32 Grams of Crack

Back in the middle of December I was riding with a partner. My partner was the other new Corporal. My partner wanted to sit and watch for cars leaving a house that was known for drug activity. We had seen a car at the house and found a place to watch for it to leave.

A short time later the car left and turned towards us. As it approached we confirmed it was the car we had seen in front of the drug house. We got behind the car and followed it. Before too long we observed a traffic violation and initiated a traffic stop.

The car did not stop. The driver stuck his hand out the window and pointed like he was pointing to where he was going. The car made a few turns with us behind him with our lights and siren activated. The driver continued to wave his arm out the window at us gesturing and pointing.

The direction the pursuit was going took us back towards the drug house. My partner was broadcasting the pursuit because I was driving. He told responding units that it appeared we were going back to the drug house.

The car turned on the street the drug house was on and drove on the wrong side of the road towards the house. It appeared that the car was going to drive up in the yard of the drug house and the driver may flee on foot into the house.

As we got closer to the yard the car slowed almost to a stop and the driver threw a large bag out of the driver’s side window. It appeared that the bag was probably drugs. My partner radioed this information to responding units.

The pursuit continued about another block. The driver pulled the car to the side of the road and almost to a stop. I pulled in front of the car blocking it and my partner and I helped the driver out of the car and on to the ground where he was taken into custody.

Responding officers were able to locate the bag that he had thrown. It contained 32 grams of crack, which is a very large quantity for a street officer to come in contact with. The driver also had $1100.00 cash on him.

What a fun night and a good bust.

A Promotion

I made Corporal Sunday. It means a nice raise and great days off, at least for this rotation. Some of the officers that have been at the department a while are not too happy. I guess they should have studied harder for the test.

An Anonymous Letter

Our shifts start off with a briefing. In briefing we are given information we may need like areas that need extra patrol, people with warrants and so on. There is also a lot of teasing and friendly banter that goes back and forth among the officers.

The other day in briefing we were read a letter that had been sent to the station. An unknown person typed a letter telling us a certain car was being driven by an intoxicated person.

Most of us listen in briefing and try to look for things mentioned. It is kind of hard to take something like this serious. If the person was really concerned they should have called while it was occurring not sent a letter after the fact. There is not much we can do about that.

A Motorcycle Wreck

I started my last post by saying how bad Friday was. As I mentioned I felt horrible. Well it just got worse after that call. I went to the station so I could try to write what would be a lengthy report on the minor drinking and CPS response. I walked in the door to the station only to get dispatched to a disturbance call. There was nothing to it so I cleared and headed back to the station to write.

As soon as I walked in the station I was dispatched to an alarm call. So out the door I went. I handled the call and cleared. As I cleared dispatch put out a broadcast on a possible intoxicated driver coming right by where I was.

A moment later the truck came by and another officer got behind it and made a stop, I followed. Sure enough the driver was intoxicated, so was the passenger. They were both arrested.

By this time it was late enough in the shift that I thought it may slow down. I finished helping the other officer and tried to go eat. As I pulled into the parking lot where I was going to eat I got flagged down about a guy riding a pocket bike on the road with no lights. I found the guy and talked with him. I was thinking that when I finished I would finally be able to get something to eat and was hoping I would feel a little better after eating.
Well that didn’t work out. I was on the far north end of town when dispatch said they had a motorcycle wreck on the far south east part of town. Dispatch said that there was probably a dead person. Since I was working two beats it was in my area. So off I went muttering to myself about how my night had gone from bad to worse.

After driving hard and fast I arrived on scene along with a couple of other officer’s right behind the fire department. To my relief I found that we were just outside the city limits and in the County. That meant a State Trooper would come work the wreck.

I saw a woman doing CPR on a guy on the side of the road, she was covered in blood. Another guy was lying on the side of the road having agonal respirations. He had blood coming out his ears, nose and mouth. The blood from his nose also had a clear mucous in it. This was not good. Obviously the guy being administered CPR was way low sick. The other guy wasn’t far behind. I’m no medical expert but I understand that if someone is having agonal respirations they are very near death. The fire department got me to help them with some of their equipment. I ended up holding an IV bag for the guy that was still breathing. He had a strong radial pulse. It appeared they both had head injuries.

While I did this one of the other officers spoke to the woman that had been doing CPR. He learned that she had come from Kansas to visit her nephew, the one she had been doing CPR on. Evidently they had been at a motorcycle rally not far from the scene of the accident when her nephew and the other guy decided to ride into town for cigarettes. They had been drinking. For some reason they ran into the ditch throwing them from the motorcycle. Sometime after the wreck she left and found them lying on the side of the road. Since she was not from the area when she called 9-1-1 she did not have any idea where she was other than in the country. A short time after she called someone else drove by and was able to tell the dispatcher where they were.

A helicopter was called for the guy that was still breathing. As they loaded him they lost his pulse.

The woman apologized to me for doing CPR on her nephew and not working on the other guy. She said she worked on her nephew because she knew him and had no idea who the other guy was. For all practical purposes they were both dead so I can’t blame her for working on her nephew.

Loud Music

Last Friday night sucked, I was not feeling well at all and considered calling in sick. I didn’t and it was a looong night. We were shorthanded; since we were shorthanded I was working two beats. It was a super busy Friday night. I went from call to call all night.

At the beginning of the shift I was dispatched to a loud music call not far from the station. While in route I thought I would locate the music give a warning and clear the call. It didn’t work out that way.

I arrived in the area of the call and did not hear any loud music, but I saw a male standing in the driveway to the house where the music was supposed to be coming from. When he saw us he started to walk inside. I could see a light on inside the truck that appeared to be coming from the radio. I also saw condemnation notices on the house.

My assist officer and I made contact with the guy in the driveway. I immediately smelled a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from him. I saw that his eyes were bloodshot and watery. I thought he might be intoxicated, but really did not care, he was in his driveway.

When I spoke with him I asked him how old he was and he told me 17 but he did not have any identification. Well that could be a problem. In most circumstances 17 year olds can’t drink alcohol. I asked him where his parents were and he told me mom was working and dad was out of town. That was a problem. It got worse though. I asked if there was anyone inside the house and he told me a friend that had been drinking and his 4 sisters that were in bed. I asked how old his sisters were and he told me the oldest was 14.

I had a problem. The boy was under arrest for minor consuming alcohol and there was no one to release him to. On top of that if I took him to jail there was no one to watch his sisters.

My assist and I found that the door to the house was open. We went in to check on the sisters inside. The house was dirty and nasty. It consisted of a kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedroom. We found the guys friend hiding from us in the bathroom. He was 17 and had been drinking so he was arrested. In the bedroom we found 5 people in bed asleep. We did not wake them up.

I went outside and talked to the first boy again. He said there was no one to call to come take custody of him or his sisters other than his mom. We tried calling mom’s cell phone several times and got no answer. That made the problem even worse. I had to contact Child Protective Services (CPS) to have them come get the kids.

