By Tom Mcnamee, The Chicago Sun-Times
“Do you know who I am?”
Cops love that question.
“Do you know who my father is?”
They love that one, too.
Two weeks ago, a woman named Lynda Fairman was stopped by a Palos Heights police officer for driving her car all over the road.
Fairman made it clear to the officer just who her dad was -- former Gov. George Ryan.
The officer managed to shake off his awe and arrest Fairman on a charge of driving under the influence.
In November in Phoenix, Ariz., the singer Glen Campbell had similar luck when he was stopped by several cops after allegedly hitting a car.
“Do you know who I am?” the rhinestone cowboy shouted. “I’m Glen Campbell.”
The officers, after coming down from the excitement, charged Campbell with drunken driving and hit and run.
For as long as there have been cops, there have been people who expect or even demand special treatment from the cops because of who they are.
Often, these people are drunk. Sober people tend to weigh the odds better.
The most recent game of “Do You Know Who My Father Is?” played out at the Crobar nightclub over the weekend when two customers -- Anne Hatch, 21, and Elizabeth Hatch, 22 -- got in a dust-up with bartenders, bouncers and cops. Through it all, a bartender later said, the two young women made sure everybody knew exactly whom they were dealing with:
The daughters of Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch.
Which, for cops in Chicago, is sort of a typical night.
“But most of the time the officer has no idea who you’re even talking about,” said Chief of Patrol James Mauer. “The average police officer may not know the difference between a ward committeeman and a precinct captain.”
Every cop on a beat can tell a story about somebody trying to big-foot his way out of a jam.
Celebrities do it. Aldermen do it. Reporters do it. The sons and daughters of cops do it -- maybe more than the rest of us put together.
And usually, it backfires.
“Nine times out of 10, it’s certainly going to go the wrong way,” said 16th District Commander Neil Sullivan. “And most of the time it’s not even the big name himself. It’s like, ‘My third cousin is so and so and I’ll have your job.’ ”
When the then-mayor of suburban Bolingbrook, Roger Claar, was stopped for suspected drunken driving in Naperville in 1997, he quickly informed the officer who he was.
The officer considered this, and instead of backing off called in several more cops to make sure he had witnesses.
The “urban legend” among police officers, Mauer said, is that if you bust the wrong person -- the mayor’s wife’s best friend’s husband, let’s say -- City Hall will come crashing down on you.
“I’ve never seen anybody get transferred or demoted for something like that, although I’m sure it’s happened,” he said. “But usually when a guy says he was demoted for that, it’s really not the reason.”
One veteran cop said officers had much more reason to fear the clout crowd before they won the protection of a union contract.
“In the old days, you could be transferred from the way North Side to the way South Side just for giving a ticket to an alderman’s son,” he said. “Some people still will cower, fearful of what might happen. But others really don’t give a damn.”
Which is to say, throwing around your name -- or job -- can work. But you have to follow etiquette.
“I know it’s worked for me,” said Jim Casey, a retired police reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times and the son of a cop.
Casey recalled being stopped one night on the Dan Ryan Expy. As he handed the officer his driver’s license, he made a point of being extremely respectful. He admitted his error. He shook his head with embarrassment. He admitted to being a knucklehead. And only then did he mention, in passing, that maybe he was a little tired, having worked all day at “11th and State” -- cop shorthand at that time for central police headquarters.
Before long, Casey was on his way.
Or maybe you’d rather chuck all the etiquette. If you’re a big enough bully, you might still win.
Former Supreme Court Justice James Heiple used the power of his position to duck at least four speeding tickets in the mid-1990s, according to testimony before a courts commission.
His luck finally ran out in Downstate Pekin in January 1996, when he was stopped for suspected drunken driving.
Heiple told one officer to “shut up” and then shouted, “Do you know who I am? Do you know what you are doing?”
He was still going on when they put the handcuffs on him.