Notes From a Jungle

The call was from Mort, a man I’ve known for 20 years. His liberalism dates back to the student movement of the 1960s when he battled authority on the streets of Berkeley. Much about Mort has changed in the ensuing decades, but one facet remains. He still hates cops.

“The dirty s.o.b.’s have done it again,” Mort said without preamble when I picked up the phone. Small talk is beyond his emotional capability.

“They gunned down another innocent man because they thought . . . now get this . . . they thought he might be reaching for a weapon! For God’s sake, he could have been trying to scratch his behind, and they blasted him for it!”

He was talking about the killing of Marcus Donel and about L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Patrick Maxwell, the guy who killed him.

It was a case of mistaken identity that began with a liquor store robbery.

The holdup man was described as Mexican, but through a confused radio transmission, the description said he was black. Along came Donel, a black man parking in the driveway of his home.

Four deputies surrounded him, guns drawn. They said Donel shouted obscenities and at first refused to comply with their instructions. Then it appeared as if he were reaching for a gun in his waistband.

The night exploded. Maxwell fired one shot, and in a twinkling of the time it took for him to be born, Donel lay dead. There was no gun. It was a mistake, the Sheriff’s Department said. A terrible tragedy. Convey our regrets to. . . .

A sergeant was less filled with remorse. Well, he said, even if Donel didn’t commit the robbery, he shouldn’t have been doing what he was doing.

“Can you believe that?” Mort said, shouting into the phone. “They don’t know what he was doing, but he shouldn’t have been doing it. Doing what? Driving home from work? Parking? You know what they’re saying? He shouldn’t have been black.”

Then Mort said, “Last month they killed a guy armed with a 10-inch rake! Get this, three cops and they can’t do anything but kill him when he comes at them with a garden tool!”

Anything is a weapon if you want it to be. I saw a kid on angel dust once snap thick leather restraining straps like they were papier-mache and skewer a cop with a mop handle. Dead is dead, no matter how.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” an L.A. deputy said to me. His name is Daniel, and he’s been a cop for 16 years. “You try to stay cool, but it’s scary as hell. A buddy of mine was killed when he stopped a guy on a traffic violation. Where is it written that we have to let the bad guys shoot first?”

Maxwell, he said, fired too fast. “But you know, you’ve got to make a decision in an instant or you become the victim. No one can tell you when to shoot. They can only tell you later that you shouldn’t have shot.”

We’re a violent species. In L.A. last year, there were more than 1,000 homicides in the police and sheriff’s jurisdictions. Three-hundred were gang-related.

At the same time, five Los Angeles police officers and three deputy sheriffs were killed. Neither agency keeps statistics on the number of innocent victims gunned down by cops. They should.

“You think we like to go out there and kill people?” Daniel said. “Maxwell is as much a victim as Donel. Even if the shooting is proved to be legally and morally justified, he’s going to have to live with it.”

Then he said, “You know what I think? I think Donel saw himself as another Don Jackson. He wanted to be a $3-million man.”

Jackson was involved in a sting last January. A black cop from another jurisdiction testing racism in Long Beach, Jackson had his face shoved into a plate-glass window by a cop and is suing.

You listen to guys like Mort and Daniel, and you’re convinced after a while they’re both right, because they are.

If it were a perfect world, there wouldn’t have been a liquor store robbery, the description of the suspect wouldn’t have been screwed up and Maxwell wouldn’t have pulled the trigger so quickly.

If it were a perfect world, there wouldn’t be drugs on the street that turn kids into maniacs, Uzis wouldn’t abound like fleas on a dog and cops wouldn’t be half scared out of their wits every time they go on duty.

But it isn’t a perfect world. We’re faced with what we’ve created, and terrible things happen.

Mort used to say he’d be safer if he went to a jungle. He doesn’t have to go anywhere now. The jungle has come to us.