The Crime Beat
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The Crime Beat
September 8, 2001
BOB GARFIELD:As we heard you don't have to be a war correspondent to catch psychic shrapnel. Take Mark Stamey, a reporter who every day pounds the Death and Destruction beat for the New York Post. Last fall Brooke shadowed him on his rounds.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Stamey is short and square-faced. A middle-aged man from a broken home in Syracuse, New York. He ran his own business for a while -salvage diving. Then he went to college, earning masters degrees in sociology and journalism. He was already 45 by the time he became a reporter. Freelancing first for the New York Times before landing the job at the New York Post.
At the Post he's covered fires, injured horses, fires, homicides, West Nile Virus, [PARADE MUSIC UP AND UNDER] evictions and fires. Stamey was working the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade the day I spent with him. He pulled a sour face as Mickey Mouse, 4 stories high and 6 stories long, floated down Broadway.
MARK STAMEY: I mean that's that - the guy owns the town here - Mickey Mouse. Took over 42nd Street, and that's more than any gangster could ever do.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Stamey is cooling his heels at the parade, interviewing kids until something bigger happens. It does, and he's summoned back to the office, a short walk away.
He rarely writes a story by himself. In fact, he rarely writes a story. His job is to cover the story -- go to the scene while another reporter is dispatched, say, to the press conference and phone the facts, the quotes and the "color" he gathers.
He nurses a healthy resentment for his white collar bosses back at the desk.
MARK STAMEY:It's all right if I live in this world, but they don't want to even be brought, you know, aware of it! When I say you see like a dog licking human blood from the cracks of a sidewalk, I'm not inventing it. I mean this is - we wait - we'll - sometimes we end up walking in gore and not knowing it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Why do you do it?
MARK STAMEY: I need the job. I think I, I would rather not do it. I mean I need the money. I need the job. I need--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You need this job -- on the New York Post-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARK STAMEY: I need a job.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- covering babies going out of windows. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARK STAMEY:No! I don't need that -- nobody wants it. No. I don't have any job from that. None whatsoever. I've been told on occasion I'm too stupid to write my own stories [LAUGHS] and that the only thing I'm good for is driving the car. So they've got me kind of pigeonholed as-- a roughneck street guy, and--I don't belong in-- Let's see what delights they have for us now.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now at the Post, Stamey is sent on another story by city editor John Mancini.
JOHN MANCINI: This is going to be a little heartwarmer.
MARK STAMEY: I can't wait.
JOHN MANCINI: Fred Nunez is 16 years old. Or just barely, because he had a Puffy jacket on - maybe not unlike yours--
MARK STAMEY: Mm-hm?
JOHN MANCINI:-- and somebody tried to st--st-- somebody did stab him for it, but they didn't get his jacket. Stabbed 3 times. He's in serious condition at Jamaica Hospital. Why don't you check - make sure he's still in the hospital. We're pretty sure he is - and then go see him - maybe the family brought a turkey over and a nice new jacket for him or something. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARK STAMEY: Some bandages.
JOHN MANCINI: Yeah. So this could be--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Stamey climbs into his jeep for the ride down to East New York. It's familiar territory to Stamey; the run down districts on the city's fringes.
MARK STAMEY: I spend a lot of time in a lot of these--other, you know, outer boroughs. Yeah.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And are you saying there's like - there's no glamour? There's no romance? There's no--sense of-- living your own drama in doing this kind of work?
MARK STAMEY: You mean like-- you know the camera's swooping around while the theme song plays in the background and here you are being grand?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yeah.
MARK STAMEY: No. No. It's all like-- emptying the trash can and changing the bed pans and-- no, there's no glamour in this. I can't imagine. I wouldn't be able to fantasize it being glamorous.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We arrive at the apartment house of Fred Nunez and park by a garbage pile. The building isn't locked, so we walk right in. [KNOCKING ON DOOR]
LITTLE BOY: They're at the hospital.
MARK STAMEY: They're at the hospital. That's what I thought. I think we'll go there instead. Do you know Fred?
LITTLE BOY: Mm-hm!
MARK STAMEY: Yeah? Does anybody else here know him? He's - maybe talk to somebody that knows him? The neighbors and-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
LITTLE BOY: 1-D.
