Interview with Carl Pullen at Yale

I whisked into the Sterling Memorial Library at noon on a Wednesday afternoon and there was Carl Pullen sitting at the security desk, in his pristine security uniform. Same steady gaze. We moved to a small security room beside the entrance and started to talk about him over lunch. 66 year old Pullen is an African American, burly, full time security personnel at Sterling, clocking hours daily from 8.30am till 5pm. The pay is considered good, for easy work that required no manual labour or “exhausting of brain juices” to quote him. Compared to Pullen’s previous jobs, being a security guard to check if students were smuggling books out of Sterling Memorial Library and directing people to the right places was to him, more of leisure pastime than work.

Born in Virginia and moved to Connecticut when he was four years old, Pullen had spent time at different parts of the world, from Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Lebanon during his time with the Marine Corps. His career with the Marine Corps started at a party when he was 17. A group of Marine Corps in their uniforms walked into a party where his friends and him were at and “got the attention of the girls”. Believing that they could beat the Marine Corps at their trade, Pullen and friends decided that they would join the Marine Corps the very next day.

They did.

Pullen made the decision to give up his basketball scholarship to college and joined Marine Corps. Although he made no mention of girls and parties during his recount of those days, the formal military training that he received proved to be useful for his 13 year career with the New Haven State Police afterwards. There he learnt about weaponry, military discipline, marching and enjoyed the excitement of visiting each new country he was at. After he left the Marine Corps, he went on to a vocation which he describes as a job that “deals with people, help people” and makes him feel good as people respect him.

With pride he showed me his gold retirement badge from the New Haven State Police.

As a detective dealing with hard crime, Pullen didn’t think he was doing dangerous work; he always had his men with him. His time at the State Police saw him doing investigative work at the Fraud department, cracking down on fraud cases concerning welfare, medical issues and construction. He then rose to the rank of Sergeant and was in charge of Division of Special Revenue for a time. Pullen was involved in some of the most high profile cases in Connecticut in the 1960s and 1970s. He went to San Francisco to arrest Bobby Seale, the Co-founder of the Black Panthers, who was charged with the murder of Alex Rackley. Another assignment saw him arresting Philip and Daniel Berrigan; both brothers were priests and listed as FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, charged for destroying military drafts in protest of the Vietnam War.

When asked about his most difficult assignment in his career as a detective, he paused as he recollected the case. After a brief period of silence, he recounted the case of a woman who had been stabbed 26 times. It was a case with no leads, but Pullen found a license plate key on the deceased which led him to track down the deceased’s previous address. Relying on his detective intuition, he interviewed people and tracked down the deceased’s old address and there he managed to find witnesses who heard the deceased shout out a name during an argument with her murderer. It turned out to be her boyfriend whom she had an affair with. With that very first lead, Pullen managed to crack the case.

Pullen is a man of brains and brawn. With a black belt in Taekwondo, Pullen taught the other police officers in the department the martial art. However, Pullen’s first loves remain to be basketball and baseball. He did not have to regret his decision to give up his basketball scholarship when he was 17, as he completed his Masters in History and Social Sciences and taught at University of Bridgeport even when he was with the State Police in 1991. After his retirement, he decided to join Library Security at Sterling Memorial to pass time. In his spare time now, he goes to the gym, church and occasional vacations with his family, to Poconos of Pennsylvania.

When 30 minutes was up, I bid farewell and thanked Pullen for his time. He gives a sturdy farewell handshake and held his gaze, just like how a detective does it.

my first interview assignment! It was a really good time, though i was nervous and Pullen was very aware of that. i thoroughly enjoyed the process of talking to him, and writing about him. I must admit that i was nearly paralyzed by fear, to just randomly go up to a stranger to request for an interview. My instructor Shapiro was really encouraging, and said that even a veteran human rights reporter like him sometimes feel the trepidation before an assignment too. No matter you're an extrovert or introvert (which i take that he can tell i'm an introvert), there is this internal barrier a journalist has to overcome to talk to people. This is especially so if you have to call up the family of the deceased to report on a death.

I guess, this is a good start for a rookie like me :)