Officer Joe grew up in a strict negroe family household and he believed in that way of bringing up children. He had punished his three daughters over his knee countless times and raised them to be good God fearing Christians. Each Sunday evening before bedtime he would vigorously chastise them one after the other, over his knee, all their sins of the week taken care of at once. His wife was kept in line with a belt. She understood her place and it was not often that she found herself touching her toes.
He ruled the gritty streets of Harlem with no less dedication and all the hoodlums knew about "Offsa Joe" the big man. The precinct top brass were no fools. Officer Joe was the man to keep the neighbourhood in line and the precinct turned a blind eye to his questionable methods. Crime was lower on his streets.
Once his hair began to go grey he shaved it off but he kept his moustache, which remained as black as it always had been. He was just under fifty years of age but had kept in good shape by bodybuilding and taking a three mile run each morning. This level of fitness was necessary. Officer Joe knew he had to be stronger and fitter than any of the young men. He had to be able to defeat any and all of them and he had often demonstrated this fact.
He was the power and authority on the streets he patrolled and people respected and feared him. In his dark NYPD uniform he walked the streets and kept order wherever he went.
In his spare time he watched sports on television and at other times he read from the Bible some of his favourite passages. He frequently went back to the Old Testament and saw how God had ruled his people and gained authority over them by force and violence.
He believed that he was God's instrument of authority in Harlem and his mission was clear: to correct those who have been led astray and set them on the righteous path. If it could be avoided he preferred to keep those who had broken man's law out of prison and he would do whatever he could if it were correct in God's eyes, the law of people being of secondary importance.
If he caught a young hood holding stolen goods it was possible to keep him out of trouble and it was always useful to have a grateful young man on his side. More often than not he had turned such a youth to the good path and it was gratifying to him to see such a person establish himself properly in the neighbourhood. Those who rejected his way did not last long on his streets.
With girls he had another approach which he favoured above any other. He held strongly to the belief that women needed a very direct physical kind of guidance in order that they should see the light of righteousness. They were easily manipulated by evil men and this led many of them onto the slimy path of sin. It was not easy for them to understand this and it did not surprise Officer Joe when they did not smell the filth of the dirty pit into which they had fallen.
It was a cross on his back to make them understand what they had done wrong, respect his authority, and lead them onto the road of godliness. His daughters were all now married to good church going employed men and he wanted no less than that for the young girls on his beat. He helped them whenever he could, corrected the wayward whims of youth where necessary.
One such young lady was Lisa Jackson. Officer Joe knew Lisa and her mother who had attended his church. Lisa's father had died before she was born and the mother had lived with countless boyfriends over the years.
But the girl had stopped attending church as she had other interests and commitments. In fact she had started going about with a group of girls that thought it was cool to cruise the streets looking out for fun with wasteful bad men.
The girls were from a distant block in Harlem which was not on Joe's beat and he considered them to be beyond his jurisdiction. Nevertheless, he did not take kindly to the gang and watched with disapproval as Lisa accepted them as peers and role models. They were older girls and she was just sixteen.
She had always dressed very respectably but now imitated her new so called friends, plastering herself with make up and wearing highly suggestive and revealing clothes. Now her slender brown legs and ample young bust were on show and Officer Joe did not like that at all. "Tutt - tutt" he would say whenever he saw her going about thus attired and an inch thick in makeup. He had always thought she was a pretty little thing with her sparkling smile and open manner. She had reminded him of his daughter Donna, when she was younger. If he let things stand and develop Lisa would end badly.
Shortly after she left school ungraduated, the policeman decided to intervene.
Officer Joe paid a visit to Lisa's mother one day, rapping hard on the door of her tenement apartment.
"Who is it?"
"Officer Joe Ma'am" He said in a deep powerful voice.
"Oh juss a minute Offsa Joe".
Lisa's mother came to the door and leaned sensuously against the doorframe with a hand on her hip. She was wearing a long satin type scarlet nightgown and she stood in such a way that her soft thighs were exposed. Her shiny black hair dropped half way down her back. She had been beautiful once and was still in good shape.
"Offsa Joe" she purred deeply, "won't ya step inside this is a pleasure." Her breasts protruded through the silky material. She turned and walked into her apartment slowly, like a Persian cat, and she parted her night dress at the back for a brief moment to reveal her bare bottom.
"Ah came to see ya about ya daughter. I needs to search her room." Said Officer Joe with cool authority.
"Goodness Offsa Joe. Lisa aint done no wrong has she?"
Now Lisa's mother knew that Officer Joe would need a search warrant but she understood better than to ask for the document. This was off the record and you never said no to Offsa Joe.
"Well lookie here" said Officer Joe after a brief spell in Lisa's room. He took something out from behind a book on a wall shelf.
"What ya got there Offsa Joe?" said the concerned mother.
"The wages of sin ma'am. Crack cocaine if I am not mistaken."
Officer Joe held up to Mrs Jackson a little sachet containing white powder.
"Oh my god! Oh my god!" Cried the horrified lady.
"The ways of Lucifer are many, oh indeed they are." Officer Joe slipped the sachet into an official police evidence envelope and put it into his pocket.
"Oh Offsa Joe!" Wailed Mrs Jackson. "Don't let her go to the state penitentiary Offsa Joe. She young and stupid! I'll whup her and tell her Offsa Joe. Give her nuther chance won't ya!"
"Now now" said Officer Joe gently. "You just calm yourself down and don't you go worrying yourself. You know me".
"Yes Offsa Joe. We all knows you. How good ya are an all. We all knows ya." She came close to him and smoothed down his NYPD uniform with her hands. "An if I can do anything at all for you Offsa Joe. You know how helpful I am now don't you."
"Mrs Jackson." Said Officer Joe, "We need to talk."
* * *
Lisa Jackson had once been a little snip of a girl and shy as a sparrow or at least that is how Officer Joe recalled her when she was much younger. Very much like his little girl had been, Donna. So when she turned up at the police station the following day at four thirty, chewing gum, wearing a short black skirt and tight yellow t-shirt, it was not easy to recognise what she had once been. Her legs, supported on outrageous glitter gold high heels seemed to go forever up and up to the limits.
The station was crowded with the usual scum, pimps, hookers, drunken tramps and all the filth of the streets gathered up and deposited in this den of law and order. Police officers booked them through as fast as they could but they kept arriving making a din with their shouting and protestations, and this way four-thirty, the evening was yet to come.
Lisa chewed her gum defiantly and looked Officer Joe in the eye with a cheeky, cocky grin. She had changed all right. She was led through a door and she walked with a couldn't care less swagger. Her hair was dreadlocked, the long strands tied back in a bushy pony tail. As they went from one corridor to the next they passed by several cops, and Lisa gave each officer rebellious vibes - staring them up and down, blowing bubbles with her gum and flaunting her beautiful body mischievously.
At last they came to the interview room Officer Joe had selected. It was a room all by itself at the end of a corridor, as far deep under the station as it was possible to go. The light was turned on to reveal a very small space with nothing in it but a little square table and two chairs, plus a sink in the corner. Officer Joe locked the door behind him.
"My, aint you a sweetheart" said Lisa with all suggestiveness. "You aint bad for a older man, what ya got in mind hun?"
"Would you sit down please miss." Said Officer Joe.
His politeness seemed to have an effect on Lisa and her expression softened a little as she pulled out the chair carefully and sat down. Officer Joe sat opposite and looked into her big black evasive eyes. She folded her arms and looked about the room, for all the little there was to see and blew big bubbles with her gum. Officer Joe put out his hand for the gum and she reluctantly gave it up to his tissue, which he made into a ball and put in his pocket.