MARK STAMEY: 1-D? Downstairs?
LITTLE BOY: Mm-hm!
MARK STAMEY: Thank you. Thank you very much. Happy Thanksgiving.
LITTLE BOY: He was like our cousin.
MARK STAMEY:Yeah? Yeah, I heard he's a nice guy! I heard he just got -- for his coat! Yeah. That's not good. We're here to help if we can.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:After the interviews and a quick trip to the hospital, he phones in from an emergency room pay phone to dump the quotes his editors will assemble into a story.
MARK STAMEY: [ON TELEPHONE] Yes, I do. I'm at the hospital now. We were just told that we cannot go talk to the family, but they're -this kid's under heavy security because the perpetrators are still - apparently they're on the loose. But I went over to his building where he lived, and I spoke to people who knew -- everybody knew him. Everybody had the same thing to say about this kid - uniformly - very positive. So-- one of the mothers in the neighborhood that knew him well, her name is Juliette - J U L I E T T E -- Fisher - F I S H E R. Said comma, quote "He got along with everybody --dash all the kids like him, and I like him. It's such a tragedy for a coat! I'm afraid for my own son. He has a name brand coat too period close quote." Good enough. All right? Have we got it then? Thank you, Andy. Is Mancini still there? [PAUSE] Who - is he the one that tells me goodnight? Happy Thanksgiving, Andy. Bye, bye.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Having been "good nighted" by his editors, he is free to go. So we take off. [AMBIENT SOUND DINER] There's a diner off the highway on the way from Jamaica Hospital in Queens not far from where Stamey used to live. They all know him there. Stamey says he finds it hard to relax. He doesn't have a closeknit family or a sheltering circle of friends. In fact, and he's pretty embarrassed by this, the only regular engagements he attends are Friday night Mensa meetings.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:When you're covering your 6th fire in as many weeks, do you ever think to yourself does the public really need to know about this fire? I mean--
MARK STAMEY: Yeah! But then again, there's always that --yesterday I covered a fatal of a - of an NYU student who's - fell asleep using aroma therapy candles. You know, if you don't know about that you think what a benign little that - we'll be healthy, I'll sleep all night, have a nice glowing light there, wake up and the whole family's dead. Seen this a lot.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But it's the other stuff - it's the - it's the catalogue of-- miseries -- you know does that serve a, a, a-- a social function? A positive-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARK STAMEY: Yeah. It's not just voyeurism, and it's not just-- you know-- intrusion so much as it is there's the need and we can tell people about it and then they feel like more times than not people have come forward to help. Especially if it's someone who's been killed - you say what can you do? He's dead. And saying well you want him to be forgotten? You know - just another toe tag?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You know when I looked at your clips: fire after murder after--
MARK STAMEY: Train wreck after plane crash after defenestration after infanticide, parricide, homicide -- I mean, come on -- whatever.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: --I thought how can a person like that actually like their job? But you don't like your job.
MARK STAMEY: I like it, and I don't like it. The thing I like about my job is that it's infinitely challenging! It's a total one hundred percent I.Q. test a hundred percent of the time --gotta outwit all of New York City and get the story in the paper. What I hate is empathizing with the people whose children have been hurt. I mean when people like that - are, are just so stricken with grief that they can't talk and they can't cry - they make this sound - they call it the "cri du chat" -- the cry of the cat. [DEMONSTRATES CRI DU CHAT] It's like a nonverbal, internalized, anguished wail that freezes in their vocal cords. And that stays with you! It, like, stains you, you know? [AMBIENT SOUND CAR MOVING]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Back on the road, Stamey says the urban spectacles he serves up daily have earned him a twitch and many sleepless nights.
MARK STAMEY:Yeah, I - it's - I never want to be on that side of the story, but I live in constant fear that it's going to happen. I don't -- I'm gonna get shot. I think, myself, I'm gonna get shot. I'm gonna get-- I think anything can happen to anybody at any time, but we go out looking for it, and--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: He fantasizes about moving to Florida or Tahiti, but that's not going to happen.
