Cop n' attitude

One would think...

2011-12-07T20:07:00.000-08:00

One would think that an officer with two years on would not have to be told not to drive his cruiser down a grassy hill into a soft muddy field when it's been raining for two days.

One would think that, wouldn't one?

I have a new bill from our contract towing service that suggests otherwise.

Care to guess what tomorrow's roll call topic is going to be?

The day after

2011-11-24T17:56:00.000-08:00

Seven drivers failed to heed yesterday's warning and now have court dates for DWI, including three with BAC's high enough to trigger the mandatory jail time provisions of our DWI laws.

Tsk!

Thanksgiving Eve

2011-11-23T15:38:00.000-08:00

Supposedly tonight is one of the biggest drinking nights of the year due to all of the college kids being out and about.

I have extra manpower for DWI enforcement.

Tonight looks promising indeed. So fi you must drink, don't drive. If you do drink and drive, I have several designated drivers who will be looking for you with an aim to getting you where you belong: our station.

Stationhouse chuckles.

2011-11-22T16:53:00.000-08:00

A quirk in our station is that of our two urinals in the men’s room, if you flush both at the same time, the water backs up into the one on the right and flows out on the floor in front of it. Most people know this and avoid using that one, especially if someone is using the one on the left.

Today, our Deputy Chief was in the building. He did not know this. Guess which one he chose to use?
One of our brand-new rookies was in there, too, using the one on the left. When both flushed at approximately the same time, guess whose dress shoes got a good soaking?

Our rookie has now achieved rock-star status among his peers, and he has the distinction of being the only one out of his recruit class whose name and face are now known to the Deputy Chief.

Bet we get a real plumber in to fix that thing now.

The high cost of being stupid...

2011-11-19T01:49:00.000-08:00

So tonight, a bit before midnight, I’m approaching an intersection with a divided four-lane road ahead of me. I see a car on that road cross the intersection at what my training and experience tells me is about double the 35mph speed limit on that road. “Someone’s about to get it,” I tell myself as I turn onto that road behind the speeding car. I accelerate to catch up. The area is devoid of streetlights and pretty dark. I'm also driving a slick-top so I'm pretty sure that the guy didn't spot me as he'd gone past.

The car is still moving fast, but I’m moving much faster and should be close enough to hit my lights in another few seconds. There’s only one other car between me and my prey, and that’s a red Ford in the left lane who is actually driving fairly close to the actual speed limit. I’m about to pass this Ford on the right and my hand is on the light switch because I’m going to light that speeder up just as soon as I’m directly behind him when all of a sudden…

What the @#$%! That Ford just shifted into my lane and hit it’s brakes, forcing me to punch MY brakes hard enough to engage the anti-lock system. My clipboard hits the floor and my coffee in the center console cup holder sloshes out of the cup.
I brake hard to get some distance between me and the obvious airhead in the Ford, and then I jump to the left lane because I’m not about to let one inattentive asshole keep me from that speeder. But just as I get back on the gas, the red Ford jumps back into the left lane and brakes again.

That did it. Screw that speeder. I want THIS guy now. My lights and siren go on and the red Ford and I both pull to the right side. In the heat of my desire to catch my original target, I was willing to scratch the first cut-off as the action of a not-paying-attention bozo. But the second time…that was clearly on purpose and both times he nearly wrecked us. I calmly put my stop out on the radio and walked up on the driver who, like his passenger, was an early-twenties white kid wearing a sports jersey, a few too many neck chains and his hat on backwards.

“Good evening. My name is Sergeant Krupke, Xxxxx Police Department,” I began calmly. “”Let me see your license and registration.” As soon as he handed them to me, I glanced at them briefly then tucked them into my belt while telling him to get out of the car. Once he was out and I’d walked him back up onto the sidewalk, I got to the meat of the matter, channeling my inner R. Lee Ermey.

“Just what exactly do you call that totally asinine display of driving?!" I shout at him. "You damn near wrecked us both not once but twice. What the hell is wrong with you?!” Actually I'm not really all that angry at this point, but sometimes it helps to employ a bit of theatrics to get your point across. And it works with this kid.

“I-I-I-I didn’t mean to, Sir…” he began, stammering.

“BULLSHIT!” I shouted. “That was 100% on purpose and don’t you even consider telling me anything different. I’ll tell you exactly what that was! You saw me coming up on you and decided that you didn’t want to be passed, didn’t you?” I was right in his face now, nose-to-nose, acting just like an old drill sergeant that I personally recall from my own younger days.

“I-I-I- didn’t know you were a police car, Sir…” he offered.

“Oh, so that makes it ok? Hell, I’ll bet that you two thought that it was pretty damned funny for a few seconds there, didn’t you?”

“Sir , we didn’t know that you were the police…” he repeated.

“So it’s ok to try to kill anyone who isn’t the police? Is that how it works? Do you even realize that your stupid stunt could have gotten all three of us killed?”

They both looked at me wide-eyed with their mouths open. The driver was shaking now. Maybe I was finally starting to get through to him.

“You’re actually damned lucky that I am the police,” I exclaimed both sharply and loudly. “Anyone else might have knocked your head off for that, and they’d have done it with my blessing!” I paused, staring at him. “But you lucked out, because I’m not going to knock your head off.”

“Th-th-thank you, Sir…” he replied.

“Oh, don’t thank me yet,” I told him as I pulled my cuffs out. “You’re under arrest for Reckless Driving, Unsafe Operation, and being a dumb-ass without a permit.” I may have been a bit theatrical, but truth be told, I was getting more pissed the more I thought about what this joker'd done. And it was either take him in or just cut him loose with a couple of tickets. Frankly, the latter option just wasn't working for me so I hooked him. Maybe next time he'll think twice before trying to cut off another driver just for fun.

So as I write this, his (dad’s) car should just about be arriving at the impound yard on the flatbed tow truck and he’s waiting for his turn before the magistrate in the morning. His pal’s probably still hoofing it, too, seeing as how he didn’t have a cell phone with him.

"Can you call me a cab, Sir?" he asked when I told him that he could leave.

"No, I'll call you a dumbass just like your friend here. Start walking."

I’m willing to bet that if you ask either of them, they're wishing that they'd just let me get that speeder.

I ruined his night...

2011-11-14T19:37:00.000-08:00

But sometimes that works out better for all involved.

Last night I was parked watching traffic on a road that comes away from the nightclub district. (Yes, we CAN do that, and I encourage my officers to scope out those roads and stop as many people for minor traffic violations as they can. Inevitably, each will get at least one DWI a night that way.)

As I was sitting there, I saw a car turn off onto a parking lot across from me and park. It's lights went off, and I decided to give it about a minute or so and then go check it out.

A minute later, I rolled up behind it with my lights still off, and when I was right up on it's back bumper, I lit everything up. Putting the location and tag out on the radio, I got out of my cruiser and walked up on what I honestly expected to be two drunks hurriedly getting re-dressed. Instead, I found a sheepish-looking guy driver with a semi-conscious female passenger who was covered in vomit and clutching a plastic shopping bag which turned out to be filled with more vomit. (I guess that she was going to save some for later.)

I started out by pulling him out of the car and putting him on my front bumper while I checked her out. Yep. She's still alive. Just drunk as hell. So I went back to talk to him and after determining that he's not drunk, started with the usual questions:

Q. What's your name?
A. Steve Xxxxxx.

Q. What's her name?
A. Robin.

Q. How do you know Robin?
A. I met her in this club we were both in.

Q. When? Tonight?
A. Yes.

Q. Where are you going now?
A. I'm taking her back to her place. She's had a bit too much to drink.

"Well aren't you the gentleman," I said. "Stay here."

Then I went up to talk to "Robin".

Q. What's your name?
A. Stacy Xxxxxx.

Q. Who's that guy?
A. That's Dillon.

Q. How do you know Dillon?
A. I met him at the club. He's taking me back to my place because I'm not feeling good.

Q. Yeah, Alcohol'll do that to you. Do you think that it makes sense going home with a guy you don't even know? And just to let you know, his name's not Dillon.
A. Yeah, he's ok. I'm safe with him. He's gay.

Q. And how do you know that?
A. He told me.

Yeah. OK. Nice try, "Stillon". I've only known him for five minutes by this time, but even I know that he's not gay. And I also know that he's not taking this gal anywhere, much less back to her own apartment.

"Stacy, You're not going anywhere with that guy. It's just not smart or safe. I'll get you a cab, but he's not taking you anywhere tonight. She started to say something but then began to heave as her stomach began rejecting more alcohol and whatever else she'd consumed. I quickly closed the door lest she get any on my nice clean parking lot and she turned her head and barfed on the center console.

Aw, hell with it. I called an ambulance. Even if she's not danger-drunk, (and she might well be at this point), a ride in an ambulance and a spell in the Emergency Department will sober her up and hopefully drive home the point that drinking that much is dangerous and expensive. Plus while she's in the hospital, Dileve or whatever his name is can't show up and talk his way inside. The I went back and explained the facts of life to Romeo, who was still sitting on my bumper. I impressed up on him my belief that picking up drunk girls in bars and taking them home is probably not a smart thing to be doing. I also got his driver's license and ran his name, documenting it in case it turns out that someone drugged her in this bar. By the time the ambulance showed up, Steve had a pretty clear understanding of where I was coming from and what I thought that he was up to, and he had a car that was going to remind him of Stacy for a long time. (Hell, I could smell the puke ten feet away from it as the EMT's got her out of the car.)

Now I could have let him just go on and take her home, especially since she wanted him to, but if I did, I'd be just as culpable for whatever happened to her later as him, and that just wasn't going to happen. At that point, I don't care what a drunk girl tells me she wants. My job is to protect and serve, emphasis here on "protect" and sometimes that means intervening and making the right decisions for people who can't make them for themselves. If Stacy still wants a date tomorrow when she's sober, she can always go back to the bar and ask around for "Dillon". Hopefully by then, he'll have gotten his car detailed and bought a few pine tree air fresheners for it. But until she's competent to make that call, my job is to make sure that no one else makes it for her. THAT is what being the police is all about.

Back to the blog

2011-11-12T10:41:00.001-08:00

Yes folks. I'm back.

Sorry for the absence, but I had a temporary reassignment that put me in a position that didn't exactly give me a wealth of tales to relate, but now I'm back on the street with a new squad of officers and the stories are about to start rolling again because these guys are kicking ass and taking names out there. So stay tuned and I promise to make up for the dearth of posts these last several months.

Ah, the joys of citizen complaints

2011-02-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

So one of my officers comes in and tells me to expect a complaint call any moment. Oh, Joy.

Having just had an encounter of the unsatisfactory kind with a citizen, he's following the time-honored protocol of racing back to the sergeant to get his own side in first.
They learn so fast, these new college-educated officers...

Anyway, he tells me about how he stopped this guy, and right from the get-go, the guy was all bluster and attitude. Now my guy is professional and I consider him to be one of my best, but even he has a boiling point, and this loudmouth finally reached it and got my guy pretty hot, too. So the stop ended with my guy handing out a few well-deserved citations, all of which were based on observed violations committed before the discussion got heated, and he sent the guy on his way after giving him his name, my name, and the station phone number, all of which he is required to do under our department's policy when citizens request it.

