patrons were tired of the over-priced garages, the assaults from homeless beggars, the throngs of teenagers zipping through the mall on skateboards, and the drunks at night slurring the lyrics to their favorite songs as they stagger on to the next bar. Eventually, tenants started abandoning their spaces, leaving storefronts noticeably blank like gaps in a person’s teeth. Large posters were plastered to the windows of deserted spaces declaring the stores available for lease. But it would be months before someone would rent it out, and even then it was used as a temporary location for a business just passing through.

As part of the security team, I got to see the parts of the mall that patrons only experienced from a distance. I was up close with it. Face to face with the grunge and drunkenness. There were peaceful days, shifts where hardly anything happened. But frequently, we were bombarded with shoplifters, aggressive frat boys who couldn’t hold their liquor, or entitled parents screaming at poor cashiers. That was normal. I could handle the jacked up college student taking a swing at me in a pathetic attempt to impress his friends. I could manage the homeless man berating the McDonald’s girl who refused to refill his coffee for the tenth time that hour. I could even stand to be harangued by an angry mother blaming the mall for her son’s injuries after he climbed the escalator the wrong way.

But occasionally, I was confronted with situations that went beyond my training.

Take for example that afternoon shift where things were calm and quiet. Children were running erratically through the fountain as if it was their own little water park. Parents were sitting on the benches surrounding the fountain, casually flipping through their phones or reading a book. The few patrons at the mall were nonchalantly meandering the meager stores, a couple bags hanging from the nooks of their elbows. I was particularly enjoying the fact that no one had called me for several minutes. From my position on the veranda, I had the perfect vantage point to see over the entire courtyard, a circular area that was part grass with a creek running through it, and the fountain a little off-center. An aerial view of the mall looked like a lower-case i, with the courtyard forming the dot.

I tended to keep a lookout for the creeps who liked to watch children play in the water, the ones who had no kids of their own, yet enjoyed lurking by the fountain suspiciously keeping an eye on kids in their swimsuits and drenched from head to toe. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, the mall was often battered with complaints from distraught parents as if we had invited the perverts to the mall specifically for a viewing session. So it was no wonder that I didn’t notice the little old woman at first. The elderly rarely caught my eye when I was scouring the property for more nefarious individuals. But then someone shouted, followed by a few other screams. It took me a moment to notice what they were all pointing at because the fountain had started spraying and a crowd of parents rushed the fountain and were herding their children away from the water.

My eyes scanned over the fountain. As the water dropped back down, I saw for the first time the little old lady standing front and center completely nude. Right then, the music kicked in. “America the Beautiful” blared over the speakers, and the fountain danced to the melody. Simultaneously, so did the naked woman. She kicked out her legs, waved her arms in the air, spun in circles. Parts of her flapped and waggled loosely. Water poured over her, flattening her curly gray hair. It took me several heartbeats before I registered what was happening. It was too difficult to peel my eyes away, like looking at something so horrific, so ugly, so abnormal, that your brain goes into overload as it tries to consume every detail.

I called it in over the radio. Silence. I called it in again. Dispatch finally answers, though her voice is cracked and stifled and there are giggles erupting from officers observing it all from the cameras back in the office. I hurry to the fountain, but just as I arrive, I realize I have no idea what to do. There’s no plan for something like this. Parents are shielding their children’s eyes, scowling at me and demanding I do something before their kids are traumatized. I was traumatized. Did they ever think about that? I turned off the fountain and the water died in sad little spurts. The woman noticed, and she fixed me with an angry stare. “Purple mountains majesty” played in the background like the whistling tune of an old western.

“Ma’am, I need you to come with me, please.” I said calmly, keeping my eyes fixed on her face.

She shook her head. “Not until I finish my routine.”

“Ma’am, you can finish it after you put on some clothes.”

“I can’t breathe in those outfits. They’re restricting. I don’t want to wear them.”