MARK STAMEY:I wish there was a 12 Step program for journalism! Cause it's very much like an addiction! It's an addiction because it pulls you in; it beguiles you; it hooks you -- and then it starts turning you inside out. And the rush is gone, and all that's left is the hangover! The hangover and the tedium, and you're just doing it like a zombie cause that's what you do every day - that's what you did every day - and it's not gonna change.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Shortly after our interview last year, Stamey's anxiety escalated into full blown post-traumatic stress disorder that kept him out of work for 8 months. Now he's back at the job, but he's still battling the symptoms.
MARK STAMEY: Very tight gooseflesh in a specific area -- on my cheek or on my shoulder; in another area my body starts sweating. I had - I developed a tremendous twitch -- a jerking of my head. It would be like I was being slapped on the l--my left cheek. And that, that became impossible to control. It, it culminated in my-- coming to in the hospital, in the intensive care unit, absolutely no memory of how I got there. I apparently had had a seizure while I was driving my car on the Triboro Bridge. I sideswiped another vehicle and hit the wall of the bridge.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And did your doctor say that this might be work-related?
MARK STAMEY: Yes.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In what sense?
MARK STAMEY:It's-- How do you say this? I guess - it was a cadaver palaver. It was nothing but just talking about bodies and every -incessant! It was the whole thing that there was no respite.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And how is it being back?
MARK STAMEY:For one thing people treat me like I'm contagious. I've had people I was supposed to give notes to jump up and run across the newsroom to get away from me. I've had--people like yelling across the newsroom about my condition. [IMITATING] I hear you've got a doctor's appointment - you - today - you know - it's common knowledge.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Doesn't anybody else in the newsroom have the same experience? Have they come up to you? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARK STAMEY:[LAUGHS] Yes! This week 2. Two people from the newsroom came up to me and asked me-- if I could recommend a psychiatrist for them because they were starting to-- react the same way, and it's starting to show on 'em, and they're - finally at least some of them have the sense to ask.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you see yourself doing this for the next 5 years, 10 years?
MARK STAMEY:God what a horrible thought, huh? [LAUGHS] I mean I could only play Indian Scout so long and then-- you know I gotta like get off the horse and-- sit at my desk like a normal - I think a normal reporter if there is such a thing! [MUSIC TAG]
September 8, 2001
BOB GARFIELD:As we heard you don't have to be a war correspondent to catch psychic shrapnel. Take Mark Stamey, a reporter who every day pounds the Death and Destruction beat for the New York Post. Last fall Brooke shadowed him on his rounds.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Stamey is short and square-faced. A middle-aged man from a broken home in Syracuse, New York. He ran his own business for a while -salvage diving. Then he went to college, earning masters degrees in sociology and journalism. He was already 45 by the time he became a reporter. Freelancing first for the New York Times before landing the job at the New York Post.
At the Post he's covered fires, injured horses, fires, homicides, West Nile Virus, [PARADE MUSIC UP AND UNDER] evictions and fires. Stamey was working the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade the day I spent with him. He pulled a sour face as Mickey Mouse, 4 stories high and 6 stories long, floated down Broadway.
MARK STAMEY: I mean that's that - the guy owns the town here - Mickey Mouse. Took over 42nd Street, and that's more than any gangster could ever do.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Stamey is cooling his heels at the parade, interviewing kids until something bigger happens. It does, and he's summoned back to the office, a short walk away.
He rarely writes a story by himself. In fact, he rarely writes a story. His job is to cover the story -- go to the scene while another reporter is dispatched, say, to the press conference and phone the facts, the quotes and the "color" he gathers.
He nurses a healthy resentment for his white collar bosses back at the desk.
MARK STAMEY:It's all right if I live in this world, but they don't want to even be brought, you know, aware of it! When I say you see like a dog licking human blood from the cracks of a sidewalk, I'm not inventing it. I mean this is - we wait - we'll - sometimes we end up walking in gore and not knowing it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Why do you do it?
MARK STAMEY: I need the job. I think I, I would rather not do it. I mean I need the money. I need the job. I need--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You need this job -- on the New York Post-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARK STAMEY: I need a job.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- covering babies going out of windows. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARK STAMEY:No! I don't need that -- nobody wants it. No. I don't have any job from that. None whatsoever. I've been told on occasion I'm too stupid to write my own stories [LAUGHS] and that the only thing I'm good for is driving the car. So they've got me kind of pigeonholed as-- a roughneck street guy, and--I don't belong in-- Let's see what delights they have for us now.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now at the Post, Stamey is sent on another story by city editor John Mancini.
