Passed Out

The other day I was leaving the jail towards the end of my shift. I heard the dispatcher dispatch a suspicious vehicle call not far away. The dispatcher said that a subject was asleep in a car parked in a yard. The part of town the call was in is not the nicest part and it is not uncommon for people to park in their yards.

I arrived and located the car. Sure enough it was parked in a yard with a person in it. The way the car was parked made it look like it did not belong there. All the other cars were parked in the driveway at the opposite end of the lot from where the car was parked.

Anyway I tried to wake the guy up and he wouldn’t at first. When he did he did not speak English. I was able to communicate with him in Spanish. I determined that he did not live there and that he was intoxicated so I arrested him. While searching him I discovered that he had urinated on himself. I was not happy about that at all. I also located some marijuana in his pocket so he went to jail for public intoxication and possession of marijuana. At the jail he was too intoxicated to remember where he lived or his phone number.

A Shooting

For some reason I like working shootings. I have worked my fair share. It is very rewarding when you are able to catch the shooter and put him in jail.

On Thanksgiving evening a couple of years ago I was working a slow lazy shift. We had made the rounds at various deputies houses eating. There was not much going on and there was very little traffic out.

About eight o’clock the quiet of the radio was broken by the dispatcher calling my unit number telling me to copy a shooting. My first thought was crap; it’s close to the end of the shift I am going to be stuck over. I told her to go ahead and she gave me the information on the call.

I was close in county terms so it took me about ten minutes to get to the call. While in route I had the scanner scanning the volunteer fire department that was responding. They beat me there. From the radio traffic I heard I knew the victim was not in good shape.

The dispatcher told me while I was in route the shooter had returned to his residence up the road from where the shooting had occurred. When I turned on the road where the shooting had occurred I saw a fire truck on scene and the victim laying in the middle of the road.

Since the firemen were treating him and there really was not anything I could do at that location I went to where the shooter was. He was on the phone with my dispatcher. When I arrived at his residence I had the dispatcher tell him to come outside, he did and I took him into custody without incident and recovered the gun that was used. I then transported him back to the shooting scene, which was about a quarter of a mile away. About the time I made it to the shooting scene the first assist deputy arrived on scene.

Since another deputy was on scene my involvement at the shooting scene was pretty minimal, I made sure nothing happened to the shooter. At one point a fireman came to me wanting to know what caliber of weapon had been used.

A helicopter ambulance responded and transported the victim to one of the trauma centers in the area. As the helicopter was landing the shooter asked me how the victim was doing. I told him I did not know but I didn’t think it was good that he was being flown to the hospital.

A short time later detectives arrived on scene. The shooter agreed to go to the station and talk with them. I transported the shooter to the station where he was interviewed by the detectives.

The shooter claimed the shooting was in self-defense. There had been an ongoing problem between the victim’s and shooter’s families over people speeding down the private dirt road their residences were on. Deputies had been out there numerous times because of the problem but there was little that could be done because the road was private.

The shooter went to the victim’s house to confront him over the victim confronting a member of the shooter’s family over speeding on the road earlier. Before going to the victim’s house the shooter armed himself with a .38 special revolver. During the confrontation the shooter pulled out the revolver and fired once striking the victim just below the eye. The shooter said there had been a physical confrontation and he had fallen to the ground and shot the victim. A witness disputed that claim, the physical evidence did not support it either.

After the detectives interviewed the shooter I transported him to jail and booked him in for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. A few days later the victim died.

Several months later I had to testify in the murder trial. My testimony was pretty straightforward. My involvement had been recorded by my in car camera. My in car video was played and I was asked questions about what the tape showed.

A few days later the shooter was convicted of aggravated assault and felon in possession of a firearm. I later learned there was a single juror who had a problem with convicting the shooter for murder so they settled on the aggravated assault charge. In the end he got as much prison time on the charges he was convicted of, as he would have gotten had he been convicted of murder.

The shooter had been in trouble for aggravated assault about twenty years earlier when he shot several people with a shotgun in some sort of dispute at an apartment complex. If he serves the minimum time required before parole he will be in his 70’s.

A Traffic Stop

I stopped an old 1966 Chevrolet 4-door car the other day for expired registration. When I made contact with the driver I saw that the inspection was expired also. The driver was holding his head in his hands and before I could say anything he told me to go ahead and take him in because his license was no good.

After he told me who he was I had dispatch check and see if he was correct and called for another officer. Dispatch told me that his license was revoked and that he had warrants. I had him step out of the car and placed him under arrest.

