The Silly Season

Fairly depressing so if anyone still reads this don’t expect to be happy when you get done reading this, you’ve been warned.

I refer to this time of year as “The Silly Season”.  I think I got the term from Lethal Weapon or one of those cop shows in the nineties.  The reason is because people act “silly” from Thanksgiving until New Years.  While this time period is full of happiness and love it’s also full of other things like resentment, despair, sadness and hopelessness. The longer I have been out of the department the worse the memories have become.  (Not a cry for help just a statement)

I know of the terrible pain of the season in a unique way.  I went to a suicide where the man had laid out his checkbook register in front of him with his bills around him in a half circle then shot himself in the head with a rifle.  One of my officers asked why he didn’t leave a note?  I pointed to the bills and checkbook and told him that is his note.  I also had a couple that had a very romantic Thanksgiving meal that ended with one man killing his husband at the table with the carving knife.  As I took him to my car he told me that he “loved him but couldn’t stand living with him”.  It also seemed like it was a season for self immolation which is horrific beyond description.

I saw some wonderful things also but right now only one comes to mind.  The last year I participated in “Shop with a Cop” I had a young boy who made sure that he bought gifts for his family before thinking about himself which was a beautiful experience for me.  I have always loved Christmas with my family, especially since we’ve had children.  I hope for them and you for a safe and happy holiday season.

When it is still.

I try to stay busy, my mind on other things.
I prefer to think heavy so there's no time for dream.
When it is quiet, silent and still,
my heart hurts so fully I fear it will fail.
Then suddenly, we were strangers after it all.

A memory I had this morning.

I-80 Westbound 2300 East

Salt Lake City, Utah

Gang Unit

“It’s Radar Love by Golden Earring, how come you can never remember that” I asked Mike, my partner for the night.  This was a game we played while we killed the down time between calls.  We would turn on the FM Radio and hit the scan button, when a song came on the first person to correctly identify the group or singer won that round.  Mike is older than me and should know Golden Earring.

Mike and I had been riding together for about a week now.  We had gone through the academy together and had somehow found our way to SWAT with a number of our classmates.  SWAT was also the Gang Unit.  I loved SWAT but HATED Gangs, most everyone else liked the Gang assignment.  They would remember monikers and what the different colors meant.  They knew how the one gang member was associated with another one that had done something somewhere with someone else.  I thought how much better our City would be if the gang members just killed each other off.

That was the Irony of it, the gang unit I mean.  The only reason that the City ever recognized that there was a gang problem, after having been told there was by the cops for years, was a shooting in a Smith’s Food King parking lot that left to dirtbags dead.  It always reminded me of the rhyme “two dead boys got up to play.  Back to back they faced each other, pulled their swords and shot each other”.  Anyway, I hated the Gang Unit assignment and the little booger eaters playing badass all of the time.

Right after Radar Love we got a call of a gang party on the Westside of the Jordan River around 1000 South.  We headed there and when we arrived a real piece of crap had a gun in his hand and took off running into a duplex.  We ran after him, well I thought “we” ran after him.  The duplex was in the middle of what we so un-politically correct called “Indian Country”.  The duplex was overrunning with gang members and their ladies.  Alcohol and mary jane permeated the air while the stark white tile floors were covered in grime.  I entered after the armed gang member with my pistol in hand due to an exception to the rule for a warrant called “hot pursuit”.  I was met with an onslaught of potential threats and had to be constantly scanning the twenty plus people in the room as I looked down the hallway at two bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen doorway.  The guy I was chasing had just ducked into a bedroom across from the kitchen.  I was heading that way when he darted across the hallway into the kitchen.

I ran up to the kitchen and Israel-ed the opening (SWAT used Israeli Military Tactics instead of SAS). No-one was there but there was an open back door.  I started to set up on that door way to make my exit when I was hit in the head with a wine bottle from the blind spot outside of the doorway.  I saw stars and was furious that I had been taken by surprise.  I was also furious that I was by myself and I had no idea where my partner was.  I was now an angry, confused, and injuried man.

Once I gathered my bearings I, seconds although it felt longer, I resumed my pursuit.  There was still an armed gang member running through my town.  I caught up to him just in time for my partner and I to crash into him driving him to the ground.  I grabbed him by the throat as he was on his back looking up at me.  There was a black Browning Hi-Power pistol next to his head.  The hammer was cocked and the safety was off.  He was still armed and I started to choke him, there was no time for me to let him get his gun from next to his head and grab at mine in my holster.  I was going to just have to choke him to death. 

The longer I looked at the pistol, as I choked him out, the more interesting the details of it became.  I was Carrying a Brown Hi-Power Practical at the time as my duty pistol.  The Practical is a two tone finish, Black on the slide and stainless on the lower, pretty gun.  Mine also had night sights which are required for any pistol the department lets you buy and carry on duty.  Brownings didn't come with night sights so I thought it was interesting that the black one next to this guys head had them.  