After hearing about the stop from my guy--someone that I tend to believe because I've known him for a while and I know how he deals with people (like I said, he's one of my top officers), I come to the conclusion that the guy he'd dealt with is basically just some sort of an asshole. Still, assholes call to complain just like regular people do, and it's my job to listen to the complaints and take appropriate action.

A few minutes later, the phone rings. My stalwart officer, my consumate professional, picks up the phone and gives the department name and his own per our policy.

A few seconds go by. He looks a bit peeved. He hits the "Hold" button and hangs the phone back up.
"Hey sarge...it's that cocksucker that I was telling you about. He's on Hold for you."

Only the guy is not on hold. My officer--one that until a minute ago I'd considered one of my best and brightest--had mistakenly hit the Speakerphone button instead of Hold.

And now the phone nearly explodes off the wall. "WHAT?! What did you just call me?! Did you call me a cocksucker?! How dare you! I'll....

Striking like lightning, my officer reaches out, picks up the phone handset, and drops it onto the cradle again, cutting off the call.

"Whoops. Sorry about that, Sarge."

I figure that he'll either call back here tonight, or else he'll call into the Chief's office tomorrow. And as it's been a few hours now and he hasn't called here, I'm already working on my latest "Dear Chief" memo.
Hopefully he'll read his memos before attending to his messages so I can at least get my side in first.

Dopes, a dope, and what happens when you dope off.

2011-01-26T10:09:00.000-08:00

So yesterday, I get a call from our undercover unit supervisor, asking if I can provide a jump-out squad to help snag a group of people that they would like to arrest after observing a number of them engaging in drug sales transactions. Now I like requests like this, because it gives me a chance to put a number of my less-experienced and/or less-motivated officers to work. I walk through the station and corral several of the ones that I want, than call for a few others to meet me at a specific corner a few blocks away from the park where the suspects are loitering around under observation. A quick call to the lead detective gets me the descriptions of the ones he wants, and so armed, we convoy up to the park, split into two wings—one for the north end and one for the south end—and sweep into the park to isolate the group and help the detective grab the suspects.

Predictably, as we swoop into the park, several people suddenly get up from the benches and tables in one corner of the park and begin to rapidly scatter. We all split up and began putting the Habeus Grabbus on the ones we wanted. I drove after two guys who started to run off, pulling ahead of them with my cruiser and jumping out to nab one. I sent the rookie riding with me after another one. Typical rook: “Which one should I get?”
“The guilty-looking one! The one RUNNING! Sic him!”
So charged, my rook ran off and grabbed the alleged crack-head in question. Other officers and detectives also went after various and sundry other mopes—uh…”alleged” mopes—and when the dust had settled, we had nine detained.
I lucked out; mine was a guy that I’d been locking up from time to time for a few years, so at least we had our shared history to talk about while I searched him.
Now picture this scene: A park. In the park—a ring of police vehicles, all with lights flashing. Inside that ring, there are groups of uniformed police officers who have several people in handcuffs that they are searching. And into the middle of all of this rides Miss Oblivious on her bicycle.
I see her as she rides around my cruiser. I yell at her to stop and go around, but she’s listening to her ipod and doesn’t even bother looking at me. I have my hands full of crack-head so I can’t go after her, so I yell to my rookie to stop her. My rook, having just handed his crack-head over to a detective, steps into her path and yells “HALT!” so loud that people a block away reflexively stop doing stuff. Bike Gal startles out of her stupid zone, tries to swerve around my officer, strikes a decorative chain barrier about two feet high that borders the sidewalks, and topples off of her bike into a muddy flower bed. She’s not injured, but by the time she gets to her feet, even the crack-heads are laughing at her. I hand my detainee off to a detective and walk over to make sure that she understands the error of her ways. But she’s not feeling sheepish or apologetic at all; she’s furious and immediately launches into me about my rookie “knocking” her off of her bike for no reason. She wants his name, and my name, and starts telling me that she’ll be going to her doctor to get checked out and that…”
I cut her off before she can get to the lawsuit threat that I know is coming. I point out the police vehicles and police officers that she was riding around and between, and I let her know that she’s right on the edge of being locked up for interfering in a police operation. I tell her that if she’s injured, I will arrange for a medical evaluation, but it’ll be subsequent to her arrest for disobeying my lawful order to stop. Only slightly cowed (because her father knows a city councilman in a nearby municipality that has nothing to do with our jurisdiction), she argues that she, as a citizen, has the right to go wherever she wants to go and that we have an obligation to protect her right, not interfere with it. She then demanded my name and badge number again.
She didn’t get arrested, mainly because we had all these crack-heads to deal with, but she got my name and badge number written down for her on the mandatory appearance citation that my rook issued her. Maybe she can bring her daddy’s friend to court with her.
As the day wrapped up, we had seven arrests for possession, possession with intent to distribute, and/or possession of narcotics paraphernalia. We also seized all the cash that the “alleged” sellers had on them.
The icing on the cake: A fairly new but undeniably lazy female officer from another squad tried to sneak back early from an overtime beat and when I saw her in the station half an hour earlier than she was supposed to be, I assigned her to do the strip searches on our two female arrestees, both of whom were morbidly obese homeless women who stank to high heaven. I'm sure that she'll try to lodge some sort of a grievance for that, but since she was on the clock on my shift, she'll doubtless find out that I can assign work to whomever I choose, even slaps from lesser squads.

Sometimes, work’s just fun in spite of itself.

Happy New Year...or not.

2011-01-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

I’m back, after some time off for vacations and training.

And it didn’t take long for people to reaffirm my belief in the inherent stupidity of some of our local citizens. All it took was a car broken down in the center lane of a multi-lane road yesterday. Flares were set out and I had two other offers trying to push the car over onto the right shoulder to lessen the hazard resulting from such a traffic obstruction. Like a good sergeant, I’d positioned my car just inside the flare line at an angle blocking both the center and right lanes as best I could. However, no sooner had I positioned my cruiser then I observed a gray Volvo approach my car, slow to almost a stop, then proceed to go around my car on the right, using half the shoulder in his effort to get around my marked police cruiser as it sat there with all lights flashing and the arrow board pointing clearly to the left.

Seriously? Is he really trying to pass me and drive into our scene?

Yep. He sure was. He went right around my car, running over a flare as he did so, and then began trying to angle around the car that was being pushed by my other officers.

Well this needed to be addressed, so I pulled out after the guy and stopped him just after he went around my other officers and the car that they were pushing. One of those officers had tried to flag him down, but he drove right past that officer, too. I got him to stop about half a block down. Needless to say, I was not in the best of moods when I approached the driver.

“Do you make it a habit of driving through police scenes like that?” I asked him.
“I didn’t know that you wanted me to stop,” he replied.

“Sir, my car was right there blocking the lane. You drove around it on the shoulder. What were you doing?”

“Well there was room to get around…” he started.

“No, there wasn’t.” I said. And even if there was, why would you go around a police car with it’s lights on like that? You almost hit my officers back there, and then when that one tried to stop you, you swung extra wide to go around him. What’s going on in your head there?”

“I could see that all you guys had was a stalled car…” It was at this point that he gestured to the woman passenger beside him. “I knew that I could get through and I need to get my wife to the hospital,” he said.

OK. Now that MIGHT be a plausible reason. And me being one of those nice guys willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, at least initially…
“So what’s the emergency?” I asked. “Do you need an ambulance?”

“Oh, no medical emergency,” he replied. “She works there, and she’s going to be late.”

Usually it takes some work to convince me to arrest a person for misdemeanors on a holiday, But he managed. He got locked up for crossing a police line, and his wife, who doesn’t drive, was taken to the nearby hospital by one of my officers. (Hey, I’m not a total meanie…although I did tell the officer to drop her off where everyone could see.)

New Rookies...God help me.

2010-11-29T08:15:00.000-08:00

So I'm watching my newest crop of rookies load their cars prior to hitting the streets, and one of them--one who is carrying WAY too much gear--is putting his second duty bag in the trunk of the cruiser. The trunk is already packed to the gills with other stuff, but he puts his bag in and slams the trunk anyway, compressing everything. A moment later, however, a yellowish cloud begins to envelop the rear of that cruiser, causing everyone else in the parking lot to stop whhat they're doing and stare. The rook looks at me for guidance, and he gets it as I yell at him: "Don't just stand there--do something! Get that trunk back open!"
You see, I already know what that is. I know what he did. Now I just want him to figure it out.

Sure enough, he opens the trunk to find that everything inside--including his oversized duffle bag that's filled with everything that some huckster at the police supply store convinced him that he might need someday--is coated with yellowish dry chemical from the fire extinguisher whose lever he'd compressed when he threw his bag on top of it and slammed the trunk shut. As a result of that careless moment, the entire extinguisher has emptied itself in the trunk, and now the contents of the trunk--and the interior of the cruiser--are dusted nicely withe the chemical.

So my new rookie spent the next hour and a half pulling everything out of the trunk and cleaning it, then getting the car vacuumed out, and then he had to go back to his locker and change, because now HE was covered with dry chemical. And of course that crap's all over the station parking lot now.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...I could not possibly have been that green when I came on the job. No way.

On new cops and clues...

2010-11-21T07:06:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the absence--training and year-end leave got in the way.

But I'm back, with this neat tale of one who almost got away.

Yesterday, one of my guys gets dispatched to a 1-car non-injury crash right out of roll call. Since he forgot to take the rookie that I’d placed with him for the day, I corralled the rook, tossed him into my cruiser, and took him up to the crash scene.
When I got up there, it was just my guy and two cars—the one wrapped around a utility pole, and another one that was just there for some reason. I was starting to get irked right out of the gate. I like my crash scenes run a certain way, and uninvolved bystanders are never included, family and friends of the involved parties in particular.

I walk up to my guy—a fairly new officer himself. He told me that the female driver was claiming that as she was descending the highway on-ramp, a car that was ahead of her made a sudden u-turn and came back up the ramp at her, forcing her to swerve to avoid it. In the process, she claimed, she struck a utility pole. But one look at the skid marks and the damage to the car told me that her story was crap.

“Whose car is this?” I ask, pointing to the uncrashed one.

“Oh, that’s the boyfriend of the woman who crashed,” he replies.

“And he’s here why, exactly?”

“I dunno. When I got here he was here waiting with her.”

“Get rid of him,” I said. I could already tell from the scene that this was likely going to involve more investigation and I don’t need boyfriends or anyone else dipping in from the sidelines.

Then I approached the woman standing next to the crashed car. I asked her if she was ok, and she replied that she was. I saw that she was smoking a cigarette, and noticed that she kept her cell phone in front of her face. “I’m on hold with my insurance company,” she explained.

Uh-huh. “Well how about if you call them back in a few minutes? We’ve got to get a few things wrapped up here so we can get you and this car out of here.” She smiled, and hung up the phone, just the perfect picture of cooperation. “Here, it’s awfully cold out here. Why don’t you come back and have a seat in the back of my officer’s cruiser for a bit, just to get you out of the weather.” She smiled again and followed me back to the responding officer’s car. I asked her to put the cigarette out, the put her in and closed the door. Then I went back to talk to my officer.
“What do you have?” I asked him. “She drinking?”

“Oh, no, Sarge,” he replied. “I checked but I couldn’t smell anything on her.”
“Of course not,” I told him. “Not with her out in the open air, smoking that cigarette to mask her breath, and covering her mouth with that phone. Now why don’t you go talk to her again now that she’s had a minute or two to sit in that closed car and see what you think.”

