[HF8577 Under Pressure 1965, Length:00:30:03, Color, Sound]
[This Beta SP was duplicated from a 3/4-inch U-Matic tape by BonoLabs for the National Library of Medicine, March 2016.]
[Dark]
[The Louisiana Association for Mental Health Presents:]
[Under Pressure 1965 by the La. Assn. For Mental Health]
[Filmed entirely in Cleveland, Ohio, with the generous assistance of this city's Police Department and personnel.]
[Supported by a grant from The National Institute of Mental Health, Public Health Service,
Department of Health, Education and Welfare]
[Narrator:] Every policemen lives two lives.
Off-duty he dresses like everybody else and to be thought of
as one more representative of John Q. Public.
But once he puts on the authority and obligations of a police job, he becomes a marked man.
In uniform or out of it, he must learn to live and work under pressures few people
outside his profession know or understand.
This is a film about these pressures as they are experienced by four men.
Jack Morris knows how to laugh at himself.
But he's also a perfectionist.
Almost every Monday night, he and his three sons play pool together,
and the boys have learned a lot from their father.
[Jack:] I believe a man ought to learn whatever he sets his hand to properly,
right from the start.
I don't care if it's playing pool or whatever it is.
[Narrator:] Jack's partner is Fred McPherson, who grew up in a small town in the west.
Fred's never quite got used to big city ways.
He likes to garden but he'd much rather hunt or go fishing.
[Fred:] My father in-law is a carpenter from theold country.
We built this house together.
Now my wife Vivian and I both work to help pay off the mortgage.
We don't have any children but it still takes two paychecks to keep things up
the way we both want them.
[Narrator:] Our third man is Jim Sweeney.
There are plenty of children around Jim's house.
Four of them his.
The rest just collect from all over the neighborhood.
[Jim:] Sure they make noise, gosh mine do, too.
They can bother you sometimes but...like when I'm working nights.
You start letting things like that bug you too much, you can go off your rocker.
You've got to learn to live and let live.
[Narrator:] Jim's partner is John Martin.
John grew up in a poor city neighborhood, so he works especially hard
to get the best of everything for his children.
And yet, he's often troubled with doubts about what he's doing for them.
[John:] I know. If kids don't learn how to make out on their own they're headed for trouble.
They've even got to learn to do without things sometime.
I've talked about this a lot to my boy Mick.
I wish I knew how much got through to him.
[Narrator:] These four quite different men who tell our story have one thing in common.
They are all policemen with at least fifteen years of service out in the street.
[Fred:] In police work you do get exposed to physical danger.
Now for myself, I think I need this sort of thing.
I guess I'm like my favorite uncle who is town marshal where I grew up out west.
[Fred:] That car wasn't there last time.
[Jack:] Let's get it.
[The officers get out of the vehicle and inspect the scene.]
[Suspect:] Cops!
[Men scramble around in the darkness.]
[Fred:] Come on out. Come. Come on.
Against the door.
Come on, hands up.
[The other suspect races up the steps trying to escape.]
[Jack:] All right, that's far enough. Let's go. Come on down.
Come on. Real easy.
Easy, I said.Turn around.
[Fred narrating:] I don't mind the physical risks you run into, but something I actually like
about police work is helping to make the jigsaw puzzle fit together.
[Police officer:] Aw hell, that was just a juvenile.
How about recently?
Three burglaries?
CCW.
[Police Officer 2:] Get his CPD over to me.
[Police Officer 1:] CPD number?
482-391.
How bout uh, last arrest?
43063.
Okay. Hold on a minute will ya?
[Police Officer 2:] We've got a good one for ya. Three convictions...
[Fred voiceover:] If you don't have the patience it takes to get this kind of detail,
you'll find you've got no place in police work.
No matter how good you are with a gun.
[Police Officer 1:] How 'bout you run a check on this sawed-off shotgun?
Springfield uhh make, serial number 5384912.
[John:] Meet me pretty soon, after I finish..
[Officer Jim:] Well hurry up, get caught up will ya?
Hey wait.
[A car comes speeding around a corner.]
[The cops turn on their siren and pursue the speeding suspect.]
[Siren wails]
[John:] Get out of the car.
Some identification.
[Officer Jim:] Take it out yourself.
[John:] Whose car is this, Jim?
[Jim:] Mine.