I really couldn't hear at the time, the wine bottle to the head and all.  As the gang member was going limp I felt someone pulling on me then pushing me and it sounded like someone at the other end of a tunnel was yelling my name.  I looked up because I was confused as to why Mike wasn't keeping anyone off of me while I stopped this threat to us when I realized that it was Mike doing the pushing and shoving.  He was yelling something and it started to sound like “it’s mine, it’s my gun”. Oh, I got out of the way for Mike to pick up his pistol and rolled the bad guy over.  His name was Kelly and he belonged to MOB “Money Over Bitches”.  I handcuffed him and we put him in the car.

The bottle to my head really rang my bell, I had a headache for a couple days and a nice shiner on the side of my head.  I could have killed Kelly that night, my perspective of what was happening would have made it a “clean shoot” but it wouldn’t have been a “good shoot” as far as the media would have been concerned.  The bedroom he had ducked into had his gun, he had dumped it inside before running into the kitchen. Mike had not gone into the house because of the crowd outside that he thought was an equal threat that needed to be managed.  I had other dealings with Kelly over my career, some where he was at gunpoint others where we just fought.  He was in his 20’s at the time of our first encounter and a little old to be playing gangster but he was the MOB “Leader”.

The last time I saw Kelly he walked over to me with his hands where I could see them and asked if he could talk to me.  He was wearing a construction workers vest and helmet.  He thanked me for sending him to prison, he had gotten his GED and was now a dad and was working to provide for his wife and son.  He apologized for his behavior over the years.  I was astonished that he had turned out to be something, I thought that he would end up being killed by the police someday but here he was.

Stuff

I have recently been introduced to a couple of cop shows that are very interesting.  Psych and The Unusual's. They are both full of whit and dry humor that keeps me smiling which is a lot like laughing for the normal person.  There was a line of conversation in The Unusual's that Jeremy Renner stated that I actually stopped the show and wrote down.  He was talking to his partner about how she thinks that people shouldn't keep secrets and he said "...we are our secrets. ... our secrets, that's what keeps us sane." Think about that a little.

