Wannabe (Season 11, Episode 23)
Premise: The rookie officer who catches a serial rapist in Central Park is really a teenager posing as a cop, which puts the whole case at risk.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 23
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Jo Marlowe (Sharon Stone)
- Guest stars
- Graham Davie as Brad Fletcher, Raphael Sbarge as Wayne Hankett, Raymond J. Barry as Mr. Hankett, Alex Kingston as Miranda Pond, Harvey Atkin as Judge Alan Ridenour
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Dawn DeNoon
Summary
“Wannabe” opens with a man exposing himself to young girls on a wall of televisions in an electronics store; his face is hidden, but he has a birthmark on his lower belly shaped like Florida. In the weeks since, three girls, Colleen Johnson, 11, Nicole Goshgarian, 12, and Tina Harper, 15, have been raped in Central Park on Sunday afternoons, and Cragen floods the park with a task force drawn from five precincts. A young officer named Fletcher chases down Wayne Hankett, pulls his pants down to expose the birthmark, and finds duct tape and a box cutter on him. Questioned, Hankett cries and says his father ignored his pleas for help.
Marlowe tells Fletcher that his search broke the Fourth Amendment and will taint everything that followed, and he disappears without logging the evidence. The 27th Precinct, Cragen’s old command, has no Officer Fletcher, and he is not in the department’s records. That helps: the Fourth Amendment limits police, not private citizens, so the case can stand as a citizen’s arrest, but Marlowe needs his signature within 24 hours. Uniform dealer Ray Marcum sold him gear for cash, and a cop named Hannigan knows him from a police bar as a sober hanger-on. Two of the girls pick Hankett out of a lineup.
Hannigan leads them to Duncan, an officer who runs the police Explorers program, and they learn Brad Fletcher is 16. The detectives get his signature, then arrest him for impersonating an officer; the gun he carried is registered to his mother. Defense lawyer Miranda Pond argues Brad acted as an agent of the police. Marlowe gives Brad a misdemeanor plea in family court, with community service, a ban on police gear and websites, and dismissal after six months if he complies. While she coaches him for trial, Judge Alan Ridenour rules for Pond, and the case against Hankett is dismissed without prejudice.
Spoiler, the ending: Staking out Hankett’s home in Queens, the detectives hear shots: Brad, who kept the house key, has broken in and been shot by Hankett’s father. He says he saw the father watching a video of Wayne raping Tina, and if it checks out, he is told, he may get another shot at the police academy. The detectives find a camera in Wayne’s baseball cap and a rape video under a floorboard. Wayne says his father blamed him for his mother’s death and, starting when he was 12, made him watch the father with prostitutes. The father, an electronics man who set up the store cameras and appears on its security tape, says he was trying to fix his son. Both are arrested, and the father disowns Wayne as they are taken away.
Why it stands out
- Fletcher claims to work out of the 27th Precinct, which Cragen calls his old command, and Cragen mentions Lt. Van Buren: on the original Law & Order he ran the 27th’s detective squad before Anita Van Buren succeeded him.
- Alex Kingston plays defense attorney Miranda Pond, and Raymond J. Barry plays Wayne’s father.