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.”
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