Grateful Things

Listing things that you are grateful for sounds like such an easy endeavor requiring very little real thought.  There are the typical sunday school answers that should roll right off your tongue like smoke from a fire.  I have decided to not only list them but to explain them because I believe that they are worth the effort. I also feel the need for a disclaimer in stating that this is my opinion and you may not agree with me dear reader and that is okay.  The list is not numerically listed in order of importance but merely in realization as the list was prepared.  If I gathered the contents correctly they should all be of equal value.
I am grateful for the ability to:
Hear. Hearing is one of the five senses that I am indeed grateful for.  It is not only to use my ears to gather incoming information but to filter the content.  It is so easy to get caught up in the day to day noise that surrounds us, the traffic zooming by, the honking horns and screeching brakes. The noise of construction and sirens and screaming. It is also the ability to hear the sweet music of the birds singing, the soothing whisper of a lover, the melodic notes that come from the stereo of the London Philharmonic Orchestra or the sound of my children singing or laughing.  It is also the ability to hear trouble before it gets to close, the sound of footfalls behind you, the breathing of someone who doesn't belong, the sound of someone hiding. The ability to hear also prompts you to take action because what you filter sounds like someone is in need behind the locked door, in the tub, the sound of a fall, the need for a rescue.
Touch. From the days of Knights, a hand extended to another is at it’s root a gesture of safety; it means that I hold no weapon and I mean you no harm. A hug is a gesture of comfort at a funeral or happiness to see someone again or the desire to just hold another person close to you.  Skin touching skin can have an electric charge that can seemingly recharge the battery of the persons involved.  The ability to run your hand over the flesh of your lover and feel the wispy, barely detectible hairs rub ever so lightly against your palm.  The passionate lovers embrace that joins two as one.  The power of holding a frightened child in your arms and reassure them that all is well and that they are truly safe.  The feel of perfect fit of my Kimber .45 as the web of my hand closes around the masterfully detailed, cold steel of the grip safety. The balance of a good kitchen knife in your hand as you peel an apple.  The pleasure of nice fresh clean socks as they slip onto your feet.
Taste. The pure enjoyment of the celebration of flavor as it dances over the palate containing the taste buds inside of your mouth can be exquisite.  Wether it is the taste of an ice cold Coke on a hot summer day or the guilty pleasure of the opulence of Thanksgiving dinner, the commingling of turkey and potatoes and gravy chased down with stuffing from inside of the bird, simple pleasure.  The taste of your lovers throat or the salt in the tear that you kiss away.  The sweetness of white chocolate or the tanginess of cinnamon bears it can all be savored.  The taste buds can be overwhelmed with the discovery of a new flavor like orange or betrayed by the memory of another like blood.  The taste of a long, deep kiss, the flavor will be recorded.
Sight. To see the world in front of you. The darkness of night, the promise of the sun rising in the East. The vibrance of the color spectrum, reds and yellows and blues and greens. To watch people as they move, erotic and sensual, slow and dumpy, fast and frantic all at the same time from different directions.  I love to watch people at the mall as they dart from store to store, deep in thought or conversations.  Dragging along husbands or children or parents as they go.  The beauty of the female body in all of it’s different shapes and sizes.  The profound greatness in driving over the crest of a mountain to see the sprawling valley below.  The way that the forest morphs from scrub to aspen to pine as you gain altitude, the fire of color in autumn.  The ability to see a smile start, spread and maximize. To tell a person about a tragedy and watch others try to comfort, the events of our lives and the people that we come into contact with however briefly.
Smell. The sense that betrays me the most, my fickle sense of smell.  The ability to complete the picture of senses by associating a smell to the flavor, texture, vision and sound of the moment.  The smell of blood also produces a flavor of blood while the smell of La Frontera food produces saliva as my mouth starts to imagine the flavor of chili verde. The distinct smell of your intimate partner, and the smell of gunpowder in the air.  The smell of pine as you enter into the mountains, the smell of scented pine cones at Christmas.  The smell of burning brakes or spelt gasoline.  The smell of a bakery or fast food establishment.  Try to remember the times that you were sick and eating had no flavor, no matter what you ate.  Smell indeed completes the picture the other senses create.
Feel. This is different from touch, feeling is the ability to experience.  Empathy, compassion, fear, forlorn.  When I listen to music and I close my eyes and let the music transport me to another place, that is feeling.  When you hear the tragic story another has to tell and you tear up because you have such a strong physical reaction to the tale.  When you laugh so hard that tears stream down your face.  When you plunge into such a low depression because you miss someones presence so badly.; That is feeling and I am so thankful for it.
Inquire. Question everything! Information is power and there are wars fought for it. Why are we doing this? Why do you want me to do this?  This doesn't sound like the right thing to do, why are you telling me to do it? What is over there? What is behind that door, why, why, why?  I love to question, we are designed to question.  As a group we have been fed so much bad information for so long it is hard to believe anything so it is in our best interest to ask why or what or how.  The growth that a team obtains by asking and then being told the reason.  The road to truth and belief is paved with questions.
Learn.  To be in constant betterment of ourselves should be our goal.  Every day we are given a new opportunity to learn at least one thing, we should look for that chance and seize it as we would the very breath we take. By expanding our knowledge we expand the ability that we have to teach another, to offer a different point of view, to contribute.  When we find ourselves thinking that we have learned all that we can about a subject, it is truly time to find another subject.  We have either set our goals too low or we have really over inflated the view we have upon ourself.  When we allow ourselves to become stagnant, we allow ourselves to be bitter and useless. I am grateful for books, some I read as purely guilty pleasure.
Contribute. What a great opportunity that we have to contribute.  There is no time like now with a greater need for people to contribute to society.  We have so many ill’s that burden society today.  We can get involved in the community by volunteering through church groups, community outreach, school, work projects.  Clean out your stuff and donate what you don’t need or use to Goodwill or the Salvation Army or Desert Industries.  Put your extra change in the homeless outreach meters downtown or someones expired parking meter.  We can all do a little more to make things better around us.
Mourn.  Cry, let things out so that they don't fester like a sickness.  Mourn as a group or do it by yourself.  I have found that I do the most healthy mourning while I sleep.  The lest healthy way I do it is by eating. I am so hopeful that we as a society will continue to move away from telling our children not to cry.  Let’s let it out!
Celebrate. I am so grateful for the ability to celebrate all of the wonderfulness of my life!  I celebrate the nation that I live in that allows me so many freedoms.  I celebrate the state that I live in with all of it’s unique diversity and oddness.  So many holidays and monumental days, weddings, birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, firsts and the list goes on.  Everyday that we find ourselves upright is a day that we can celebrate. I also celebrate new discoveries. I marvel at what my cell phone can do, who would ever had imagined the incredibleness of today’s hand held, micro computer that also makes phone calls?
Love. The depth that I love is unfathomable, it is deeper then that of my ability to understand it.  Love can drive you to do things from the dumb and unexplained to heroic and magical.  Love of country, of family, of anything or anyone you value more than your own life.  A word that I reserve for only the most special of ideas and one that I hear undercut in it’s everyday us.
In setting down to reflect on the things that I am grateful for I realize that It is not the items in life, the possessions that I crave, it is the flavor of life that I am the most grateful for.  The loss of even one of my senses would be terrible.  As things are now I have to wear corrective lenses so that I can see life and my hearing has been damaged by to many explosions and by gunfire therefore I now take every precaution to preserve what is left of them.  From the instant that I awake in the comfort of my dark bedroom and feel the smooth cotton sheets and the cool air to the moment I slip back into bed at the end of another adventure, I can say that I am truly grateful.

