World's Toughest Cops: On the Front Line of the War against Crime. Vinnie Jones
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It was unbelievable. We literally could not imagine how he did it. We couldn’t really get our heads around how anyone here coped – and our admiration for the cops who put their sense of duty before their own homes and families knew no bounds…but to do it with an open gunshot wound in your leg? To strap on your boots, haul yourself to your feet, go out and try to police the apocalypse when you could barely stand up? Unbelievable.
‘As far as American police forces go, I don’t think there’s any other unit that has been through what we’ve been through,’ he said. ‘It was akin to going away to war together.’
We could do nothing but shake his hand. Words can’t express what we thought of the guy.
No wonder this unit were so strong. No wonder they were such a team. Listening to the heroics of Jason made me proud to be serving alongside them.
And no wonder they wanted me to fight for my place on the night shift. It was time to earn my stripes. I had a date in the ring with big Jeff Roach.
The bell rang and through the headguard the shouts of all the watching cops came through as a muffled roar. Word had got around and they’d turned out in force for this one. All the VOWS unit were here: and they were all looking forward to seeing their boy put the Hollywood hard man face first on the canvas.
Jeff raised his gloves in salute and moved forward. I did the same.
I was right about this ring: now I was inside, it seemed a whole lot smaller. To be fair, Jeff himself was taking up quite a bit of room himself. I was giving up a height and weight advantage – my tactic was to draw on my speed and nimble footwork to get me through this fight.
At first it worked. Jeff dominated the centre of the ring and I danced around him, popping a few jabs in. Some even got through his guard. He moved with me, watching for the most part, knocking out a couple of slow jabs himself…I parried them easily.
But then my fitness level started to tell. I may have spent a bit of time in the gym recently, but since I stopped playing football I’m nowhere near as in shape as I used to be. My legs couldn’t keep up with my heart, my dancing slowed to more of a soft-shoe shuffle.
Suddenly a big right hook came out of nowhere and walloped me pure and clean on the chin. The world spun…my left knee wobbled, my right knee wobbled…I spun with it, wheeling away, managed to catch myself before I fell. Just.
The noise of the watching cops was nothing compared to the roar in my ears.
For the rest of the round I kept my distance – and most importantly I kept on my feet. The bell rang and I got a minute’s rest. I made it back to the corner and sat down.
Our director – bless him, he’s a lovely boy, but he’s no boxing coach. He reckoned I had a shot at this. He reckoned I should play it Ali-Foreman style, use the old rope-a-dope tactic. Let him keep hitting me for another minute or two, let him tire himself out, and then slay him in the last 60 seconds, he said. Idiot.
As I took in some water and tried to clear my head I could hear a couple of the watching cops talking to the cre.w ‘Don’t tell Vinnie now but if he beats Jeff we’re going to book him. He’s going to jail,’ laughed one of them.
That did it for me. I came out for the second round fighting.
I’d learnt my lesson and cut out on the fancy footwork. We circled each other slower now and I kept landing my jabs. With less attention paid to dancing like a butterfly I was stinging a bit more like a bee. And, more importantly as far as my face was concerned, I was keeping my guard up. As the round went on I landed more on Jeff than he landed on me.
And that’s when I saw him grinning. The bastard. Suddenly I realised – here I was, giving it my all to stay in contention, and he was cruising at 60, 70 per cent. Whenever I put a few punches together he took them…and held himself back from coming straight back at me with a big haymaker of his own.
The bell rang out and so did the applause. Jeff and I shook on it and then we both doubled up over the ropes. I’ve boxed for movies, but I hadn’t done anything like that in a long time…and I’d forgotten that sparring for the camera is nothing like actually getting in the ring for real. You think you’re fit, but after two rounds I was exhausted.
Jeff was still smiling. ‘I’d have to take the first round cos I caught him with that hook, but Vinnie’s got to take the second round cos he put a few punches together on me that I just couldn’t defend. So we’ll definitely call it a split decision.’ He laughed. ‘He might have thrown the fight you know, cos he doesn’t want to go to jail.’
He was being generous. Let’s be honest: he could have kicked the shit out of me if he wanted. He was so big and strong. Any time he wanted he could have put it on my jaw and knocked me spark out. He’s the police champion, isn’t he?
It didn’t matter. As far as the boys from the squad were concerned I’d proved myself. I’d gone two rounds with their champ. I’d given it my best shot and despite taking a whack on the chin had kept my feet. Like the man said in Raging Bull: he couldn’t knock me out. That’s what counted.
I might not have won but I’d earned their respect. And with it came a place alongside them on the notoriously eventful night shift.
When night falls, the challenge of being a cop in New Orleans becomes even greater. When the sun goes down the criminals come out to play. We’d already seen two sides of the Special Ops unit in action, on SWAT duty and serving warrants on wanted men – now it was time to run with the wolf pack.
The wolf pack is the name the squad gives to a special tactical group that hits the city’s toughest neighbourhoods tackling crime as it happens, flooding an area with a gang of cars and enough men to take on the worst situations. They hunt by the light of the moon – and thanks to my battle with Jeff Roach, we’d got ourselves a place with them.
After getting stuck in helping Fred with the arrest earlier, I couldn’t wait to get my hands dirty again. Officer John Barbetti was our partner tonight – he was another big guy, with the same easy confidence in his abilities as all the VOWS unit – and he assured us that if it was trouble we were looking for, there was a pretty good chance of finding it.
‘There’s murders here, you know, every day,’ he shrugged. ‘All we do is mostly proactive kind of work. Try to stop things before they happen, or while they’re happening. This is the ninth ward area, so there’s a lot of chasing, a lot of weapons violations, people are heavily into narcotics here…’
We peered out of the window as Barbetti drove. The streets were wide, the buildings spaced evenly out, like little Monopoly houses. It was flat, dusty, scrubby…these were the poorer areas of New Orleans and amongst the worst hit by Katrina. There were plenty of abandoned and missing houses, and most of those that remained were undergoing some kind of building work. Even four years after the hurricane, this place still needed a lot of attention.
The radio did its thing and we responded. Another unit had apprehended a suspect and called for assistance. Three or four corners later and we were on it: another of the wolf pack pulled up seconds behind us.
The suspect was standing between two officers, handcuffed, staring at his feet. Next to him a knackered old bicycle lay on the patchy grass. He was just a kid, skinny and wide-eyed. Barbetti asked what had happened and one of the guys pointed at the car.
On the bonnet: one big shiny handgun. Loaded, too. Barbetti whistled. The arresting officer filled us in, immediately lapsing into that cop-speak they use, like he was filling in a report, or giving evidence.
‘I saw the subject emerge from the corner on a bicycle,’ he said. ‘And when he saw us he hopped off the bicycle and started fleeing on foot, digging in his pocket as he ran. So believing he was concealing a weapon, we jumped out and ordered him to stop. He continued running: as he got up into this area right here, he removed the firearm from his pocket and tossed it on to the concrete over there. So Officer Budrow tazed him and he was quickly subdued.’
Sounded simple