[John:] You let the fella over there drive? What's his name?
[Jim:] My brother, Bill.
[John:] Hey Bob, what are you doing outthis late?
[Bob:] Just riding around with some of my buddies.
[John:] Your dad know you're out?
[Bob:] No.
[John:] Has Mickey been with you?
Tonight at all?
[Bob:] No, I haven't seen him all day.
[John:] How about you fella, where do you live?
[Boy mumbles]
[Officer Jim:] Whose car is it Thomas? [Thomas:] It's my dad's.
[Officer Jim:] It's your dad's? Do you have the registration?
[Thomas:] No.
[Officer Jim:] Where is it?
[Thomas:] At home I guess.
[Officer Jim:] You guess? You're not sure?
[Thomas:] No, I don't know where he keeps it.
[Officer Jim:] Go over there.
John. Watch him for a second, I want to get a check on this.
[John:] Come over here.
What's your name lad?
[Bill:] Bill.
[John:] Bill what? [Bill:] Thomas.
[John:] Where do you know Bobby here from?
[Bill:] Go to school with him.
[John:] Is he one of your friends?
These are friends you and Mickey hang around with?
[Bob:] No.
[John:] I never saw them around the neighborhood.
[Officer Jim:] 104 to central.
Can you give us a listing and a check please?
P for Paul, B for Bernie.
[John:] You been doing any drinking at all?
[Bob:] No.
[John:] No? You smell like you have.
Listen, we're gonna give you a break. I'm gonna let you go home.
But we're going to give your buddy a ticket.
[Officer Jim:] Hey John, it’s a hot one.
[John:] Oh my God, get up against the car, fellas.
Turn around, put your hands up on the car.
Come on Bobby, you too.
[Police Sergeant:] Very good arrest fellas, I want to congratulate you.
Don't forget you still got two hours on the street.
[John:] Okay, let's hit it.
[Narrator:] Getting personally involved with the people whom one must arrest
can't be avoided sometimes.
But the truly professional policemen follows procedures
that keep such occasions to a minimum.
When issuing a traffic citation, for instance,
he asks for license and registration, states the offense, then leaves the driver to cool off
while he returns to his own car to make out the ticket,
undisturbed by the driver's attempts to argue or talk his way out of the situation.
[Man in car slaps the steering wheel.]
, the officer's partner stands guard,
the patrol car placed so it can give protection from oncoming traffic.
[Police Officer:] Mr. Federico, this is your citation.
This is your personal bail that you will be in courton the fifth of July at 8:45 am.
Will you sign this please?
[Mr. Federico:] I don't know why, I explained to youI couldn't get out of that lane.
[Narrator:] Want to see how personally involved you can get?
[Woman:] I had to stop for that white car, it was right in front of me.
[Police Officer:] Lady, there was no white car in front of you!
[Woman:] There certainly was officer. Don't tell me, I know what I saw.
It was a white station wagon.
[Police Officer:] Lady, there was no white station wagon there.
There are two stop signs back there.
You may have stopped for the first one, you did not stop for the second one.
[Woman:] Officer, you don't have to give me a lecture.
I did not stop, I DID stop at that sign.
I didn't see the sign you're talking about.
[Police Officer:] Lady you were right the first time.
[Narrator:] Now she's in charge, and doesn't he look silly?
[Police Officer:] You're going to jail and your carwill be impounded.
[Woman:] You're not taking me anywhere.
[Police Officer:] You most certainly are going and you're going now.
[Narrator:] No patrolman can possibly guess what’s coming up next.
Some find this uncertainty adds to the job's interest.
All find that it builds up tension.
Nowadays, even the most routine call can involve the patrolman in something
that adds up to thousands of dollars.
[Narrator 2:] With so much money at stake, I guess it's only natural for people
to tell us just what’s favorable to them.
But after a few years of hearing this kind of thingyou get pretty cynical about everybody
if you aren't careful.
[Narrator 3:] I'll tell you something else you've got to watch out for.
You see situations like this day after day.
After a while you get so used to them, you start forgetting that for the people involved
it's most probably the biggest thing in their life.
If you sound bored or offhand, they're going to resent it
and they'll hold a grudge against the whole department.
[Narrator:] People can be pretty unreasonable sometimes.
Almost everybody's got some form of prejudice.