After I spoke with CPS I waited on scene. While waiting the boy told me he was really 16. We were able to verify that this was true. That caused yet another problem. 16 year olds don’t go to jail, they go to juvenile detention. The problem is our county does not have a juvenile facility and sends them out of county. Since there is not a juvenile facility juvenile probation deals with juveniles but will not take custody of them in most cases. They just refer the juveniles to court. So now I had a 16 year old in custody for drinking no one to release him to and I could not put him in jail because of his age. I called juvenile probation and was given the answer I expected, they would not take custody of the boy even though he had been drinking and there was no one to release him to. They suggested releasing him to CPS since I had already contacted them. CPS won’t take custody of him because he had been drinking so I was really in a bind. It was looking like I was going to be a babysitter until mom got home.

We sat on scene for about 2 hours waiting for CPS. Just before CPS arrived mom showed up. Mom had not been working, or maybe she had, she had been at a bar with her boyfriend. I started to explain to mom what was going on using an interpreter when CPS showed up.

Since mom was on scene when CPS showed up they did not take the children. Maybe they will in the future. Obviously mom is not taking care of the kids and the living conditions were horrible. The boy was released to mom with a citation for minor consuming alcohol and I did a report charging him with failure to identify for lying about his age and birth date.

My First Shooting

One hot Saturday afternoon I was working dayshift in a pretty large city. I was in field training and it was nearing the end of our shift. My FTO (Field Training Officer) had the mentality a lot of senior dayshift officers have, which was to do as little as possible. We were not on call and were just patrolling our beat when the radio crackled “east patrol to any George unit that can clear for a signal 37 priority 1 on New York.” By asking for a George unit the dispatcher was asking for a unit in that district to clear for the call.

Well no one spoke up. The next thing I heard was “Ed 112 copy a signal 37.” In the lingo of the department Ed was short for Edward which was the district we were working. The 1 signified dayshift and the 12 denoted our beat. A signal 37 is a shooting. So she had called my unit number and told me to copy a shooting. George district was in our division but a good distance away.

I was excited; it was going to be my first shooting call. So off we went running code 3 (lights and siren) to one of the roughest parts of the city. It was also an area I was not familiar with because it was not my normal patrol area.

Once the call was dispatched to us several units cleared their calls and took assists to help us out. It’s funny how that works, no one wanted to be the primary officer, but they cleared to come help as soon as someone else got the call.

We arrived on scene after several other units because we were so far away. I was pretty overwhelmed since it was the first shooting I had been to. The victim was dead in a car, shot in the eye. I don’t remember much, my FTO and other officer’s did most of the work. I do remember that the shooting was drug related and that there was not an arrest made. I never heard if an arrest was made later.

The media showed up. I remember thinking “this is pretty cool, this is my call and the news is here.” Later after I got home I made sure to watch the news, sure enough I was on the news. They had video of my FTO and me talking to the homicide detective that had come out. I looked like I knew what I was doing. Funny thing is I was just following my FTO around.

That was an exciting call. I was pretty certain I was the first in my class to work a shooting/homicide.

Amber Alert

One day in March the Sheriff’s Office got a call about a missing 5 year old. The child had gone outside in front of the residence to play. When the dad and grandparents went to get him to come inside they could not find him. So they called the Sheriff’s Office. They looked all night and issued an Amber alert. It had been a very cold night for the area. The next day I ended up assisting the Sheriff’s Office. I didn’t do much of anything other than ride around with one of their Sergeants and look for the child.

While I was at the house I heard one of the Lieutenants from the Sheriff’s Office mention something about the stock tank on the property. It was determined that it had not been searched. They got some equipment and began to drag the tank. They found the child in it. The child had ridden his bike too close to the edge and into the tank. He was clutching the bike. There were a lot of veteran cops with tears in their eyes. That was not a very pleasant experience.

We are experiencing a drought in our area. Just a few days before the drowning we had a couple of days of heavy rain. As a result of the rain stock tanks in the area filled back up. If the child had ridden into the tank just a couple of days earlier it would have been dry. Sometimes you wonder why things happen.

A Suicide

A few weeks ago I was at the station working on paperwork when the Corporal running the shift got on the radio and said he had just been flagged down by a woman that said her husband had just shot himself. There were a couple of other officers at the station doing paperwork also. Needless to say we all quit what we were doing and hurried to the Corporals location.

I was the first to arrive. As I pulled up I saw the woman in the back of the Corporal’s car. She was screaming and hollering that her husband was dead and that she wanted out of the car.

The Corporal and I made entry into the house while another officer went to the rear, another officer stayed with the lady. The house was a complete mess. We had to climb over clothes and furniture to get through the front living room. That’s not a very pleasant thing to do when there is possibly an armed person in the house.

Anyway we made it through the house and to a back living room. There he was sitting on a couch, obviously dead. I say obviously dead because there were pieces of his head and brain splattered all over the walls, ceiling and floor. He was holding a shotgun between his legs.

We had dispatch tell the paramedics they could come in. When they came in we told them to watch where they stepped because there were pieces of his skull on the floor. They came in and looked at the guy and hooked up a monitor. They thought they saw a pulse on the monitor. Because their protocol says they will work someone with a pulse they started to work him. The ambulance crew seemed a little overwhelmed by the scene. We had to drag him off of the couch, as we did his head hit the couch. It made a squishy noise kind of like a wet rag hitting something.

One of the paramedics started to put a tube in his mouth. She looked up at us in what appeared to be shock and said she could see the floor. That was about the extent of the work on him. It was determined that his injury was not conducive to life and they stopped working him.

It turns out the man had a history of mental problems and had attempted suicide in the past. He was mad at his recently married daughter over the cost of the wedding. Just before he shot himself he told his wife to go get the daughter, who lived just down the street, because he was tired of being lied to. Then he shot himself.

Crack

The city I work in definitely has a drug problem, but most of what we find is marijuana and methamphetamine. From time to time we find powdered cocaine and ever less often we find crack cocaine. In the last week I have made three arrests for crack cocaine. We certainly have crack in town but not in the quantity of the other drugs.

Monday night, which was the only day I worked last week because I took some time off, I was riding around when I saw a car at a convenience store early in the morning. I ran the plate and saw that its registration expired over a year ago. I figured I would wait for it to leave and make a stop on it.

The car left and I pulled in behind it to stop it. I turned on my overhead lights and it made a quick right turn and pulled against the curb. The way the car turned and pulled against the curb I was expecting someone to get out of the car and run.

Sure enough the front passenger casually got out of the car and started to walk away. I got out and told him to stop and he started to run. He ran into the dark behind two houses. As I rounded a corner between the houses I was surprised to see the man lying on the ground by a trailer. It appeared that he had run into the trailer in the dark. I had a hard time not laughing because he was all laid out on the ground. When he saw my light he sprung up and ran about five steps and fell over a fence just ahead of my reach. When he fell over the fence he fell on his stomach and laid there.

