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Summary
Summary
"As the spotlight on law enforcement grows ever harsher, the perspective of a top cop--a black cop--makes one sit up and take notice. [Corey Pegues] gives us an incisive look at life on both sides of the blue line....a nuanced perspective of the often-fractious relationship between communities of color and law enforcement." --USA TODAY
"A rollicking, no-holds-barred account of life on the streets, seen from both sides."--Booklist (starred review)
During the 1980s, crack cocaine devastated many of America's inner-city communities. Drug dealers seized neighborhoods, terrorizing its inhabitants with brutal violence. Aunts and uncles, next-door neighbors, and best friends became addicts. No longer were playgrounds and parks a safe-haven for kids; the sound of bouncing basketballs by day was replaced by the pop of gunshots by night. Those who lived through the nightmare tell unimaginable stories of that era. Once a Cop is one of the most extraordinary.
Raised in Queens, New York, as a teen, Corey Pegues watched drugs uproot his stable, working-class neighborhood almost overnight. When times got tough, he had a choice: continue to watch his family struggle to buy food, to pay bills; or sell dope. He chose the latter, eventually becoming part of the notorious Supreme Team street gang. After a botched murder attempt on a rival gang member, Corey, the only member of his family to graduate from high school, knew he had to get out. Barely eighteen, with two kids by two different women, Corey left under cover of night to enlist in the US Army. After several years in the military, he set his sights on becoming a New York City cop and breezed through the police academy.
In this provocative memoir, Corey Pegues tells how a onetime crack dealer became one the highest ranking members of the largest police force in the country, living and working in the nation's most violent neighborhoods. His meteoric rise from patrol officer to deputy inspector covers the administrations of former New York City mayors Rudy Giulliani and Michael Bloomberg, and coincides with the early tenures of famed police commissioners Ray Kelly and William "Bill" Bratton. Corey grants readers full access to the manner in which some of the NYPD's most controversial policies like Broken Windows and Stop, Question and Frisk were implemented; and an insider's take on the shootings of Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, the assault on Abner Louima and other tragedies that stained the department.
As tensions continue to mount between police and communities of color, Corey tears down the blue wall to discuss the discriminatory practices he faced within the NYPD and talks candidly about the distrust that exists between law enforcement and the citizens they are sworn to protect. What is daily life truly like for urban youth in America? What is the one problem endemic in law enforcement that's even more dangerous than rampant racism? Corey contends that his life on the streets informed his approach to police work, and shows how it made him a more conscientious and compassionate officer. There aren't many people who understand both sides of the story the way he does.
Corey doesn't hate the police. He loves the badge. And he believes it's his duty to challenge the culture of racism, silence, and arrogance in the NYPD and police departments across the country.
Author Notes
Corey Pegues, a native of Queens, retired from the NYPD as a deputy inspector in 2013, after twenty-one years of service.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this gripping memoir, former street dealer and retired N.Y.C. police inspector Corey Pegues documents a life on both sides of the law. As a teenager from an impoverished home in Queens, Pegues fell into the drug game just as crack cocaine flooded the marketplace in the mid-1980s. Working for the infamous "Supreme Team" brought Pegues money and prestige, but he was dismayed by the growing violence around him. Soon after graduating high school, Pegues escaped to the army and later joined the NYPD. Pegues faced prejudice for being African-American in a predominantly white organization, but still rose to the rank of deputy inspector despite concerns about his "urban" attire and outspoken positions. The book falls into two sections: Pegues narrates his criminal days in intimate close-up, while taking a more distanced perspective on his years as a cop. Although Pegues remains loyal to the badge, he criticizes the department's old boy network and conflicts with minority neighborhoods, including the excesses of programs such as "Stop, Question, and Frisk." In 2015, Pegues's disclosure of his criminal past ignited controversy and led to a police raid of his Long Island home, a backlash that highlights just how far the NYPD remains from serving all New Yorkers. