The Night They Shot Captain America

I was on duty at the precinct the night they shot Captain America. With over twenty years as a detective in various precincts in the general Portland, Oregon area, I have had a lot of serious matters come across my desk, but this one was special since I knew the parties involved.  It quickly became a personal matter.  

I am Detective Rocco Mancini, swing shift supervisor. The 5 pm to midnight shift can be a very vigorous one since all the freaks come out at night as that old song suggests.  I do my best to keep things loose and stress free since it can become a zoo in a matter of seconds.  

The night they shot Captain America was a classic example of how we can go from zero to one hundred in the blink of an eye.  

For the last eight years, Captain America has been a regular fixture on our city streets in the Pearl District of Portland.  Wearing the whole get-up of the Marvel superhero, Jose D'Acquisto occupies his place on the street where he collects money from those passing by both on foot or in a vehicle.  He is very polite and gracious when someone gives him a donation.  

Jose is also paranoid schizophrenic according to the DSM-V and receives regular treatment from a community mental health center.  

Most of the guys on this shift know him since he usually shows up sometime around Friday evening and leaves late Sunday afternoon.  The money he collects panhandling on the streets, he turns over to the shelter where he is almost considered a patron saint.  

We were just starting the holiday season about a week after Thanksgiving when he was shot by one of my men for resisting arrest.  There are a lot of details that seem to be somewhat blurry in the oral recorded statements I have collected from three eye witnesses including Officer Maurice Petit who fired the fatal shot.  I will save his report for last.  Perhaps when you look over these transcripts, you will understand the circumstances of the night they shot Captain America.

Report #1:  Rodney Ackerman, street vendor.

I’ve known Jose D'Acquisto for a long time.  We go back a long way since we first met in the psychiatric unit at the state hospital where they gave us thiazine to calm our brains down. There were some really bad side effects, but considering some of the alternatives, I was happy to put up with the lightheadedness.  Back then if someone rejected the thiazine, they would take you to the shock room.  This was around 1964, give or take a year.  We were both around twenty years old at the time.  We grew our hair long and didn’t shave so we both looked like hippies.  Dr. Watson said that we were just hippie bums. <laughs>  We didn’t care. 

They discharged me in 1974 and I wound up in a halfway house.  Say what you will, being diagnosed with schizophrenia kept me out of Vietnam.  Some of the guys I rub elbows with downtown are vets who got pretty messed up over there.  Some of the stories they’d tell me really get my hair to stand up on the back of my neck.

I guess it was around the 80s when Jose became enamored with Captain America.  He started hanging out at the comic book store.  Of course the store owner got tired of him hanging out there all day and he called the cops.  He told them that he was Captain America.  One of the policemen asked him where his shield was so when he got released, he got himself a shield.  Little by little, he began to acquire the rest of the get-up until he actually looked like Captain America.  He got himself in the newspapers with his picture and story about how he would collect money and give it to the shelter. 

Father Gregory runs the shelter down there.  I used to help out in the kitchen.  It kept me out of jail for the most part.  It’s hard being a schizophrenic, you know.  People treat you either like you’re sasquatch or like you are missing most of your brain cells.  

Sometimes we’d hang together and make fun of all those morons who got their kicks out of making fun of us.  You’d think that people would find better things to do, but I guess they get bored and figure we don’t mind on account we are just nuts anyway. Jose would say that one day, he’d bring justice back to the world.  I guess I’m not the optimist he was.  People are evil at the core otherwise we’d have no use for prisons, right?  

Just before Officer Petit came along, Jose was telling me about the voices he was hearing telling him that he was an idiot for dressing up like some faggot and pretending to be somebody he ain’t.  His voices were always vicious, telling him all sorts of crazy shit.  He was a good guy.  Everybody liked him.  

I don’t know why Officer Petit picked on him either.  He was just asking for donations.  He wasn’t hurting no one.  He didn’t have it in him.  He wouldn’t hurt a flea. 

He carried that device with him wherever he went, that black box.  It was supposed to help him guess what mood a person was in, but in the dark it looked like a weapon I suppose.  He pulled it out and pointed it at Officer Petit.  Officer Petit told him to drop it, but he didn’t.  Officer Petit drew his pistol, gave another verbal warning, and then fired his pistol.  <pause>  I held him until the ambulance arrived, but by that time he was almost gone.  His eyes fluttered and I could hear the gurgle of the blood as he tried to draw another breath.  He never did.

I heard someone yell, “They shot Captain America!”

Officer Petit just stood there like a statue, his pistol was still smoking.

Officer Holt, his partner kept saying, “Why did you shoot him, Maurice?” 

“I didn’t mean to.” He answered.

“Rodney, take the money…” He stuffed the money into my hands.  I didn’t want to take it.

I could hear sirens in the distance getting closer.

One of the paramedics tapped me on the shoulder as I sat there holding him, “Buddy, I need to get him into the ambulance.” 

“It’s too late.” I felt the tears run down my cheeks.  One of them pulled Jose off my lap and they put him into a gurney.  It was the last time I saw him.

Officer Holt told me I needed to come down to the station to fill out a report.  I don’t know why Officer Petit shot him.  He wasn’t doing anything.  But I knew if I said anything, they’d lock me up again.

One of the things that kept running through my mind was what he told me earlier about not being able to tolerate the voices much longer.  I wondered when the officer came up to him if he had it all planned.  He knew how tense things can get when a suspect pulls out an unidentified object and when commanded to drop it, does not.  I wonder if Jose knew what he was doing when he took out that device.  It makes me shudder that he would consider something like that.  He wouldn’t be the first person who I knew to do that.  

