Aggravated Kidnapping

A couple of years ago while I was working patrol at another agency I was a Field Training Officer and had a rookie riding with me. We were dispatched to a call inside one of the small towns in the county. It seemed the small town officer had stopped a car driving down the road with the back passenger door open and a guys legs hanging out the door. Someone had called 9-1-1 thinking that was a little strange. It’s probably a good thing that person called.

We arrived on scene and began to talk to the officer from the other agency. He had a guy in handcuffs in his backseat. He was under arrest for traffic warrants. The guy in his backseat had been the one whose legs had been hanging out the open door.

We talked to this guy and he told us the guys in the car were his father-in-law, brother-in-law and a friend of theirs. They showed up at his trailer and assaulted him then drug him to the car and were driving somewhere to assault him some more. In fact they told him they were going to kill him. He seemed genuinely afraid.

We then spoke with the driver of the car. He told us that they had gone to the house because the guy had assaulted his daughter and they were tired of it. He said they were going to run him off and that’s why they had drug him into the car and were driving off with him. When my rookie heard that he blurted out “you can’t do that, that’s kidnapping.” He was right. We then placed the three people in the car under arrest for aggravated kidnapping. The driver asked what that meant. I told him it was a first-degree felony and there was only one crime more serious than that in Texas, Capital Murder. I should not have told him that, he immediately started to have chest pain so we had to call an ambulance for him.

In the end we arrested the three guys in the car for aggravated kidnapping, and the officer from the other agency arrested the complainant for his warrants. I have no problem arresting a complainant on a call, but thought it was kind of harsh to arrest him under the circumstances of the call. If we had not shown up I think the other officer would have released the bad guys and just arrested the complainant, which would have been really messed up.

Another Person that can’t Remember Their Name

One night I stopped to talk to two males that were hanging out on the side of a closed business. They were both Hispanic and claimed not to speak English very well. I asked them for identification and they said they did not have any. To avoid any problems because of the language barrier I had them write their names and birth dates down for me. I had my dispatcher check them for warrants they did not find any. I suspected that one of the guys was lying about his name because the other guy had referred to him by a different name than he had given me. The guy would not give up his real name though. So I decided to bluff him. I told him I knew he was lying about his name but the name he gave me came back with a murder warrant so he was going to go to jail for the murder warrant. He decided he did not like that idea and told me his real name. It came back with a traffic warrant and I arrested him for that as well as for failing to identify. If he had just told me his name to begin with I would not have taken him to jail for just the traffic warrant.

Passed Out

One night the dispatcher asked if there was a unit near a particular intersection. I was about three blocks away so I spoke up. The dispatcher told me a person was asleep in a truck at the intersection. People do not normally go to sleep at stoplights so I thought maybe the person was a passed out drunk.

I arrived at the intersection and sure enough there was a guy sitting in his nice white pick up truck slumped over to his left with his head leaning on the seatbelt. I started to knock on the truck window first with my hand then with my flashlight. I could see that the truck was in drive with the driver’s foot on the break. The guy looked at me for a second and then closed his eyes. I continued to knock on the side of his truck with my flashlight.

One of the other officers placed his car right in front of the truck touching it with his push bumper to keep the truck from going into oncoming traffic if the driver took his foot off of the brake.

Finally after two minutes according to the time on my in car camera the guy woke up enough to unlock his door. We reached in and got the truck in park and got the driver out. He was unsteady on his feet, I immediately patted him down and I could smell a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from him. I asked him if he had been drinking and he said he had. When I asked where he told a topless bar about 30 miles away.

I had him perform the horizontal gaze nystagmus, walk and turn, and one-leg stand field sobriety evaluations. His performance on these evaluations led me to believe he was intoxicated so I placed him under arrest. During this he was polite always saying “yes sir,” he also had a tattoo on his arm that said “Navy”. I asked him if he was in the military, and he said not anymore. When I handcuffed him he asked me if I had double locked the handcuffs. Double locking handcuffs is standard procedure; it keeps the handcuffs from tightening up and makes it harder to defeat the locks. I thought that was an unusual question and told him I had and asked why he was so familiar with the procedure. I figured he had been arrested several times because of the question. He answered and told me he was going to corrections officer school.

I placed him in my patrol car and he told me he had really screwed up because he wanted to be a cop. I told him that he sure had.

I then transported him to the jail which was just a few blocks away. I told him how hard of a time we had waking him up. As we entered the jail he again said he had screwed up and said he hoped we did not make a training video out of his arrest. I couldn’t help but laugh at that comment.

Then he requested to be placed into protective custody. That is an unusual request and not something I take lightly. There is usually a reason a person is fearful of being in the general population, like they have been a snitch in the past. Anyway I told him that was not a decision I could make that we would have to tell the jail staff. Then he told me the jail Sgt’s name. I asked how he knew the jail Sgt’s name and he blurted out that he worked there. He said this in front of a couple of other prisoner’s. I told him to shut up because I did not want any other prisoner’s to hear this. It could have led to this guy being assaulted.