JOHN MANCINI: This is going to be a little heartwarmer.
MARK STAMEY: I can't wait.
JOHN MANCINI: Fred Nunez is 16 years old. Or just barely, because he had a Puffy jacket on - maybe not unlike yours--
MARK STAMEY: Mm-hm?
JOHN MANCINI:-- and somebody tried to st--st-- somebody did stab him for it, but they didn't get his jacket. Stabbed 3 times. He's in serious condition at Jamaica Hospital. Why don't you check - make sure he's still in the hospital. We're pretty sure he is - and then go see him - maybe the family brought a turkey over and a nice new jacket for him or something. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARK STAMEY: Some bandages.
JOHN MANCINI: Yeah. So this could be--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Stamey climbs into his jeep for the ride down to East New York. It's familiar territory to Stamey; the run down districts on the city's fringes.
MARK STAMEY: I spend a lot of time in a lot of these--other, you know, outer boroughs. Yeah.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And are you saying there's like - there's no glamour? There's no romance? There's no--sense of-- living your own drama in doing this kind of work?
MARK STAMEY: You mean like-- you know the camera's swooping around while the theme song plays in the background and here you are being grand?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yeah.
MARK STAMEY: No. No. It's all like-- emptying the trash can and changing the bed pans and-- no, there's no glamour in this. I can't imagine. I wouldn't be able to fantasize it being glamorous.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We arrive at the apartment house of Fred Nunez and park by a garbage pile. The building isn't locked, so we walk right in. [KNOCKING ON DOOR]
LITTLE BOY: They're at the hospital.
MARK STAMEY: They're at the hospital. That's what I thought. I think we'll go there instead. Do you know Fred?
LITTLE BOY: Mm-hm!
MARK STAMEY: Yeah? Does anybody else here know him? He's - maybe talk to somebody that knows him? The neighbors and-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
LITTLE BOY: 1-D.
MARK STAMEY: 1-D? Downstairs?
LITTLE BOY: Mm-hm!
MARK STAMEY: Thank you. Thank you very much. Happy Thanksgiving.
LITTLE BOY: He was like our cousin.
MARK STAMEY:Yeah? Yeah, I heard he's a nice guy! I heard he just got -- for his coat! Yeah. That's not good. We're here to help if we can.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:After the interviews and a quick trip to the hospital, he phones in from an emergency room pay phone to dump the quotes his editors will assemble into a story.
MARK STAMEY: [ON TELEPHONE] Yes, I do. I'm at the hospital now. We were just told that we cannot go talk to the family, but they're -this kid's under heavy security because the perpetrators are still - apparently they're on the loose. But I went over to his building where he lived, and I spoke to people who knew -- everybody knew him. Everybody had the same thing to say about this kid - uniformly - very positive. So-- one of the mothers in the neighborhood that knew him well, her name is Juliette - J U L I E T T E -- Fisher - F I S H E R. Said comma, quote "He got along with everybody --dash all the kids like him, and I like him. It's such a tragedy for a coat! I'm afraid for my own son. He has a name brand coat too period close quote." Good enough. All right? Have we got it then? Thank you, Andy. Is Mancini still there? [PAUSE] Who - is he the one that tells me goodnight? Happy Thanksgiving, Andy. Bye, bye.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Having been "good nighted" by his editors, he is free to go. So we take off. [AMBIENT SOUND DINER] There's a diner off the highway on the way from Jamaica Hospital in Queens not far from where Stamey used to live. They all know him there. Stamey says he finds it hard to relax. He doesn't have a closeknit family or a sheltering circle of friends. In fact, and he's pretty embarrassed by this, the only regular engagements he attends are Friday night Mensa meetings.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:When you're covering your 6th fire in as many weeks, do you ever think to yourself does the public really need to know about this fire? I mean--
MARK STAMEY: Yeah! But then again, there's always that --yesterday I covered a fatal of a - of an NYU student who's - fell asleep using aroma therapy candles. You know, if you don't know about that you think what a benign little that - we'll be healthy, I'll sleep all night, have a nice glowing light there, wake up and the whole family's dead. Seen this a lot.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But it's the other stuff - it's the - it's the catalogue of-- miseries -- you know does that serve a, a, a-- a social function? A positive-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARK STAMEY: Yeah. It's not just voyeurism, and it's not just-- you know-- intrusion so much as it is there's the need and we can tell people about it and then they feel like more times than not people have come forward to help. Especially if it's someone who's been killed - you say what can you do? He's dead. And saying well you want him to be forgotten? You know - just another toe tag?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You know when I looked at your clips: fire after murder after--
MARK STAMEY: Train wreck after plane crash after defenestration after infanticide, parricide, homicide -- I mean, come on -- whatever.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: --I thought how can a person like that actually like their job? But you don't like your job.