“I’d already seen her eyes and I knew. But now I wanted my new officer and the even newer rookie to pick up on it, and hopefully realize what mistakes had already been made here. Sure enough, when they came back after talking to her in the closed car, without the cigarette or the phone in front of her mouth, they'd been able to smell the tell-tale odor or alcoholic beverages and they told me that they wanted to do field-sobriety on her.

“Yeah, I kind of figured that you would. Now do you see why I wanted her boyfriend out of here?” They nodded, knowing that had he still been here, he’d have been one more variable, and might possibly have interfered with the process. Talking a person into performing the tests could be tricky enough without having someone else standing on the sidelines telling them not to do it or otherwise butting in.
Predictably, she failed. Big time. And she got locked up, so we had a happy ending to the tale.

And as she was being searched and put into the car, her boyfriend returned. As expected, he saw her being placed under arrest and started to front up, showing her that he was her alpha male. But once I pulled him aside, explained the situation to him, and asked him if he wanted to go with her for interfering, he looked over to see if she could see us, and when he realized that she could not, he shrugged and told us that he’d come get her later when we released her. He walked off, and I then explained to the rookie how much easier these things tend to work when you get the guy out of eye-and ear-shot of the girl. All-in-all, it was a good learning opportunity for both of them and hopefully they take a few things away from it.

Realistically, my guy had already ruled out DUI in his own mind despite it being a single-vehicle crash early on a Saturday morning just a short distance away from the bar area. He was so caught up trying to be all “Officer Friendly” to this poor girl that he was even buying her tale of woe about how the crash happened despite the skid marks which clearly showed that she’d fish-tailed from road shoulder to road shoulder twice before hitting the steel pole hard enough dent it severely while destroying the front of her car. Yet when asked her speed, she’d just batted her eyes and said “no more than 10-15 mph…”

But she was pretty, and he’s way too naïve and trusting at this stage in his career, so he'd disregarded all the clues that didn't confoem to her story and she almost got away with it.

"Authorized Emergency Vehicles Only" sign means me, not you.

2010-10-19T15:22:00.000-07:00

Today, as I was out checking on my crop of new rookies, I had occasion to use one of our emergency turn-around strips that goes between two opposing lanes of a highway. This particular one is fairly long and it runs between two long hedgerows so that the vehicles traversing it are not readily apparent to oncoming traffic in either direction. naturally it's great for radar/laser work and other traffic-monitoring activities.

But today it was just supposed to be a way for me to quickly reach the scene of a new officer's traffic stop, saving me the trouble of going all the way up to the next exit and back. However, as I turned into this lane from one direction, what did I encounter but a Mercedes SUV coming the other way!

I stopped.
The Mercedes stopped.
My overhead lights came on and my ticket pen came out.
The woman driving the Mercedes buried her face in her hands, certain that her day was about to get expensive.
It did. To the tune of $275.00 plus $50.00 more for not wearing her seat belt.

Those cross-over lanes, folks? Those are for us, not the general public. We take it kinda personal when people presume to encroach upon our exclusive domain. And besides that, they're not set up to allow the average person to safely exit and re-enter traffic. So please, save us the aggravation and yourselves the risk and the fines if we catch you, and just go up to the next exit like you're supposed to.

This has been a public service announcement from Sgt. Krupke.

Pursuit...without a police car.

2010-10-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

So the other evening--my night off--I'm heading back to my house with a friend of mine who is in town for the night. We'd been out for dinner and as we're driving back on the two-lane highway well outside of town, I see that the vehicle coming head-on in the opposite lane is encroaching over the solid double-yellow line.
"He's over the line," I say as I swerve to the right. But before I can even finish the sentence, there's a loud "WHAM!" as his mirror hits mine. At a combined closing speed of over a hundred miles an hour, this jack-ass who couldn't hold his own lane damn near killed us all. I slow to a stop, but as we look back, we see that the other vehicle--a pick-up truck--isn't stopping. "Oh, no," I say. He is not going to hit and run me. That's NOT happening." I commence to turn around, and my pal tells me that he'll be gone before we can catch up. But this is a long road with no side roads to turn off on, and while it's all hills and curves, it's a road that I know intimately as I drive it every day to and from work. I know this road better than I know our agency's pursuit track, and I can run this road.

As my pal dials the local law enforcement agency via his cell phone, I manage to make up enough lost ground to come up behind what we think is the striking vehicle caught behind a couple of slower vehicles ahead of him. Sure enough--it's an older full-sized pick-up and what's left of it's driver's mirror is hanging.

My initial plan is just to stick with him until he gets back into town where the local law guys can intercept him, but when we get to an intersection, he messes that up by trying to turn left onto a road that will take him well away from where help is on the way to us from. So I pull left of the center line, pass him, and cut him off. As I stop, my dashing pal is already out of my vehicle and getting ready to snatch this miscreant out of his. But the hit-and-run driver has other ideas and he throws his truck into reverse, backs down the highway past several other cars, then three-points it and heads back the way that he came. And we're off after him again.

Back down the highway we go, his old pick-up moving so slow compared to my vehicle that this hardly counts as a chase. The local law has been advised of the change in direction, the tag number of the offender, and the fact that the two occupants of the pursuing vehicle are, in fact, off-duty police officers.

We roll on behind this truck, and the pursuit is about ten miles old and approaching the jurisdiction's boundary when we see behind us a fast-approaching car with the familiar Ford Crown Vic front end...the calvary's arrived. The red and blue lights come on, but again, our fleeing truck doesn't stop. So I pull over, expecting the officer to take up the lead, but to my frustration, he pulls over behind US instead.

Now shame on me--I know better--but when he didn't immediately come out of his cruiser, I opened my door, stepped out holding my badge up, and yelled: "That one! Get him!"
The officer stepped out of his cruiser and yelled back, "Did he hit you?"

"Yeah! Now go get him!""

"Don't yell at me!" the other officer responds, getting back into his car.

"Sorry!" I yell, getting back into mine. The officer takes off after the truck, and we naturally take off right after the officer. Two cars that had passed us as we sat on the side of the road were treated to the spectacle of seeing the police car passing them on the left with the car that it had just stopped in hot pursuit. I'm so used to doing this sort of thing on the clock that it never occurred to me not to do it here and now in my POV....besides, when this officer catches the truck, he's liable to be alone and we may well be his only back-up until others arrive.

A couple of miles up the road, the officer catches the truck. Just as he pulls up behind it, another police vehicle ahead of it puts it's lights on, and the truck is effectively trapped. It pulls into a gas station, as do the two police cars and us. I almost pulled in beside the cruiser "felony stop" style out of habit, but at the last second realized that my part in this was done. I stopped back a bit and my pal and I waited to make contact with one of the officers who was actually at work and in their own jurisdiction.

As it turned out, the driver of the truck was a punk teen. He told the officers that he was scared because we were chasing him, but he never explained while I was there why he didn't stop in the first place OR when the first officer put his lights on. My take is that the kid is both a coward and a liar, and now he's got a charge of Reckless Driving under a statute that imposes jail time upon conviction. And of course, as cops will do, we all got to be talking. Not unexpectedly, we all have mutual friends/co-workers in common. I even apologized to the nice young officer that I'd yelled at in the heat of things.
And of course THAT had to make the kid feel good, to see the cops detaining him acting like it was "old home week" and laughing with the people that he'd hit. Feeling a little but outnumbered there, junior? Good!

Anyway, it ended on a good note, in that the bad guy got caught and no one got hurt. Discussing it afterwards, my pal and I agreed that both of our respective agencies would probably have called that chase off long before it's conclusion, but since we didn't have any supervisors on the radio to tell us to break it off--and since traffic was light and the weather was good (and the bad guy only doing about 70mph max) we exercised our discretion and made use of our training and abilities to go a little (ok, a lot) farther than any civilians should ever have considered attempting. (In my defense, I'd just completed a 40-hour in-service pursuit driving refresher course.) Should we have chased the kid? Probably not. But we did, and a hit-run driver who would otherwise have gotten away with it got nabbed in the end, bascially because of all the cars that he could have hit that night, he had the bad luck to hit the one containing two police officers.

Oh, and a fair warning to people with GEICO insurance... GEICO has informed me that even though I'm not at fault in any way, I'm still responsible for a deductable. Apparently they don't waive that like other insurance companies do. So if you're a GEICO customer, you might want to re-think that.

And despite the drama, I did manage to get my pal to the airport on time the next day. He's off on a new adventure as one of Alaska's newest State Troopers.

Those moose and meth-heads have no idea what's coming their way.

So today...

2010-10-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in my car, having what passes for breakfast. I'm parked in the shade alongside one of our local war memorials. As I sit there eating, I see a man in his 50's walking down the sidewalk toss a soda cup at a trashcan. He misses by a mile but he keeps walking as it hits the sidewalk.

Sigh.

I pick up my PA mike.

"How about you pick that up and put it in the trash can."

He stops. He looks all around. He obviously doesn't see my slick-top cruiser parked alongside the curb. He's Mr. Oblivious. No, make that Mr. Looks-Guilty-but-Oblivious.

"Sometime today would be nice."

He looks right. He looks left. He looks right at and past me. Then he looks UP. I was so tempted to key up again and say: "Yeah, that's right. it's me--God." But I managed to restrain myself.

Suddenly he sees me. He looks right at me, then points to himself and mouths "Who? Me?"

Like there was someone else walking down the sidwalk throwing paper cups on the ground? Seriously--there's just the two of us here, and I didn't throw that cup on the ground.

"Yes, you."

He looks at me, then looks at the cup as if he's seeing it for the first time. He walks over, picks it up, and deposits it in the trash can as reverently as one might place an envelope in the church collection plate. Then he shouts "Can I go now?"

It was so tempting to tell him that no, he now has to stay there and clean up after the next three litterbugs who happen along, but damn it, I'm a supervisor now. I can't be doing the sort of stuff that my rookies do--or that I used to do--any more. I dismiss him with a wave and he turns to walk away, leaving me to wonder how people that obtuse actually get to be that old.

Just because I felt like it...

2010-09-08T17:46:00.000-07:00

Today being the last day of our work week, I found myself with nothing to do during the last hour. And since it was a nice day out, and since I was a bit bored, I decided on a whim to indulge myself and correct the behavior of some of the violators that just get my blood to boiling--the lane-cutters.

On my way home most days, I have to pass by a highway on-ramp that gets a ton of traffic come evening rush hour. Usually cars are lined up in the merge lane to get on it, and all too often, the impatient among us decide to get into the right non-merge lane and drive past all of the people who are waiting in line and then horn in at the last second just as the ramp splits off from the main road. As anyone who has waited patiently in line for several minutes only to have some jack-ass zip past and cut in can attest, there are few ways to be more selfish and disrespectful towards everyone else, and it's aggravating enough to make the Pope want to slap a nun, especially after a long day at work.

So today, with nothing but time and a repressed desire to see justice served, I pulled up to that split and parked my car in the safety zone between the actual road and the ramp. Then I got out, put my safety vest on, and began targeting those cars that were passing all of the waiting motorists and trying to cut in. It didn't take but a few seconds to spot the first one whipping across the beginning of the safety zone. I pointed to the driver, and when he made eye contact with me, I waved him right back out of line, told him that I could either cite him for crossing a safety zone ($150) or else he could get back on the surface road that he'd cut in from. He got back on the road and drove off, and I was loudly thanked by the drivers of two of the next three cars that came by--cars that he'd just cut right in front of because he was (in his mind) more important than them.