When we made it into the booking area the jail staff immediately recognized him. They told me they were not surprised, that they thought he had a drinking problem. I heard a couple of days later that he was no longer employed by the county.

More Fun in the Park

We have a lake on one end of town. It is not uncommon to go out there when working the night shift and catch couple’s out there enjoying each other’s company. Depending on circumstances they can be given a warning or issued citations for violating park curfew, or even arrested for public lewdness. Usually overnight the most serious thing that happens is they are issued citations for violating the park curfew and told to finish their business somewhere else.

What is funny is you can drive up on people that are very busy enjoying each other’s company and shine your lights in the car and see nothing at first. Then all of the sudden a head pops up and the car starts shaking as people scramble to put clothes on. When you get close to the car you see people in various states of undress. The funny thing is they almost always tell you they were just talking when you ask them what they are doing. I had a topless woman holding herself to cover up tell me she wasn’t doing anything but talking. I am not a rocket scientist but I think she was probably doing more than talking.

Fun in the Park

I was dispatched to the park the other day in reference to people in a Toyota pick up and Chevrolet pick up having relations in the park. The way the dispatcher dispatched the call she said the trucks were having relations. I was pretty sure the dispatcher meant to say people in one of the truck’s were having relations but that is not what she said so I asked her if she meant the truck’s were having relations. When she answered me I heard the other two dispatchers laughing hysterically in the background. I am glad they thought it was funny; sometimes our job is way too serious. I got to the park and located the offending trucks. I found a couple sitting in one of the trucks. They were fully clothed and said they had just been making out.

Dispatcher's

There is a love hate relationship between officers and dispatchers. Sometimes you love dispatchers and sometimes you hate them. It is not uncommon for an officer or dispatcher to yell at the radio in frustration with one another.

The other day I was dispatched to a hit and run at an apartment complex. The dispatcher said she was also dispatching an ambulance because a person was injured and his tooth had gone through his lip.

I thought about asking the dispatcher if she had a description of the suspect vehicle, but decided not to, thinking if she had one she would have given it. Another officer asked for the suspect vehicle description, the dispatcher said she didn’t have one.

I arrived on scene and saw another officer with his rookie on scene along with the fire department and an ambulance. The other officer came over to me and asked how the call was dispatched. He already knew the answer but wanted to make sure he had heard the call correctly. I told him the call had been dispatched as a hit and run.

We determined that it was indeed a hit and run. Someone had hit the victim several times in the face with his fists and then ran off in a car. So I guess it was a hit and run. The victim ended up going to the hospital and getting stitches.

Tasers

Tasers are becoming more and more popular with law enforcement agencies. They are a very effective tool to incapacitate a noncompliant subject and avoid injury to suspect’s and officers.

The agency I work for had two officers trained and equipped with tasers until recently. The department bought tasers to equip more officers with them. I was chosen to get one.

To be issued a taser we had to attend a training class put on by the two officers’ who already had them and had been to instructor school. The class was very informative and educated us on the use and effects of tasers. When a taser is deployed the subject is hit with a five second burst of electricity. This can be stopped sooner by turning the taser off or if the subject remains noncompliant they can be hit with another five seconds.

As part of the class we had to experience the effects of a taser. We had an option of taking a one second hit or a full five-second hit. The first officer to go decided he wanted to feel the full five seconds so he knew what a subject would feel if hit with the full hit. After he went the rest of the class, being dumb macho cops, decided to take the full five-second hit too.

The taser hit me in the back. One prong hit on my left shoulder and the other on my lower left back. I didn’t feel the prongs hit me but I sure felt the electricity. The way the taser works the two prongs complete a circuit and the electricity basically flows through your body between the two prongs. It felt like I was repeatedly being hit by a sledgehammer on my stomach and back. I remember thinking it is only five seconds, but it sure was a long five seconds. I screamed like a girl, we all did, and began kicking my legs into the floor. Then as quickly as it started it was over. There was no lingering pain. I felt like I had been through a rigorous work out though.

A DWI

I was dispatched to a road hazard the other day. Dispatch told me that a truck was blocking a bridge over a creek. When I arrived I saw a wrecker was hooked up to the truck and was pulling it off of the bridge. That looked good to me, the road would be clear. As I pulled up to the bridge the wrecker pulled over with the truck in tow. The wrecker driver got out of the wrecker and started to walk back to me. He was staggering as he walked, as he got back to me I could smell that he had been drinking. He told me that he had wrecked his truck on the bridge and had gone home and gotten his wrecker and was going to tow his truck home. I couldn’t let him do that without investigating whether he was intoxicated. I had him perform field sobriety evaluations and determined that he was intoxicated and arrested him. He was adamant that he was not intoxicated. I called for another wrecker to tow his wrecker and truck.

Later at the jail another officer came to operate the intoxilyzer machine. The guy asked the other officer what the legal limit was to be intoxicated, in Texas it is .08. When he was told that he said he was going to be close. He blew a .109 and .104 so he was booked in for DWI.