The unceasing crackle of police radios quickly became the Muzak of my life.
Every newsroom has them, UHF radios tuned to the major police frequencies. As a news acolyte you have to learn to separate the wheat from the chaff and there was a lot of chaff – messages about driving conditions, fuel and doughnut stops, lookers and hookers. No, you had to go about your routine writing, editing whatever and have your subconscious tuned to pick up one of the Big Tens… a signal 10-something which meant an armed robbery in progress, a shooting, a traffic accident with injuries, or, the biggie: a police officer down.
(Once, later in my career, I heard “Officer Shot!” on the radio and made several frantic phone calls to various police agencies trying to find out where it happened. I grew increasingly frustrated when I was repeatedly told it hadn’t happened, I was sure it was a conspiracy of silence. Only a half hour later did I hear: “Officer Schott” respond to his call on the radio).
So one late night in Baton Rouge, after the Ten O’Clock News, when I heard the number that signaled an armed robbery in progress, shots fired, I leaped for car keys and called for Sonny the photographer.
It was dark when I pulled in behind a line of police cars and jumped out to find officers crouched behind their cars, pistols drawn and the sound of popcorn in the making. When a friendly cop motioned “down” with his arm, followed by “them’s bullets, boy!”, I relied on my lightning quick self-preservation instincts and exceeded the normal pull of gravity in getting flat on the ground. Sonny followed, and got a caution not to turn on his filming lights, or else.
Here we were, me, Sonny and a line-up of city, parish and state police surrounding an armed robber trapped in the woods in front of us. I was hugging a Goodyear tire and hubcap on a police vehicle, when I discerned the distinctive sound that is a pistol hammer firing a bullet. Make that plural: bullets. My audio limits were greatly expanded when I heard a distinctive “ka-thud” immediately behind me. Later I found out, it was the sound of a bullet hitting the metal of the squad car I was hiding behind.
For, in the speed of the chase, the armed robber had decided to make his stand in a patch of woods that had the busy Airline Highway on one side, and two side roads, making up a triangle. No one realised it at the time of course, so, surrounded by police, the robber would lob a shot out only to have the fire returned from three sides, meaning the police were shooting at themselves, and me and Sonny. The fact that it was farcical was not brought up in polite company.
(Later, whenever I heard New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison talk about triangulation of assassination fire on President John F. Kennedy, I would flash back to that night knowing exactly how potentially harmful triangular fire could be).
Some minutes later, after multiple gunshots from all involved, we heard the call echo in the darkness: “we got ‘em.” It was then the camera lights went on and we followed a line of officers, guns at the ready, through the skimpy woods to a patch where three officers stood, their flashlights illuminating a black man, about 30, lying face-up with dark, non-theatrical blood seeping from the multiple gunshot wounds to his torso. I saw Sonny taking close-ups of the large revolver on a ground about ten feet away.
In all my preparation for life I had never been taught what to do in this unsociable circumstance, so I did what anyone would do, I gawked while Sonny went about recording the scenes on film.
The man’s lips I’ll never forget. They pursed, then opened outwards, repeatedly, like a fish out of water, gasping for life but breathing in death. And after a few minutes, he gasped his last and died right there during my gawk.
I didn’t know it, of course. It was one of the officers with the flashlight who announced it with the words: “that’s the end of the story. Call the coroner.” He aimed a boot at the man’s shoulder, pushing it to nudge him, like you’d wake a dog you didn’t want to stoop down for. There was no response and so it was a corpse. There was no first aid, nor ambulance. They just waited for him to die. (One law officer, a State Trooper named Gene, was wounded during the shootout.)
It was only later, outside of my gawk and shock to my senses that I realised it. But it wasn’t something that you wrote about in those days. The actions of police were above journalistic inquiry in 1964, that is, if you wanted to continue to have a career and a life. As in alive. Besides, it never occurred to me at the time that there was any malice on the part of the officers.
Call it naiveté, but now I know I was playing the game according to their rules and I feel shame to this day even repeating the story.