Surviving Frank Rizzo’s Philadelphia
In 1943, Frank Rizzo joined the Philadelphia Police Department, worked his way up through the ranks to captain, and was eventually appointed police commissioner in 1967. He not only supported, but encouraged police brutality, racism, and corruption throughout the department. Four years later, he was elected mayor.
Rizzo was a forerunner of Donald Trump but at a local level—flaunting his tough guy image through caustic, outspoken remarks to the press and vindictiveness against critics, while manipulating public fear with zealous law and order rhetoric. He told Time magazine, “I’m going to make Attila the Hun look like a faggot” and bragged on national television that his police force “could invade Cuba and win.” The pathological cop turned politician became the role model for the entire Philadelphia Police Department.
In 1968 I was seventeen years old, living in a small New York City apartment with several acquaintances. The previous year, I’d gotten a job doing market research surveys by phone passing myself off as an eighteen year old college student. My shift began at 5 p.m. and lasted until midnight, the call sheets targeting earlier time zones as the night progressed. During the day, I led a young man’s life and seldom slept more than four hours.
I existed at the heart of New York’s drug culture during the 1960’s. Everyone I loved either consumed more psychedelics than food or was sticking needles in their arms. But I never participated, valuing my edge and clarity above instant gratification…with one exception. I sometimes used amphetamine pills to get through the long work nights when sleep deprivation caught up with me.
On a pleasant spring evening while I was at work, a street hustler named Richie who’d become a welcomed guest visited the apartment. On the way out, he casually mentioned that I’d sold him my guitar and was therefore taking it with him. When I arrived home at 1:30am via subway and bus, I was shocked to find that my guitar wasn’t in its usual place. The next morning, my roommates explained what had happened.
I called in sick at work and contacted two friends who I knew would provide backup in my efforts to remedy the situation. That night, we paid a surprise visit to Richie’s apartment, armed with razor knives. Our objective wasn’t bloody reprisal but simply to retrieve my guitar, understanding that fear is sometimes the most persuasive argument.
We knocked repeatedly on Richie’s door with no response until a neighbor finally approached and told us our quarry had left town for awhile. So there we were, all dressed up with nowhere to go.
“Let’s go to Philadelphia,” I suggested.
This wasn’t a random impulse. My friend Marty and I both had girlfriends in Philly who we hadn’t seen in a month and Steve was always willing to come along for an adventure.
Within half an hour we were headed south on the Jersey Turnpike in my beat-up old Rambler station wagon that I’d bought for seventy-five dollars. Two hours later, we picked up my companion Sherrie and drove down a small, two-lane avenue at 10 p.m. to see if we could sneak Marty’s friend away from her parents.
Suddenly, I saw flashing lights in the rearview mirror and a moment later, heard the ominous wail of a police siren. I pulled over and officers were soon knocking on both front windows, ordering everyone out of the car. During Frank Rizzo’s regime, probable cause was seldom applied to people of color and those considered white trash. Police would stop and search vehicles based solely on bias, claiming that they looked suspicions.
I politely presented my license and registration to the tall, broad-shouldered policeman who approached me. “It says here you’re underage, boy!” he declared, looking at my credentials. “Do your parents know where you are?”
“I’m on my own, sir, and support myself. If you don’t mind my asking, why did you stop us? I don’t believe I was speeding.”
“Your New York plates caught our attention. What the hell you doing this far from home in the middle of the night? You transporting drugs? If you all just hand them over now, boy, it will go a lot easier on you!”
In the midst of this fierce interrogation, part of me was thinking, I can’t believe he’s actually calling me “boy.” This is like something out of a William Faulkner novel. While the streets of New York had the world’s largest vocabulary of insults, one seldom heard the term “boy.” I’d assumed it was reserved for interactions below the Mason-Dixon Line.
“What you thinking ‘bout boy?” asked the imposing officer.
“Nothing sir. Just awaiting your instructions.”
“I ask you once again. You and your friends put all the drugs on the hood of your car and then step back!”
“We don’t have any drugs, sir. I don’t even use drugs and I work for an honest living.”
I’d learned through innumerable encounters that the best way to deal with law enforcement was to stay calm and polite, acknowledging their authority without displaying weakness. Fear awakens their predatory instincts and anger invites retaliation. Casually making reference to shared values is also useful.
It appeared to finally be working. We were all patted down, the likely hiding places in the car were searched and the tension began to ease when the expected drug cache wasn’t found. On impulse, the policeman frisked me one last time, and pulled the razor knife out of my back pocket.
“What have we here?” he exclaimed with the snarl back in his voice. What you doing bringing this into our city, boy?”
“I use it at work, sir, to open cartons. I forgot to leave it home.”
“Well it’s still a deadly weapon and you have no business carrying it around. Are your friends armed?” The officer turned toward the others. “Everyone empty their pockets of weapons immediately! Toss them on the ground. Anyone who holds back, and we find it in a search, we’ll beat the damn crap out of them right here and now!” The clang of two razor knives hitting the pavement was quickly heard.
“We’re gonna have to bring you in for this and once we’re at the precinct they’ll do a more thorough drug search.” We were all handcuffed while awaiting the paddy wagon. I noted we hadn’t been formally arrested, but simply provided an excuse to be hauled downtown for further investigation. The police were looking for a drug bust, not three kids with box-cutters.