Articles

I just posted some articles that were published in our police union magazine.  Some stories are gross, some are sad, some are funny.  The intent of this blog is purely therapeutic for me, if that makes sense, what I do for a living is not clean.  I am a human garbage trash collector, here in a society that seems to live it's life behind rose colored glasses.  Some have no idea what public service employees do other then make too much money, there is such a personel price that we pay in service of "God and Country" while others really do appreciate our service.

Interesting

…My kids are often asking me to tell them stories that I was foolish enough to tell them over and over again.  I usually tell them that I don’t have any stories but they’ll say, “What about the time Dave crawled through the poop, or the time Dave fell into all of those cups?”  Or so on.  I’ll say, “I don’t remember that one.  How does it go?” And then they will proceed to tell the story back to me verbatim how I remember it. Poor Dave!  I haven’t told my children all of the “stories” I have because some of them are more like ghosts that haunt me. Like the time the kid stuck the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger fifteen feet in front of me.
If someone was to ask me to use one word to describe police work, that word would be easy to come up with, Interesting. I have often wondered what “normal” people would think of our job if they knew what didn’t make the blotter or the field command log.  Just think for a minute of all the times you have laughed until you had tears in your eyes and could not stand unassisted.  The times when you had brains on your hands after assisting at an accident and you feel like you’re going to lose it when the mom shows up.  Then the miracle you witnessed when the mom did show up because she doesn’t normally travel that direction.  How relieved you feel when a child that has been missing for hours shows up. When the whole search you have been remembering that horrible homicide on the west side all of those years ago, or more recently on the east side.
How would a “normal” person react to the same situation?  This career is funny and it is horrific.  The skills that we have to develop to survive the horrible situations that we face, the realities; are learning to laugh or learn to cry, I think both would be better.  
One event that still doubles me over with laughter is an experience with David, one of my most treasured and trusted partners and friend.  Dave and I were prowling around Euclid Street one evening.  There was an old motel that was now being used as a flop house.  It had a tunnel that ran to the old manager’s home that was adjacent it on the property.  (I have always wanted a house with a secret tunnel; this has nothing to do with the story just letting you know)  Anyway, we snuck up to the second level and found a open sliding door that led into a large room that was probably intended to be a living room with a kitchenette at the back.  The carpet is a horrible bluish color that is covered with upright 44 ounce “Super Big Gulp” cups filled to the rim with yellowish, brownish, smelly liquids.  This room had a disgusting odor to it as well as a little trail that ran to a bedroom. The bedroom had a light emitting from the bottom of the closed door.
Dave was feeling kind of spunky that day so he was leading us down the trail.  When we got to the door, one on each side, we motioned back and forth with hand signals about what we were about to do. We were so tactical!  Dave set up to kick the door and motioned for me to knock.  I knock and announce in all authority “POLICE OFFICERS, Open the Door!” and the panic starts inside of the room.  It sounds as if there is a room full of five foot high cockroaches scurrying around trying to escape; pure panic has consumed the room because they know who is at the door. Anyway, that’s how I see it (and I’m the one telling the story.)
The look of pure glee that emits from Dave’s face was a pleasure to experience. It was just like watching your kids see what Santa has just left for them Christmas morning, or a grandparent meeting their first grandbaby, or when your pizza is delivered!  He puts everything into that forward kick that will certainly reduce that door to a bunch of matches for Rain Man to count.  The door seemed like it was waiting for Dave to kick it, much like Lucy playing football with Charlie Brown. Instead of vaporizing into the air with the kick, it absorbed it, and the door bowed in.  The door reached its apex and then with the same amount of force given it, gives it back to Dave propelling him through about twenty glasses of yellowish, brownish, smelly, sticky sludge.  When he came to a stop, he was in a “snow angel” position on the floor.
I damn near fell down I was laughing and dry heaving so hard.  I had to lean against the wall. I was dying! I thought I was going to require medical attention, “Quick get oxygen for that man!”  We eventually arrested everyone inside but it took about twenty dollars in quarters to clean Dave up at the car wash.  Dave always seemed to end up in “poop” and I always got something wrong with my food at the restaurant. Go figure.
We as police officers have had horrific events unfold in front of us over the years.  I have become softer as I have done this job and I actually hurt now when I see the tragedies occur right before my eyes.  One such event was a traffic accident in May 2004.  I was westbound on 2100 south turning southbound on 8000 West to go pick my daughter from school when I witnessed the worst traffic accident I have ever seen.
The little car in front of me wasn’t paying attention, misjudged or something then proceeded to pull in front of a semi pulling two loaded trailers of Pepsi.  The driver of the semi did everything he could to avoid the collision, almost put the truck on its side, but there was nowhere for him to go.  I knew there was going to be a collision. I knew what was going to happen. I have enough ghosts, so I looked away while reaching for the radio and telling dispatch that there was an accident and to send Highway, fire and to get a helicopter standing by. This one was going to be bad.
I pulled my newly issued police truck into the traffic lane to block further damage and started walking towards the front of the semi rig.  The driver was trying to get out. He was bleeding from his legs from injuries he had sustained trying to push the brake pedal thru the floor boards.  He had actually been standing on the brakes in a heroic attempt to stop. I have to hand it to the guy, he really tried.  I walked around the front of the truck expecting to see the car in the grill or under the tires, but it wasn’t.  “Where is the car?”  I asked the driver. He started crying and pointed two hundred yards down the street.  “There was going to be fatal in this one,” I thought as I started trudging down to the car.  I was wearing sandals, shorts and a tee shirt and the brush was tearing at my feet as I made my way to the car.  As I neared the car the weirdest thing happened, it was as if I left my body and watched myself approach the car to see what remained inside.
Hanging from the rear view mirror was a tassel from Cyprus high school, my high school, and my parent’s high school. I probably knew these people.  There were two seventeen year old girls lying in separate heaps not moving inside of the nearly crushed car.  The driver had not been wearing a safety belt and looked dead, the passenger had a safety belt on but wasn’t moving either.  Just then a very helpful, but not really, EMT showed up and started trying to remove them from the inside of the car.  I returned to my body and started barking orders. The loudest one was not to touch them until the real medical team got here.  I had to get closer to determine what I had, and found that the passenger was coming to and trying to get up, she was in shock. (She also had internal injuries that required immediate surgery.)  The driver was making a sound that I associate with death; I call it “the carp”, (fast shallow panic driven breathing,) and I’ve heard it lots of times before.  She was not conscious.
I sure wanted the cops and firemen to show up. My daughter is not much younger then these girls and it was getting personal.  I thought that things were grim, but because I must have needed a challenge, the car caught on fire.  The engine compartment had caught on fire and was starting to smoke. EMT boy wanted to move them again so I sent him to my truck two hundred yards away to get my extinguisher. I wasn’t as concerned about the front catching on fire as I was moving these girls without a team ready to deal with them.  The rest of the story is kind of frightening as the fire got bigger, but eventually fire arrived and the girls got sent by helicopter to U of U and LDS hospitals for care.  I kept things together, I did my job, and I did it as well as anyone else could have, no better no worse.  I filled out the witness statement; made sure I had all of my equipment and drove away.  I made it about a block before I pulled off into a church parking lot where I knew I was alone and wept.  I knew that Casey, the driver, was not going to make it to University Hospital alive.
Some experiences don’t even make any sense.  Craig, Rick, Jim and I were fortunate enough to go to Reno for some amazing training when we were assigned to the training unit.  We were shooting for ten to twelve hours a day solid and were exhausted.  As we all got off an elevator one evening at our hotel near the end of the week,  I said something to Craig that made us both laugh so hard that we fell to the floor and had to crawl to our rooms down the hall.  Rick and Jim thought we were insane because we couldn’t tell them what was so funny. When we were able to (about forty five minutes later,) it wasn’t funny to them.  But Craig and I know it was funny! I still laugh out loud when I reminisce about that trip. Good friends equal good times.
So, we laugh and we cry. It sure is an “interesting” job that we do.  Over the last fourteen years I have had the opportunity to grow up performing this service.  I blame my softening on my sweet wife and wonderful children who give me the perspective that life is fragile and important. I also blame it on the citizens who have taught me that everyone we contact deserve some sympathy and respect, even the drudge of society.  I blame it on good supervisors I’ve worked for and the amazing brothers and sisters I have on the department.  I know that I laugh more then I did in those first years, gallows humor only gets better with age, but tragedy hurts more than it ever did before.
Casey lived by the way, after several surgeries and spending months in ICU and therapy. She is planning on getting married later this year.  She is beautiful. My most valued accolade for being a police officer is a Christmas card from her this year thanking me for being her guardian angel...

