I knew it would get better

Well.....I knew it wouldn't take long to be reminded why I love my job. I showed up to work today to find that one of our detectives was working with a neighboring department trying to get an arrest warrant on a man accused of sexually assaulting his daughter.

I left briefing early to go watch the guys house in case he left. After watching the house for about 30 or 40 minutes the detective showed up with the warrant. We knocked on the front door, which was locked, and got no answer. So we checked the back door and found that it was locked but had no dead bolt. Since we had a felony warrant we could have kicked in the door but we didn't. One of the officers was able to get the back door open. Once he did that we made entry and searched the house for this guy, but he wasn't there. As we were getting ready to leave the detective was able to speak with him by phone. The guy agreed to meet the detective at the station. We went to the station and a few minutes later the guy walked in. I took him to the detectives office where they talked for a while. Then the guy went to jail. I won't get into specifics but apparently he has been molesting his daughter for about 6 years. It is always nice to get to help someone in a situation like that.

Later in the shift I went to a prowler call. When I got there I found this woman on her front porch. She was trying to change the light bulb on her porch light. She told me someone had tried to get in her front door by using a key and that she tried to turn the porch light on but it didn't work. She wasn't having much luck getting the bulb cover unscrewed. I thought for a second and told her I would change the bulb. The reason I thought for a second is because the last complaint I got the lady accused me of almost causing her car to fall off the jack by placing the jack in the wrong place and jacking it up, even though I had not jacked the car up. Anyway I changed the bulb. I will probably be in the commanders office in a few days because something will be messed up and who better to blame it on but the police. Oh well, if I get in trouble, it was worth it. This is another reason I became the police, to help people even if it was changing a light bulb.

Then towards the end of the shift there was a hit and run in town. Another officer located the suspect vehicle but the driver was gone. We started checking the area between where the vehicle was found and where it registered to. One of the guys found him and had a short foot chase that ended with the guy running/crawling into a drainage pipe under a road. It was kind of funny when I asked him on the radio which way they were running and he said "we went underground." I got there in time to help take him into custody and drag him out of the pipe. For some reason the man wanted to cuss us and not stand up and help us get him out of there. I am not sure why......Maybe it was because he was intoxicated. He went to jail. Since I was recently accused of using excessive force while taking some poor innocent person into custody I will add this DISCLAIMER: we never kicked, hit, cussed, dropped him or anything like that, in fact even though he repeatedly asked us to shoot him we didn't do that either.

Visit with the Patrol Commander

Well I knew it was too good to be true. I have been with the PD for 7 months now and have avoided visiting the Patrol Commanders office until today. Today I found out that someone had complained on me for being rude during a traffic stop where I went above and beyond to help, and that the city is being sued because several officers and I had supposedly used "excessive force" when helping a nice lady out of her car at the end of a pursuit.

During briefing today the Patrol Commander comes into the room and tells me he needs to see me. That is usually not a good thing, and it doesn't help that all the officers in the room start giving me a hard time. Anyway I racked my brain trying to figure out what I have done lately that would have gotten me in trouble but nothing came to mind.

I go in the Commanders office and have a seat. He starts the conversation out with "it's not a big deal but..." Now that is not a good sign, in fact many an officer has gotten hammered pretty good after being told that. He asks me if I remember stopping a lady on January 2nd. Well being the dedicated conscientious officer I am :-) I remember stopping her and tell him what happened.

I was patrolling on one of the main streets in town about 1030 or 1100 one night when I saw a car blacked out in a closed business parking lot as I passed it. We had just had a rash of burglaries in the area and had been told to stop anyone around the closed businesses in the area and check them out and identify them.

Since I am a highly motivated and dedicated officer :-) I thought I might need to turn around and see what the car was doing. By the time I had turned around and gotten back to where the car was going it was leaving and going down a side street. It looked like the car had taken off pretty quickly.

As I tried to catch up with the car it made a quick turn down another street. I followed and got close enough to see the license plate. I ran it on my in car computer and continued to follow the car. Before I got the return on the license plate the car pulled into the water department parking lot and up to an after hours depository. As it did so it ran over the curb.

I pulled into the parking lot and watched the car as best I could but was not close enough to see what the driver was doing. The car then pulled away and I followed as it pulled onto another major street in town. The car then started to make a u-turn and I initiated a stop on the car for suspicious activity. The car stopped in the middle of a curve on the road and the driver got out of the car.

