Boston Cop and the Homeless Woman
A Boston undercover cop comes to the rescue of a homeless woman in need of his help.
Author's Note:
This is the true story of how Susan Jill Parker met her ex-husband, Michael Joseph Sullivan, a Boston police, undercover, first grade, detective sergeant.
# # #
Minding my business while walking to the local pharmacy in plain clothes to buy items that I needed, I'm trained to always be on alert. A habit that I have, I'm always checking cars, memorizing license plates, and taking note of descriptions of any suspicious persons that I see. Not uncommon in any big city, between the police sirens, fire sirens, car burglar alarms, and beeping horns, a cacophony of noise, able to distinguish and isolate one from the other, I heard a woman scream for help. An emergency, her screams sounded, pleadingly desperate.
"Help! Stop! Don't! Don't you touch me! Get away from me! How dare you? Who do you think you are? Get the fuck away from me! Help! Police! Rape!"
Then, when she screamed rape, I knew this was serious and not another domestic issue. Impossible for me to ignore, coming from all directions, her loud cries for help echoed throughout the alleyway. With me only a couple of blocks away, I stood in front of the alley and peered down listening while trying to determine where the screams were coming from. With the sound of her loud screams bouncing off of brick buildings and echoing all around me, it was difficult to pinpoint their exact location.
"Help! Help! Please! Please help! Somebody help me," she screamed louder and longer. "Please! Someone call the police! Call 911! Call 911! Rape! Rape!"
There it was again. Sounding closer this time, I continued walking down the alley to investigate. Heading in the right direction, the closer I walked the louder her screams.
"Please! Someone help me. Call 911! Rape!"
Her screams were reminiscence of a time past. Whether young or old, stripped naked and forced to have sex against their wills, I thought of all the women who were brutally raped and murdered by the Taliban. I couldn't walk in a village without women hiding for fear of being raped again or murdered.
Something that stuck with me, I remembered Lara Logan. A television and radio journalist and war correspondent from South Africa who was stripped naked, brutally attacked, and raped multiple times by a mob of dozens of angry men in Cairo, Egypt. Gang raped, fucking her in her pussy and in her ass, forced to her knees and forced to blow them, they sodomized her with sticks and even a flag pole. Her security detail was only one man armed with a handgun. Overwhelmed, there was nothing that he could do but to watch in horror and hurry her out of there after the ordeal was over.
That wouldn't have happened on my watch. Stopping it before it even happened, crowd control and keeping angry mobs at bay was one of the specialties of the Navy SEALs. Reading the obvious signs, we would have gotten her safely out of there before it escalated to that extreme. She never would have gone through any of that physical and emotional trauma had I been there with my SEAL team.
# # #
Typical of people who don't want to get involved, as if they didn't hear her screams, the pedestrians around me ignored her cries for help and continue walking. Yet, if something as horrific happened to them, they'd be screaming for help, too. If someone attacked them and no one responded to help them and came to their rescue, they'd be angry. If what happened to this poor woman happened to them, and the police were slow to respond, they'd be the first ones to accuse the police of not doing their jobs.
Never without them, ready to take action and help her when no one else would, I pulled my SAP, weighted, black, leather gloves from my back pocket and put them on as I walked towards her cries for help. Any man, no matter how big, would take notice of a two-pound weighted uppercut delivered to his chin at full force and with the devastating speed of a martial artist and ex-MMA fighter. Most times, snapping their heads all the way backwards, it would only take one, perfectly placed punch to knock someone out and put them down on the ground unconscious.
The screams were coming from the alley that housed dozens of 180-year-olds, brick buildings behind Marlborough Street in Boston. No matter if rich people lived there in this 13-block part of the Back Bay, from Arlington Street to Massachusetts Avenue, there were always criminal activities happening in the alleys. No matter if they paid three-thousand-dollars or more a month for rent for a studio apartment, whether drugs, break-ins, stolen cars, robberies, or rapes, the alleys were the targets of criminals.
If that wasn't enough, the alleys were infested with rodents and roaches. You wouldn't want to be a homeless person in Boston. Yet, a real disgrace, with Boston the 8th richest city in America, nearly 6,200, one-percent of Boston's 670,000 population are homeless. From drunks to druggies and to mothers with children, with America the richest country in the world, no one should be left out in the cold, going hungry, and begging for food. Yet, the homeless people of Boston who slept in cardboard boxes in doorways, on the sidewalks, and on park benches graphically highlighted the problem.
# # #
As if on a military mission, using the element of surprise to my advantage, I quietly entered the alley one slow step at a time. Not knowing if they had a firearm, I hugged the wall and walked sideways to make myself a smaller and harder to hit target. Positioned out of sight and continuing to inch my way along, in case they had a gun, when I peered around the corner, I saw a woman surrounded by four men.
Not making a sound, I continued moving closer while remaining out of sight. None of them displayed a gun in their hand, had a gun tucked in their waistband, or showed a firearm bulging out and weighing down their pockets. I stopped to view her from a safe distance as I slowly and stealthily continued to move closer. Clearly, they were getting ready to strip her naked and gang rape her.
The men were physically abusing and sexually assaulting the woman. With her disheveled appearance and two shopping bags filled with her personal belonging, mostly clothes, by her feet, she looked like a homeless woman or loosely referred to as a bag lady. Not seeing me coming, continuing to stay low, and crouching down out of sight, I took my position behind a parked car. Wanting to know more about my enemy before planning my attack, the men were unaware that I was there watching them through the passenger side window while I continued to survey the situation.
I needed to be careful. Especially with four against one, a situation such as this could turn violently ugly really fast. They could take her as a hostage to make their escape. They could stab her to stop me from chasing after them and, to force me to stop to call an ambulance and wait with her for it to arrive while medically treating her.
# # #
Sometimes preventing a fight from even happening, I rolled up my sleeves to display my Navy SEALs tattoos. My shoulders, arms, and forearms were decorated with them. If a man recognized what they symbolized, usually, that was enough to stop him in his tracks. Yet, these men were too dumb to know who I was and what I was about. With special ops members, Green Beret, Delta Forces, Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs all having deadly reputations, no one wanted to tangle with a Navy SEAL, especially one who was trying to save a defenseless woman from being brutally, sexually assaulted.
Clearly, the woman feared the men but, giving her credit, seemingly fearless by her defensive posture, she was unafraid to defend herself and fight back. Maybe she had brothers and I suspected she did have brothers because someone had taught her how to fight. With her balanced on her feet, she definitely knew how to throw a punch and a kick to defend herself.
I don't know of too many women who knew how to throw a punch with force. I don't know of too many women who'd be ready to take on four men to defend themselves without trying to run away and falling apart crying. I don't know of too many men who'd be ready to take on four men but, having done that many times before in combat situations, I was ready and able to do just that again on her behalf now.
Using whatever there was around her, she tossed a heavy, metal, garbage can filled with trash and garbage at them hitting one of them in the legs and knocking him down. Strong to even lift the garbage can, one-handed no less, she was even stronger to toss it with some force. Yet, the potential of physical danger when fighting for your life will give anyone superhuman strength, strength they never knew they had until they needed it.
Keeping hold of the lid by the handle with her left hand, she used that as a shield to defend herself against their onslaught while waving an old, discarded, wet, dirty mop in her right hand. Hitting them in the face with the mop head whenever they neared, she did a good job of keeping them at bay. Then, tired of playing games and tired of being hit in the face with a wet, dirty mop, they attacked her full force.