We all make mistakes.

I found myself discussing with a group of buddies the mistakes that rookies have been making recently.  The rookies have actually been a discussion point in the West Point Academy. The retired guys that read this think they were much more amazing cops then my class ever was, and the ones that were cops before them were even more amazing and so on.  I thought you’d like to know.   I am very fortunate to have been hired with the group of people that I got hired with.  I am still very fond of the majority of them.  We love to get together and talk about the way we used to be when we were new.  How many people would believe that Shaun would be in charge of hugs, that Rex would be driving a cab, and Dave wearing a tie?  Rich got married, as did James resulting in two stalwart males joining the ranks of matrimony. Walter would be the Union President, okay, we all knew Walter would be that.  We also knew that Chris would be promoted to Captain; they all make us proud.  Anyway, getting back to the rookies and their mistakes, I realized that I was probably being more critical than I should.  I started asking if my buddies remember the dumbest thing they did as recruits; the stories started pouring like rain.  The point of my ramblings this time (if there can be a point to ramblings) is everyone makes mistakes, even my class.  The old timers that policed “back in the day” might have made one or two.
Here are my favorite mistakes that I have been a party to.  Phil and I had been on our own for about four or five months when we got a suspicious circumstance call at 1820 South State Street.  We arrived darked out and as tactical as we could on State Street.  This is harder than most streets due to the overhead lights that run the majority of it.  We found that we were parked in front of an old Victorian style home that had been converted to a triple apartment building.  The home had lost its charm during the transformation and was looking run down.  We knocked on the door and the nicest little man answered. He looked like a character out of a child’s storybook. He asked us to come in and was very polite, but his house was trashed!  The cabinets had been ripped out of the wall, the carpet was pulled up, there was an offensive odor, and stuff had been smeared all over the walls. Guess what that was?  I thought, “Wow”, I actually thought “WOW!”  This isn’t right, nice little guy, trashed apartment?!?!?
So, I’m looking at this little guy and all of a sudden, he bares his teeth and growls “Grrrrrr!”  We jump back. “What the heck is wrong with him?  That is not normal!”  It seemed his eyes turned yellow and he started slapping our badges.  “I’m not afraid of these” he said. Then he slaps our pistols, “I’m not afraid of these either.”  He then announces, “I’m a Chin-Chi fighter” which completely freaked us out.  I paid attention in the academy most of the time, and they never told us about Chin-Chi fighters. More importantly, they didn’t teach us what to do with them.  He walked us around that apartment for about twenty minutes.  At one point, we were actually trapped in his bathroom and thought we were going to have to shoot him to get out.  We were terrified!  There are many parts of this story that are bad, but one of them was that we didn’t want to shoot him because he was so tiny.  Who would ever buy that we were afraid enough that we had to shoot him?  The most frightening part was that he would revert back to being a nice little guy.  “Why you in closet” he would query in a normal, polite demeanor. “Why you stuck in bathroom?” he would ask.  We would try to reason with him, then the growl would start again and the whole “I’m not afraid of” speech complete with the slapping would begin anew.  We decided to end this the best way we knew how. “It HAS to end,” we agreed.  As soon as he had a lucent moment, we bolted for the door and escaped lives intact.  We agreed to never talk about the call again and went 10-8, a secret for the rest of our lives.  Years later, we found out that a similar call happened the day after our incident.  A no nonsense officer, responded that time, Jeff.  He knocked on the door and when the guy started to growl and tried to slap his badge, he got a “D” cell flashlight upside the outside from Jeff for his troubles.  Needless to say, the problem was over at that address.
I learned a great deal from the veteran officer that I like to call my friend, Jeff.  On my first night off FTO, I got a stabbing call right out of line up.  I was nervous and so was my back, Michelle.  She was in the same boat I was; it was her first night on her own also.  We were able to get to the address just fine, and that was good, but weren’t real sure what to do next when this five month veteran officer drove up to the scene.  Jeff quickly hopped out of his car and asked if he could help us.  When neither of us could speak very well, he told us a piece of advice that I have never forgotten.  He said, “a stabbing is just like a shoplift; there’s just more blood.”  I have applied that advice to rapes, robberies, murders and mayhems.  Jeff was then, and still is today a monument to police work. He truly is an astonishing street cop.