This felt good.

I pegged about thirty of these people in a bit over ten minutes, offering each the choice of a ticket or a detour back on the road that they'd come from. many of them whined that they only know one way home (the highway via this ramp) and a few got downright panicky at the thought of having to navigate on unfamiliar city streets to try to find a new alternative route. Most of them had GPS units too, which was the sad part. "You got a GPS and you still can't find your way? Sucks to be you today. Move along."

One young woman in a new Lexus SUV tried to tell me that she had a baby in her back seat. I replied that that was nice, but she still couldn't cut in front of other people or cross my safety zone in violation of the law. She began to get upset and then turned on the tears, growing louder and acting more hysterically each time that I told her to drive straight ahead back onto the road. Maybe that crap works with her baby daddy or her mom, but it doesn't work with me. Finally her baby started to cry too, probably because she was crying and carrying on. Then she yelled: "You made my baby cry! I hope you're happy!"

Another guy was peeved at being told that he couldn't just cut in front of everyone as he'd just done. (He refused to come back out of the merging traffic lane and I had to go stand in front of his SUV to force him to stop.) He told me that everyone cuts lines and that he does it like this every day. I let him know that if I catch him doing it again he'll be going to jail. (Even though we rarely arrest for traffic charges, all of our traffic offenses here are technically arrestable.) "Yeah, we'll see about that!" he yelled as he drove away (on the surface road).

Yes sir, we more than likely will. Even more than the many people who thanked me as they drove by today, you've just motivated me to come back out here next week and do this again.

Besides, it's fun and it generates no paperwork.

Is there a "short bus" stop around here somewhere?

2010-08-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

So last night, I'm out and about and I stop this pick-up truck full of good ole boys because I saw them coming out of a road construction zone. It turns out that they were stealing...wait for it...SANDBAGS.

That's right--they were picking up all of the sandbags used to hold temporary road signs in position. Of all the things in that work area to steal, these idiots were only taking the sandbags. That's like breaking into a bank just to steal the pens chained to the counter.

They're also all drunk, which might explain the desire to possess thirteen state-owned sandbags.

But sadly, dumb as these guys are, they're not the special ed class graduates that I'm writing about. No, the real idiots of this story are the couple dozen pedestrians who happen to walk up during my traffic stop.

You see, I'd stopped these jokers just past a mid-block cross-walk. My cruiser is actually partially IN the cross-walk, with it's lights flashing. There are also three other fully-marked cruisers on scene, and we've got the four drunken bumpkins our of their truck and seated on the curb between my cruiser and the truck...in the cross-walk, naturally.

So what do these pedestrians insist on doing, literally one right after another? That's right--trying to cross the street in this cross-walk by going between my cruiser and the stopped truck, and even trying to walk between the four guys seated on the curb and the uniformed officers who are watching them while we search the truck.

And then these pedestrians have the nerve to look surprised and offended when we tell them to stop and look at them as if they're retarded.

Now it's not as if there's so much traffic that they all *have* to cross here--traffic's light and there's not even a light here. But the bike path happens to cross here so suddenly every brain-dead zombie on the bike path has to show up and try to walk through the middle of our scene. One woman even asked our detainees to move aside for her, I swear. And when I asked her if she had any idea what was going on here, she looked totally baffled and said "no."

So do you make it a point to walk around fire trucks at building fires and ask firemen to stand aside for you too?"

"Well no," she replied, as if that would be silly.

She finally went around the scene, but her fellow window-lickers just kept showing up and trying to walk through the scene, even as the narcotics K-9 was being brought up to the truck. I finally had to post an officer on each side of the scene just to redirect people who you'd think would have had the common sense that God gave a goose--it was either that or just put everyone back in their vehicles and move the stop down the block away from these white painted lines on the pavement.

Oh, and if this wasn't stupid enough, we also had to deal with several drivers who pulled up adjacent to the stop, rolled their windows down, and proceeded to ask for directions, as if we were all just out there like some sort of information kiosk with our red and blue lights flashing.

"We're busy--keep moving," we'd say before they could even pose the question. But even that wasn't enough for one guy, who insisted that we tell him how to find a certain street first.

"You'd best find yourself a gas station that sells maps real quick," I tell him. "Now move!"

The pathetic art is that this city is ranked as one of the most well-educated cities in America. I just don't get it.

Oh, and the sandbag guys? The driver eventually got locked up for DWI and his truck was impounded, and we made the other guys put the sandbags back before letting them summon a cab and leave.

I made three people cry today.

2010-08-03T18:10:00.001-07:00

First there was the woman that I stopped for running a red light who broke down into dry but very dramatic sobs before I even reached her window. She quickly stopped when I told her to show me her license, registration and some maturity. She quit crying and just got angry.

Then there was the driver of a private school's bus, who made an illegal turn across traffic in her small bus filled with other peoples' kids, narrowly avoiding being struck by a garbage truck that had the right-of-way. She cavalierly told me that she wasn't much of a "city driver" and when I pointed out the numerous and highly visible "No Left Turn" signs, she replied: "Well my GPS told me to go that way so I did."

When I returned with her ticket, she began to tear up and proclaimed that this would probably cost her her job. I told her that I wasn't seeing that as such a bad thing. Then she seemed to get mad, just like the last one.

Finally there was the cab driver whose cab was being impounded by the local taxi inspector for numerous safety, paperwork and hygiene violations. HE cried the loudest--and I mean bawling with real tears and even throwing himself on the ground and wailing in some arabic language while beating the grass with his fists. He told me that I would have bad karma forever and asked me if I knew what karma was. I replied that I had heard the song about it by Culture Club back in the 80's just like everyone else. He then ran over and sat down in front of the tow truck and screamed "Just kill me now because I won't let you kidnap my cab!" However he changed his mind and got up quickly just as soon as he saw me take my pepper spray out of it's holster and shake it. Last I saw of him, he was walking towards a bus stop and shouting "God sees this! God will get you!" back at me as he walked. The tow truck driver was nice enough to give him a friendly beep of the horn as he drove past with the cab but even that didn't seem to cheer him up. He threatened to leave America and go back home (wherever that is) and didn't seem the least bit grateful when I wished him a safe and speedy voyage.

Maybe tomorrow I can make someone happy. Just maybe.

Or not.

So can you still have fun as a supervisor?

2010-07-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

Apparently so.

The other day, I showed up to assist one of my rooks who was handling a minor collision. As I was helping him explain the facts of life to a woman who crossed three lanes of traffic trying to make a right turn from the far left lane--a woman who hit another car that was properly in the far right turn lane and who for some reason insisted that the driver of that car was at fault--I was interrupted by a car horn that was being sounded by a guy who's stopped his car in the traffic lane. "Hey! Come here!" he yelled at us.

"I'll take this joker," I told the rook. My asshole detector was already registering. So I ambled over to see what could be important enough to summon a police officer away from an accident scene.

"I need to know how to get to the city," the guy exclaimed.

"You're in the city," I told him.

"No, I want to get to the city."

"Look around," I told him. "You're in the city. Seriously."

"No. I want to get downtown where all those tall buildings are," he explained, pointing to several tall buildings about a mile away.

"Well you probably should have turned back there and gone that way," I told him. I mean, Geez, dude...you could see them and you still can. Think about it.

"Well I didn't see the signs telling me how to get there. You need to tell me how to get there. Show some public service." His attitude indicated that he considered me to be just half a step above a moron. Whatever, idiot. At least I'm not lost. Damn, I should have let the rook deal with this guy...must...bite...tongue.

The I noticed that his seatbelt was off.

"How about if you put your seatbelt on for me," I suggested.

"Yeah, ok," he replied, making no effort to do it. "So how do I get over there?"

"Well first you start by putting your seatbelt on," I suggested again.

"Are you going to tell me or not?"

"I'll tell you right after I hand you the $50.00 ticket for not wearing your seat belt if you don't put it on right now," I told him.

He sighed and put it in. "There. happy now? Feel big? Gonna tell me now?"

"No problem," I said with a smile. "Go straight ahead to that next light. Take the downramp that says "Airport" and after you get on it, the very next turn-around you come to will take you right downtown. Just follow the signs."

"Thanks for nothing!" he yelled as he drove off.

The rook came over. "Gee, Sarge, why'd you take all that from him? He was an asshole."

I just turned and smiled. "Yeah, he was. And he'll have some time to reflect on that once he goes down that ramp." We both looked and could just make out his little car going down the ramp I'd directed him to...the one for the airport connector--The airport connector that has no exits and no opportunities to turn around until one reaches the airport itself, seventeen miles later.

"I guess I forgot to tell him that the first turn-around that he's going to come to is seventeen miles away. If he follows the signs there, they'll direct him to drive seventeen miles back here and with any luck he'll see the signs for the downtown exit. Allowing for afternoon traffic and airport congestion, I figure he'll be just about back here again in about an hour or so.

The rook laughed. "Damn, Sarge. That's just wrong."

"No, Son...That's what we call a learning experience. With any luck, he'll learn something from this. And if he does, that'll be my good deed for the day."

Stripes or not, I still enjoy this job.

Rookies with ticket books

2010-07-22T07:01:00.001-07:00

Like I said previously, I have a whole flock of new rookies working for me now, several of whom have been assigned to downtown foot beats. And each rookie has a ticket book and has been told that he or she can write as many tickets as their little hearts desire. So what are they doing? Why naturally, they are having contests among themselves to see who can write the most, and they are going out and enforcing regulations--chiefly parking regulations--that have not been enforced in a while. So people who have gotten used to parking freely in areas where the prohibitions against it have not been enforced are suddenly and repeatedly getting slammed with parking tickets. This of course makes my phone ring, as people used to getting away with things now consider it "unfair" that they're getting tickets for parking right under the big "no parking" signs that have always been there.

Well they're calling the wrong person if they're expecting sympathy or any kind of a break. I've always been about the "enforcement" part of law enforcement myself, so if my rook are writing legitimate tickets..."You have two options, sir or ma'am...you can pay them or request a hearing...No, I'm not going to take the ticket back just this once as a courtesy."

I used to hate it when I had a particular sergeant who used to pull my tickets as favors for friends of his or for people that he wanted to suck up to, and I'll be damned if I'm going to do that to my officers. If they wrote a ticket, that's their call and I wasn't there so I have no business second-guessing them. That's what court is for.

Hell, I'm so proud of my charges for going out every day in the hot sun and crushing the scofflaws that I've taken to going out there myself a little bit each day when my schedule allows and writing tickets right alongside them. And this has already led to one humorous phone call:

"RING!"

"Sergeant Krupke speaking."

"Yes, Sergeant. I'm calling to complain that one of your officers wrote me a ticket for parking an a handicapped space this morning."

"OK, were you parked in a handicapped space?"

"Yes, but..."

"Do you have a state-issued handicapped placard in your car?"

"No, but I was just in the store for like thirty seconds, and now it's going to cost me like three hundred dollars!"

"And what would you like me to do about this?"

"I just think that you need to talk to the officer and tell him to have a little understanding and maybe show some common sense. I mean, he was right there when I parked and he could have told me not to park there."

"And what is the officer's name on the ticket?"

"Uhhh...Here it is...it's 'Krupke'...oh damn." (click!)

Not funny anymore.