MARK STAMEY: I like it, and I don't like it. The thing I like about my job is that it's infinitely challenging! It's a total one hundred percent I.Q. test a hundred percent of the time --gotta outwit all of New York City and get the story in the paper. What I hate is empathizing with the people whose children have been hurt. I mean when people like that - are, are just so stricken with grief that they can't talk and they can't cry - they make this sound - they call it the "cri du chat" -- the cry of the cat. [DEMONSTRATES CRI DU CHAT] It's like a nonverbal, internalized, anguished wail that freezes in their vocal cords. And that stays with you! It, like, stains you, you know? [AMBIENT SOUND CAR MOVING]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Back on the road, Stamey says the urban spectacles he serves up daily have earned him a twitch and many sleepless nights.
MARK STAMEY:Yeah, I - it's - I never want to be on that side of the story, but I live in constant fear that it's going to happen. I don't -- I'm gonna get shot. I think, myself, I'm gonna get shot. I'm gonna get-- I think anything can happen to anybody at any time, but we go out looking for it, and--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: He fantasizes about moving to Florida or Tahiti, but that's not going to happen.
MARK STAMEY:I wish there was a 12 Step program for journalism! Cause it's very much like an addiction! It's an addiction because it pulls you in; it beguiles you; it hooks you -- and then it starts turning you inside out. And the rush is gone, and all that's left is the hangover! The hangover and the tedium, and you're just doing it like a zombie cause that's what you do every day - that's what you did every day - and it's not gonna change.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Shortly after our interview last year, Stamey's anxiety escalated into full blown post-traumatic stress disorder that kept him out of work for 8 months. Now he's back at the job, but he's still battling the symptoms.
MARK STAMEY: Very tight gooseflesh in a specific area -- on my cheek or on my shoulder; in another area my body starts sweating. I had - I developed a tremendous twitch -- a jerking of my head. It would be like I was being slapped on the l--my left cheek. And that, that became impossible to control. It, it culminated in my-- coming to in the hospital, in the intensive care unit, absolutely no memory of how I got there. I apparently had had a seizure while I was driving my car on the Triboro Bridge. I sideswiped another vehicle and hit the wall of the bridge.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And did your doctor say that this might be work-related?
MARK STAMEY: Yes.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In what sense?
MARK STAMEY:It's-- How do you say this? I guess - it was a cadaver palaver. It was nothing but just talking about bodies and every -incessant! It was the whole thing that there was no respite.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And how is it being back?
MARK STAMEY:For one thing people treat me like I'm contagious. I've had people I was supposed to give notes to jump up and run across the newsroom to get away from me. I've had--people like yelling across the newsroom about my condition. [IMITATING] I hear you've got a doctor's appointment - you - today - you know - it's common knowledge.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Doesn't anybody else in the newsroom have the same experience? Have they come up to you? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
MARK STAMEY:[LAUGHS] Yes! This week 2. Two people from the newsroom came up to me and asked me-- if I could recommend a psychiatrist for them because they were starting to-- react the same way, and it's starting to show on 'em, and they're - finally at least some of them have the sense to ask.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you see yourself doing this for the next 5 years, 10 years?
MARK STAMEY:God what a horrible thought, huh? [LAUGHS] I mean I could only play Indian Scout so long and then-- you know I gotta like get off the horse and-- sit at my desk like a normal - I think a normal reporter if there is such a thing! [MUSIC TAG]
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