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Pegues, who came up as a ghetto kid and crack dealer in Queens and retired as a deputy inspector in the NYPD, after having served in a range of positions from transit cop to first black commander of the high-crime 67th Precinct has written a rollicking, no-holds-barred account of life on the streets, seen from both sides. His account of how his father's alcoholism slid his family from a working-class neighborhood to the ghetto is riveting, marked by details like his family's subsisting on mayonnaise sandwiches and using cardboard to paper off holes in the soles of shoes. Pegues shows how natural it was for him to start by making a little extra money selling marijuana to making enormous amounts of money selling crack cocaine in the mid-'80s, when most New York cops were either blind to the trade or on the take. Pegues was able to leave that life, first through the army, and then by joining the NYPD in 1992. The next portion of his story is equally gasp-inducing, as Pegues describes the entrenched racism in how white cops treat blacks on the streets and on the force. His criticisms of individual commanding officers are remarkably frank (Pegues entered a $200 million lawsuit against the NYPD, among others). This insider account of street and squad-room life is riveting, and Pegues' writing style is assured and polished.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2016 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A Queens native recounts his evolution from drug dealer to decorated veteran police officer. Though he was raised to be a law-abiding, productive member of society, the streets had a different plan for former NYPD deputy inspector Pegues. He intensively details his childhood as a brother to four older sisters and the son of a functioning alcoholic father within a family barely subsisting on welfare. Desperate for easy money, in the early 1980s, when he was 13, the author began selling drugs. With his likable, smooth-talking demeanor, his illicit deals became more lucrative as the caliber of drugs escalatedbut so did the violence. When events reached deadly proportions, even then, Pegues believed "it's never too late to turn your life around" and his own "exit plan" included enlisting in the Army after high school graduation. His memoir's subsequent sections detail the author's time as a member of the NYPD, where diligent police work was often met with disillusionment and criticism within the tacitly segregated "lily white" precinct to which he was assigned. Complementing the brash experiences Pegues illustrates as both a drug dealer and a civil servant, his memoir is ornamented with raw street vernacular, lending it authenticity. As it wraps up, however, his empowering story darkens and discourages with discontent. Though the author retired in 2013 after an eventful and ambitious, rank-climbing 21-year career, his final chapters are world-weary and indignant, as he accuses regional media and the police force at large of discrediting him and stripping his legacy of its honor. More distressing are his allegations about the questionable motivations of the 67th Precinct, the resurgence of broken windows policing, and the dismantling of the urban inner-city youth programs and anti-violence efforts he'd established. A multimillion-dollar lawsuit remains pending. A gritty, straightforward memoir about corrective determination written from both sides of the law. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
This memoir of an NYPD officer who once was a crack dealer promises a candid discussion of race and policing today. © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Once a Cop 1 Suburban Sugar Hill No kid grows up dreaming of being a crack dealer. I certainly didn't. My mother did everything she could to put me on the right path, to teach me the difference between right and wrong. She made us go to church every Sunday. She'd wake us up early--so early that we'd all have to shower the night before. The next morning we'd be running around getting dressed while she'd yell from downstairs, "Hurry up! The Lord don't have no time to wait for you!" There would be fights over the bathroom, because there was only one in the house for me, my parents, and my five sisters. Ma would have breakfast ready when we came downstairs. We'd eat real fast and rush out the door. Poppa rarely came with us. Every Sunday she tried to get him to go, and every Sunday he'd say, "Eva, I ain't goin' to no damn church." We went to Prince of Peace Baptist in St. Albans, Queens, where we lived. It was a big church, a lot of members, including almost my entire extended family, my aunts and uncles and cousins. Church was all day. Me and my little sister, Latonia--we called her Tawn--we would start out at Sunday school in the basement, then go up to join my mother and my older sisters