The four of us were loaded into the back of the prisoner transport. One of the apprehending officers took the wheel while the other sat beside him. The two cops who delivered the large van were assigned to drive the patrol car and my vehicle to the station. I wasn’t overly concerned as this had all the appearances of a routine shakedown to which I’d been subject countless times…until remembering I had two of the amphetamine pills used to keep me awake at work in my jacket pocket…enough back then to get me locked up for at least a year.
We barreled down a wide boulevard through a shopping district with two lanes of traffic going in each direction. Every time we passed an attractive female pedestrian, the driver abruptly cut across all four lanes and slowed beside the woman as both officers shouted licentious greetings before swinging back to our side of the road. Accosting women walking to our right required less extreme driving maneuvers. If a civilian motorist had exhibited similar behavior, these same cops would have cited him for reckless driving and disorderly conduct.
We arrived at the precinct twenty minutes later. Once inside, our handcuffs were removed and we were ordered to line up behind a long desk and empty our pockets under the watchful eye of the night sergeant. Within seconds we were surrounded by thirty policemen, all curious to observe the interlopers from New York. We might as well have been aliens rescued from a disabled spacecraft. A few shouted sarcastic remarks, one of them attempting to mimic a New York accent by asking, “Where you from? The corner of thirdee-toyd and thirdee-toyd?” It was an absurd query as the intersection of 33rd and 33rd doesn’t exist anywhere in the five boroughs.
I was wearing an old army surplus jacket and when it came my turn to stand before the sergeant, I slowly began emptying the safe pockets while considering options. Eventually it came time to reach into the upper pocket over the right side of my chest, where a Dexedrine capsule and half a Benzedrine pill rested at the bottom. I looked straight into the sergeant’s eyes while removing a pouch of cigarette tobacco and rolling paper, which I knew would get his attention, with the Dexedrine between my pinky and adjoining finger. As I placed the tobacco on his desk, I casually let the capsule slip through my fingers onto the floor and continued providing other miscellaneous items from the large pocket, aware that no one had responded to my covert action.
“Is that it?” asked the sergeant.
“Yes sir,” I replied and was ordered to step back and be frisked again. The small Bennie was buried in loose tobacco at the bottom of my pocket and went unnoticed. Once all of us had been through the procedure, we were locked in a small waiting room, except for Sherrie who was taken elsewhere. To my utter astonishment, our chamber contained a toilet and the last bit of incriminating evidence was flushed away. “No matter what happens,” I told my crew, “don’t anyone get defensive, or start babbling excuses like a child. That’s what they expect from criminals. Just act like gentlemen and we’ll get through this.”
An hour later, we were ushered up a flight of stairs into a larger room containing ten other prisoners sitting on metal chairs. A young man positioned nearby had a red, swollen jaw and I asked what happened.
“I mouthed-off to one of the detectives and he punched me in the face. Oh God, here he is again…”
A stern looking man wearing a white shirt and red tie with a shoulder holster strapped on entered the room. Ignoring his previous target, he approached my small crew. “We know you’re at least carrying some marijuana, and figure you’re using that local girl to hide it. She’s being searched by a female detective as we speak. We’re also tossing your vehicle. One way or the other, we’re gonna find it!”
I wondered if, as a last resort, they’d plant evidence in my car. But there was nothing to do but wait and keep my wits about me. The minutes passed slowly and while my composure remained calm, sweat was dripping down my arms inside the jacket.
The large round clock on the wall was approaching 5 a.m. when a uniformed cop I hadn’t seen before entered the room and nonchalantly told my group, “You’re free to go.” We followed him into the hallway and found Sherrie waiting. The officer pointed to the staircase, saying, “You know the way out. I suggest you three gentlemen leave town as soon as possible.”
We descended the long flight of stairs toward the exit. Imagine a movie camera filming from a wide angle, slowly zooming in on the four of us as we reached ground level, and then panning to the floor of the now empty lobby as the zoom increased to reveal a single Dexedrine capsule lying in plain view not far from the unoccupied sergeant’s desk. To my eyes, it appeared to be the size of a football, dominating the station. We’d been surrounded by a room full of professional investigators, so consumed with fascination and rage that not one of them bothered to cast a downward glance.
We entered the parking lot, and located my old Rambler to find it utterly ransacked. All of our belongings were jumbled together in sloppy piles and the back seat was loose. Sorting through our stuff, we came across a sketch Marty had made of my face as I drove. One of the police officers no doubt harbored the sincere belief that good art requires collaboration and decided to contribute by placing crudely drawn male genitals in my mouth.
“Let’s get the hell out of here before our luck changes,” I told my friends. “We can clean up this mess later.” We dropped Sherrie at her house and headed for a north bound ramp of the Jersey Turnpike.
A few months later, I stopped using pills to stay awake at work, having learned to prefer coffee.
A bronze statue of Frank Rizzo waving a greeting was erected at the entrance to Philadelphia’s Municipal Building in 1998. It became an icon of national protests against police brutality starting in 2017 and was vandalized following the murder of George Floyd. On June 2, 2020 the monument was removed and put in storage.
Phil Cohen spent 30 years in the field as Special Projects Coordinator for Workers United/SEIU, and specialized in defeating professional union busters. He’s the author of Fighting Union Busters in a Carolina Carpet Mill and The Jackson Project: War in the American Workplace.