Another choice time was in the early morning right after we had breakfast at Chuck and Maryann’s. “Greasiest pancakes in the city,” was our unofficial motto for the restaurant.  A burglary in progress call had come from a woman who had stated that her husband had left for work and someone had come in afterwards.  We rocketed out to the address and surrounded it.  We had it tightly buttoned up and no one was leaving or going in unless we let them.  Just as Sgt. Gilbert was pulling up down the street, a nice woman in the house next door came outside and said, “Officers, I hate to bug you while you’re busy.  If you will let your dispatcher know that I’m okay and my husband is still home, I would appreciate it.” We had surrounded the wrong house!  Sgt. Gilbert gave us a little grief over that one.
My number one “when I was a younger cop” story, is the time that Dave, our Sergeant, and I got our butts kicked by the ninety pound crazy lady at Pioneer Park.  Dave and I were walking through the park one summer evening.  The sun had listlessly gone beyond the mountains, blanketing our fair city in a comfortable and harmonious mid-summers slumber.  Other then the discarded syringes, vomit piles, empty whiskey bottles, and other garbage that you find in an environment associated with urban decay, the park looked almost normal.  We were fortunate that night that a patrol sergeant we had worked for before being assigned to drug interdiction had decided to go for this “walk about” with us.  As we were visiting, we spied a little lithe women jumping around in the center of the park.  “What is she doing?” was the common question uttered.  As we approached her, I told my friends “I will handle this; I have a soothing voice.  Ma’am, can we….” That was all I was able to get out before she karate chopped me in the throat and I went down.  Dave stepped up to curtail the assailant from getting away when she kicked him right in the round tables.  He went down.  The sergeant started to put some distance between he and her when she did some crazy move right out the Matrix and kicked him right in the ouch ouch spot. He went down.  She took off running, stopped in the middle of 4th West and commenced to taking off all of her clothing and was screaming for the police to come and help her.  We actually had to pepper spray and hit her with our asp to get her under control.  There was another sergeant on duty that night, who second guessed every move we made.  He would have been able to handle it better, without force. That was his opinion.
I remember what it was to be new and make mistakes, which brings me to one of my latest mistakes.  SWAT recently surrounded a home that a suspect was supposedly inside of.  After filling the house with tear gas, we assaulted it looking for this armed fugitive from justice.  He wasn’t there; the house was empty.  We told the other agency that had called us that the house was empty and that he must have escaped before SWAT arrived.  “No, he is there. Look again” is what they told us.  We looked, still no one. We were told, “Look in the attic.” “No crap,” if there was an access to the attic we would look but, there isn’t an access to look through.  Once again, we called the house clear and were again asked to look in the attic.  So I punched a hole in the ceiling barely creating a space big enough to send up a couple skinny guys.  I could barely get my head through the hole as my head has its own solar system, not to mention when I am wearing a gas mask and a helmet. My poor neck!  Soon the skinny guys found the bad guy hiding under the insulation.  How did he get up there you ask?  There was an 18 x 18 hole in a closet concealed with a cobweb covered board.  I’m thankful that no one has been seriously hurt from mistakes that I have made over the years.  It only takes a moment for something very bad to happen; I have been blessed.
Now, if you will allow me a moment to indulge in your patience, I have a little more to say.  When I sat down originally to pen this installment, it was a very negative article explaining the terrible things that I have seen happen to children.  When I reread it I wondered what the deal was. “Why am I being so negative?”  Then it struck me how terribly sad I have been for the last several months.
My mom is the reason that I have always enjoyed reading and telling stories so much.  She always wanted me to write down the stories that I would tell.  She told me that it would be good therapy to journal what I have struggled with, and that my children would enjoy it later in life.  She actually published her journal in 2002 and it has turned out to be invaluable, proving her point.   When I finally decided to write for the Journal, I was able to quickly write up a memorial for Karl as well as my first two columns.  I wanted to have her read and proof them for me, but she got sick and was admitted into the hospital for what they first thought was pneumonia.  Fourteen days later she died at the age of fifty seven, fifty seven, of Primary Pulmonary Hypertension.  It has been a staggering blow.  My first son died during his birth almost fifteen years ago.  Both of my grandmothers have died in the more recent past, as have some very, very good friends.  I have loved them all.  But even with all of the thoughtfulness and kind words that have been spoken and the sweet promises afforded through religion, their deaths have paled to the emptiness I have felt in losing my mom.  She was an amazing woman that was as beautiful as she was intelligent, and I miss her to my core.  I could write pages about her accomplishments, but this is not the venue for that.  It is enough to say she was wonderful, a perfect mother. “She had a soft heart and a big smile.”  