for the regular service. We had to be there for all three services, the six o'clock, the eight o'clock, and the eleven o'clock. Tawn and I would get restless and start acting up, hitting each other, making noises. Ma would turn her head, grit her teeth, and say, "Sit y'asses down 'fore I beat you." We knew what that meant. We would settle down quietly for a while, until, inevitably, we would start back up again. Getting through three services was hard but worth it, because after church we'd get Ma's home cooking. Every Sunday was like Thanksgiving at our house. My mother cooked during the week, but Sunday was the day we'd eat. To make a big meal like that with six kids wasn't easy. Ma had a system and she ran a tight ship. She had one of us sweeping the floors, another setting the table, someone cutting the potatoes. Tawn and I would stir the cake mix, because we liked to lick the bowl. After dinner we'd play games or do homework. The time we spent together on Sundays was always special. I was born on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968, at Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica, Queens. Nobody called me Corey. My nickname was Boobie, or Boo. I don't know where it came from. My mother was Eva Jewel Caple, we called her Ma, and my father, Poppa, Richard Russell Sloan. My four older sisters, Linda, Vicky, Debra, and Angie, were from Ma's earlier marriage in North Carolina, to a man named James Caple. My older sisters are much older. Angie is the youngest of those four, and she's six years older than me, so most of my memories from growing up are just me and Tawn, who's three years younger. We shared a bedroom and have the same father. We didn't get his last name, though; the two of us were given my mother's maiden name, Pegues. (Nobody pronounces it right. It's Pa-geez.) St. Albans was a working- and middle-class black neighborhood in southeastern Queens. It was mostly African-American, sprinkled with some Caribbean, and by Caribbean I mean Jamaican. Some of the better off families from Sugar Hill in Harlem had started moving out after World War II. They called St. Albans the suburban Sugar Hill. A lot of famous names: Count Basie, Jackie Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown. They all lived here back in the day. Just next to us were neighborhoods like Hollis and Laurelton and Springfield Gardens, places where blacks who had made it out of the ghetto were able to buy their own homes. To the south, down Guy R. Brewer and Sutphin Boulevard, was South Jamaica, home to the Baisley Park Projects and the South Jamaica Projects, which people called the 40 Houses. That was still the ghetto, pretty much. That's where things got rough. When I was growing up, middle-class black families were going even farther out, to towns like Hempstead and Roosevelt on Long Island, and St. Albans saw a lot of less-well-off families like ours moving in. It was definitely becoming a low-income neighborhood, but it was a stable, working-class neighborhood: kids playing in the park, people sitting in the front yards, barbecues in the summer. St. Albans had been all white before blacks started moving in, but by the time we lived there the only white person left on our block was Mr. George, this grumpy old fat guy. He was nice, but he was a loner. We only saw him when he'd take his garbage out. We lived on 198th Street, south of Murdock Avenue, in a small row house. Up at the corner, at the intersection with Murdock, was the bus stop and a commercial strip with a beauty shop, a Jamaican restaurant, and a bodega. Only we didn't call them bodegas. We called them candy stores. A couple blocks down Murdock was O'Connell Park, with the basketball courts where everybody would hang out. Other than that, the surrounding blocks were all residential. Row houses and detached, single-family homes. People had little front yards and driveways for cars. Kids were always in the street, playing skelly, Frisbee, tag, baseball, football. It was a nice place to grow up. The best thing about living in St. Albans was family. I had twelve aunts and uncles and twenty cousins within a few square miles. My aunt Mary and her husband Gene lived across from us with my cousins Val and Jeff. My grandmother, my mom's mom, lived there, too; she had a room in the basement. Aunt Mary's house was the unofficial gathering place; you'd find seven or eight cousins running around over there at any given time. We did birthdays together, played after school together, went to church together. Christmas was a big deal for us. My birthday was on Christmas Eve and my mother's was on Christmas Day. Every Christmas Eve, my aunts, uncles, and cousins would celebrate and exchange presents. There was a lot of laughing and singing and dancing. My aunts would take turns singing Christmas carols and hymns in the living room. With all those cousins, presents