“I’m Italian and I’m Catholic, and nothing offends me more than seeing a junk heap ditched in front of a church or a synagogue, a school or a park,” says Officer Joe Pizza.
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Pizza, whose services are in steady demand, begins each morning by taking phone calls from 7:30 till about 8 AM. He can expect about 20 calls a day from irate Chicagoans who want quick action on immobilized autos in their neighborhoods. Pizza jots down the addresses on any available scrap of paper, then hits the streets. Inevitably, en route to the cars that have provoked complaints, he will find many others. After checking them out, he writes them up too. He aims for 33 cars a day, about one every 15 minutes. He is consistently 300 cars ahead of the guys in the light-blue tow trucks. “I can write faster than the Streets and San guys can tow,” Pizza says, not boasting.
Under the city’s new contract, with a private towing company, it’s expected that orphaned cars will be removed more quickly. But Pizza has his doubts. “How is a vehicle that can tow six cars at time going to maneuver these side streets?” he Wonders. “Plus, the cars are all going to be towed to the south side, and that will eat up time.
As he drives, Pizza waves to kids and offers the right-of-way to other drivers; he says he tries to be Officer Friendly. But he receives mostly abuse. “I’ve been called everything you can imagine, from ‘pig’ to the more common phrases,” he says. “It’s usually under their breath from a second-story window. The problem is, people want these cars towed today. Their tranquillity has been disrupted and they’re angry. I understand that.”
Pizza, who owns some gas stations and real estate on the side, could quit his job. But he is too accustomed to roaming the back roads. “Some of the old people on my beat call me Joey,” Pizza says, giggling. My mother used to call me Joey as a kid. These old people see me coming and they say, ‘Joey, there’s a car. You got to move it.’ I love that. They call, I haul.”