That's Gross!

Warning:  You may not want to read this before, during, or immediately after eating.

… Dave and I were sitting in the office one night trying to get ourselves geared up to go to the shelter for another evenings’ activity when the phone rang.  I was closest, so I answered and it was Morgan.  He said, “We got a telephonic search warrant for some evidence a guy has at the jail.  They just called us and said it was ready to be picked up, will you get it?”  I replied, “Sure, what is it?”  He continued, “Get with the jailers’; they’ll have it ready for you.  We are on our way home or we’d go get it ourselves.   Okay, we’ll go now.  Thanks a lot, we owe you dinner.”
I told Dave what we needed to do, so we drove to the jail on Four Hundred South.  We pulled up to the sally port door, identified ourselves, and told them they had some evidence ready for Morgan to pick up. There was total silence. Then, the sally port started to open and the jailer in the control room was barely able to say “Come on in,” because it sounded like he was crying.  Dave and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and drove in.  We secured our weapons in the trunk and walked to the jail doors (which opened with no talking from control).  As we stepped in, the outer doors closed, the inner ones opened, but the booking area was completely deserted.  As we looked toward the control area, we saw all the jailers’ pointing at us and leaning against each other. They were laughing so hard they were crying, and could hardly stand up.  We looked at each other and wondered, “What the heck is so funny?” then started walking toward control. When we got there, one jailer gave us a plastic spoon, a Ziploc bag, two pairs of rubber gloves, and pointed at a confinement cell.  We looked in to see this naked, exhausted transient who looked like he was rode hard and put away wet.
Now, maybe you know where this is heading, but we didn’t and asked, “What the heck is going on?”  They all started laugh-crying, and told us that Morgan and Jeff had gotten a telephonic search warrant for the guy after he swallowed drugs at the park.  They had taken him to the hospital to get his stomach pumped and found some drugs in the vomit, but thought that some had made it into the lower GI. The water had been turned off (so it couldn’t be flushed) and the jail had been waiting for him to finish evacuating his stomach.  They told us the plan was to move him to another cell and we were the lucky ones chosen to examine the waste.
I then said something to the effect that I was very unhappy with the assignment and wished that something bad would happen to Morgan.  Dave shrugged his shoulders and said, “Come on, how bad can it be?”  (Remember, Dave has done snow angels in the stuff, so what was this going to bother him, right?)  Anyway, I am dying and have many less then complimentary things to say about Morgan. But, because Dave is my partner, I put on the gloves and held the bag. Nothing else happened and we left!  Not!!!  Anyone that knows me also knows that I have the most developed gag reflex in the lower forty-eight, so that can’t possibly be the end.
As we went into the cell, the stench was almost more that I could take. Hospital bathroom bad, in the emergency room bathroom bad, after someone died in the bathroom bad, had nothing on this bad!!!   I am gagging so hard that I am afraid I’m going to dislodge something.  Dave smiles, shakes his head at me, kneels down near the stainless steel throne and starts probing the blackish water (from the charcoal that they used to pump his stomach) with the spoon.  “I found it!” he exclaimed. As I looked down at the spoon, Dave says, “Nope, it’s only a peanut,” and plops it back into the water.  That was it for me; I said something nice and walked out.  Morgan, what can you say about him?