At that moment, a female officer arrived. She had a blanket in her hands and she held it out as an offering to the woman. The woman looked at me, then looked at the blanket, then looked back at me. She was connecting the dots. In a sudden surge, the woman took off running. Dancing was bad enough. But now every motion as she sprinted down the sidewalk exaggerated her drooping skin as it flapped up and down, up and down, her flaccid breasts swinging from side to side and slapping together like a pair of hands clapping in applause. A few stunned onlookers flattened themselves against the wall as she ran past them.

I ran after her reluctantly, my fellow officer following with blanket in hand. The woman approached a four-way intersection, a through-road that intersected the main street that cut lengthwise down the center of the mall. Just as she turned the corner, she collided with another security officer. The young officer had been working at the mall for only three weeks. He was eighteen, just starting college classes that coming fall, was most likely a virgin, and I am willing to bet had never before laid eyes on a naked woman. His eyes squeezed shut and his face scrunched up as the pair of them fell to the ground, the old woman planted firmly on top. He held his hands out, unwillingly to touch her, and he kept his eyes closed and face turned away. The woman, on the other hand, was grinning.

The female officer draped the blanket over the woman and helped her to her feet. She hummed to herself while being escorted to the office. The young officer gazed blankly ahead of him as we followed, muttering to himself about quitting. With the help of the police, we managed to track down the woman’s family, who had been frantically searching for her ever since she had escaped a care facility several blocks away the night before. Several times the old woman attempted to start dancing again, threatening to shed the blanket. The woman’s daughter arrived minutes later, a set of clothing in her hands. She kept uttering apologies, explaining that her mother has dementia and was a dancer many years ago.

The daughter and her mother walked out of the office, the old woman now clothed in a floral muumuu and some brown slippers. I watched the daughter take her mother by the arm, engaged in a delightful conversation about dancing for a large audience on an outdoor stage, surrounded by spires of colorful water. The daughter patiently, lovingly patted her mother on the arm and said, “It sounds wonderful, mom.”

The Sleeper

Any mall across the United States is a petri dish of interesting characters. The bevy of diverse patrons navigate the corridors of shopping centers like trout in a current. Even the employees of the retail establishments exhibited a range of unique qualities, just as varying as the stores they worked for. This diversity is magnified when the mall has a homeless shelter as a nextdoor neighbor. It can be difficult to be welcoming with an array of eccentric individuals frequenting the stairwells for day-time naps, possessed by sudden outbursts of obscenities at innocent passerby, or releasing a steady obnoxious odor. Most of the time, however, the homeless were harmless, and even polite. It wasn’t our policy to eject every homeless person off the property, but management certainly didn’t appreciate them idly loitering in the mall.

The homeless were frequent flyers, repeat visitors who returned without fail at almost the exact same time everyday, and usually set up in the same places. As an outdoor shopping center, it was next to impossible to keep people out, even at three in the morning, when all the stores were closed. It then became a revolving door, escort one person off the property for violating mall rules, and they’d be right back again an hour later. We tried not to bother too much with the minor offenders. It wasn’t worth the effort. Picking and choosing your battles was an essential skill for a mall cop. A tactical decision. Sorting through trash? Not a big deal at two in the morning, but can very easily turn into a fight if you pissed off the right person. Loitering in the food court with your tenth cup of coffee from McDonald’s? Hardly an issue when the person is quiet and not bothering patrons, so why rile the man and make the situation far more uncomfortable for customers?

But there were times when certain things just couldn’t be ignored, particularly when someone complained, or it was impacting the shopping experience of customers. The ravings of a lunatic shouting at the top of his lungs just outside Hot Topic while staring meanly at people walking by wouldn’t and couldn’t be tolerated. Delving into a trash can in front of a group of people trying to eat their meals at a restaurant was unacceptable. Shooting up with a needle in a public restroom where children could easily see wasn’t going to be ignored. And lastly, a man sleeping in the entrance way of a popular restaurant warranted approach.