2010-07-21T13:08:00.000-07:00

It wasn't long ago that I, along with most cops, thought that Force Vehicle Crashes (where a police officer smacks up his cruiser) were a source of amusement. Contrary to what you see on TV, most of these don't occur in the middle of high-speed pursuits but typically during normal driving and parking...especially backing up. Most cops drive a lot, and they mutli-task while doing so, so the chance of a fender-bender is always there. It used to be fun to come into the station parking lot and see a freshly-crumpled cruiser because you knew there was going to be a funny story circulating inside about how it happened.

That changes when you get to be a patrol sergeant. Now it's more along the lines of: "Dammit! How could you not see that post?! It was sticking right up out of the ground in the same place where it's been since you came on this job. Now I've got to write a report, take pictures, get the damned thing to a couple of local garages for repair estimates, explain it to the white shirts, and somehow make street coverage without that car for the next week or two...DAMMIT!"

So the enjoyment that I used to secretly--or openly--take from other people's car mishaps has come back on me in the form of a baseball bat gripped in the hands of the karma fairy. Now no matter who on my squad wrecks a car, it's MY problem, and in the eyes of a couple of our white shirts, somehow MY fault. ("You aren't supervising them right, Sergeant Krupke...")

And if anyone in the station wrecks one, I still have to do without as I work out my daily beat coverage assignments every day. Again, unlike in the movies where every cop gets a nice, shiny car and just goes out wherever they want, I have to make sure that each little zone or area in our jurisdiction has a police car in it, plus I have to make specific coverage of certain locations with dedicated cars assigned strictly to those areas, and I have to cover a few road construction sites with permanently-placed cars that are required by municipal contract. The construction contractors pay for the officer--usually at overtime rates--but the cars that the officers use get drawn out of the existing pool fleet and usually they're gone before I even get in to start my day. Bottom line: Ever since I came on board, there have been more cars needed each morning than are available and I have to juggle assignments and scare up nonexistent spares or hand out cars that are being saved for some special use by somebody higher up the food chain and are therefore technically off-limits to me.

So along comes my perfect storm: Not only does one of my rookies wreck a car the other day, but he totals one of the brand-new ones that had (naturally) been set aside for another unit's exclusive use. Short on cars, I made a decision and snatched the keys to that car out of someone's desk drawer where they had been poorly hidden. (I keep reminding the white shirts that they gave me the power to make decisions...) Not twenty minutes goes by and the radio explodes into screams of "10-50! 10-50! Officer involved! My rookie is in his first wreck (with that cruiser, naturally) and it's hit the fan.

I can't post specifics about the incident yet, but the rook smacked someone else who was both totally at fault and politically connected. As a result, my report (and my finding of fault) is on the best-seller list around here--everyone wants a copy. It's also been "suggested" that I revise it a couple of times and take some of the sting off of the guilty party. I may be a new (and still probationary) sergeant but I'm not changing the report, especially not in a way that opens my rook up to even a part of the responsibility. I'm standing by my findings, but I can't help noticing that there's a chill in the air every time I have to go into white-shirt country, and it's not just because they've got killer air conditioning.

Ah well...this too shall pass.

Back...all new and improved

2010-07-18T04:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the absence, gang...but Officer Krupke had to go back to school for a bit.

Exit Officer Krupke--enter SERGEANT Krupke.

That's right--I am now a patrol sergeant, with a squad of 24 officers (and two Corporals, thankfully) under my command. Adding to the fun: almost half of this squad are new rookies right out of the academy.

Oh, I've already got stories, and more are coming every day. So stand by and I'll get them all posted here as soon as I can.

Cop humor

2010-06-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

Recently, our chief had a neatly-lettered motivational sign put above the mirror in our locker room. It says: "A Neat Appearance Commands Respect."

It wasn't up three days before some wise-ass cop wrote in pen underneath it:
"So does the ASP."

The chief's pissed, but I still chuckle when I see it.

Just a suggestion...

2010-06-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

If you're the sort of person who can't help driving through an accident zone and shouting obscenities at the people involved and the officers handling the mess, it's probably not a good idea to do it less than two miles from where you habitually park illegally. And as dumb an idea as that is, doing it while driving a tricked-out brightly-painted SUV with a personalized vanity tag is just plain ignorant.

A fella here did that to a few of my co-workers last week. It was rude to say the least. And later that day, one of the officers involved happened to see the undeniably distinctive vehicle parked in a two-hour metered zone and the meter was expired. Cost to the loudmouth: $50.00.

But it gets better. The next day, the same officer found it parked at an expired meter again. CHING! Another $50.00.

We discussed this at roll call and deduced that the driver works at one of the nearby businesses and is one of the many local workers who roll the dice every day by parking in the metered spots and gambling that they won't get more than a ticket or two every month. (As long as they think it's cheaper than paying for legal parking every day, many people will do this and just accept a few tickets as their unofficial parking fee.)

To be honest, a main reason that this works is because most of us have better things to do with our time than cruising meter parking and handing out parking tickets every day. But this guy...he's become a day-shift project now and it's a game to see who can find him and tag him first on any given morning.

He just got his fifth parking ticket this morning and some of us are wondering how long it's going to take him to figure it out and either pay to park in a garage, take public transit to work, or start driving another car--one that we don't automatically recognize on sight.

Regarding my previous post

2010-05-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

Like I said--all cops are family, and I don't ticket family.

Of course I also don't ticket lots of other people I stop. Generally, if I'm hunting for drugs or drunk drivers and I stop someone for a minor infraction--known as a "pretext stop" by the Supreme Court that endorses such tactics--I usually don't cite the ones that I stop unless my brief contact with them turns into something more. I stopped you because you have a light out or because you were doing ten over. No indications of drinking or contraband? Drive safely and correct that problem before I see you again.

Other than that, most people that I stop get stopped because they've done something right in front of me that's so egregious that it cannot be overlooked. And even in that case, if I feel that my merely pulling you over and discussing it with you has been sufficient to change your behavior, you probably won't get anything worse than a written warning either. My traffic tickets are few and far between these days and generally only go to those who worked hard to earn them. So it's not like I'm stroking everyone except cops.

To the ones upset because they see a few cops getting away with something...If I pull you over tonight for something minor, unless you're drunk, appear to be hiding something, have a bad driving record or are just a total mouthy tool, you're probably not going to get a money ticket either. So chill.

Why I never ticket cops.

2010-05-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

So I'm driving along one night not too long ago, just minding my own business, when I see a car coming towards me moving at warp speed. As it passes me, I bang a nearly perfect power turn and go after it. I catch the car about a mile down the road and light it up. And just as I stop it, a co-worker of mine pulls up to back me up. Cool.

Approaching the car, I find out that the driver is not Mario Andretti but a sergeant from a neighboring department who is well on his way to being late for work--one that I've stopped for speeding before. Turns out that my partner has stopped him before, too.

Now had this been any other citizen, I'd have smacked him with a ticket or two. But I have this policy against citing fellow officers, so I just give him a mild ass-chewing and send him on his way. No ticket, no documentation. It didn't happen.

Yeah, I know--this is going to anger quite a few people, most all of whom are outside of law enforcement. Tough. But my reason was validated literally a few minutes later when a call came across our radio about shots fired and a bail-out after a car full of gang-bangers doing a drive-by crashed. Suddenly we've got multiple armed suspects running around loose in one of our neighborhoods and we need every officer we can pull in for a decent perimeter and searches of the area. Both myself and my co-worker rocket over to the area as fast as we can, and one of the first things that we see when we pull up to the incident command post that's being set up is the car belonging to the sergeant that we'd just stopped and cut loose. He was on his way in and happened upon our guys starting to set up a perimeter and instead of going on past them to his own department's station, he stopped, offered his assistance, got his tactical gear out of his trunk, and jumped right into the fray with our guys to lend a hand. He also called his own department and has some of his department's officers respond over. I think that the fast influx of officers--theirs as well as ours--was a major factor in our eventually snaring all four of the knuckleheads that bailed out of the car. We also recovered two guns.

Now I've cut countless regular citizens breaks on infractions over the years, but I don't ever recall one of them showing up to help us out when we needed it; I've never had a regular citizen pull up on one of my traffic stops and offer me back-up, or respond and jump in when I'm in a fight. But this sergeant had no problem pitching in to help us out, and he did so without being asked, just like lots of other officers have done over the years and like many more will continue to do. When the chips are down, most cops around here don't care about the color of the shirt or the logo on the car of the officer who needs help--they all respond and help take care of business. We're a family and we're all on the same team even though we're on different departments, and we all share the risks when one of the family needs a hand.

That being the case, it'd be stupid for us to jam each other up over the petty stuff, knowing that we might need to rely on each other later in the shift or the next day. Now that doesn't mean that I overlook felony-level stuff, or drunk driving. I won't do that. But then again, I'm surrounded by professionals who are damned good people here and those situations rarely materialize. But sticking it to one of my peers with speeding ticket? Please. Not going to happen.

Kids, coats and drunk drivers.

2010-05-26T01:33:00.001-07:00

So the other night I'm out, and I stop to back up another officer who has a suspected drunk driver. He puts the guy through field sobriety tests and he fails miserably. He checks him with the portable breath tester and gets a reading back of 0.27. Whoa! Legal limit is 0.08--this guy is over three times that. He gets locked up and we impound his car.

Complicating things, of course, is the presence of his baby momma in the car as a passenger, along with their child--a two year old named Dayquan who is not in a car seat. There is no car seat in the car. Dayquan was just loose in the back seat without even a seatbelt.

This is added to the driver's DWI, and it becomes an aggravating factor for charging and sentencing. If convicted, he's going to do time.

Mama just shrugged when we asked where the car seat was. She knew that he was supposed to be in one, but it was in another car and she admitted that she just didn't feel like taking it out of that one and putting it in this one.

But the funny part came when Dayquan decided to get out of their car and walk around. His mama actually scolded him for getting out without his coat. "Dayquan! You put your coat on right now. Mama doesn't want you getting sick."

So going out without a coat in 60-degree weather is bad, but riding around unrestrained in a car driven by a drunk is ok. Got it.

I made sure that a copy of the report was sent to Child Protective Services, with a recommendation for home visits and other follow-ups.

One of those weeks.

2010-05-01T04:27:00.000-07:00

Slow week. Only one memorable melonhead.

This one I caught as I was driving southbound on a busy city street at the beginning of rush hour. At the intersection ahead of me, there were three southbound lanes--a right turn only lane, a lane for folks to go straight, and a left turn only lane. The right turn lane was--as usual--backed up for about a block because that's where most people coming out of this area go to get on the freeway. The straight lane that I was in wasn't moving at all though. I nosed into the left turn lane to look ahead, and there was this little green Honda sitting right up at the intersection in the straight lane with it's right turn signal on, trying to get someone to let him cut in. The light for straight ahead was green, but he wasn't going forward, and because of him, no one else behind him could go through the intersection. Where's a cop when you need one? Oh yeah...

So I pulled into the left turn lane, drove up next to him, and pulled up window to window next to him, and hit my air horn. He looked over and saw me. "You! Go straight! Now!" I pointed for him to go through the intersection.

"But I'm going this way!" he yelled back, pointing right.

"No you're not," I replied. "Go straight. Now!"

Of course at this moment, some chucklehead in the right turn lane stopped for a second and created a gap, and my Honda driver just zipped into it, made the right turn, and headed for the freeway.