Since he was laying on the fence right where I would land if I jumped I figured I would tell him to stay on the ground or I would tase him. He didn’t stay on the ground and I tried to tase him. The taser did not deploy for some reason and he ran off into the dark. By the time I had the taser secured on my belt and was able to get over the fence he had disappeared into the dark.

I had told my dispatcher I had a person running so other officer’s were converging on the area. I returned to the car I had stopped to make sure the other occupants stayed.

As I went back to the car one of the officers saw the man run across a busy street and behind a building. The other officer located the man hiding behind the building a short time later. He had a substance that appeared to be crack cocaine in a baggy in his pocket. He told the officer that it was candle wax that he was going to sell because he needed gas and food. When the officer tested it for cocaine it came back negative.

While that was going on I was talking to the two female occupants of the car. It turned out that the driver was the wife of the man that had run. She lied to me about that at first. When we searched the car we found some more of what appeared to be crack in an area accessible to both the driver and the male. This tested positive.

In the end the driver and the male went to jail for possessing the crack. The male was also charged with evading detention and several warrants including one for revocation of probation on a cocaine charge. I guess he didn’t learn after his first arrest that he can’t have cocaine.

A Foot Chase

Friday night I was working with a partner. We were looking for something to get into when we saw two guys in a dark area near some cars in the general area where there have been car burglaries. When they saw us they started to walk away from the area. We made the block and came back to them.

By the time we made the block they were in a parking lot to a restaurant. As we pulled in the parking lot my partner yelled at them out the window to stop. One did, the other looked at us and kept walking. My partner yelled at him again as I started to get out of the car. I was expecting him to run.

He did. I chased after him on foot as my partner followed in the car. We went about a block, turned and went about another block made a circle around a house and started to go back where we had started.

He had a good jump on me but I had been steadily gaining on him. We jumped a curb and I tased him. I stumbled over the curb and fell on my stomach as I deployed the taser. I looked up and saw that I had hit him with the taser and that he was falling towards me. I quickly jumped up and out of the way.

By this time my partner arrived and took him into custody. He did not like being tased. I don't blame him, it hurts.

Jerry Springer

Last Saturday I had an observer riding with me. He was a local college student interested in being a cop. It was really slow for a Saturday. I told him that the job is interesting, that you get to meet all kinds of people and see and hear stories that you would not believe if you didn’t see it yourself.

Near the end of the shift we went out to the lake. The park at the lake closes at midnight and you can often find something good out there after it closes.

Another officer was out there and found a woman walking near the lake. He stopped to talk to her. The woman said that she was with some friends and pointed to three people about a hundred yards away.

I went to talk to them. It was a female and two males. I asked for identification from them and only one of the males had any. I separated the female from the males and asked for the name of the male without identification. She told me his name and that he was her fiancé. While talking with her I saw some bruises on her neck. I asked her what the bruises were and she told me hickies. She went on to say that she was going through a divorce. Her husband used to be best friends with her fiancé. Her husband ran off with her fiancé’s wife so they decided to get together.

I got back in the car with the observer and reminded him what I had said about hearing all kinds of stories.

Corporal's Test

The department I work for is a civil service department. That means a lot of things, one of which is that most promotions are based on promotional exams. Back in March all eligible officers were told there would be a Corporal’s test in July. These tests have a reputation of being difficult. Along with the notification was a list of six books that the test would be over. When I first got notification of the test I studied quite a bit. I have only been here two years and am still the rookie on the department. That is kind of frustrating because I have as much or more overall experience as most of the people I work with.

A lot of things within the department are based on rank and seniority. Besides a nice raise I saw making Corporal as a chance to advance ahead of the officer’s I work with. If I would make Corporal I would not have the seniority as a lot of people in the department, but I would have rank. That is a good thing for many reasons, for example when we bid on vacations the list starts with the senior Sergeant works its way to the junior Sergeant, then to the senior Corporal down to the junior Corporal and then to the senior patrol officer and down to the newest officer. Corporals at my department are kind of supervisors. Corporal’s run the shift on days the Sergeant’s are off. A new Corporal typically is not in charge often when they are first promoted. I eventually want to be a Sergeant and making Corporal is the next step from officer toward Sergeant.

Yesterday I took the Corporal’s test along with about 21 other officer’s from the department. The test was not what I expected it to be. When I walked out of the test I thought I had done all right. I talked to the officer that I considered the one to beat. He told me his score and I immediately thought I did not do as well as I thought. A few minutes later I learned my score, I beat him by a point. There were a few left taking the test but my score was the highest up to that point.

Once all the tests were graded I still had the high score. The officer I expected to come in first and I had the two highest scores. I think the next closest raw score was 7 points behind him. So we did a lot better than everyone else. With civil service rules everyone was given seniority points, that is a point for every year of service with the department up to 10 points. With seniority points added in I still was first followed by the other officer, but an officer with 7 years on the department leapfrogged over at least one other officer to place third 4 points behind me.

These results are not official yet. They should be posted when I go in to work tonight. Then anyone that took the test can challenge questions. Depending on challenges the results could change a little. I think I have enough cushion that at worst I would be tied for first or maybe drop to second, but I don’t anticipate that.

Needless to say I am very pleased. Now we just need to have an opening or two for Corporal’s.

Drunks and Guns

Monday night I was dispatched to a noise disturbance about someone possibly shooting fireworks. When I turned on the street the call was on I saw another officer about two blocks ahead of me. He said there was a group of people in the street in front of him. As I got closer he said that the people in the road said someone had been out shooting a shotgun. They pointed out the house this had happened at.

We went to the house and cautiously went to the front door. We did not see or hear anything unusual coming from the house so the other officer knocked on the door. A man opened the door holding a Budweiser can and a cigarette. He started to talk and had slurred speech. He said that he had shot a dog twice with his 9mm pistol and then got to feeling bad since it wasn’t dead do he shot it again with his rifle. The man was on the verge of tears and appeared to be intoxicated.

You can’t just shoot in the city limits and you can’t just shoot a dog. Depending on the circumstances of shooting the dog it could be a felony.

We talked to the man’s girlfriend who was at the house. She said she had gone outside into their fenced backyard to bring their dogs in. Another dog was in the yard and as she tried to shoo it away the dog growled at her. She went inside and got the man. He came outside and tried to shoo the dog away it growled at him so he went back inside and got his pistol. He came back outside and tried to shoo the dog away again. This time the dog tried to bite him so he shot it. The dog didn’t die so he shot it again. This put the dog down but did not kill it. He drug the dog across his yard to the back fence and left it. He went back inside and continued drinking his beer. Then he started to feel bad because the dog was still alive so he got his rifle and shot the dog again killing it.

The way the law is written he can kill the dog to protect himself so the shooting was not cruelty to animals. The other officer and I had a problem with him putting himself in the situation and never calling the police or animal control. He ended up with a ticket for discharging a firearm in the city.

Ho’s

Last Friday I was at the station near the end of the shift trying to finish up paperwork when dispatch dispatched a call to a convenience store in reference to a fight in progress. Another officer was at the station and we were the closest officers to the call. She jumped in the car with me and we went to the call.