For example, on the edge of our patch there's a nice neighborhood
that's trying to keep hillbillies from moving in.
So we get a complaint every time the hill kids start playing in the park.
Sometimes the kids are doing things they shouldn't.
But if they're behaving themselves, they have just as much right to be in that neighborhood
as anyone else.
We aren't making ourselves popular with the property owners when we take this attitude.
But if I intended to win a popularity contest, I wouldn't have been a policemen in the first place.
But if you own property in a neighborhood like this the way my mom and dad do,
then it's a lot harder to take an impartial attitude.
I'll admit I've got prejudices.
It's a real strain trying to handle a situation impartially.
When you feel one side or the other is one hundred percent wrong.
[A woman's voice:] I don't know, I guess the man. I don't know what happened.
[Narrator:] Some of the things you see in this business can turn your stomach in no time flat
if you let them.
And yet it will amaze you to see how the public will flock around
when there's anything like this going on.
Maybe some of them think we're lucky 'cause we get a real close look.
I don't know.
The more you're in this business, the more you begin to think
that the whole world is a pretty mixed-up place.
This old man had been dead for a week before anyone noticed.
Now all his neighbors are acting like they care what happens to him.
Well, maybe some of them do care.
But one thing you can bet on, whatever we police do, there's a thousand eyes watching us.
[The police check a collapsed man for vitals.]
I had to get used to this feeling of being watched all the time.
But after nineteen years on the job, I've learned to ignore it.
[Fred voiceover:] God almighty, the things that you see.
A lot of the times you're really not equipped to handle a situation,
but the public expects you to take charge.
So you do. Somehow.
[Jack voiceover:] When I first joined the force. I thought policemen spent most of their time
catching burglars, solving crimes, stuff like that.
Instead we spend most of our time playing nursemaid.
If nobody else wants the job, then who gets it?
I'll give you one guess.
But, it makes the day pass.
[Jack voiceover:] If there's one thing you can say about police work, it's not routine.
You can answer a call and hear a man's whole life story before you get through.
People can break your hearts, if you let them.
I know I shouldn't do it, but every time I handle a case where there's little children involved,
or there has been a family breakup, I think "Oh my God, it could be me or mine."
[Fred voiceover:] Handling family quarrels isn't the kind of work that gets your name
in the papers or much credit back at headquarters.
But it's one of the most important jobs we do.
Most crimes of violence begin with spats like this.
Now you've got to learn to handle them without getting caught in the middle.
A lot of policemen have got themselves killed this way.
[A child's voice:] That man works at the television station.
[Fred voiceover:] I guess I've made my worst mistakes when I've been working under the pressure of time.
A day ago we got the call to pick up this mental patient
a half-hour before we were due to go off duty.
So we tried to hurry them along.
[Shouting and crying.]
[Woman:] I saw him take his fist and he hit the window
and he's been bleeding. Jimmy!
I don't know what's wrong with him.
Maybe you can take him to the hospital.
Jimmy keep yourself together now, don't act like that, Jimmy!
[Fred voiceover:] The wagon men who got the call with us were in a hurry, too.
And in about a minute all of us were in a mess up to our armpits.
[Woman:] Please don't hurt him, that's my husband.
Jimmy don't do this, Jimmy don't.
Officer, don't hurt him.
Please don't hurt him. Jimmy!
Jimmy.
Don't hurt him, please don't hurt him.
Don't Jimmy, don't Jimmy. Jimmy!
Don't hurt him! Don't hurt him.
Please don't hurt him, officer!
Jimmy!
[Fred voiceover:] I don't think that man's family or neighbors will ever forget what they saw that day.
I know I won't forget it.
Two days later Jack and I handled a commitment that could have been just as messy
if we'd let it get out of hand.
Believe me, women can be just as difficult to handle as men.
[Older woman:] I ain't been bothering nobody.
[Fred:] What's your name ma'am?
[Narrator:] This one has been exhibiting strange behavior for several days.
We talked with her quietly for a long time before we made the first attempt to get her to move.
By then we'd made her feel that we weren't siding against her, but that we meant what we said.
Handling people like this does take time.
You've seen only a minute or so of the half hour we took to get her as far as the car.
[The disturbed woman is escorted to the police car, with sounds of passing traffic.]
[Lakeside Hospital Admitting Office]
When I first joined the force I thought you had to yell at people
and frighten them to get them to do things.