Report #2:  Justin Wisniski, insurance salesman

I could not believe what happened.  I handed this guy dressed like Captain America a one dollar bill, because he told me that he could not accept anything more than a dollar.  I did not see the policemen approach him, because after I handed him the dollar, I turned to get back into my car.  That’s when I heard the gunshot.

Me and my buddy Elmer Halsten are insurance salesmen who had a couple after work.  I know they patrol the area, so I was careful.  I know my limit.  We were just shooting the shit, nothing more.  Selling insurance can be challenging, but we both have been at it a while.

Anyway as we drove, I stopped at this red light and Captain America began to collect money from the cars waiting at the light.  Elmer laughed when he saw him dressed up in his costume.  Anyway, my window doesn’t work as you know how cheap a Celica can be.  So I opened the door and handed him a twenty.

“I am sorry sir, but I can only accept a one dollar bill per person.” He sounded so serious, but I reached into my wallet and gave him a one dollar bill.  The light changed and the jerk behind me was quick to hit his horn.  I got into the car just as the officer’s gun went off.  

“Jesus Christ.” Elmer yelled, “That cop just shot Captain America.” 

“You’re kidding.” I put the car into gear and followed the car in front of me.

“We’d better pull over.” Elmer waved his arms, but the jerk behind me hit his horn one more time. I put on my signal and pulled over to the curb.  The jerk behind me went screeching on by.

When I got out of my car, I saw this guy holding Captain America begging him not to die. The cop who shot him was just standing there.  

“He shot him.  I can’t believe it.  He shot him.” Elmer kept saying.

“Quiet.” I shushed him, because I was afraid the cop might shoot us or at least run a breath alcohol test on us.  Times like these can make such cowards of us all. 

The other cop was the one who came and talked to us, telling us that since we were witnesses, we would have to fill out a report.  I figured it was the least I could do considering what had just happened.  I did not know the guy.  I heard he was resisting arrest.  I also heard he died.  I read about it in the newspapers the next day.  

I don’t know what we have to be hopeful about when they end up shooting Captain America.   It really makes you think, now don’t it?

Report #3 Officer Maurice Petit

I have only been on the police force two years, but I have passed all my training with flying colors.  Most of the time it’s pretty routine stuff.  You drive around the Pearl Section of Portland looking for drug dealers and pimps.  Some of the criminals we come across are well armed, so we have to be ready to draw our weapons, but most of the time that’s not necessary.  As soon as they see the uniform they know any resistance will be met with possible deadly force.  

I come from a family of cops.  My dad and my uncle are still on active duty.  My grandfather served over twenty five years as a patrol officer.  I knew before I graduated from high school I wanted to be a police officer.  

Officer Holt, my partner, has a lot more experience and has had to draw his weapon on occasion. I didn’t want to think about what I would do if I ever had to do that.

All of that came to an end when I had to face that guy dressed up like Captain America.  I have no idea why he was wearing that costume, but when I saw him reach for that thing in his pocket, I could not take a chance.  You never know.  It’s dark and you just can’t take any chances.  

I warned him.  I warned him three times before I fired.  It was all in my Firing Report.  One shot to take him down.  My intention wasn’t to kill him, but put him down so he could not harm either me or my partner.  They warn you about things like this during training, but when the adrenaline is pumping, you have to rely on instincts.

I had no idea that he was a mentally ill patient.  After the shooting, I had to read his records. It makes me wonder if it would have changed the outcome if I had known.  Usually I figured I would only run into a mentally ill person who was in the act of committing suicide, I never figured on anything like this happening.  

Of course I have to start attending classes and I am on administrative leave until Internal Affairs have ruled that this was a justified shooting.  I’m not really worried considering the circumstances of the evening.  Uncle Tony told me that you have to go through this bullshit when you shoot someone, but he figures that I will be cleared since he has read the reports.  Dad tells me that I have nothing to worry about.

“Crazy people put themselves in perilous situations all the time. They don’t understand how to be rational in situations like these.” He explained and then told me about a time when he came in contact with a paranoid schizophrenic who pulled a gun on him forcing his partner to open fire. “He emptied his pistol and put six bullets in the guy’s chest. There was no investigation back then once the report reflected that the dead guy had pulled a gun on us, even if it was just a plastic toy.” 

I have to admit that this whole thing has me kind of shaken.  I saw the look on his face when I shot him. I did not expect to feel the way I did.  They don’t tell you that part of it.  Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I hear someone yell, “He shot Captain America.” He wasn’t Captain America, he was just some nut dressed in a costume.  

Officer Holt has not been much help in this whole thing.  His report indicates that my use of deadly force was not justified.  Who the hell does he think he is?  It really makes me mad when my own partner won’t stick up for me.  

I have also heard that the other guy, the guy holding him as he was dying, has stated that Jose D'Acquisto was a popular personality in that part of town and that he turned all the money he panhandled to the shelter.  It doesn’t matter.  I told him.  I told him three times to put down that thing, but he ignored me.  I had no choice.  He left me with no choice.  If there is an inquiry, that is exactly what I’m going to say.  I will go on record saying that he left me no choice.  No choice. <wiped face with Kleenex>  It just doesn’t seem fair that I am being dragged through the mud over this.  I do not deserve this.

So that is what we have gathered so far in recorded testimony from three different perspectives.  When we put them together, it should be clear, leaving little doubt as to guilt or innocence.  Sometimes things are not so cut and dry and facts can be obscured by circumstances that had nothing at all to do with the shooting.  Once I put my name on the final report determining whether this firing report will justify Officer Petit’s actions.  It will end all speculation and doubt one way or the other, right?