We arrived and found two women on scene, one of which had been assaulted. I asked one of them what was going on and she pointed at the other woman and said “she’s a ho.” The other officer determined that the woman I was talking to was a suspect and told me to detain her. There was also a man on scene.

Once the lady was detained we talked to one of the store clerks. He said another female suspect had left in a car. I gave the information over the radio and another officer located the car and female a few blocks away and brought her back to the scene.

It turns out that the female in the car is married to the man that was on scene. The woman that was assaulted is seeing the man. The wife decided to take care of the problem and got another family member to come with her and they assaulted the victim together.

While we were sorting this out another woman arrived on scene. She walked up to the victim with about six cops standing around and started to hit her. It turns out she is the mother of the man. Instead of being mad at her son for messing around she thought she would beat up the woman he was seeing.

In the end we took three to jail.

Mother's Day......

I heard the other day that the guy who assaulted his dad and kicked me on Mother's Day is still in jail. He has a $10,000 bond on the injury to the disabled and another $10,000 bond for kicking me.

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.

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.

Hurricane Katrina

I went with a group of 8 officers to Louisiana. In Baton Rouge my group of 4 was given an assignment in Covington which is directly across the Lake Pontchartrain causeway from New Orleans. The other group was given an assignment in Kenner which is a suburb of New Orleans.

My group arrived in Covington and as soon as we exited I-12 we saw damage all around. Tree’s toppled over, power poles down and damaged buildings. When we arrived at our assignment we found we were going to be providing security for a Bell South phone company facility that was sprouting up at the local American Legion.

Workers were there constructing tents for Bell South employees and families that had been displaced to stay. They were also installing facilities so repair crews could use the facility as a base. There were helicopters flying to the south towards New Orleans on a regular basis, and I saw a C-130 mid-air refueling a Blackhawk helicopter.

For the next three nights my group provided overnight security for the facility. There were also two soldiers from the Alabama National Guard with us all the time. We had electricity, running water and all the food we could eat. Bell South did a great job taking care of its employees and us.

Last Wednesday morning after completing our shift several of us decided to go into New Orleans to look around. As we got closer to New Orleans on the causeway we could make out the skyline and see numerous helicopters flying around the city. Once we crossed the causeway we were in Metairie. We could immediately see there had been more damage here than in Covington. Windows were broken, debris was scattered about, and street after street was impassible due to downed power poles, trees and other debris.

We began to work our way towards downtown. A couple of times we ran into water over the road and had to find an alternate route. We saw street after street of damaged buildings. Helicopters flew overhead. The military and police were seen in large numbers. Sometimes the soldiers appeared to be on patrol, other times they were in convoys and other times they were already working clearing debris using chain saws to cut trees.

We stopped once to change drivers. A couple of people were inside a building and when they saw us they took off. One was on a bicycle and he was so busy looking over his shoulder at us as he tried to get on his bike that he ran it into the curb and almost fell over. It appeared that they may have been trying to loot.

We had to pass a couple of checkpoints to get into town. Once they saw we were the police they just waved us through. We worked our way downtown and ended up within just a couple of blocks of the Superdome before we ran into water. There was not much traffic but it was a free for all in town with cars going down streets the wrong way.

When we left the downtown area we got on I-10 and headed west to the causeway. It sure was uncomfortable getting on the freeway and having vehicles coming towards you in your lanes. We went west a little ways and ran into an area where there were soldiers in red berets standing near where the freeway had some water across it. It looked passable at that point but we talked to the soldiers. They told us that a little further down the road we would not be able to get through because of water over the road. We were also told there had been some “hostile activity” in the area earlier. These soldiers had a certain swagger to them that made it seem they were pretty squared away. I was later told these were probably guys from the 82nd Airborne Division.

We turned around and headed the wrong way down I-10 back towards downtown and worked our way back towards the causeway on side streets. We saw areas of town where there was widespread destruction and then in others the only damage seemed to be downed trees with no real structural damage to buildings. There were very few people in the city that were not military or police.

More Marijuana

I saw a guy riding his bicycle in the middle of a busy street Monday night without a headlight. I stopped him to talk with him. He was sweating profusely and could not stand still or stop fidgeting. These are some clues that he may be on some kind of drug. He volunteered that he did not have anything on him and that I could check all I wanted.

Since he offered, I asked him if he minded emptying his pockets for me, he said no. Then he felt his pockets but did not empty them saying "see there is nothing in them." I asked if he minded if I checked for myself and he told me I could check all I wanted, so I did. When I got to his left front shorts pocket I felt a plastic bag. I immediately suspected it contained some type of drug.

I removed the bag and found that it contained a green leafy substance that appeared to be marijuana. I placed him under arrest. He said the shorts weren't his they belonged to a friend. The substance field tested positive for marijuana and he went to jail.

Marijuana

I made a traffic stop Saturday night. I checked the occupants for warrants and found out a passenger had a warrant. I took him out of the car and handcuffed him. Then asked if there was anything in the car I needed to know about. He told me he had a knife and some "baggies" in a backpack in the truck. I told him I was not worried about a knife thinking he meant a pocket knife, but was concerned about the "baggies" thinking he meant some kind of drugs.

I placed him in my patrol car and searched the truck incident to arrest. I found the backpack and opened it up. There was a double bladed knife in a sheath. I looked a little further in the backpack and found some marijuana. It wasn't his night, he went from going to jail for a warrant to two additional charges.

First Night Back

My first night back at work I was ready to do some work, but was a little tired since I had gotten used to being up during the day. I was riding around and an officer got dispatched to a noise disturbance call at an apartment complex on my beat. I spoke up and said I would be in route. Another Officer spoke up and said he would be in route also because he was close.

The other officer arrived on scene pretty quickly, and called out that he had a subject running. He did not give chase but stopped the people that were with him. I hurried to the area and began to look for the guy. A few minutes later dispatch told us they had a call from someone saying the guy had run into an apartment.

I went to the apartment along with several other officers. One of the officer's knocked on the door but didn't get an answer. He could see that someone was in there through the window. Eventually a guy opened the door. I checked his heart and it was beating pretty fast, so I figured it was probably him that had run. He denied it and said he had been sitting on the throne in the bathroom when we knocked and it scared him since he was in his buddies house. The problem was his buddies had already told us it was him that had run.

He went to jail. He admitted that he had run because he had a beer in his hand. It isn't illegal to drink in a parking lot so he had no reason to run. We found out after he was in custody that he had a warrant for assaulting a family member.

One of his buddies had a warrant too. I arrested him, and before searching him asked if he had anything I needed to know about meaning any contraband or anything that might stick or hurt me. He told me he had marijuana in his pocket. Sure enough he did.

Vacation

After spending about three weeks wondering around the southwest and southern California I had to come home and go back to work. We had a great time visiting family in New Mexico and Arizona. Then we moved on to Disneyland where the kids enjoyed the magic kingdom and I enjoyed the wonderful weather. On the way home we made a stop at the Grand Canyon and enjoyed a helicopter flight over it.