Oh, hell no. He did not just do that.

I motioned for the other trafic to hold up for a second and I went after him, catching him about a block down. Normally I'm pretty mellow and restrained, but it was near the end of my tour, I was hot and tired, and that was just plain disrespectful. And then he had the gall to ask one of the dumbest questions possible as soon as I walked up to his window:

"What are you stopping me for now? I didn't do anything wrong."

I got his license and registration and informed him that he was being stopped for turning from the wrong lane.

"No. I turned from the right lane. That guy let me in."

I explained that I had just given him a direct order to go straight, and he'd defied me by cutting into the right lane after I'd told him not to. I further explained that there was a solid white line running back up that lane for fifty feet, and that he was not allowed to cross that solid line even if someone had let him in.

"There was no solid white line there," he stated.

"Sir, you are more than welcome to go back there on your own time and look for yourself, but it's there. I know it's there, and the judge knows it's there if it comes to that."

"No. both of those lanes allow right turns."

"Sir, again--there are painted arrows on the pavement, and a large sign showing the direction of travel for each lane on the side of the roadway prior to the intersection. The traffic lights are also directional arrows, and I'm sure that you noticed that the green one for your lane was pointing straight ahead.

"But I had to turn there," he said. I'm trying to go home."

I explained--again--that he'd missed his turn when he'd failed to get into the turn lane in a timely manner like all those people that he'd just cut off had done and that I'd told him to go straight.

"I don't know how to get home from that direction," he whined.

I couldn't take it anymore. I just walked back to my car and stroked him out tickets for turning from the wrong lane and disregarding traffic control direction. His decision to bypass all of the people in that right lane and then cut them all off--and his decision to sit and argue it with me, obviously with the earnest belief that he and his desire to get home trumps everyone and everything else--earned him a hundred and fifty dollars in fines and five points on his license unles he decides to challenge the tickets in court. And I really hope that he does, because I know the magistrate and the way that he feels about lane-jumpers. Bring it on, little Honda man.

And for a bonus, I found my fake-handicapped tag Mercedes again yesterday. Incedulously, it was parked in another handicapped zone about three blocks from where I tagged it the last time. Maybe the owner figured that it was in a different memter maid's zone or something? Dude, I'm citywide....no, I'm regional. I whacked him/her again with another $250.00 ticket. That's two. Wanna bet I can find it again next week? When I get three of those on the car, I'm calling the boot squad. And I WILL get my hands on that fake tag yet. The mere fact that the owner keeps using it despite the last ticket tells me that he/she still thinks that it's worth it to be able to park for free all day in spaces reserved for the actual disabled. I look forward to seeing this person in court one day soon, too. My magistrate is gonna love meeting them.

Reader-influenced enforcement...and a new hobby.

2010-04-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

OK, readers, this one's on you.

I got a lot of feedback on the previous story regarding the handicapped parking issue, so it was with that in mind that I went out this morning hunting handicapped parking violators specifically.

I got six of them, five for merely being parked in handicapped spots without handicspped tags or placards. But the sixth one was special--that one truly made my day.

I saw the car in a handicapped parking spot in an otherwise crowded area, It had a handicapped placard, but it didn't look right. I know what this state's placards look like, but this wasn't one. I looked closely at it and discovered that it was a special placard issued specifically to a renatl van with handicapped controls--the one that comes with such vans when you rent them temporarily.

The problem was, this was in a Mercedes sedan with standard controls.

In other words, it was an improper tag; a fake. Had I not looked closely at it, I'd have probably passed it by, no doubt as many other officers have done. This person was using the tag to park illegally in spaces reserved for the disabled, and if there's one thing I despise more than thoughtless people, it's calculating scammers who try to get over. This driver got a $250.00 ticket, but the slate's not clean on this one. I'm pretty sure that he works in one of a couple of nearby buildings and now that his days of free parking in the handicapped zone are over, I suspect that he'll try to slide into the adjoining unmetered 3-hour max. zone and hope that no one comes by and actually goes to the trouble of keeping track of who has and has not been there over 3 hours. Many of those employees get away with it because most patrol units don't waste the time doing that sort of thing--and to be fair, I don't either--but now that I know that car, you can bet that I'll be making not of what times I see it, and any time I catch it parked overtime and can document it...$50.00.

We'll see how long it takes for this car to start seeking sanctuary in a pay lot or disappearing from the area altogether. Trust me, I will make the effort to legally ruin this guy's day every chance I get. Like I said, I hate people who try to take advantage of the disabled so he or she will be my personal hobby for a while and it's probably going to cost them.

And you readers who commented on my prior handicapped parking enforcement...it's all because of you.

I just couldn't make anyone happy today.

2010-04-14T17:16:00.001-07:00

So I'm driving along, minding my own business, and this guy in front of me tosses a cigarette butt out of his window right in front of me.

That's a big pet peeve of mine--it's filthy, disrespectful, and a fire hazard all in one. On go the lights. He went away with a hundred dollar consolation prize, and for some reason he was angry at me, even though he's the one who chose to toss his trash on my road right in front of me.

Then there was the woman who wasn't paying attention while driving. She spun her car out and took out a big road sign and shut down a major roadway at rush hour. I handed her a ticket for failure to maintain control, and she got mad too, but not quite as mad as the other woman who tried to zip around the long line of cars backed up prior to the wreck by driving at least half a mile on the shoulder, only to have me pluck her right out of the traffic flow after she saw me standing on the shoulder ahead of her and forced her way back into the traffic lane. She got two tickets--one for driving on the shoulder and another for cutting off a truck to dive back in as part of her unsuccessful effort to avoid the first ticket.

"Well how is anyone supposed to get to work?" she screamed.

Well lucky for you, I'm already at work. Sign here, please.

Then there was the people in the office building next to a municipal parking lot. The lot is specifically for visitors, not commuters, and that's why the lot has three-hour meters on every spot. I got a call from the lot manager about the lot being full of commuters so I went in and of course almost all of the meters were expired because the commuter cars had been there longer than three hours so I sighed and started writing. As soon as someone in the office looked out and saw me, word spread, and suddenly the lot was full of people frantically feeding meters, all from that building.

Pity that they didn't seem to know that it's also a violation to repeatedly feed a meter. That three hours? That's a hard limit on how long your car can physically occupy that space, and you can't extend it just by recharging the meter. I just kept writing, and the cars of the people that I saw feeding the meters got tickets for that right along with the ones whose meters were still expired.

Now there's a whole building full of unhappy people. Sorry folks--maybe tomorrow you'll park in your company's own lot and pay whatever they charge and stay out of the city's lot. Then I'll be happy because I won't have to write so many freaking parking tickets.

And then, of course, there was the old man in the Mercedes who got rear-ended at a stop sign by a high school-aged girl. It was just a tap and there was no damage to either car but he was going slightly berserk about it when I drove by and saw them parked alongside the road. I stopped and talked to them and looked at the cars. Not a scuff on either one that I could see. Of course he was sure that his Mercedes now had "hidden damage" and he suddenly wanted a police report even though he already had her insurance company's info. He kept pointing to obviously ancient minor scratches on his bumper and telling me that they were new. He wouldn't accept that there honestly wasn't a mark on the car that wasn't there before and I told him that there was no way that I was taking an accident report. I didn't want to have to hammer the girl with a ticket as she was already in tears, and I just didn't feel like wasting another half an hour getting all of the info, filling out the form, and sketching the scene when there was no injury or damage. So I sent him on his way--unhappy, of course--and then got the girl to run along. Now even I was finally cross.

But then I found a car parked in a handicapped spot in front of a store where I regularly go for coffee. It had no handicapped tag or placard (pet peeve #2) and it was running and unattended (pet peeve #3). That was two more tickets--handicapped parking violation and running unattended at $250.00 each, both of which I eventually handed to the fit and able-bodied young lady about 25 years old who came out of the store with a coffee in one hand and her cell phone in the other just as I was starting to write the second one. Naturally she was unhappy, but I have to confess that it did cheer me up a bit.

Raising other people's kids.

2010-04-03T06:11:00.001-07:00

So once again, I find myself in the position of having to raise some other woman's child.

This time, I was investigating something in front of the local bus and train station. When that turned out to be nonsense, I went inside for a cup of coffee. (And yes, I paid full-price for it. My cop-hating readers have no need to worry about the possibility that I might have accepted a free cup of Starbucks.)

I was standing in line there when I observed a young boy maybe eight or nine years old just lie down on the floor. He was with the woman ahead of me in line, and as it turned out, she was his mother. She was begging him to get up off the floor, and he kept refusing, telling her that he was tired. So what did this adult do when the little child would not obey her commands? That's right--she continued to beg. "Please, Jeffrey. Please get up off the floor..."
But Jeffrey wasn't about to get up. It was obvious that he's comfortable disobeying and disrespecting his mom.
Then as so often happens, she saw me. "Officer, can you please make my son get up off the floor?"

Damn. How did I get wrapped up in this? Why do I have to choose between being the bad guy in the kid's eyes, or blowing this woman off in front of everyone else in the area who is now watching? What do I do if he tells me no? I can't just snatch him up by the ear like she should have done two minutes ago...

I sigh. Then I lean down and whisper to the boy.

"Hey. You see those bums over there?" I point to a couple of the local bus-station regular homeless who were slouched in the corner with their trash bags full of junk.

Jeffrey looked over. "Yeah."

"They spit on this floor. A lot."

"Oh, GROSS!" Jeffrey yells, scrambling to his feet.

Problem solved. Mom thanked me and remarked how Jeffrey is at that age where doesn't like to listen to her any more (and I refrained from telling her to learn to control her own kid) and another woman in line gave me a smile and a little "golf clap". Jeffrey was still standing when I paid for my coffee and left.

I can't help but think that it's going to be a long road for both Jeffrey and his mom unless she learns to get control over him.

Baby Mama Drama

2010-03-08T23:21:00.000-08:00

So I'm just sitting there in the dark--minding my own business and not bothering anybody--when I see this Dodge Charger blow through the stop sign just ahead of my cruiser.

I stop the car and observe that it's occupied four times...by young black females who are all shoe-horned into in their club attire, most of which appears to be two to three sizes too small. I pretty much know that I'm going to get a bunch of baby mama drama out of this one, it's just a question of how much and why.

The car has a cardboard 30-day dealer tag on the back, but this one doesn't come back to the car and resgistered owner like they're supposed to. When I ask the driver for her license and registration, she decideds that she doesn't want to give me anything until we argue about her violation for a bit. I cut her off, tell her that it's not up for discussion, and ask her again for her license, registration and proof of insurance. She digs a big envelope out of her glove box and shows me the paperwork that indicates that she purchased the car in January. Then she hands me a Xerox copy of a registration. I note that it's expired by almost a month and the tag number is different from the one on the car. For proof of insurance, she hands me a bill from an insurance company which says that a two-month policy will take effect when she writes them a check for five hundred and thirty four dollars. The date is, of course, two months ago.

