Fred Sargeant, the cop

As a fan of the novels of George V Higgins, and all things related to the seventies (best movie decade) I was thrilled to receive this photo from Fred during the week. I know Fred from his tireless work correcting the revisionist myths that trans rights activists are trying to construct around Stonewall, but his time as a cop is just as fascinating. Look at the font on ‘Stamford Police’!

I wanted to know more about this period so I asked him a few questions by email.

Great photo! How old were you at this time? How long had you been in the force? Had you done much undercover work previously?

I was 28 when that photo was taken.  I'd been on the job then just over three years.  I was known as an overachiever.  I'd done foot/traffic work at first.  Got assigned to patrol early and had a knack for talking things through with people.  Since I wasn't muscle-bound, I learned how to use my nightstick when needed.  Not the brutal stuff that you see on TV today.  I practised the art of the jab.  Whaling on someone was, to me, inelegant.  Hit'em in the head and they still might not go down but it would be messy and as the saying went, "The rest might die."  So I perfected my technique to merely jab and take the man's breath away.  Quick, stunning and made life simpler for everyone involved when needed.  My nickname was The Stick.  I became an investigator assigned to a fatal accident unit.  That turned into a plainclothes investigation assignment in our Special Services Squad which focused on Vice, Gambling and Narcotics.

Was your sexuality ever an issue at work?

No. Back then, at least, cops were like islands. People knew I was gay but it wasn't an issue, for the most part. A few things were said over the years and the occasional graffiti in the men's room - Freddie the Fag - but nothing much that I couldn't deal with. That's probably why I have zero sympathy for the profound sensitivities of the trans community.

You said to me once “I got out just in time”. What did you mean by that?

Like any job, depending on how far you wished to go, there are career paths.  I wanted to advance and not take the slow route through a patrol assignment.  The way to advance quicker was taking on investigative assignments.  The pitfall in a plainclothes/undercover assignment was if you stayed too long, you could lose your values by living so much in the seamy side of life.  I'd seen good officers take a downward trajectory if they stayed in past 18 months.  In a few cases, they lost their jobs, lost their pensions and a few ended up in prison.  Really tragic stuff.  So I set my goal to get out earlier.  Just over a year after that assignment, I took a promotional exam, came in number 1 and was promoted to sergeant.  I then coached others on my exam prep and as a result, came in number 2 on my lieutenant exam. 

As a shift commander interested in expanding our department's response skills I proposed creating a unit that is now ubiquitous in policing but was just emerging then, a hostage negotiation team that worked adjacent to SWAT.  Ours was the first in Connecticut and I trained with an NYC captain, Frank Bolz, who literally wrote the book on hostage negotiations.  One afternoon he called me to a plane hijacking case on the ramp in LaGuardia and I drove down from Stamford, lights and siren all the way, just to get a front-row seat to see Frank at work.

When you were undercover, was it frightening? Were these guys the kinds of guys who would kill you if they figured you out?

In plainclothes I'd had a number of cases where people would say, "You're a cop, aren't you?" erroneously believing that cops have to admit it if asked.  I lied.  And that's allowed by case law. 

Fear was something we managed.  You prepared for hits and relied on your training when the action started.  Keeping your head so you'd go home after the job was always the goal.  My worst moment was at night, after responding to burglary and getting into a high-speed chase with the perps into the backcountry of Stamford.  They crashed into stonewall (no pun) and ran through a yard to the back of a house.  They turned and fired at me.  My backup had arrived and returned their fire.  I was stuck in the middle of a crossfire with no cover and merged as best I could with the lawn.  I didn't want to return their fire because I didn't want the backup to, adrenaline pumping, mistake me for the burglars in the dark.  Like most officers, I kept a change of underwear in my locker.

What kind of success rate did you have?

The only operation that I was involved in that wasn't a success was a drug hit where we needed a buy to obtain a search warrant.  I was in an office adjacent to the commander's office and saw him toss a baggie to my senior officer.  When we went on our surveillance for the confidential informant buy, I asked what's with the baggie.  He told me that our boss had given it to us in case the CI couldn't make the buy.  I got him to give it to me when I told him if that happened I was going to the prosecutor about it.  I kept the evidence in a safe deposit box out of state until I retired.  The CI didn't make the buy so no search warrant could be obtained.  I was on the boss's shitlist forever after that but soon got promoted out of the squad.

I proud of the fact throughout my career there were no civilian complaints filed against me.  As a commander, my squads had the lowest civilian complaint numbers while maintaining appropriate clearance rates for investigations (I also commanded our division's Special Investigations Unit) and other police performance metrics (not quotas).

You’re very committed to standing up for lesbians and women in general. I suppose that must have been formed in part by what you saw in the field? In terms of the damage that men can wreak on women and girls?

One time a teenage girl had gone missing. One of her friends told us she had gone to interview for a babysitting job but only knew the first name of the man she went to be interviewed by. We started scouring the area for men with that name. We came up with a suspect and things immediately became complicated. His father was a cop working as a dispatcher in our PD on that shift, as the investigation was unfolding.

We needed more evidence than a hunch to proceed. As you know, hostage negotiation has a lot to do with time, controlling the event, wearing people down and knowing when and what to say. While investigators pursued developing leads, I had a marked car park across the street in front of his house where he could see them to make him sweat. They had to maintain radio silence because his father was dispatching. Dispatch is the center of police operations on a shift and keeping this from the father was a task. If the man were innocent he would have called the father about the squad car parked in front of his house. He didn't. The father eventually asked me if I knew why he couldn't reach that car. I told him that they were on a detail for the chief and couldn't be used.

After 5-6 hours we had enough to go to the home. I brought in an old sergeant from the youth bureau who was off duty, who was a contemporary of the father and had known the man we were looking at since he was a kid. We sent him to the house to ask one question. Without mentioning the missing girl he asked the man when he came to the door, "What happened?" The man confessed on the spot. He had killed the girl minutes after she arrived at the house. The father never spoke to me again after that.