Now I am looking forward to next year and another vacation. Guess it's time now to start working part times to pay for it.

Part Time Jobs

Cops work part time jobs. It’s just the way it is. I work them too. They are a nice way to earn extra money. My family is going on vacation in a couple of weeks so I have been working as much as I can to have extra money for our trip, in fact I am working a part time job now. It is a nice thing to be able to work and pick up some quick money.

There is a lot of gas exploration going on around the area. My job tonight is to sit at the lake watching some equipment making sure nothing happens to it. It sure is a nice night to be sitting here; I should have brought a fishing pole. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it.

A Pursuit

Last Sunday I returned to the midnight shift. I like working midnights. It starts out busy especially on Fridays and Saturdays and then slows down by quitting time allowing time to complete paperwork.

About 10:30 I was riding around town looking for something to do when I heard a pursuit on the Sheriff’s channel. The pursuit was in a town about 15-20 miles away and headed towards my city. I didn’t figure they would come all the way to town because of the distance and because there were several major roads for them to turn on, but I began to listen. The officer in the pursuit said he was going 140 mph.
A short time later the officer said they had passed the interstate and were continuing towards town. I stopped to see if I had spikes in my car, I did. I figured if they got into town I could attempt to spike the car and end the pursuit.

I found a place at the end of town closest to the pursuit and waited. They passed the exit they would have taken to come to where I was so I hurried to the other end of town where the highway crossed the street I was on again.

As I was trying to get to the other end of town I heard that some of our officers had joined the pursuit and that they were passing a road ahead of me. I figured I had missed my chance since they were ahead of me.

I kept going because the highway they were on makes a loop around town and they were about to come up on the curve in the loop. That meant they had farther to go to get where I was going to try and spike the car then I had to go.

I made it out to the loop and got out just in time to hear the engine of the car being chased. It came around a bend in the road about a mile away and was flying. I had about 30 seconds to get ready so I hurried and set my spikes up so I could pull them in front of the car as it approached.

As the car got closer I pulled the spikes into the lane of traffic going toward the pursuit to make it easier to get the spikes pulled into the lane the car was in. The car came up toward me and veered into the oncoming traffic lane. I think he was trying to stay clear of me. That meant he drove right over my spike strip, it looked like I got all four tires.

The car was way ahead of the pursuing officer’s. It continued on, about 30 seconds behind him was the first pursuing police car. About another 30 seconds behind him came two of our cars. Then a few minutes later a few more county cars went by as I picked up the spikes.

The pursuit continued for a while longer. I knew I had seen the car run over the spikes with all four tires but I began to wonder if I had successfully spiked the car because he kept going.

He ended up making it to the neighboring county before running into a ditch and wrecking. Once he wrecked he bailed out and ran on foot a short distance before being caught.

I learned later that he had wrecked because his front drivers tire had been flattened by my spikes and he had been driving on the rim. Once he was in custody he said he had stolen the car from his brother in a neighboring county. He also had swallowed some cocaine.

I have been in my share of pursuits. Some are not very exciting and some are scary; it depends on speeds and circumstances of the pursuit. I had never been in a position to spike a car when I had spikes so this was a first for me. It was pretty interesting and caused quite an adrenaline rush, mainly because of the speed the bad guy was going and the short time I had to get prepared.

An 18 Wheeler, A Missing Tire, And A House

I was driving around when another officer was dispatched to a wreck where an 18-wheeler had lost a tire. The tire supposedly hit a house.

I wasn’t doing anything so I thought I would drive by and take a look. The 18-wheeler was sitting in the center turn lane and was missing two wheels off of the back drivers side of the tractor.

There was an older man standing on the porch of a house. I went and talked to him and asked where the tire was. He took me into his bedroom and showed me the tire. The tire had gone through the wood frame house and ended up against a dresser. There was wood, insulation and other building materials scattered throughout the room.

I then talked to the truck driver. He said another truck driver had told him on the radio he had lost a tire. About that time he saw a tire go past him and into the house. I can only imagine what he thought as one of his tires passed him as he drove down the road.

It turns out the older man who lived in the house had built it in the late 1940’s. He had been a naval aviator in World War 2. I talked to him for a few minutes about that. It was pretty interesting.

Sometimes I get to meet interesting people at work. He was one of them. World War 2 has been something I have been interested in since childhood. Since becoming a police officer I have met a member of the Flying Tigers, survivors of Pearl Harbor, a sailor that was on the U.S.S. Enterprise at Midway, a soldier that landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day and several pilots from the Air Corps during the war. All had interesting stories.

A Domestic

Later in the day I was dispatched to a disturbance in a car. The caller said a man was driving down the street and hitting the female passenger.

The female officer from the drug arrest was closer to them and found them. She saw the man push the woman and then stopped their car.

When I got there I found the male driver out of the car talking to my partner. The female passenger was in the car and talking to my Chief who had stopped by. We checked both for warrants and found that the woman had a fail to identify fugitive warrant from a neighboring county. I told dispatch to confirm the warrant.

The woman was injured from being hit in the car so I placed the male under arrest for assaulting her. While waiting for dispatch to confirm the warrant on the female I began to complete jail paperwork for the male. I verified his name again. He told me he had lied to my partner about his name and gave me his correct name.

I checked that name and found out that he had a warrant for fail to identify fugitive also. I had dispatch confirm this warrant. That just added several charges to the man. He went to jail for fail to identify fugitive, his warrant for fail to identify fugitive, assault bodily injury family violence which are all misdemeanors, and fraudulent use of identifying information since he had originally identified himself as his brother, that is a felony.

That meant I was involved in five felony arrests for the day. That’s not a bad days work if I say so myself.

Methamphetamines

After dropping the mental patient off at the hospital I returned to the city and went to the station to talk to the officer doing the report. While talking to him another officer came in and told me that dispatch had given her information that there was a drug deal going on at an apartment in town. She asked if I wanted to do a knock and talk. A knock in talk is where you knock on the door and if you get an answer you talk to the people at the residence and see what happens from there. Anyway the maintenance man for the apartments had been in the apartment and saw scales and the people in the apartment measuring drugs.

We went to the residence and I knocked on the door while she went to the back door. A little girl looked through the window and then her mom did, but they did not answer. I figured they were hiding their drugs.

Then my partner said they had come out the back. They weren’t trying to run so much as they were trying to sneak out. When they opened the door they saw my partner. She immediately identified the three people and determined who lived there. My partner then took the resident aside and talked to her while I talked with the male and female that had been with her.
A short time later my partner told me there was another man inside taking a shower and that a rifle was in the bathroom with him. My partner got consent to search the residence. We went in to locate the guy in the bathroom. As soon as we walked in the back door we saw drug paraphernalia, specifically pipes used to smoke drugs. We located the man in the bathroom. Behind the bathroom door was an SKS Chinese assault rifle. This guy was detained when we found he had an illegal knife.

