DAD RAN THE HIPPIE SQUAD

So what did you do in the 1960s, Daddy?

For more than a few boomer men, such a question would ruin an
otherwise pleasant Father's Day, calling up memories of antiwar anger,
countercultural folly and bad hair. But in my house it was always the
start of an enjoyable generational exchange. My late father, a Navy
vet who retired in 1972 as a detective captain after 25 years in the
New York Police Department, always had a striking answer when one of
his eight children (or their children) asked him about those days. "I
ran the Hippie Squad," he would say.

During his long NYPD career, my father guarded Fidel Castro, held down
the fort in "Fort Apache" and taught Telly Savalas how to answer the
phone for "Kojak." But leading the 20 or so young undercover
detectives in this real-life "Mod Squad" was his favorite assignment.

Flashback, October 1967: As the Summer of Love fades into autumn in
New York's East Village, runaway teenage socialite Linda Fitzpatrick
is found bludgeoned to death with her hippie boyfriend, "Groovy"
Hutchinson. Just a few months before, Fitzpatrick had graduated from
prestigious Oldfields School in Maryland. By the time of her death she
had become a "meth monster," last seen panhandling before she was
lured into the basement of a tenement by promises of an LSD party.

Fitzpatrick's murder -- the basis of a Pulitzer Prize-winning account
by J. Anthony Lukas -- left parents and public officials desperate to
understand, as Mr. Lukas put it, the "forces at work on young people"
who were "leaving middle-class homes throughout the country for the
'mind-expanding' drug scene." Sociologists invoked "the generation
gap." Pastors, parents and psychologists scrambled for a way to bridge
it. My father, then a detective lieutenant, did his bit too, leading a
unit whose mission was to infiltrate the hippie scene, locate underage
runaways, reunite them with their parents and put predators -- drug
dealers, racial hucksters, Hells Angels types -- behind bars.

According to former Hippie Squad detective Greg O'Connell, "parents of
runaways were on their own" before the squad was formed. Midwestern
mothers and fathers would come to the city and walk the streets,
carrying pictures of their kids. Light poles were plastered with
fliers, a la 9/11, describing the age, appearance, nicknames and "last
seen" whereabouts of the missing.

Many runaways came to roost in the rundown or abandoned buildings of
the far East Village, spreading dirty mattresses on the floor of
makeshift crashpads. Free love, along with heroin and methamphetamine,
triggered an epidemic of VD, hepatitis and drug addiction. Bad
relations between white middle-class hippies and impoverished local
blacks and Puerto Ricans resulted in beatings, robberies and worse.
"Rape was the norm for runaway girls," says former Hippie Squad
detective Robert Marshall. News reports told of a father identifying a
13-year-old girl from Ohio who had been raped and thrown down an
airshaft and of a drug-addicted 17-year-old girl from New Jersey who
was found dead in a steamer trunk. "It was a very intense era, a sad
era," recalls retired East Village detective Edmund Murphy. "A lot of
kids got hurt."

The members of the Hippie Squad came from all over the city, many from
police narcotics units familiar with undercover work. The chief of
detectives promised that there would be no deadweight, and he
delivered. The unit was diverse -- Irish, Italians, blacks, Jews and
Latinos. They forged a family-like bond, dining together before their
8 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift.

To pass, some squad members grew beards or long hair and wore ratty
clothes, their guns holstered under bell-bottomed pants. Others donned
leopard-print vests or put studs in their noses. "Born actors," my
father would say. "Shoulda been on Broadway." For his part, my father,
then 45 years old and the boss, dressed in an older "Dragnet" style:
good suit, sharp tie and fedora hat.

The detectives worked in groups of two or three and traveled in
unmarked cars. In the cases referred by Missing Persons, they used
"stoolies" for help. They picked up other runaways randomly on the
street, tipped off by tender ages and nervous demeanors. The bulk of
the squad's action involved minors apprehended in "no knock" raids on
crashpads or parties. In the late 1960s, when the legality of
warrantless searches was unsettled, "it was easier to take a door off
its hinges," former Detective O'Connell says.

The squad arrested the predators it found, but it tried as much as
possible to return the runaways to their parents. "Ours was more a
social mission than a law enforcement mission," Mr. O'Connell
explains. Indeed, a lot of the kids had hit bottom by the time the
Hippie Squad found them. They wanted to go home and just needed a
little help or coaxing.

During the long hot summer of 1968, reports of "no knock" raids would
occasionally hit the grapevine, inspiring angry hippies to lay siege
to the East Village's Ninth Precinct, waving banners that said "Don't
Bust Our Crash Pads" and "Join the Revolution." It was not uncommon to
see mounted cops, a couple of busloads of riot police and dozens of
uniformed officers ringing the precinct house itself. The members of
the Hippie Squad were also there, infiltrating the crowd and leading
them off to other destinations in what the squad called "cattle runs,"
until the mob's energy had faded.

Dad often escorted VIPs who wanted to see the "hippie scene" up close.
And sometimes the top department brass or City Hall officials would
arrange favors -- really just immediate police attention -- for
politicians, celebrities and friends whose children had become
runaways. One of the more interesting such cases involved the daughter
of Maxie Levine, a former mob enforcer.

Maxie's teenage daughter, a meth addict, had run away to the East
Village and then to Miami, taking her cat with her. A Hippie Squad
detective accompanied Maxie to Miami, where they quickly located the
girl. But they didn't pick her up right away. Maxie, you see, wanted
to party, which they proceeded to do for three days, at one point
drinking with Jackie Gleason. Finally he gave the signal and the girl
was brought in. She was whisked by jet to a private sanitarium in New
York, the cat in a hatbox.

A few instances of rule-bending aside, the squad was on the straight
and narrow. The relative youth of the men, their excitement for the
mission and their loyalty to my father kept temptation at bay. The
squad enjoyed so much autonomy that my father, in the old department
style, sometimes ran the show from uptown places like Toots Shors,
where the banter was warm, the cocktails were chilled and Sinatra's
"You Make Me Feel So Young" always seemed to be on the jukebox.

By late 1968, hippiedom was ebbing in the city and the number of
runaways declining. One night, my Dad told his men that the squad was
to be disbanded. In a little more than a year, it had found and
returned 350 runaways.

For my father, the job's greatest satisfaction was the gratitude of
the parents -- and some of the runaways. He kept their letters until
he died. "The lieutenant was most kind and understanding," one parent
wrote. The detectives who had helped to find her daughter did
"excellent work."