Now I've found that all you have to do is talk to 'em and show them a little respect.
Now I'm not saying you can make hard and fast rules about anything in this business.
Most of the time you're working in the dark in more ways than one.
[Police Officer:] What is it?
[Dwight:] Dwight Brown.
[Fred voiceover:] Boy, can people fool you.
Take these two lost kids we picked up the other night.
Their story was that some big boys had stolen their bus money.
So we gave them a ride home.
It turns out they cooked up the whole story to get out of a beating
they thought might be waiting for them at home for being out so late.
A policeman gets a close view of the lurid side of life, all right.
Some of the characters you meet in this business can trap you into all sorts of trouble.
Both at home and on the job.
If you don't watch your step.
So you do a good, conscientious job all night long, maybe make a good pinch, and what happens?
You end up in court the next morning.
When you could've been home sacked out.
[John:] What are you doing up here so late, Mick? Come on up to bed.
Where's mom, in the kitchen?
[Nick:] Yes.
We're still going tomorrow, aren't we dad?
[John:] Nope.Gotta go to court.
[Sheryl:] Oh John no.
[Mick:] What, again?
[John:] Yes again, now get to bed!
[Donald:] Are we gonna go fishing tomorrow?
Well, are we?
[Mick:] No we're not.
[Donald:] Why?
[Mick:] 'Cause daddy's a cop.
[John:] Well, we almost made it tonight, Sheryl.
[Sheryl:] What happened this time?
[John:] We got a drunken driver.
[Sheryl:] Every time we make plans you have to go to court.
[John:] What do you want me to do, look the other way?
[Sheryl:] No.
[John:] I tell you a million times, don't plan with the kids for anything, because they think I'm the goat.
You can see the reaction of Donald and Mickey already, they think I don't want to go anywhere.
It's me.
Now don't make any plans.
You can call uncle Bill, uncle Frank and tell them to forget everything.
[Sheryl:] All right, but I hate to disappoint the children.
[John pushes a loaded dolly through a warehouse.]
[John voiceover:] Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have two jobs.
We're allowed to work twenty hours a week on the outside.
And I need that money to buy the little extras for my kids that all the neighbors do.
But I'll admit, there have been times when I went on a late shift after a day on the dock so tired,
my partner had to do the looking around for both of us.
Sometimes I think what the hell.
I make more money pushing crates than I do as a policeman.
But man I'd hate to think of spending the rest of my life in any routine job.
I just don't care how much it pays.
[Police Officer:] I wouldn't do that job for a million bucks.
[Jack voiceover:] I'll be frank with you, I enjoy my extra job.
Maybe I need the change.
But it sure did play hell with my home life.
I'm divorced now, and I see my boys one night a week.
[Sound of balls colliding on a pool table.]
This is a poor arrangement at best, for all of us,
and financially, well, I'm in as much of a hole right now as I ever was.
It's too late to think about it I guess.
But what I was trying to do was buy happiness for my family on the installment plan,
instead of learning to live content on what we had.
[Jack voiceover:] Sometimes I think the greatest hazard of a police job is the fact
that your wife can get almost unlimited credit.
The merchants all know they can complain to the department if you get too far behind.
And man, how they push their advantage.
[Fred voiceover:] Easy credit is a trap, all right.
You get into debt way over your head.
And then it's damn hard to say no to somebody who wants to do you a favor.
Believe me, there are always people around who want to do a policeman a favor.
Maybe I'm too cynical.
But after fifteen years on the street, I've learned to be suspicious of everybody
when it comes to this sort of thing.
[Narrator:] Most patrolman these days spend the greater part of their working hours
driving or sitting in a prowl car.
This has introduced a new occupational hazard.
Physical and mental lethargy.
[Jack voiceover:] I'll go along with that all right.
It was a lot different back when I was walking a beat.
Then you just naturally got to know people.
You met all kinds.
Not just the crooks or the ones making complaints,
the way we're liable to now.
It gave you a different feeling about people.
And about your job.
[John voiceover:] There's no reason why you can't meet people in the same way now.
Jimmy and I do that all the time.
I'll admit you have to make a little more of an effort.
When you stick in a car you have a tendency to stay grouchy
and think the whole world's against you.
But when you really get to know the folks in your patch, they seem a lot different.
There's good and there's bad in every neighborhood.