By this time we had additional officers there to assist. I opened a closet in the bedroom closet and saw a whiskey bottle with a clear liquid in it and two tubes coming out of it. I am short and could not get around the cluttered floor to reach the bottle so my partner grabbed it. The liquid was field-tested and came up positive for methamphetamines.

No one in the house would admit to it belonging to them so we took all four to jail. The methamphetamines were later measured and came out to be over 400 grams, a very large amount.

What A Way To Start The Day

Friday started out with a bang, or more correctly a shock. We were getting ready for briefing when dispatch told us they needed us to come into service for a disturbance. Dispatch said that it was at a group home for people with mental problems and that a man was out of control and had pulled a knife earlier.

Officer’s arrived on scene and determined that the man needed to be taken into custody because of his mental condition and taken to a hospital. The man was a danger to himself and or others.

When we went to take the man into custody he decided to fight. It wasn’t much of a fight thanks to the taser one of the officers had. Once the man started fighting he just stepped in and drive stunned the man. The fight was over.

I was the lucky one and got to take the man to the hospital. It was about a 40-minute drive to get there. The whole time this man kept saying he was sorry, he didn’t mean it, that he wanted to talk to his mom and that he did not want to die. He did this in a whining voice; it almost made me want to commit myself.

Once I got him to the hospital he was unhandcuffed so the staff could medicate him. That did not go too well, he wanted to fight again. We got him under control and he was given his medicine and he went to sleep.

A Runner

Monday another officer and were dispatched to suspicious activity at a vacant residence. Dispatch told us that the front door had been kicked in and there was a car parked behind the residence.

We arrived and my partner walked up to the front door. It was not kicked in. He knocked on the door but got no answer. We then walked around the residence and saw the car in back. The keys were in the ignition. From looking in the windows we could see that the residence was not being lived in.

We continued around the residence and found a window was slightly open in the front. My partner opened the curtain and looked in. He immediately smelled the odor of burning marijuana and saw a male and female having sex on a dirty mattress with no sheets. My partner told them to come to the door. They said they needed to get dressed and would come to the door. My partner called for another officer to assist.

I walked to the back of the house to make sure no one tried to get out that way and my partner went to the front. I saw the woman walk towards the front door and went around to the side so I could tell my partner she was coming.

As I turned to go back to the back I saw a male take off running across the back yard and through a hole in a wooden fence. I yelled at him to stop but he kept running with me behind him.

He made it through the hole in the fence and I lost sight of him. When I got through the fence I did not see him anymore. I was in a backyard and there were two males there. I asked them where he had gone and they told me around front. So I ran that way and did not see anything, he had just disappeared. By this time my partner had made it to where I was and we began to check the area.

Another officer arrived in the area and went to the original residence. The woman was not there. As my partner and I continued to check the area the officer at the residence told us that a resident from a neighboring house had come to him and said a woman had just barged into their house and was hiding there. That officer went to the house and detained the woman.
By this time my partner and I had returned to the residence. A computer check showed the female was wanted so she was placed under arrest for the warrants as well as criminal trespass for just barging into the neighbor’s house.

We called for a dog from a neighboring agency. When the dog arrived we started to retrace my route. As we got to the hole in the fence a woman met us and told us there was a "black guy" in her house. This was a white woman and it happened that the guy that ran was black.
My partner and I along with the dog and his handler went to the house. We were told the guy was in the garage. After yelling at him repeatedly and threatening to send the dog in he came out.

Once he was in custody he told me he was on parole and had a parole violation and that was why he had run. It turned out he was on parole for aggravated assault on a peace officer for trying to run over an officer a couple of years ago. He also had a warrant for possession of a controlled substance as well as various traffic warrants.

One of the males from the backyard went to jail for hindering apprehension. The guy was a friend of his and he had hidden him in the house and lied about it.

Aggravated Assault

Sunday I was dispatched to a wreck where there had been an assault. When I got there I talked to a man that told me he was sitting in his truck in the backyard to a house. His ex-girlfriend showed up and wanted money. They got into an argument and she reached in and scratched his face several times. I could see the scratches and that he was bleeding.

The man went on to say that while he was sitting in the truck his ex-girlfriend rammed the truck four times, and then she left. The evidence I saw seemed to match his story, plus he had a witness that gave the same account.

The ex-girlfriend was not on scene, but the man told us where she lived. Another officer went to her house as I conducted my investigation. He found that the ex-girlfriend was not home but someone at the house called her and she said she would return.

I finished my investigation at the offense location and went to the suspect’s house. A short time later the ex-girlfriend drove up. She had damage to the front of her Jeep Cherokee.

I spoke with her using an interpreter. She told me that she had gone to the offense location to get some money and got into an argument with her boyfriend. During the argument he said he was going to kill her and grabbed her to prevent her from leaving. She got away and he blocked her in with his truck so she rammed the truck to get away.

The ex-girlfriend showed me one scratch on her wrist to back up her story. Her story was not consistent with what I had seen at the offense location. The truck that got rammed was sitting in the back corner of the yard and was not blocking anyone from leaving. I could see the marks in the dirt where the truck had been pushed after being hit so I was certain that is where it had been parked when it had been rammed.

I told the ex-girlfriend I did not believe her story and arrested her for aggravated assault with a motor vehicle, my second felony arrest of the week.

The Name Game

The other day I was working S.T.E.P., which is traffic enforcement and is overtime (woohooo). While riding around looking for traffic violations I saw a man run a stop sign in right in front of me. In fact he looked right at me and ran the stop sign while turning right.

I followed him and stopped him as he pulled in a parking lot. I made contact with him and asked him for his license. He said he did not have it so I asked him his name and birth date. He gave me a name and birth date. I asked him how old he was and the age did not match with his birth date. Being a seasoned officer this made me think he was lying to me.

I returned to my car and had dispatch check him for warrants under the name and date of birth he gave me. While I was doing this a female walked up and started to talk to the driver. Police officers do not like this and I told her to come to me. Then I asked her her friend’s name. She game me a different name than he had.

I had dispatch check the name the girl had given me and found that we had dealt with him before, and that he had a traffic warrant. I then went up to the driver and called him by the name the girl had given me. He answered by that name. I asked him why he was answering to the name I called him if his name was the name he had given me.

I then had him get out of his car and arrested him for his warrant as well as fail to identify-fugitive since he was wanted. Both of those are misdemeanors. It turned out the name and birth date he had originally given me were his brothers. That made his lying to me another offense, fraudulent use of identifying information, which is a felony. When I told him this he was not very happy. He went from possibly going to jail for a traffic warrant to having two additional charges including a felony.

Graduation

I have a younger sister that graduated from college last Saturday. So CONGRATULATIONS to my little sister!!!

Performance Evaluation

I got called in the Patrol Commanders office last Friday while we were sitting in briefing. Of course everyone figured I was in trouble....I wasn't. I got my 1 year probationary evaluation. I am a little biased but it was pretty good, at the high end of meeting expectations and almost exceeding expectations. That's good for a new guy even if I do have previous experience. Barring any major screw ups between now and June 21st I will make probation. Making probation means I have civil service protection, which is a good thing, even if it didn't help me at a previous agency.

