Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

Disclaimer: I feel sort of conflicted about posting this article. On one hand, it’s my cops, courts, crimes story, due today. I’m one blog short of my 13 required for Interactive. On the other hand, I worked hard on it and it’s a hilarious story. So if you can dig that, read on…

The fate of three men arrested and charged with the 2007 murder of rookie cop, Russell Timoshenko, may rest on a chicken bone. Four chicken bones, that is. Four chicken bones, some partially eaten pieces of Popeyes chicken, a biscuit, three beverages and the precise arrangement in which these items fell, when an early morning traffic stop turned deadly.

Three attorneys, each defending his own client, have not argued that their clients were elsewhere when bullets struck officer Timoshenko and his fellow rookie partner, Herman Yan who survived his wounds.  They have not argued that their clients were not in the stolen BMW X5 that was abandoned following the shooting.  They are not questioning whether a shooting took place, or whether the shooting that they agree did take place after their clients were pulled over in the early hours of July 9, resulted in the death of a New York City police officer. Instead, responding to evidence and testimony that connect each car seat with a very different role in the shooting, (the driver not shooting at all) they are battling the prosecution and each other for the least guilty seat in the car.

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After our cop ride quite surprisingly I’ve realized that American cops aren’t dramatically different from their Italian counterparts, carabinieri. They both are proud of serving their community, love respect, complain about their wage and don’t mind stopping for a coffee or a slice of pizza even when in service. After all, you need your calories to play tag with criminals.

Here is the story of an American cop. But could be an Italian “carabiniere”.

As a child, Sgt. Gonzales didn’t get along with the Latino kids of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. His skin was white, his hair red and his mother Irish. But Gonzales couldn’t get along with Irish children, either. His Spanish was almost better than his English, and his last name, Gonzales, did not exactly sound Irish.

 “Now I feel respected, I am a cop,” says Sgt. Gonzales, driving lazily to the first job of the day, an alleged theft of a pair of glasses at the Automotive High School on Nassau Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Gonzales, 41, who has been in the profession for two decades, has seen worse times. His morning patrols in the Greenpoint area are a sleepy merry-go-round compared to his nightmarish shifts in Harlem 10 years ago.

These days, most of the time his hardest task is to help a flock of school children crossing the street in a bad corner.

“If you help them, their teacher smiles at you and says thanks,” recounts Gonzales. “Children got to know you are around. When they get old it’s harder. You need to establish a relationship where they respect us and we respect them.”

Sometimes teenagers can be problematic. Today Gonzales has to interrogate a 17-year-old man who allegedly stole a teacher’s glasses yesterday morning.

“Oh man, this substitute teacher was awkward,” says the school coordinator Kim Laboy. “He went on picking on the kids and they got upset. He told them that they look like Flavor Flav. It doesn’t surprise me that his glasses are missing.” 

It’s almost 11 a.m. and the suspected kid is not in the school yet. He might not show up today, Laboy says.

“All right,” says Gonzales, with a shrug. “We shall come back tomorrow.”

Gonzales’ patrol is over for the morning. As he pulls the car out and heads back to the precinct, his thoughts go to the next hassle.