Take a look at our patch, for example.
[Jazz music playing.]
We're right in the heart of the bloody Fifth District.
We call it the combat zone.
It has the highest crime rate in the city.
And yet 80 to 90 percent of the people in the Fifth District
are law-abiding citizens who need our protection.
They're people who are doing their best to keep up their houses and raise their children
to some kind of standard
in spite of what goes on around them.
[Bluesy music playing.]
Of course part of my job is knowing the crooks and keeping an eye on them.
But if I forget that there are good people here too, and treat them accordingly,
I'm not doing my job as a policemen.
If you start treating all kids as delinquents because they happen to live in a neighborhood
where delinquency is high, you're encouraging the very thing you're supposed to be fighting.
I always try to remember that for these kids I represent not just the law on their block,
but the whole city government.
The way they feel about me now is beginning to determine how they will feel about law and order
in general a few years from now.
[Sounds of children talking and playing.]
[Jack voiceover:] My partner and I are pretty fortunate.
We live and work in a nice part of town.
But you still can't just assume everybody is going to respect you
because you have on a uniform.
If you don't stay friendly with the people, then you don't have much of a chance
to find out about the trouble ahead of time.
And yet you've got to learn to keep your distance from them.
[Jim voiceover:] People are always suspicious.
Even your neighbors and friends.
They see you in a bar and right away they say you're catching a free drink.
Hell, it's our duty to check out places like this.
They see us stop for a coffee and right away they say you're freeloading on the city's time.
What the hell, don't they take a coffee break?
You've got to get some fun out of life.
[Murmuring]
[John voiceover:] Boy, people are funny.
One policemen gets accused of making a mistake and we all get blamed.
No matter how far away it happens.
Your best friends kid you about it.
I try to laugh with them, but it hurts.
Even Mickey starts asking all sorts of questions.
[Narrator:] Every police officer must expect this kind of group blame for individual misdeeds.
And there is another kind of publicity every policeman and his family must learn to accept.
[Shoot-to-Kill Hunt On for Police Slayer]
[Policeman Killed Nabbing 3 Robbers]
[Slain Officer's Wife Bitter]
[31 Police Injured in Philly Rioting]
[Fred voiceover:] This is a job that can get to you,if you don't watch yourself.
You're under pressure all through the shift.
And then you've got to relax.
Too many of us relax by stopping by the nearest tavern for a couple of cold ones.
After a while you'll find you're fighting a habit that's damn hard to control.
I wouldn't be surprised if booze hadn't killed a lot more policeman than bullets.
[John voiceover:] As a policeman you see so much that's wrong and rotten in this word
that you've got to get away from it once in a while.
When you do, you start getting a different view of your job.
It's not all bad.
Once in a while you get an assignment that makes your family really feel proud of you.
[Military band music playing.]
[Officers stand guard to protect President Lyndon Johnson.]
[Music and clapping.]
[Emergency Room. Injured man in wheelchair moans.]
[Fred voiceover:] I wish I had more education.
I had a couple years of college and I had fourteen weeks of basic training in our police academy.
And we get refresher courses from time to time.
I'm a lot better able to handle things then say my uncle, who's still town marshal out west.
But police work is getting more professionalized all the time.
We work right along with the nurses and doctors and lawyers, social workers.
The public's beginning to expect us to measure up to professional standards ourselves.
I'm glad to see this.
We talk a lot about the public not appreciating all the hard work we policemen do.
But they aren't going to change much until we change.
Until we start thinking of ourselves as professional men and acting like it.
When you're tired you start asking yourself, what's in it for me anyway?
There's not much glory, thanks, or high pay, I can tell you.
But there's something about this job that's right for me.
I don't think I'd want to do anything else.
[Under Pressure]
[is fourth in a series of training films for the police produced by The Louisiana Association for Mental Health]
[Planned by Loyd W. Rowland, Ph.D.]
[Content Consultant George W. O'Connor, Assistant Director, Field Service Division, International Association of Chiefs of Police]
[Written and Directed by George C. Stoney, Photographed by Bill Godsey]
[Edited by Irene Wilson Laune]
[Narrated by James Daly, Location Sound by Carroll Williams]
[Production Assistant Stuart Chasinar]
[National Institute of Mental Health representativeHarold M. Hildreth, Ph.D.]
[A George C. Stoney Associates Production]