A Disturbance

Monday I was in the dispatch office near the end of the shift getting some paperwork. One of the dispatchers got a call on 9-1-1. She began typing information into the computer and from her side of the conversation I could tell it was a disturbance with a gun involved and that it was in a not so nice part of town.

The dispatcher dispatched the officer whose beat the call was on and I went along as his assist officer. The dispatcher told us that a woman in a car had pointed a gun at a woman walking in the road and that the woman in the road had pointed a gun back at her.

While we were in route the dispatcher was able to get a name on one of the people involved. I recognized the name, she is an older lady I have dealt with before.

We pulled up on scene and spoke with the lady that had been walking and her neighbor. The neighbor did most of the talking. The lady that had been walking was very intoxicated. The neighbor told us her friend did not have a gun that the lady in the car did. She went on to say the problem stemmed from the friend and lady in the car having been married to the same man. The friend was his first wife and the lady in the car was the second wife. The man is now deceased.

Anyway the second wife needed some paperwork taken care of for a car she had with the man. Evidently it was registered in his and the first wife's name. The second wife became angry that the first wife did not want to sign the paperwork and threatened her with a gun.

There were some teenagers standing in the yard of a house close by so we went to talk to them. They were laughing as they told the story. They said "an old lady drove by and pointed a gun at the other lady then drove by us and said I'll give you some of this as she held her gun in the air."
They thought it was quite funny because of the age of the two women, the woman in the car was 59 and the other was in her 70's.

We then went to the second wife's house which was just a few blocks away. She tried lying to us about what happened and denied having a gun. Then she showed us the gun, it was a BB pistol.

We talked with her for a while and could not talk any sense into her. Then we went back and talked to the first wife. We couldn't talk any sense in her either partially because she was so intoxicated. I don't think she really understood what was going on.

We ended up just telling the ladies to leave each other alone since no one wanted to cooperate with us.

9-1-1 Hang-up

Most 9-1-1 hang-up calls are accidents. Last Friday after clearing my robbery call I was dispatched to a residence where there had been four 9-1-1 hang-up calls. That kind of makes it look like there could be a problem at the residence. It appeared like there was more of a problem because of the residence it was coming from.

There is a history of problems at the house I was going to. A known prostitute's boyfriend lives there and they regularly get into fights over sex and drugs. In fact one time she accused him of sexual assault. During the alleged assault she almost bit his penis off. Detectives determined that there had not been a sexual assault, that she had gotten mad at him during sex and had bitten his penis. Because of all the problems these people have the man has a protective order against the woman. That means she cannot come to his house or near him. She violates it all the time. Usually when the man invites her over for drugs and or sex.

Anyway the woman showed up Thursday night and they had their fun. Friday morning after the fun was over they got into a fight. The man knew the woman was not supposed to be there so he called 9-1-1 knowing she would be arrested.

That's exactly what happened. My assist officer found them walking down the street about a block from the house. He verified that the protective order was good and arrested her. Too bad there is not a law that lets us arrest someone for allowing the protective order to be violated.

A Robbery

I am on day shift now. I hate the hours but love being home with the family. Last Friday about 0730 I was dispatched to a disturbance where someone had taken money from my complainant.

I got to the call and saw that my complainant was 84 years old. He was sitting in a pick up truck with a known prostitute. They told me that another woman had come up to them and demanded money from the man. The woman, who was another known prostitute, then choked the man and took $5 from his shirt pocket. That made it a robbery.

It was hard to feel sympathetic to the man. He does not live in that part of town and has no business there. It was apparent why he was with the woman he was with.

What a way to start the day.

A Commendation

I went to work the other day and looked in my box. There were a few memo's, but in the stack was a commendation letter from the Chief. It was for my participation in the barricaded subject we had a few weeks back. It's always nice to get a commendation letter.

Barricaded Subject

Near the end of the shift the other day the dispatcher came on the radio and asked for officers to go to a closed restaurant in town to meet a man who said his adult son had assaulted him, was suicidal and walking around with guns.

An officer went to meet him and several officers including myself went to the house. We sat up a perimeter on the house but did not attempt to contact the man inside because of the guns.

After some time our SWAT team was assembled and tried to deliver a phone so the guy could communicate with us. As they delivered the phone I heard shots being fired. The guy was shooting at the SWAT team! They were able to deliver the phone and back off without any injuries.

The standoff lasted about 17 hours with the guy shooting several times. When he was finally taken into custody he had to be shot with bean bag rounds and a taser. Fortunately no one was injured.

Welfare Check

I was dispatched to a welfare check the other day at a retirement community. The dispatcher said an elderly woman's son had tried to get into his mother's apartment but couldn't because it was dead bolted from the inside and she would not come to the door.

My Sgt. and I arrived on scene and located the apartment but not the son. We tried looking in windows to see if we could see anything but couldn't because of the blinds. A maintenance man arrived with a key and unlocked the door for us, it was not locked from the inside.

As soon as we made entry we could see the legs of a person laying on the floor. We went in and found an elderly woman collapsed on the floor. My Sgt. called for an ambulance and the firemen that were already on scene began to tend to the woman. From what the firemen said she was not in good shape.

The Civil Service Test

The city gave the civil service test to create a hiring list earlier this week. Several guys I used to work with at the county took the test. Another friend that is a Federal Agent took the test also, he made the top score. Maybe some people I know will get hired.

A Drunk

Last Sunday night I had just left the jail and was headed to the station to eat my dinner and work on my report from the earlier arrest. I saw a guy cross the street in front of me and walk over to a mini-van parked in front of a closed body shop. It was about 9:30 so it was dark and there was no foot traffic out.

There have been burglaries in this area of town so I made the block and found a place to watch him. As I watched he looked at the van and in the windows. Then he moved to the front and leaned over it. It looked like he might have been trying to get the hood to open.

I drove up to him and got out of my car. I spoke to this guy and he did not respond, he just laid there with his head burred in his arms on the hood of the van. I yelled at him a couple of times saying hi and asking him what was up, but he did not respond.

He finally picked his head up and looked at me. When he looked at me he gave me a drunken stare. So I knew he was drunk, but it was something I could not articulate for court....yet. He had snot stringing from his nose onto the arms of his coat. He was Hispanic so I began to communicate with him in Spanish. He just looked at my like I was stupid. I don't speak Spanish very well, but what I was saying I have said many times to people and have been understood.

I thought that I might have to arrest the guy so I backed up to my car and put some gloves on. I really didn't care to get his snot all over me. Once I had some gloves on I talked to the guy some more. He had the classic signs of a drunk, he smelled like an alcoholic beverage, his eyes were bloodshot and watery and he was unsteady on his feet.

A couple of other officers arrived to assist. One of the officers used to work in El Paso and speaks Spanish. He talked to the guy for a few minutes and the guy told him he had never been arrested.