For the record, I happened to get to know a lot of the homeless that meandered the public areas of the mall. They enjoyed striking up conversations with security officers, or anyone else who’d listen to them for that matter. Most times I could tell if it was an attempt to butter up the officers to garner leniency at a future date, but for many they just wanted to be acknowledged. It was a simple gesture, and most of them had war stories from before and during their times living on the streets. There were times I went out of my way to strike up a dialogue with certain individuals out of sincere interest to get to know them better. You get some insight into the sorts of things they have to endure, and the methods of protecting themselves they adopted, even evolving certain characteristics necessary for them to live in the wild and unkind streets of a concrete jungle.

Enter Franklin. Not Frank. Franklin. Always used his full name. Hated the way Frank sounded. A Desert Storm veteran, often seen wearing the bottom camos with loosely laced up boots, a grungy t-shirt taken from the pile of clothing donated to the shelter, and a puffy, multicolored jacket from the nineties. He never had a beard, and always kept his hair closely cropped, an obsession developed from his military days. He carried a backpack slung across his shoulder everywhere he went, stuffed with a sleeping bag, a couple pieces of cardboard, a large black marker, a bag of loose change and a few extra dollar bills he saved for a rainy day, and a change of socks. He made sure he always had socks. And lastly, he carried a miniature crowbar, sheathed in the belt loop of his pants like a samurai sword. I had never asked him what that crow bar was for, and honestly, I was scared of the answer. I chose to live in willful ignorance in case plausible deniability was ever needed.

Franklin was one of those harmless people, who’d casually stroll down the sidewalks, grinning at people even when they scrunched up their noses or deliberately moved to the farthest side of the sidewalk to avoid him. He didn’t care. He moved to his own beat, a literal rhythm playing in his head. I asked him once about it, why he always looked like he was bouncing to music. He simply replied that he was, always replaying Tupac, Wutang, or Jurassic Five, and enjoyed jamming to the songs even if people thought he was crazy. “I know what I look like,” he said one day. “If people already think I’m batshit crazy, I’m gonna enjoy myself while I’m at it.”

It was difficult for most new officers to ignore the homelessness. It was awkward for them, and they couldn’t understand why some of the more experienced officers could be friendly with the people that were often arrested or kicked off property. I had to explain it as similar to when two men get into a fist fight. The fight itself was often bloody, vicious, and tiring, but at the end of it, the two opponents had developed a newfound respect for one another. Similarly, frequent encounters resulted in the blossoming of a strange, exotic relationship between officers and the homeless. And when training new officers, it was essential to educate them about homeless quirks, habits, and lifestyles that had ensured their survival out on the streets, because a simple misunderstanding could lead to a quick and painful lesson.

I was training a new officer. A twenty-year-old kid with ambitions to become a police officer one day, and who was already exhibiting an authority disorder just a few days into his employment. He let his position as a mall cop fill him with a sense of grandiose power. It showed in his condescending and patronizing tone he took with most people, even those we weren’t arresting or kicking off property. Even his posture was dictatorial. He’d stand with his feet shoulder-width apart, hands on his hips, sometimes with his fingers gripping a flashlight that hung from his nylon belt like he was going to quickdraw and blind someone into submission with the strobe feature. He puffed out his chest to draw attention to the badge pinned to his uniform.

I tried to quell that toxic ideology early on. The kid was going to get himself into trouble, often diving headlong into a situation by himself without first taking stock of the circumstances. For the first few weeks of a new officer’s arrival, they were teamed up with someone else who showed them the ropes. Because the kid happened to have a near identical schedule that I did, he was glued to my hip for the majority of my shifts. That meant babysitting a toddler who’d been suddenly granted too much power. I had to pull him out of a throng of teenagers at the food court after he accused them of skipping class, despite the fact that it was lunch time and they had every right to be there. I had to intervene to de-escalate a very tense stare-off between him and a store manager after he threatened to arrest the manager for loitering in front of the store on her break. There was even a time I had to keep him from chasing a trespasser into the street after the trespasser exited the property.

