Overheard on the Sixth Floor

Gottlieb: Boss, I think I’m in a bit of trouble.

Nifong: What’s the matter? Did they blame you for jamming the shredder again?

Gottlieb: No, the shredder is working fine. I only turned in two pages of handwritten notes.

Nifong: Be careful with what you say around here, Baldo! . Never know when that Neff character might be lurking. Hey, you’re not wearing a wire, are you?

Gottlieb: To my knowledge, uhm...I’m not But listen, really, I’m in a mess and if I had any hair left I’d be pulling it out about now. I’ve had to hire an attorney.

Nifong: "One would wonder why one needs an attorney if one was not charged and had not done anything wrong."

Gottlieb: Yes, Boss that’s why I’m asking you for some help. I was at Blinco’s with some of the boys and this fry cook fella hollered at us when we were speeding outta the parking lot. We were a bit saucy so we called him the N word.

Nifong: You called him a Nifonger?

Gottlieb: No Boss, not that N word. The other N word. One of the boys said, “F.. You N……“ And then a couple of the boys beat him.

Nifong: "The circumstances indicate a deep racial motivation for some of the things that were done. It makes a crime that is by its nature one of the most offensive and invasive even more so."

Gottlieb: Uhm..

Nifong: The racial slurs involved are relevant to show the mindset involved in this particular attack and, obviously, it made what is already an extremely reprehensible act even more reprehensible." Well at least you had the decency to stop them, didn’t you?

Gottlieb: Well sir, that’s where it gets a little sticky. I didn’t exactly stop them.

Nifong: "We're talking about a situation where had somebody spoken up and said, “Wait a minute, we can't do this,“ this incident might not have taken place." Sarge, just so you understand, let me repeat myself, “There's a good chance if someone had spoken up and said, ‘You can't do this,’ it might not have happened"

Gottlieb: Yeah, boss. I know but I had ten too many and just wasn‘t thinking right.

Nifong: Sarge, that’s just not a very good excuse. You were a paramedic at one time, weren’t you? Certainly you helped this poor man and gave him medical attention after the bozos were done with the ass whooping, didn’t you?

Gottlieb: Well, not exactly. I said, “Guys, let's go," repeatedly.

Nifong: Baldo, with your 15 years on the job, didn’t you ask yourself “if it's a question of is it right to leave things a mess at this point in time?”

Gottlieb: Well, not exactly, Boss. Me and the boys, we got back in our trucks and hightailed it outta there before the Raleigh police showed up.

Nifong: Officer, you mean to tell me that y'all called this poor man the N word, then you watched while your fellow officers gave him an ass whooping, neglected to give him medical attention and then fled the scene before the real police arrived?

Gottlieb: Yeah Boss, that’s about it.

Nifong: Well, it sounds like a good idea that you got yourself an attorney. All guilty men should have an attorney before talking to the police. You are going to talk to the police, aren’t you? We don’t want people saying stuff like, “My guess is that some of this stonewall of silence that we have seen may tend to crumble once charges start to come out” or even worse, "I would like to think that somebody [not involved in the attack] has the human decency to call up and say, 'What am I doing covering up for a bunch of hooligans?' " So who did you hire anyway?

Gottlieb: Jerry Clayton.

Nifong: What!!!!!!! "I think Jerry Clayton has made it clear he doesn't want to be treated fairly. He wants to be treated better than everybody else, and I think Jerry Clayton knows as long as I'm DA, that's not going to happen."

Gottlieb: I don’t understand. What are you saying, Boss? Should I have hired someone else?

* No district attorneys were harmed during the making of this satire.