How a Fictional Cop from Baltimore and a Real One from New York Changed my Life

“That’s not for you, Gabriel.” That was a near-constant refrain of my mother, a short, serious librarian who had very clear ideas about what was appropriate for her little boy. She uttered this refrain when a ten-year-old Gabie came up to her at the front desk of the local library holding a VHS tape of “Amadeus” because it looked, well, interesting.

Why do I feel like Elizabeth Berridge’s cleavage was why my mother deemed “Amadeus” “not for you, Gabriel”? (screen, um, grab)

When I was twenty-two and I told her I was enrolling in a local county’s municipal police academy with the intention of becoming a cop, she said, “That’s not for you, Gabriel.” That’s for some other mother’s son, she said. Jewish boys don’t become cops, she also said– ignoring the fact that her grandmother’s second husband was Philadelphia’s first foot patrolman, and his son rose to the rank of Chief Inspector of the Philadelphia Police Department; both of them were very much Jewish.

She was also ignoring two other Jewish police officer examples (ignoring them probably because she didn’t know anything about either of them) whom I held very close to my heart, whom I protected, whom I tried my best to study and emulate, on whom I would fashion, I’d hoped, a career. One of them was real, one was fictional: David Durk and John Munch. I’ll start with the real guy first.