I then took the guy into custody for public intoxication. At the jail he said he had been arrested before. We found his information and saw that he had been arrested for DWI in the past. The paperwork also indicated that they had put a hold on him because he was illegal. That means he probably was deported. Since our southern border is so secure he probably just turned around and came right back.

A Fatality Wreck

Monday as I was about to pull into the station parking lot at the beginning of my shift I heard dispatch send some officers to a major wreck where one of the vehicles was on fire.

Since I was not on duty yet, I was not too concerned. As I walked into the station the Chief went walking past me on his way to the wreck since it sounded serious.

I began to prepare for briefing when I heard the officers that had arrived on scene ask for some more officers to help with traffic control. I got a car and went out to the wreck. While I was in route to the wreck the Chief came on the radio and said he needed a road closed because there were going to be three helicopter ambulances coming.

I arrived on scene and found that two Sheriff's Deputies I used to work with had blocked off the road. Since it was in my city I relieved them. I spent about the next hour blocking the roadway while the helicopters came and went and while the accident investigators did their work.

The media showed up and began filming. One of the accident investigators is a motorcycle officer. He had been on duty when the wreck occurred and had gone to the call. At one point he needed to move one of the expeditions another officer had been driving. He got in it and began to back up. He backed into his motorcycle hitting it with the expeditions door. He said he didn't damage his motorcycle too much, but it sure messed up the expeditions door. Anyway he managed to do this in front of a camera that was recording.

An elderly lady that was driving one of the cars ended up dying at the hospital later.

A Wreck a Liar and an Overdose

Last weekend I was dispatched to a wreck. It was a cold rainy night so I was not too thrilled to be going to this call where I would have to be out in the elements.

I arrived on scene and found a truck and a car blocking the road. A lady walked up to me said hi to me and told me that the other person had caused the wreck because she was driving too fast. I had dealt with this lady on a previous call where she wanted to report her boyfriend was stealing her medication and threatening her. She said she he might hurt her. I asked the lady what car she was in and she pointed to a parking lot. I asked her to get her drivers license and insurance for me.

I found that the truck belonged to witnesses so I got them to pull into the parking lot. The lady from the car in the parking lot gave me her drivers license and insurance. I then spoke with the young woman driving the other car involved and got her into the parking lot.

Once everyone was out of the road I talked to the witnesses. They told me that the woman who had given me her drivers license and insurance had not been driving and that a man had been driving. The also told me that the car did not have any lights on and had turned in front of the other car.

I then spoke to the young woman driving the other car involved. She was not injured but was shaken up. She could not tell me who was driving the other car or if it had had its lights on.

I then confronted the woman who claimed to be the driver of the other car. I asked her if she was the driver and she told me she was. I then told her she was lying to me and she responded that she was.

I completed the accident report and showed the liars to be at fault. I also gave the male that had been driving three citations. Two of which I would normally not issue, but when you lie to the police there are consequences.

The man she was with is the boyfriend I had talked to her about before. She had been scared to death of him then, or so she said.

A couple of days later another officer was dispatched to her apartment. It seems her boyfriend had overdosed on some medication. He will be fine, but I wonder if the citations I gave him had something to do with him overdosing.

Drunk Driving

The other day I was finishing up lunch with another officer when the dispatcher asked if there was an officer near where we were. I answered her and said I was. She then said there was a person following a possible drunk driver and gave a vehicle description.

The other officer and I got up to throw our trash away and go to our cars. As we did so the other officer looked out the window and said he thought he saw the car. I looked out the window and saw the car and agreed.

We got in our cars and started after the possible drunk driver. Dispatch then told us that the car had been involved in a wreck and that it had kept going. By this time several other officers that were in the area were looking for the car also.

They found it in the Wal-Mart parking lot right in front of the front doors. They tried to get the occupants out but they wouldn't get out at first. I arrived on scene in time to see the driver and passenger being "helped" out of the car. I then put the driver in my car. While this was going on the Wal-Mart shoppers stood there watching.

I went and looked at the car and saw that the airbags had deployed. The driver in his intoxicated state just kept on driving after the wreck even after the airbags went off. He went to jail along with his two passengers.

The car he hit was not seriously damaged, but his car was. For once the drunk got the worse end of the wreck.

A Little Marijuana

I was on "routine" patrol the other night sitting at a stop light. I wasn't really paying attention to the cross traffic but I noticed their light had turned yellow. Just as their light turned red a car went flying through the intersection. The speed limit on the road the car was on is 40, and it did not appear the car was going anywhere near 40.

My light had turned green by now and I took off after the car. The car quickly made a left turn onto a side street. I did not know if he was turning to get away from me or if that was the way he was going. I made the turn myself and found that the anti-lock brakes were working and activated my overhead lights. The car made a quick right turn. I could tell the car was being driven by a male, and it appeared he might be thinking about running, but then he pulled over in front of a house.

I exited my car and made contact with the driver. He was breathing heavily and said he had asthma and was trying to get home and get an inhaler. He had stopped in front of his house. The driver told me that there was an inhaler in the house and that his dad would know where it was.

I knocked on the door and dad answered. Dad couldn't find an inhaler. While I was talking with dad I saw that the driver was reaching behind the passenger seat like he was trying to hide or retrieve something.

I went back to talk to the driver and he was breathing better. I had him get out of the car and began to pat him down for my safety because of his reaching behind the seat. While I was patting him down I asked him if there was anything in the car I needed to know about. He didn't answer.

Once I was finished patting him down I asked him for consent to search the car. He told me I could and that there was marijuana in the car.

By this time another officer had arrived. The officer looked in the car and found a shoebox in the back floorboard behind the passenger seat. Right where the driver had been reaching. Inside the shoebox was the marijuana and several pipes to smoke it with.

I called paramedics to come look at the driver because of his asthma. They said he was fine. The driver didn't want to go to the hospital so I took him to jail. On the way to jail he told me he was going about 70 when he passed me.

A Busy Friday

We were short handed last Friday so I was working two beats. It was one of those days where things just dropped in my lap. Right out of briefing I was notified by some narcotics officers that they were doing surveillance on my beat. They wanted me to be in the area in case they needed something.

A short time later they let another officer and I know they were watching a female that had a drug related felony warrant. We went to take custody of her and had a little scuffle. I transported her for the narcotics guys, but they handled the paperwork, which was nice.

After dropping her off I stopped a car for expired registration. It turned out the inspection did not belong on the car so he went to jail. The guy didn't have a drivers license or insurance either so he got a few citations.

As I was leaving the jail I was dispatched to a suspicious person call about a guy sitting in a law chair on the side of a busy road in front of a business. I found the guy and talked to him. A computer check showed he was wanted. So back to jail I went.

Later in the shift I volunteered to go pick up a prisoner at another agency in the area. That was an easy arrest.

The bad thing is while I was at jail one of the businesses on my beat was burglarized for $50,000 worth of rental equipment. The good news is there is video so hopefully they can figure out who it was.