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The Fraternal Order of Police will then dispatch an attorney to ensure that the rights of the police officer being detained are not violated in any way, and to assist him in any way deemed necessary.
There are lawyers under contract to Lodge #5 to provide counsel on call. There are other lawyers in Philadelphia who provide their professional services, pro bono publico, to Lodge #5.
Perhaps the most distinguished of this latter group is Armando C. Giacomo, Esq., a slight, lithe, dapper Italian who once served his country as a Marine Corps fighter pilot, then came home to become either the best and most successful criminal defense attorney in Philadelphia, or the second best. The other contender for that unofficial title being Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson, Esq., of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester.
The difference between the two was essentially in their clientele. Colonel Mawson, who often defended individuals accused of stealing, misappropriating, embezzling, taking by fraud or deception, or otherwise illegally acquiring huge sums of money-and was compensated accordingly-declined to offer his professional services to anyone with any connection, however remote, to organized crime, or the illegal trade in controlled substances.
Arguing that even the most despicable scoundrels were entitled under the United States Constitution to the best defense possible, Armando C. Giacomo defended, very often successfully, the most despicable scoundrels alleged to be connected with organized crime and/or the illegal traffic in controlled substances, and was compensated accordingly.
Mr. Giacomo’s understanding with Lodge #5, Fraternal Order of Police, was that he wished to offer his services only in cases worthy of his talent. As the ordinary thug could not afford to avail himself of his services, neither should the cop charged with, say, drunken driving, or slapping the wife around, have his professional services made available to him, pro bono publico. He preferred to defend officers charged with violating the civil rights of citizens, and-above all- officers alleged to have illegally taken life in the execution of their official duties.
When the official of Lodge #5, Fraternal Order of Police, was informed by Captain Daniel Kimberly of Internal Affairs that a sergeant was being detained for investigation of a shooting of two suspects, one of them fatal, he immediately began searching for Mr. Giacomo’s unlisted home number in his Rolodex. And he was not at all surprised, despite the hour, that Mr. Giacomo said he would go directly to IAD, and that the FOP representative should meet him there.
The city editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin, Roscoe G. Kennedy, responded to a computer message from Michael J. O’Hara-
Kennedy-Hold space page one section one for threecolumn pic, plus jump for 350–400 words, + 3, 4 more picsOhara — in several ways, the first being annoyance. O’Hara’s message was very much in the form of an order, rather than a request or suggestion.
No matter how much money and perquisites O’Hara’s pal Casimir Bolinski, the football-jock-turned-sports-attorney, had beat the people upstairs out of in exchange for the services of Michael O’Hara, Roscoe G. Kennedy felt that this in no way changed the fact that Michael J. O’Hara was a staff writer, no more, and Roscoe G. Kennedy was the city editor, and thus entitled to tell the staff writer what to do, and when, not the reverse.
The second cause of annoyance was that in order to see what immortal prose Michael J. O’Hara believed was worthy of a three-column photograph on page one of section one-plus a jump with more pictures-before O’Hara saw fit in his own sweet time to send it to him, he would have to go to O’Hara’s office.
This was actually a double irritant. Mr. Kennedy did not think a lowly staff writer was entitled to an expensively furnished private office-O’Hara’s $2,100 exotic wood and calfskin-upholstered Charles Eames chair was more salt in the wound here-in the first place, and to get to it, he was going to have to get up from his desk and walk across the city room, which meant past a large number of other staff writers, all of whom would see that he was calling on O’Hara rather than the other way around.
The third irritant was that Roscoe G. Kennedy knew that if O’Hara thought he had something worthy of space on page one of section one, and with a large jump to be placed elsewhere, the sonofabitch probably did.
Roscoe G. Kennedy was honest enough to admit-if sometimes through clenched teeth-that Mickey O’Hara was really a hell of a good writer, and had earned his Pulitzer Prize.
So Mr. Kennedy resisted the urge to summon Mr. O’Hara to his presence to discuss his latest contribution to the Bulletin, and instead got up and walked across the city room and knocked politely at the door.
He saw that Mr. O’Hara had guests in his office, Casimir “The Bull” Bolinski and presumably Mrs. Bolinski, and he smiled at them.
“What have you got for me, Mickey?” Mr. Kennedy asked.
O’Hara raised one hand from the keyboard of his computer terminal, on which he was typing with great rapidity, and pointed to the screen of his personal (as opposed to the Bulletin’s) computer.
There was a very clear photograph of a well-known Philadelphia police officer on it, this one showing him in a dinner jacket, with a cellular phone in one hand and a. 45 Colt in the other, standing just a little triumphantly over a man lying on the ground.
“There’s more,” O’Hara said.
The city editor looked at the other images from the parking lot, then read Mickey’s story on the computer screen. He didn’t speak until O’Hara had finished and pushed the Transmit key. Then he said, “Great stuff, Mickey! Really great! The Wyatt Earp of the Main Line Does It Again.”
Mickey stood up.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“For a head, how about ‘Main Line Wyatt Earp 2, Bad Guys 0 in Shootout at the La Famiglia Corral’?”
“You sonofabitch,” Mickey said. “That’s a cop doing his job.”
“Watch your mouth, Michael,” Casimir said. “Antoinette…”
“A goddamn cop in a tuxedo who obviously likes to shoot people.”
“You sonofabitch, you’re no better than the goddamn Ledger!”
“Don’t call me a sonofabitch, O’Hara. I won’t stand for it.”
“Then don’t make wiseass remarks about a cop liking what he has to do to do his job, you arrogant, elitist, bleeding-heart…” Mickey paused, searching his memory for the most scalding insult he could think of, and then, triumphantly, concluded, “… Missouri School of Journalism sonofabitch!”