Every encounter with someone was like playing Russian Roulette with this kid. I had no idea when he was going to do something idiotic. So when I got a call at seven p.m. that there was a homeless man sleeping in the vestibule of a Thai restaurant, I had to be on alert. Not because I thought the homeless man was going to be a threat, but because the kid was more likely a threat to the homeless man. The man was curled into a ball, tucked in nicely to a corner that shielded him from the wind. He was stuffed into a ratty sleeping bag, his backpack and everything he owned stuffed in there with him like an overfilled burrito. I could barely see the head poking out through the top, looking like a stray black bean about to fall from the tortilla. I stopped just shy of the man and listened carefully. I was not keen on one day approaching a dead person who I thought was just sleeping. I could hear breathing, and occasionally a soft snort.

The man shifted slightly in his sleep, and for the first time, I recognized him as Franklin. I could tell from the haircut. I started calling out his name, trying to wake him up. He didn’t even stir. There was a strong odor oozing out of the sleeping bag, the powerful stench of alcohol. He was drunk, and it would become far more difficult to wake him up. I kicked his feet lightly, trying to jostle him a bit. Still no reaction. I did it a little harder. Nothing. Then the kid got impatient. He knelt next to Franklin and started shaking him by the shoulder. I tried to stop him, but it was too late.

Part of protecting one’s self on the streets is developing a useful ability to react instinctively to different kinds of movement while sleeping. For example, when you feel someone rustling around your stuff, your first instinct is to protect both yourself and your belongings. After all, when all you have to your name is a bag filled with random items that help you survive, you will do what’s necessary to keep them from being stolen. That’s why I kicked Franklin at the feet. That’s why I never approached him in a way that made him think someone was attacking him or trying to steal his things. Because even drunk, Franklin’s instincts were still in hyperdrive.

Remember that little crowbar that Franklin liked to carry around? That day I figured out what he used it for. While the kid was shaking Franklin by the shoulder, Franklin was sleeping with one hand tightly clutching the crowbar. In one swift motion, Franklin sat bolt upright and swung that crowbar like Mickey Mantle. It connected with a sickening thud against the kid’s cheek. The kid slumped to the ground like a bag of potatoes. Out cold. It took only seconds for Franklin to realize what happened as his drunken stupor vanished from the burst of adrenaline. He dropped the bar and raised his hands in the air.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he shouted over and over again.

I checked on the kid and called for an ambulance. A deep black and purple bruise spread across the kid’s face, the shape of a bar. I couldn’t help but think of Chris Farley in Tommy Boy. It had swollen to the size of a twinkie. He slowly started to come to, eyes blinking rapidly. He was disoriented and his body was still limp.

As the paramedics loaded the kid onto a stretcher and wheeled him to the ambulance, Franklin nervously walked alongside him, muttering apologies the entire time and anxiously playing with the hem of his shirt. Franklin spoke with the police officers, expecting to go to jail, but once they heard my version of events, they just shook their heads and let Franklin go. There just wasn’t enough culpability to charge Franklin with a crime. The kid was in the emergency room for six hours, and couldn’t work for another two weeks while his concussion resolved. No fractures, just a dark bruise and a swollen cheek that didn’t go away for a month. By the time the kid came back to work, he was humbled, and even a little hesitant answering calls. The cocky and authoritative attitude was beaten out of him, knocked out of the park on a homerun by Franklin.

At the end of the second shift back to work, the kid went to drop off his radio in the office. Waiting for him was a little plastic baggie filled with change and a couple crumpled dollar bills. A note was taped to the side of it, scribbled in chicken-scratch with a black marker, and for the most part, illegible. But at the bottom, it was signed, “Franklin.”

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