“Yes, it is,” the female voice said, and then she spotted the shopping bags, and a tone of indignation came into her voice. “Those are my things!”
“Somehow, I didn’t think they were his,” Martinez said.
Clarence felt the weight of the man kneeling on his back go away.
“Your name Clarence Sims?” Martinez asked.
“Go fuck yourself!”
Clarence Sims’s face, which he had raised off the macadam of the parking lot, suddenly encountered it again, as if something—a foot, say—had pushed the back of his head.
“You’re under arrest, Clarence,” the honky said.
“What happened here?” the female voice asked.
“I saw him taking those bags out of the backseat,” Martinez said. “Ma’am, can you tell me how much the stuff in them is worth?”
The victim thought about that a moment. “Two hundred dollars,” she said, finally. “Maybe a little more.”
“It would help if you could tell us if it’s for sure worth more than two hundred dollars,” Martinez pursued.
The victim considered that for a moment, then said, “Now that I’ve had a chance to think, it’s all worth closer to three hundred dollars than two.”
“Bingo,” Charley McFadden said. “M-1.”
The victim looked at him strangely.
The crime of which Clarence Sims now stood accused, theft from auto, was a misdemeanor. There were three sub-categories: M-3, where the stolen property is worth less than fifty dollars; M-2, where the property is worth between fifty and two hundred dollars; and M-1, where the property is worth more than two hundred dollars.
Like most police officers, Charley McFadden was pleased that the critter he had arrested was not as unimportant as he might have been. An M-1 thief was a better arrest than an M-3.
A faint but growing glimmer of hope that he might be able to extricate himself from his current predicament came into Clarence Sims’s mind: The fucking pigs had not read him his goddamned rights. Like most people in his line of work, Clarence Sims was well aware of what had come to be known as the Miranda Decision. If the fucking pigs didn’t read you the whole goddamned thing, starting with “You have the right to remain silent” and going through the business about them getting you a lawyer if you couldn’t afford one, and could prove it, then you told the judge and the judge let you walk.
Clarence Sims erred. Under the law it is necessary to advise a suspect of his rights under Miranda only when the suspect is to be questioned concerning a crime. Since it was not the intention of the arresting officers to ask him any questions at all about the crime, it was not necessary for them to inform Mr. Sims of his rights under Miranda.
The man Clarence Sims thought of as the big honky, who was a twenty-two-year-old police officer named Charles McFadden, opened the door of a battered old Volkswagen, and picked up a small portable radio.
The battered old Volkswagen was his personal automobile. He had been authorized to use it on duty. Authorized, but not required. Since he had chosen to use it, he had been issued sort of a Police Department credit card, which authorized him to gas up at any Police Department gas pump—there is one at every District Headquarters—up to a limit of one hundred gallons per month, no questions asked. If he had not elected to use his personal vehicle on duty, he could have performed that duty on foot.
“Twelfth District BD,” Charley McFadden said into the radio. (Burglary Detail.)
“Twelfth District BD,” Police Radio promptly responded.
“Twelfth District BD,” Charley McFadden said. “I need a wagon for a prisoner. We’re in the parking lot of the Penrose Plaza at Island Road and Lindbergh.”
Police Radio did not respond to Officer McFadden directly, but instead, after checking the board to see what was available, called the Emergency Patrol Wagon directly:
“Twelve Oh One.”
“Twelve Oh One,” the wagon replied.
“Meet the burglary detail at the parking lot of Penrose Plaza, Island at Lindbergh, with a prisoner.”
“Twelve Oh One, okay,” EPW 1201 replied.
Charley McFadden put the portable radio back on the seat of his Volkswagen.
When the two police officers assigned to 1201, the Twelfth District wagon responding to the call to transport a prisoner, arrived at the scene, they found that the arresting officers were having more trouble with the victim than with the prisoner.