Friday, June 12, 2009 | Opinion
THE BENEFIT FOR SGT. SCOTT KREHER: A REVIEW

Everytime I interviewed a cop who said "Yeah, I'm on my way there now," I scowled at my laptap's empty screen, with all those words still coiled up in the keyboard, and at the clock steadily ticking on, and felt like Cinderella locked in the attic. 

No, sadly this is not my review. 

Thursday night is when the Sunday Paper goes to press and it's rare that I'm able to attend anything then. Last night was especially difficult. Still jetlagged (when the hell does this finally end?) and apparently cursed by the goddess of return phone calls, I struggled to pull together this weekend's cover story, "Officer Down: How City Hall's neglect of officers disabled in the line of duty affects crimefighting in Atlanta's neighborhoods." And I did so with a feeling of being in the wrong place. 

I wanted to be at the benefit for APD Sgt. Scott Kreher and everytime I interviewed a cop who said "Yeah, I'm on my way there now," I scowled at my laptap's empty screen, with all those words still coiled up in the keyboard, and at the clock steadily ticking on, and felt like Cinderella locked in the attic. 

There were so many people I wanted to actually meet in person, but it just wasn't happening. The story had to be done. Deadline--which was pushed to as late an hour as my coworkers are ever likely to tolerate--had to be met.

Fortunately, Turner Knapp, a reader who has stepped in before to be somewhere I couldn't be, offered to cover the event in my stead. Here's his account of the evening. -- Steph

Turner Knapp visits the Cops

So I rolled out to the benefit for Scott Kreher in Midtown last night hoping to rekindle my DJ career. Everyone was gathering on the back patio and I was set up inside at the DJ booth. I had selected some of my favorite tunes from over the
years and I was determined to have a Cop mosh pit going by the end of the night.

Well about halfway through my set somebody rolled up and said, "You know, these guys like rock and roll." That is an immediate indication that the crowd out back was
not 'feelin it' as they say in the industry. So, I decide to hang up my needles and hop out back to mingle with Atlanta's Finest.

(It should be noted, however, that Cosmo's own DJ Jeff saved the day by breaking out some kickass rock and roll and--bonus points--Inner Circle's "Bad Boys," or what most people call "the theme to 'Cops'" which went over unsurprisingly well.)

There was a ton of cops out there, in fact, several tons. These are some of the biggest human beings I've ever met in my entire life and they were everywhere. I'd say 60 or so, the patio was packed out. I saw Sgt. Phinney who was the only one that wasn't towering over me so I decided to introduce myself to him first. I got about 2 sentences in before a swarm of people came up to speak with him. The whole night was kind of like that, lots of hustle and bustle. People
catchin' up, shakin' hands, cracking their best 'bat' joke. One guy from the IBPO had a little mini Louisville Slugger that he had Scott's name etched into.

I met Kevin who helped organize the event and I asked him if it was cool if I got everybody to sign the poster I made for the event so that we could give it to Sgt. Kreher. He said, "Let me go grab Scott and we will talk about it."

"Oh crap, they didn't like the poster" popped in my head along with, "Oh crap, I'm about to meet Scott Kreher."

Scott came over and we did a quick handshake and he said, "So what's going on here?"

Turner: "Well, I made this poster for the thing and I..."

Scott: "Oh yeah, lemme see that thing. Yeah that's cool, man."

Turner: "Really?!?! Awesome."

So I spent the next 30 minutes or so going around to all the little cop circles that had formed on the deck and got
signature after signature till there wasn't an empty piece of real estate on the thing. One guy, halfway joking, told his fellow officers,"Make sure your name isn't readable when you sign that thing so they don't fire ya."

That was the closest thing to a comment about the mayor as I heard all evening. This wasn't a gripe session or even a pity party, these guys were having a good time and all of them opened up their wallets and gave what they didn't have to give to help Scott and his family. If I had to describe the 'vibe' I'd say it was a lot like that. Family.

And if anybody was missing from this reunion it would be Stephanie Ramage whose name was mentioned about every five minutes. I think Kevin put it this way. "Yeah I just got an email from Stephanie. She's got a deadline."

"Of course."

--Turner