Yesterday was a fine day for strolling around Providence, and as Retired Guy and I headed into the free-for-all intersection that separates the mall from downtown, there before us was one of the city's finest, sitting alert but relaxed astride a police edition, V Twin, 103 cubic inch, 1690 cc Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle, shiny black like his leather jacket, boots and helmet.Eddie Malloy has been a Providence cop for 20 years, a motorcycle officer for many of them, and he loves his bike. Now, chatting about the absolute craziness of the intersection we were waiting to cross, we all saw a gang of saggy-pants youths cavorting merrily across eight lanes of exiting Interstate traffic. The kids were heading into downtown.
Malloy gave them a perfunctory bleep on his siren, but they ignored it.
"See?" we all said, shaking our heads. "No respect."
"You know, it's just like Martin Luther King said," added Malloy— "It's not the color of a man's skin; it's the content of his character."
He had just two minutes left on his shift.
Then, just like that, he gets a message on his radio that there had been a robbery in the mall — a cell phone stolen by a gang of saggy-pants youths.
"You can't outrun the radio!" says Malloy, revving up the Harley and turning on his siren to officially part the Red Sea of the city's certified-insane intersection.
We had been heading to the Biltmore anyway. Just as we got there, there was Malloy, along with a member of the mounted command, a detective, a park ranger and a couple of other cops.
They already had two Saggy Pants in the patrol car and were waiting for a female cop to arrive to pat down a girl who'd been one of the group.It appeared, Malloy told us, that she had just been hanging around them and wouldn't be charged.
"Look at that," he was telling us and the detective (while behind his back one of the other cops scooped up a pile that the horse had left and pretended to drop it near the Harley) — "Two arrests in two minutes with no paperwork."
Then Malloy got back on his bike and drove off home.
There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.
See motorcycles like Malloy's at special event nights held at Ocean State Harley Davidson in Warwick.