The other officer then had dispatch check and see if the female passenger had a good license or if she was wanted. She had warrants so they both went to jail.

Teacher’s

Friday night I was driving down the road around 2300 looking for something to do when I saw a car coming towards me with no headlights, it only had running lights on. It appeared it was moving pretty fast but I did not have a radar to get a speed. As it passed me I saw it was a jeep and it had no taillights.

I turned around on the jeep and we stopped on a side street. As we stopped I shined my spotlight on the jeep so I could see in it. I clearly saw the passenger putting her seatbelt on.

I made contact with the driver, a male, and identified myself and told him why I had stopped him. He said he wondered why it seemed so dark. I could smell an odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from him as he answered me. Then I asked the female passenger if she had just put her seatbelt on. She said no, and he said she had had it on. I saw a cooler in the back seat. I asked the man if he had been drinking and he told me no. Since I knew they had already lied about the seatbelt and it was apparent by the odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from the male that he had been drinking I did not believe him.

I had him get out of the jeep. He stumbled and staggered as he got out. We stepped to the curb and I asked him again if he had been drinking. He told me he had drank two beers. That is the standard answer. I told him I knew he had more than two beers because of the smell and the way he walked.

I then did the horizontal gaze nystagmus evaluation on him. He was wobbly while I looked at his eyes. I saw six clues of intoxication. Then I had him perform the walk and turn evaluation. He almost fell as he turned around and had to catch himself on the jeep. He could not keep his balance on the one leg stand. I believed he was not only intoxicated but that he was way drunk so I placed him under arrest for DWI.

He told me he was a teacher as was the passenger and that he had only had two beers. Then he told me he lived a block away, implying that I should let him go. Finally he told me he knew the Chief of Police. I told him I did too and placed him in my car. Another officer had spoken with the passenger and determined that she was intoxicated so she was arrested for public intoxication. At the jail he refused to provide a breath specimen.

Later at the station I reviewed my video from the stop as I wrote my report. It was obvious that the passenger put her seatbelt on as they were stopping. The driver looked worse on the video than I had observed on the scene.

A couple of days later I saw the Chief. He said the male was his daughter’s teacher. The Chief did not seem too pleased that he had used his name to try and get out of being arrested.

Mother’s Day

I was sitting in briefing the other day thinking about how far behind I was on paperwork when I heard a couple of dayshift officers get dispatched to a disturbance where a person had been assaulted. My supervisor asked me to go ahead go to the call since it was in my beat in case an arrest was made. That way the dayshift officers would not be stuck as late.

When I arrived on scene I saw an officer handcuffing a bad guy. The bad guy was screaming and cursing. I got out of my patrol car and saw a man holding his chest and having difficulty breathing. Another officer called for an ambulance for him.

The dayshift supervisor told me to follow the officer that had the bad guy in custody to the jail so I could book him in. Plus there was some concern that the bad guy might become combative, he was paranoid schizophrenic and off of his medication.

In route to the jail the bad guy started to bang his head on the partition between the front and back seats. As I followed it appeared he would go from being excited, screaming and hollering and banging his head to being calm.

When we arrived at the jail we got the bad guy out of the car. This was my first contact with him. He looked me in the eye and told me he hit his dad today. Then he asked us to tell his dad he was sorry. A few seconds later he told us he hoped we died and the maggots ate our dead decaying bodies.

As we began to enter the jail he called me a “gay faggot” and turned towards me. As he turned he pulled his leg back. I saw that he was going to kick me and I stepped back. I didn’t step back far enough fast enough and he kicked me above my left knee. The officer with me stepped in and forced him against a wall and then we took him to the ground. Once he was under control the jail staff brought a restraint chair and he was placed in it.

Once we were in the jail and he was restrained I talked to the officer on the scene. The bad guy is paranoid schizophrenic and apparently off his medicine. He was picked up by his mother and sister to go to their house for Mother’s Day. On the trip to the house he became angry for some reason and started to curse his mother and sister.

When they got to the house the dad, who is disabled with heart problems and has to walk with a cane, came out and told the son to get back in the car because he was not going to put up with it and he was going to take him home. The son became angry and assaulted dad.

Because dad is disabled he was charged with injury to the disabled, a felony, instead of assault which is a misdemeanor. He was also charged with assault on a Peace Officer for kicking me which was another felony. Maybe in jail they can get him back on his medication.