I got out of my car quickly to make contact with the female driver before she got back to me. She told me she thought she had a flat tire, we looked and sure enough she did. I then explained to her why I had stopped her. It turned out she owned a a tire business in town that had been a victim of one of the recent burglaries so she said she understood me stopping her.

I then asked her for her drivers license and proof of insurance. She did not have an insurance card so I wrote her a citation. I then helped her get her car out of the road and let her use my personal cellphone to call her son, who works at the tire shop, to come help her change the tire.

While waiting for her son to arrive I got her tire jack out. I was about to get started changing the tire when her son showed up. He began to jack the car up but found that the jack could not jack the car up high enough to take the tire off. As he jacked the car up the car started to roll forward slightly. I just stood there shining my light so he could see thinking this guy is a moron and that there was no way I was ever going to take my car to their business to have a tire changed. After about 30 minutes of watching his incompetence he finally got the tire changed.

They thanked me and I left. I told the Patrol Commander a very abbreviated version of the story. He then tells me that the lady had complained on me for being rude. When the Commander told the lady he could look at my in car video tape and review it her tone changed and she said she didn't want to make a big deal about it. Evidently she lost some credibility with him when she did that. It's too bad she didn't want him to do that, it would have shown how professional I was and that I was in fact not rude. Anyway he told me he wasn't worried about it so I have nothing to worry about.

The Commander then asked me how things were going and complimented me on my work and tells me he is glad I am there. That is great, I haven't worn out my welcome yet.

Then he asks me if I remember being involved in a pursuit that another officer had started. Of course I remember it.....it was a pursuit. One of the guys had tried to stop a car for the license plate light being out. He had no intention of writing a citation, it was just to let the driver know and to show that he was working.

Well the car didn't stop and a short 12 or so block slow speed pursuit happened. It just happened that the pursuit was coming right at me so I did what any officer in their right mind would do, I got in it. As the pursuit passed me it was not going very fast and I joined in as the third car, which is within policy.

We followed the car for about 10 or so more blocks with lights an sirens blaring. Other cars got out of our way but this one just kept going. When we got to downtown the car stopped. We exited our cars and I expected to conduct a felony stop where we got the driver out at gunpoint and did all that neat stuff you see on TV.

It didn't work out that way. The driver just sat in the car and wouldn't get out. Another officer and I then went and opened the drivers door and helped her out. While we were doing this we were following our training, yelling verbal commands instructing the driver to get out of the car.

Once we had her out of the car we continued giving her verbal commands to get on the ground. She didn't and we had to help her to the ground. She ended up on the ground with her hands under her. We continued to give her verbal commands telling her to give us her hands and she wouldn't.

At some point, and I didn't know this until later, an officer with a taser "drive stunned" her. This means that he used the taser as a stun gun. Well the first drive stun had no effect so he did it again. We were finally able to get her hands and handcuff her. After getting her handcuffed we sat her up. She had a knot on her head from hitting the ground. I asked her what her problem was and she didn't answer at first, she was in a daze. Similar to some intoxicated people. She finally said something about being diabetic. So we called for medical to come look at her.

Once medical got there and checked her they said nothing was wrong with her. She went to jail for evading arrest or detention in a vehicle and resisting arrest. It turns out she is from Greece. She said she didn't know what she was supposed to do with all the police cars with bright shiny lights and loud sirens behind her. I find that hard to believe considering she had a valid Texas drivers license.

Now she is suing the city saying we (I) used excessive force against her to take her into custody. The good news is the Chief and Commander have no problem with anything we did. The bad news is the officer who initiated the pursuit did not have a tape in his camera. I had a tape going that caught the pursuit but not us helping her out of the car. The way I pulled my car up for the felony stop I was on the passenger side of the car so my camera gets the passenger side of the car but not the drivers side.

Then the Commander goes on to tell me I am doing good work and to keep it up. Some days I really wonder why I picked this line of work. But give it a couple of days and something good will happen and I will remember why I did.

My First Post

This is my first attempt at a blog. I guess we will see how it goes. In time I will share stories of my life as a cop in Texas. It can be fun, aggravating, scary, and down right boring! I hope ya'll enjoy!!