Pride of the PBA
mailto:asullivan00@comcast.net
We all know why we’re here.
And the reason why I’m talking at all is to say something I could never say when Peter was still around.
With all the hustle and bustle of being a cop, you hardly get to say things like how you feel.
With Peter around, it was even a little harder. You had to get around all that heavy male stuff. You didn’t want to come across like a sissy or anything.
Maybe Peter was really a shy guy, hiding behind his gruff the way his warm heart always hide behind his badge.
Yeah, and I’ve heard the bad talk about him lately, saying he wasn’t the hero we all made him out to be.
Some bastard even thought up shit from when he was in high school, saying Peter was the biggest bully there.
I went to high school with Peter, and sure he was tough. Maybe even as tough as people say. Hell, I even got a lump or two from him. And so did a lot of you guys. But you had to be tough back then just to get through school, and it’s not how you start out, it’s how you end up that counts.
I mean, we all had a choice to make.
Some of us took the path out of that place figuring to help people by becoming cops. Others took the other road and it’s one of those sons of bitches that shot Peter in the back.
Sure, there are some who’ll say Peter just used his badge to get what he wanted, and that behind the badge he was still a bully, and that he spent a lot of his time getting even for old scores from high school. That’s why – these bastards say – some many of his old high school chums wound up behind bars.
There are others who even point to Peter’s drinking habits and his tendency to tell dirty jokes as something he ought to be ashamed of.
Okay, so he cheated on his wife now and then. Like any of us can resist the temptation when so many young girls flock around us all the time. Sure, there were more girls around him than any of us, but that only goes to prove the hell of a guy he really was.
Nobody’s perfect. And for some of us, the job’s rough enough for us to have to blow off steam from time to time. Cops have one of the highest divorce rates and I guess Peter had to get love where he could find it.
But none of that proves zilch about why he was out there. You can’t take the talk of two punks on the street over the record of a good cop. How can you believe that this whole thing happened over a girl?
Peter didn’t need women so bad that he would have to steal one – especially from drug dealers like those two were. If anything, they were trying to steal his girl.
Okay, I’ll admit he might have used a little too much force, and maybe he said some inappropriate things when he was smacking that fool’s head against the wall. We all say things that our mothers wouldn’t approve of.
But that was no reason for that other son of a bitch to go and shoot Peter like that, and no reason for people to be spreading lies about him either.
I promise you this. If I find the son of a bitch who shot Peter, he won’t need no jury trial. And we’ll save the state the expense of having to give him gas. Lead’s cheaper. You get my drift? Now get out there and find him before some shyster finds him first.