When I was brand new, I had a 1985 Chevy Celebrity for my police car.  It had an AM radio, no cage, and an obsolete light bar. I loved it.  I would wash and clean the windows every day. I truly loved that car!!!  One very cold winter night, I was driving around on graveyards when I noticed a displaced home owner sitting by a business at 600 West and South Temple.  I thought that I would save this man from the cold, so I pulled over after letting dispatch know where I was and made contact with him.  He was in his fifties but the years had not been kind to him as he looked to be in his late seventies.  He had a long, grey beard, was balding and generally unkempt.  He wore a plaid suit and beat up, brown shoes.  If anyone needed to be saved that night, he did.  I promptly donned my gloves (I call them my “people touchers”) and found his wallet and ID so I could check him for warrants. I found he had enough that the jail would take him so I went and prepared my beautiful car for the visitor.  A heavy duty garbage bag went down on the front passenger seat (no cage, remember?) on top of a sheet that Gold Cross had given me.  Then, a healthy spray of Lysol was needed prior to having this man get into my chariot of truth and justice.  I picked him up, searched and cuffed him, and placed him inside.  I fastened his safety belt, cracked his window, and started off towards jail.
There was an interesting smell that progressively became worse on the way there and it was just my luck to get stuck behind a train. So, I looked at this guy as I was waiting and realized that as he was warming up, the urination and defecation in his pants were defrosting.  And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, there was something worse going on.  He had several pieces of moldy, green, phlegm covered bologna in his beard that was starting to slide around.  I quickly looked away, unrolled my window, stuck my head out and drove like the devil to the jail.
I got into the sally port, secured my weapons and took a moment to congratulate myself on not losing my dinner on the way there.  I thought to myself, “I’m so impressed, not one gag the whole trip!”  I put on my “people touchers,” made sure that my long sleeve shirt overlapped my gloves, and opened the door to my chariot.  Whew, it smelt!  But, because I was a doer of good deeds, I knew all was well. So, I reached across the man to undo his safety belt and that is when it happened.  Something very, very bad happened! It was horrible bad! I heard a noise and had an accompanying feeling that I was not going to be able to deal with.   A piece of moldy, green, phlegm covered bologna had slid out of his beard and had fallen onto the ½ inch part of my wrist that neither my sleeve nor my glove covered in the outreached position that my arm was in.  It made a sheplunking noise on my skin and I felt it gooing around like a snail looking for a new home and had spied this “fresh meat” ready for the taking.  I stood up, and as dignified as I could, flicked it off of my wrist and promptly projectile vomited in the sally port. . . . .

The Deer

My friend "Rich" told me this story and I have to share it.

He was a new sergeant working the graveyard shift when one of his officers got on the radio stating that they needed someone with a shotgun to put down a deer that had been hit in a traffic accident, My friend is the "great white hunter" that legends are told about, cowboy poets have made their careers waxing his tales into lore. He grabbed his radio and spoke into it that he was en-route.

When he arrived at the accident he could see the smashed up car that had hit the deer and down the road a bit he could see the deer. Funny thing about it though, another car had pulled over and the driver, it looked like a woman, had gotten out and was holding the struggling deer in her lap. He walked to his trunk and removed his shotgun and jacked in a load of buck shot, slung the weapon and started to trod down to the injured deer.

The woman who was attempting to hold the struggling deer in her lap heard his approach down the incline and jumped up running to him. She was a mess. Her shirt and pants were covered in deer hair, blood and snot. Lots of it. Her face was covered in tear stained makeup mess as well as the spit and snot and blood from the deer. She was sobbing as she ran up to my friend.

He thought "great, I get some animal activist that is going to protest me dispatching this poor animal that no vet is going to try to save, that is suffering on the side of the road and won't understand that I'm just doing what is best". When she got a few feet from "Rich" she asked are you going to shoot him? He said yes and started to explain why expecting an argument when she suddenly held up a plastic "Smith's" bag that was covered in deer blood and hair and spit and snot and stated "Thank goodness, I've been trying to suffocate him with this".