would be piled up under the tree. Every Christmas Eve, I'd get nice gifts from my aunts and uncles--train sets, toy soldiers, toy trucks--and I went home happy. But one year I realized that my parents never got any presents for the other kids. I asked, "Ma, why don't we get presents for them?" She said, "Son, we can't afford it." I'd never thought of us as being poor, but as I got older I learned that we were on welfare. I learned what that was, what it meant. Ma was from a town called Laurinburg in North Carolina, where she'd had my four older sisters with her first husband. He was no good. He wasn't just cheating on her; he had a whole second family going at the same time. Ma couldn't take it. One day she took the girls and left. My aunt Mary had already moved up here. My mother followed, hoping to give her daughters a chance at a better life. Ma was a beautiful woman, smooth cocoa-brown skin with a big Afro. She was strong and hardworking, but she'd never graduated from high school. She didn't have the skills or the education to get a decent job. With four young girls and no husband to help out, she wound up on public assistance and never left. In New York she met my father, who'd come up from Tallahassee, Florida, where he had two older sons running around, my half brothers. I've never met them. My father was tall and slim, about six-one, handsome, a bit of a player and a charmer. He hadn't graduated from high school, either. He drove a bus for Creedmoor Hospital, an institution for mentally challenged adults. Throughout the day he'd drop the patients off at appointments and pick them back up. Whenever we weren't in school, he'd take us to work to ride the bus with him. That was my favorite memory of him, riding around on that bus and watching him work. Some of the other memories aren't so good. My father drank. Smirnoff. He'd drink it straight, no chaser. I actually don't have any memories of him without a glass or a bottle in his hand. As far back as I can remember, every day my father smelled like liquor. I don't think I ever saw him sober other than when he got up in the morning. I'm sure he drank while he was at work, too, driving the bus for the hospital. But the man could hold his liquor. He was a functional alcoholic. He was never sloppy drunk to where he couldn't hold a conversation. He'd kill a fifth of vodka and carry on like it was nothing. I didn't like that my father drank, but other than that I was a happy kid. My parents had a genuine love, but they weren't always good at being together. They'd fight a lot, mostly about the drinking. For a while, thanks to my father's job, we lived better than most families on welfare. Rent wasn't too high in a neighborhood like ours, and we had clothes to wear and presents on our birthdays. But my parents never got married. They couldn't. Technically my father wasn't supposed to be living with us. Single women on welfare couldn't have a man living in the house. If Social Services found out, she'd lose her benefits. Once in a while caseworkers would do these pop-up visits to check the house. Ma would say, "They're coming today for a face-to-face," and we'd have to run and hide my father's things. We'd empty his dresser and his closets, stuff his clothes in the trash can or under the bed. That's also the reason my sister and I went by my mother's maiden name. We had to pretend my father wasn't a part of our lives. Then, at a certain point, we didn't have to pretend anymore. Excerpted from Once a Cop: The Street, the Law, Two Worlds, One Man by Corey Pegues All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Part 1 Hustler | |
1 Suburban Sugar Hill | p. 5 |
2 Loosies | p. 10 |
3 The Golden Age | p. 18 |
4 Life | p. 25 |
5 The Perfect Drug | p. 32 |
6 In Full Effect | p. 37 |
7 The Block Gets Hot | p. 48 |
8 Welcome to the Supreme Team | p. 55 |
9 Safety Transfer | p. 60 |
10 Prince | p. 65 |
11 Cracked Out | p. 73 |
12 Dog Years | p. 80 |
13 I Decided I Would Kill Him Myself | p. 88 |
14 Please, Please, God, Please | p. 96 |
15 I Have to Do Right. I Have to Do Good. | p. 101 |
Part 2 Cop | |
16 Old Habits | p. 109 |
17 TNT | p. 115 |
18 #900570 | p. 120 |
19 The Most Racist Thing I've Ever Seen in My Life | p. 127 |
20 Not Exactly Starsky & Hutch | p. 135 |
21 The Biggest Gang in New York | p. 142 |
22 That Cool Cop | p. 149 |
23 Doing Something | p. 156 |
24 Climbing the Ladder | p. 165 |
25 The Worst Thing I Ever Did as a Cop | p. 173 |
26 Yo, I'm the New Sergeant | p. 183 |
27 Theft of Service | p. 194 |
Part 3 Executive | |
28 Across 110th Street | p. 205 |
29 Thug Life | p. 216 |
30 Black Friday | p. 226 |
31 Everybody Is Looking for You to Fail | p. 238 |
32 Broken Windows | p. 249 |
33 Daybreak | p. 256 |
34 Leadership | p. 266 |
35 The Blue Wall of Silence | p. 276 |
36 Insult to Injury | p. 290 |
Epilogue: 198 and Murdock | p. 299 |
Acknowledgments | p. 305 |