Super Cops: A True Story

The day I got my "adult" library card had all the feel of a rite of passage. Our sixth grade class was bussed from our rural elementary school into the city, where we were taken into a back room at the public library. A venerable elderly librarian gave us a lecture about the responsibilities and privileges we now possessed, we each filled out a form, and we were given the sacrosanct card itself (which in lieu of today's magnetic strip, actually contained a piece of metal). We were then set free, for the first time, in the grown up portion of the library, able to check out absolutely any books we desired, without restriction. After grabbing a few baseball books, I cruised randomly through the aisles. I alighted on a colorful red book called The Super Cops by L.H. Whittemore. When I saw that the subtitle promised "The true story of the cops called Batman and Robin," being a big superhero fan, I was sold.

The book was already 17 years old by the time I read it, and containing accounts of the New York ghetto, it was nothing that a small-town Wisconsinite could directly relate to. But this didn't stop me from becoming absolutely consumed by this story. Even now, twenty years later, having read it only once, I can still tell you many vivid details about the short but incredibly eventful police careers of Dave Greenberg (nicknamed "Batman") and his partner Bob Hantz ("Robin"). That is, if you care. Problematically for an excited 12-year-old, I didn't know anybody who did. I do remember informing my mom about how Greenberg and Hantz shut down the Hayes Brothers drug operation, but it didn't seem to captivate her the way that LA Law did at the time.

I also remember quoting lines from this book at school. But unlike if I would have quoted something from Beetlejuice or Short Circuit, nobody cared. I did get a reaction once when apropos of nothing, I spat out the line "This is probationary patrol officers Greenberg and Hantz. We just made an off-duty narcotics arrest in the seven-seven precinct." A classmate challenged me by saying, "You don't even know what that means." "I sure do," I replied, "'Probationary patrol officers' means that they haven't become actual policemen yet, and 'off-duty' means that they were on their own time, 'narcotics' means drugs, 'a precinct' is an area that police are assigned to cover, and the 'seven-seven precinct' was the absolute worst in New York City. In other words, these guys who didn't even have their badges yet went looking to bust people for drugs in their free time in the worst parts of the city they could find." I remember my classmate being impressed, but not enough to ask to read the book himself.

As I was required to do, I returned the book to the library, and I never saw it again. And in the years that followed, I never heard any reference to Greenberg and Hantz. I didn't forget them, though. Every so often I'd see or hear something that reminded me of something from the book, even though I was apparently the only person I knew who had heard about this book, much less read it.

And if the World Wide Web had never been invented, that's probably how it would have stayed. I would have a pristine image of Greenberg and Hantz, last seen on the final page of Super Cops receiving promotions to the rank of detective. I would have been alone in my admiration of them, and their ultimate fates mine alone to imagine in any way I saw fit.

What I have since learned from Google is that although their story had apparently faded into obscurity by the time I discovered it, the publication of the book in the early 1970s garnered them some degree of fame. New York magazine ran a fascinating story about them. To my surprise, I found that there was a movie based on the book. Although that film underperformed, it supposedly inspired a much more successful TV series, one Starsky and Hutch.

I've also confirmed that I am not on the only person to have read (or enjoyed) the book. A total of six reviews have been posted on Amazon, an average of one every two years. All of them are five stars. The top review comes from a guy I wished I knew when I was a kid. Maybe we could have played "Super Cops" together:

From when I was 9 years old, The Super Cops was, and still is, one of my favorite books. I liked the idea of them working to save a community. The villains were more or less drug dealers. David Greenberg and Robert Hantz will always be heroes of mine. In college I did a little bit of research on the two of them, including speaking with real cops.

Unfortunately, his real life research results in some cold water thrown on my fandom:

In fact, their exploits were certainly exaggerated. The end of their careers was somewhat tragic. David Greenberg went to jail twice for white collar crime. Robert Hantz was accused of smuggling marijuana, and lost his Detective's shield because of it.

Ironically, about the same time I was becoming a fan of these guys, the New York Times was running a story about Greenberg's latest downfall.

Although part of me wishes I had never received this addendum to the book, another part of me welcomes not only the added knowledge, but also the implications of the receipt of that knowledge. For one, it is a concrete representation that obscurity is downright obsolete, and experience no longer need be in isolation. As long as you have an Internet connection, if interested, you can find like-minded souls.

Second, I am intrigued by the idea that narratives can be sustained through the end of any one medium. The story of Greenberg's conviction was only a story because of the book, so one has to credit Whittemore's narrative with influencing culture. But then again, we also see the limitations of Whittemore's influence, as the enduring image of these men that he wished to convey to the world has been tarnished. In lieu of a second printing of this book, the Amazon reviews essentially become permanently inscribed, and unavoidable, postscripts. The fact that the final word of a narrative no longer rests with the author, but rests instead with the subjects and the consumers, is fascinating.

And speaking of the final word, that's all I have to say--unless anyone wants to hear about an off duty narcotics arrest by probationary patrolmen in the seven-seven precinct.