I wasn't born yesterday; I know the score. She bought the car and got just enough insurance to get her drive-away dealer tag, and she drove on that tag until it expired. She doesn't have insurance and can't get her hard tags so she just bought a new and probably blank temp tag illegally from someone who works at or stole it from a dealership and now she's trying to play it off as if it's all valid and clear when I already know it isn't. She keeps flipping through her paperwork and claiming that she gave me everything I asked for. Other than her driver's license, she's given me nothing that I wanted and I let her know. She starts getting louder and more upset, and two of her girls try to chime in to back her up. I tell them that they need to sit quiet because I'm talking to the driver. Surprisingly, they actually do shut up--usually the whole crow chorus jumps in to support the star in this impromptu bit of Shaniqua Theater. (Credit to Beat and Release for this wonderful descriptor of the behavioral characteristics of this particular demographic.) But the star is far from done. She shakes, she yells, she starts to cry, then says it's my fault for getting her so upset. She wails that she's a single mother (as if I care) and she bawls that she has a "federal job" and that I'm going to make her lose it with "all of this BS."

I tell her to calm down and remind her that the whole problem is stemming from the fact that I asked for two pieces of paper that every car owner is supposed to have and that she's apparently unable to come up with either of them. She demands that I "show some common sense" and realize that she must have insurance otherwise she could not have bought the car, and she claims that the registration--the expired one with a different tag number--is somehow adequate.

Finally I ask her where she wants the car towed to. I'm tired of her and she and her car need to go, only she's not going to be driving it. I offer her the choice of a tow to her home at her expense or to the impound yard for free, however she'll have to pay to get it out of there and the fees willl add up quick. She petulantly tells me to do whatever I want and tow it wherever. She claims to have no money, and when I ask her who she can call for a ride, she insists that she doesn't know anybody at all. The others all ape onto this crap too, claiming to know no one with a car, apparently figuring that if I can't get them rides away from here, I won't impound the car. But I'm not playing that game either. First of all, I don't care if they are all genuinely broke. That's their problem, not mine. Of course considering that they're all sitting in a newly-purchased two year old car, each with fresh new hairdos and stylish club outfits complete with plenty of jewelry, I'm not buying the "poverty" pleas. If they could afford all that crap and a night out at the club, they can afford a cab. So I flag down a passing cab and suggest that the passengers either get into it and work out payment for the driver or else they'll be walking. Suddenly they find money and off they all go, leaving me with my new friend. Fortunately the tow truck shows up before the cab's even out of sight. Meanwhile, my overly-dramatic new girlfriend now sobs that she won't be able to get to work AT THE FEDERAL BUILDING in the morning and when she loses her job, it'll be all my fault. She refused to hand over the car key until I told her that if I had to ask one more time, she'd be going to jail. Then she shouted "Just give me my tickets if you're going to ticket me!" Of course I'd already written them out, so it was no trouble to hand her three--one for unregistered vehicle, one for uninsured vehicle, and one for the stop sign. She bawled and ranted and carried on like a fool until she finally figured out that I really didn't care, and then she switched it off and just stood there all casual. It was all an act, and undoubetly learned behavior; at some time in her life she realized that she could get her way by throwing her dignity away and acting like an angry child. But it didn't get her anything tonight--if anything, if made me less inclined to cut her even the slightest break. I don't care for it when people try to play me.

The grand ticket total was $275, and the tow bill and impound fees are going to be on her, too. She doesn't get the car back now until she presents a valid registration and proof of insurance at the impound yard and storage fees accrue by the day. Of course she let me know that she'll be fighting this all in court. Yeah, good luck--your car was either registered and insured on this date or else it wasn't. And the fake tag and lack of any paperwork pretty much indicates which is the deal. Court should be fun--and short. But I get paid to show up so it's all good. Bring your lies and bring your girlfriends if you want...just file for a court date and bring on the court overtime.

Oh--and bring a better tantrum and more convincing fake outrage when you get to court. The judge wasn't born yesterday either.

Ya'll can't be putting that dog up in my car like that!

2010-02-27T14:43:00.000-08:00

At least that's what she said.

It was a week-end night, and we were short on cars due to maintenance issues, so a partner and I doubled up and we went out to see what we could find.

As we were rolling through the club district, we happened to spot a car in reverse backing down the street at a pretty high speed. we watch it drive backwards about three quarters of a city block to slide into a parking space, and as soon as the driver parallel parks it, I pull up next to it and block it in, hitting the lights while my partner puts the stop out over the air. As he's doing that, I get out and introduce myself to our latest customer, a black male about 35 years old who is nervous as all hell.

The car has an odor of a substance that I'm quite familiar with, so I put it to him: "How come this car smells like weed?" The driver begins to visibly shake. He agrees with me, but says that it's not his weed and not his car. It turns out the driver is just a valet for a so-called "gentleman's club" up the block. He's sweating bullets because, as it turns out, he's only been out of prison for about a month. That should tell you something about this particular club, right there. But the club's manager sees the stop and verifies that the guy is indeed the valet, and he tells us that the car belongs to one of the dancers, who is about to get off for the night. my partner and I confer briefly and we tell the manager to go get the car's owner while we deal with the valet's driving issues.

Now the valet's being pretty cooperative, even consenting to letting us search him, and I can actually appreciate the fact that he's got what at least looks like a straight job after doing 15 years inside. So we call for an available narcotics dog and I write him out two warning notices for his infraction (improper backing and no seat belt), taking as long as I can to give the K9 time to arrive. The dog shows up in a few minutes and I give the valet his warning notices--no fine and no points because he was respectful and cooperative and I didn't feel like jamming him up--and then my partner had him stand aside (and away from the club) while Riker the Landshark did his thing. As expected, the dog hit on the center console and the ash tray, and now we've got all the probable cause we need to search the car thoroughly. But before we can start, Mo'Neek, the owner of the car, appears. (Yes, that's her real first name. I shit you not.)

"Hey! That's my car! Excuse me! Ya'll can't be putting that dog up in my car like that!"

But alas, we can. And we did. And I go into the car and find her smoking device and two zips of weed in the console and three roaches in the ashtray. I hold up the pipe. "This yours?"
She doesn't even try to lie. "That don't make no difference if it is or it ain't. You don't get to put that nasty dog in my car and you need a warrant before you can touch anything in there!"

"Don't tell me," my partner says. "You're working here to put yourself through law school."

I almost told her that the dog was a lot cleaner than her dirty, trash-filled car but I bit my tongue.

In the end, I took the weed and the pipe and handed Mo'Neek a couple of misdemeanor mandatory appearance citations for possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. I let her know that she had to show up in court in a couple of weeks and that when she didn't show up (I didn't even bother saying "if") we'd be coming around to serve the warrant either here or at her home address. I also advised her as a courtesy that her driver's license was suspended/revoked and that if we caught her driving that car, she'd be getting locked up.

Of course she swore up and down that she'd paid her tickets and that her license was good, but then again, almost everyone operating after suspension says that. And I know that she won't get her license fixed any time soon but I'm actually good with that, because now that I know her car and where she lives and works, I doubt that it'll be too hard to find her driving around again. You see, I'm betting that when I do find her driving and I lock her up for operating after suspension, I'll get another crack at her car and odds are pretty good that I'll probably get more weed or maybe something even better. So she'll go into my "perp bank" folder and I'll keep an eye out for her car on those slower nights when I need a lock-up but can't find anything else. It's always good to keep a few of those in reserve.

The funniest part? When we left, she was yelling at the club manager and telling him that he or the valet needed to come up with some money since it was their fault that she just got busted.

Some people's kids...

No, I don't have infinite patience for fools.

2010-02-16T20:21:00.000-08:00

I started off this evening responding to a call from another agency nearby for an officer in trouble. Enroute to that scene, another one of our units gets t-boned by an inattentive driver as he goes through an intersection on a green light with all of his emergency gear working. She admitted that she was messing with her ipod and didn't see or hear him. Fortunately he wasn't injured, but his take-home cruiser is going to be in the shop for a while. Needless to say, we never got to the officer in trouble scene--I was redirected to our crash to assist, and I got to spend the better part of the next hour directing traffic at a major intersection in the city during evening rush hour. The crash was right in the middle of the intersection and it and the rescue vehicles blocked most of it, so that meant that most people who wanted to go straight got to make right turns instead just to get traffic moving. Naturally, about every third or fourth car driver insisted on trying to either coast past me and try to wiggle around the crash despite my direction, or else they would stop and ask if I wouldn't let them go the way that they wanted to go, ambulance and fire trucks and flares be damned.

Adding to the fun was any number of pedestrians who insisted on crossing wherever and whenever they wanted, with to regard for the traffic direction that I and another officer on the opposite side of the wreck were doing. And then there were tools on bicycles that also ran hither and yon and messed up our traffic pattern.

All of this I still managed to deal with, and we managed to keep the traffic flowing even if a lot of people had to go a block or two out of their way. As irritating as some of these people were getting to be, I refrained from shoving any of the pedestrians over the snowbank, and I even resisted the temptation to thrust my ASP into the spokes of any of the bicycles that rode right through the gridlocked traffic and made cars that I was moving come to a stop right where I didn't want them stopping. So I was doing pretty good, and keeping my frustration in check until I heard the horn.

Beeeeeeeeeep! Beeeeeeeeep! Beeeeeeeeep! Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

Sitting a dozen or so cars back from the intersection, stuck in the mess like everyone else, was a very impatient man behind the wheel of a BMW. He was blowing his horn, apparently trying to get all of the other people that I was holding up to move out of his way. And even though traffic was moving slowly, he kept on with the horn.

He finally got up to where I was, and I motioned for him to turn right. However he pointed his car at me, rolled down his window, and yelled "I need to go that way!", indicating that he wanted to pass through the crash scene.

OK, in the words of one of my childhood idols, I've had all I can stand cuz I can't stand no more.

I motioned for him to pull into the one open lane, then I stopped him and walked up to him. "I want to go that way!" he says as I get to his window.

"Give me your driver's license," I tell him.

"Why are you asking for my license?" he asks.

"I didn't ask for it. I told you to give it to me." I give him a look back that makes it clear that I'm not about to kiss his ass or play games with him. He complies, and I tuck it into my pocket. "Now pull over there to the curb and turn this car off. Stay in the car and I'll be over to deal with you when I'm done here."

"Look, I'm trying to get home and I'm late," he says.

"You're going to be later. Now pull over there and turn it off." He did, and I went back to directing traffic, basically ignoring him other than to look up and make sure that he was still there every few minutes.. And he sat there until rescue cleared and the wreckers hauled the cars away and we could open the intersection up to normal traffic again. I went back over to talk to him.

"I want your name and badge number right now!" he demanded.

"Well I'm going to be writing both of those down for you in a minute," I told him. Of course it was going to be on a ticket, but I didn't add that. Had he been contrite by this time, I would probably have just let him go with a warning since I'd basically given him a time out for twenty minutes. But his continued attitude that he was somehow in charge or otherwise entitled pretty much killed any inclination on my part to let him slide. After all this time to reflect, he still wasn't getting it.

So I told him that he was being given a citation for excessive use of horn, and that if he wanted to contest it, he could call the number on the back of the ticket and request a court date and then he could explain to the judge why he felt the need to sit there in stopped traffic at a crash scene and lay on his horn.

"I'm don't have a problem with the ticket," he replied. "I can pay these all day. But where do you get off making me sit here for half an hour? I had someplace else to get to and you had no right to keep me here like that!"

So I sighed and explained to him what should have been obvious to the average five year old: There was a crash here, people were hurt, the road was blocked, and everybody else had to wait and detour around it just like he did. And since everyone else managed to handle the slight inconvenience without throwing a road-rage temper tantrum, I decided that his behavior warranted a citation. However the circumstances didn't permit me to drop everything else and write one right then and there so he had to wait his turn for it. If that meant that he had to sit for a few minutes, too bad. I also told him that if he wanted to speak to my supervisor, he was more than welcome to go find a parking space and walk back here. My sergeant was on scene dealing with the crash and had been here the whole time. I pointed my sergeant out to him, but the guy declined and drove away.

He may complain tomorrow, but that's fine. I can deal with this one easily enough, the ticket still stands and he can't get his half an hour back. I'll just never understand how people that immature get to the point where they can afford a BMW.

Mentally handicapped parking?

2010-02-15T12:03:00.001-08:00

So this morning, a couple of us are in a local 7-11 for coffee. Besides us, there are a couple of cars each from two other departments. in fact, the parking lot on the side of the building is almost all police cars, as are the spots out by the curb, in front of the building but out along the street. The only spots open are the slots directly in front of the store, which we typically leave for the regular customers who might actually want to run in, buy stuff and leave.

So we're all sitting around, drinking coffee and talking about the night's business, when I happen to glance up and see that there's a vehicle parked in the handicapped spot out in front of the store. A quick look around shows me no one who appears handicapped, just a bunch of hispanic laborers (note to self: start inviting ICE guys to these coffees) and a large guy buying a pair of hot dogs at 5AM. (Ugh!) I wander outside and notice that in addition to having an expired inspection sticker from the neighboring state, the Cadillac SUV in the handicapped spot bears no placard or special DMV tags. I sigh, wander over to my cruiser, get my ticket book out, and start to write. This sort of thing is one of my serious pet peeves, for reasons that people who know me understand all too well.

A moment later, hot dog guy comes out and sees me scratching him the ticket. Of course he begs for a break, claiming that he didn't know, despite the big blue and white sign right above the parking lot just above eye level. Unfortunately for him, it's me writing the cite, and I don't cut slack on handicapped violators. I point out that there were and still are several other vacant slots that are not handicapped and which are still closer to the door than my car, and then I point out all of the police cars in the lot and ask him what he was thinking. Hell, doing this blatantly in front of us all is almost as disrespectful to us as it is to the actual disabled people who need those spots. He shrugs and laughs and says "Yeah, ok...you got me," in a manner that suggests that he still doesn't take it that seriously. But his good nature changed when he looked at the fine amount line: "Two hundred and fifty dollars?! Come on, man! That ain't right!"

No, parking in the one space reserved for the disabled isn't right, and doing it with six police cars in the parking lot is just ignorant. Hope he enjoyed the hot dogs. I figure they cost him $125.00 each. Dumbass.

And the money comment of the night:

2010-02-09T16:32:00.000-08:00

So in the middle of our snow emergency, I ask the guy I just stopped for an asinine traffic violation why he's driving.

He points to his passenger and says "Because he's drunker than I am."

Some people just make my job way too easy.

And for what it's worth--everyone that I saw out tooling around last night with a three-foot high mound of snow atop their vehicle got a ticket for it. That's dangerous to you and other drivers and common sense would suggest that if you must drive, you take a minute to remove it. Or to paraphrase Chris Rock: "Clean that shit off!"

Another great cartoon from Garey McKee.

2010-02-09T16:23:00.000-08:00

Why do so many papers waste space on that Doonesbury guy when Garey McKee is available?

Police Limit rocks.

On snow...and getting it done.

2010-02-07T15:42:00.000-08:00

So this week-end, our area got socked with a massive winter storm. Everything was closed--government, stores, schools the Friday before (and the Monday coming)and everybody was warned for days to prepare to stay in.

I wish I could have stayed in, but us cops are essential. That means that like power crews, tree-removal crews, hospital workers and (ugh!) firefighters, we need to show up no matter how bad it is. It sucks, and it's hard sometimes, but people need us and we knew that this was part of it when we applied for the jobs. It's one of the things no one thinks about when they see us taking it easy and getting paid well on the nice days.

Our area got between two and feet of snow in a day and a half. I needed to make sure that I could get in to work because I live 50 miles away from my worksite so I went out into the beginning of the storm the night before and stayed in a motel closer to town at my own expense. No one will ever pay me back for that--it's just something I had to suck up because it's still my responsibility to get in to work and calling in and crying that I couldn't get out because of the snow wasn't an option. (And a note to some of my lazy-ass co-workers, including a few supervisors: Calling in "sick" at the last minute is bullshit, too. Everyone knows that you useless slaps just didn't want to come in, and those of us who did come in like we were all supposed to will remember who put their work on us this week-end.)

No thanks goes out to the motel, a Days Inn that I expected better from. They put me in a room knowing that I needed sleep so I could pull an extended 16-hour night shift later, and then they put a bunch of people in the adjoining room who laughed and swore and made noise all night. The walls were so thin that I heard everything that they said and did, and calls to the desk brought no relief. The desk didn't even call that room like they promised to do--I'd have heard their phone ring through those thin-assed walls. And if that wasn't bad enough, the motel's own maids started yelling back and forth in Spanish to each other at about 8AM, totally oblivious to the fact that people in motels might want to sleep. And of course the power was out, so no hot shower for me, and damned little heat after a spell. And of course the front desk woman totally refused to adjust the bill or do anything else to make amends. I even suggested that I'd call it even if I could stay a few hours past check-out time and try to catch a bit more sleep before reporting in, and she refused that offer too, even though without power she couldn't check anyone else in or out. Fuck you, Days Inn. Next time I have to respond over there because you need help with some drunk or unruly guests, I'll remember this.

It took more than two hours to drive what should have taken less than one. I ran in 4WD the whole way at about 30-35 mph. The roads were in the process of being plowed but far from clean, and the snow was still coming down hard. Other than plow trucks, I was almost the only one out there. The power was out for miles, and the only thing I found open was one lone 7-11, and frankly that was a surprise.

I started work early to fill in for someone who never showed. If I hadn't, the officer from the previous night who'd been held over to cover the slot would have had to work the whole double shift. I started out having to deal with a mess because some idiots decided that they were going to move their whole extended family in the middle of this blizzard and driven a caravan that included a mid-sized U-Haul truck with a car-hauling trailer behind it out into this record snowstorm. They then got the truck and trailer stuck on the ramp from one highway to another and then had the nerve to get upset when they found out that they'd be getting billed for the large wrecker that it was going to take to get them out of the mess that they created. And since I had nothing better to do while waiting on that wrecker, I inquired as to where the car seats where for the infant and two kids under five that were riding in one of the cars. "Oh, they be packed way back in that truck," I was told. So I stroked them with tickets for each of the unrestrained kids and made them open up the U-Haul and dig the seats out. They couldn't understand why, even though the only reason I was here was because they'd just had a crash. It should be legal to just beat some people.

Two hours later, that was cleared up, and I spent the rest of the long night finding and reporting trees and power lines down and shooing drunk pedestrians off of our roads. The bar crowd was in full swing and they weren't letting a lack of cars keep them off the roads. Two other officers actually arrested drunks for being in the roadway and refusing to go back inside, but I was able to get my drunks to at least pretend to comply until I was gone.

Eighteen hours later, I was released to drive home. Again, I was virtually the only vehicle that wasn't a snowplow on the highway. And as I clawed my way in 4WD up to my house out in the country a bit, I pulled up to find my own 100-foot driveway buried under 36 inches of snow, plus the bunch that the county plow had shoved into the end of it. It took another hour of digging just to make a hole big enough to back my vehicle into, and then it was time for bed.

I'm going back in tonight. And if I see that Al Gore guy, I'm going to kick his ass in the name of his so-called "Global Warming".

Oh--and don't mistake me for someone who loves his department. I have a lot of issues with my department right now and we're not exactly the best of friends. However this isn't the time for any of that. This is the time to put that stuff aside and get the job done. That's what being a professional police officer is all about.

Friendly skies? How about friendly highways?

2010-02-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

So last night I'm passing the airport in my marked cruiser. (Note: Use of the term "marked cruiser" is a hint. It typically means that I was very obvious and not being at all sneaky but someone about to be blogged about still didn't get it.)

Looking in my mirror, I see a car coming off of the ramp fro the airport onto my highway behind me. Speed limit here is 55mph, and just past that ramp is a sign saying as much. It's late, and me and this car are the only two vehicles around, so I slow down to 65mph as I watch this car rapidly gain on me. Naturally I expect that this driver will pull up close enough to recognize the marked police cruiser in front of them and quickly slow down to a bit under my speed. That's what usually happens, and that's one of the reasons why I'm out here--to keep traffic speeds reasonable just by my mere presence.

But this driver just doesn't care. ZOOM! Right past me. And then as I increase my speed to catch up, that car increases speed, apparently racing to get to the next interchange to jump onto another highway. By the time my lights go on, I'm doing 75 and that car is still moving a bit faster. That car stops, but instead of pulling to the clear, roomy and safe shoulder, it stops in the traffic lane. I have to use my PA system to tell the driver to pull onto the shoulder. Then the nonsense really starts. She pulls onto the shoulder but I see that her brake lights are still lit and I haven't seen the vehicle shift into "park" yet--the vehicle is still in gear. I again pick up the PA and tell her to take her foot off the brake. Sure enough, she starts rolling forward...and keeps rolling forward. I tell her to stop again, and she does, but still doesn't put the car in park.

I don't approach cars that are still running and in gear. I don't like cars that are either preparing to rabbit away from me or able to otherwise injure me by suddenly moving when I'm near them. And I'm naturally suspicious of drivers who won't put the car in park like 95% of the driving public automatically does when stopped.

I tell her to put the car in park, and she finally does. I then tell her to turn the car off, but she refuses. I can see the exhaust so I know it's still running. Again, we have noncompliance to a simple instruction, and one that directly concerns my safety. Screw it. I ask for another unit for back-up and one actually materializes fairly quickly. The airport guys were monitoring our channel and one ambled up within a minute. Now with two of us, we approach the car. The driver is a black female still dressed in the costume of an American Airlines stewardess. And she starts right in:

"You need to stop yelling at me," she says before I even introduce myself. "I'm not your dog and I'm not your kid."

OK, so it's going to be like that, is it? This was going to be a quick sobriety check, probably ending with a verbal warning if she was sober, but she's taking it in another direction pretty quickly. I put my hand up to cut her off.

"First of all, when the lights come on, you need to pull onto the shoulder and put your car in park. Then when I give you instructions that I know you can hear, you need to obey them. And that means turning your car off when I tell you to. Is there a reason why you didn't want to do any of those things?"

"Yeah," she snaps. "I'm just off work, I want to get home, and it's cold out. I don't need this."

"Ok, The reason you were stopped in the first placed is because of your speed back there. The speed limit here is 55 and you were in excess of 75 before I stopped you. Are you aware of that?"

"I was doing 65," she said, dismissively turning to look out the front windshield instead of at me.

"And as I just explained, the speed limit is 55. You passed a sign saying so when you came out of the airport. License and registration, please." I'm not going to sit here and argue with her. She can just have a citation and take it to the judge if she wants.

She digs the information out of her purse and then tries to hand it to the airport officer who is on the other side of her car. He tells her to give it to me.

"But I want to deal with you," she says to him. You're from the airport and I work for American Airlines." The airport officer tells her again to give it to me because this is my traffic stop. She hands it to me and repeats: "I work for American Airlines and I want him to handle this."

"Well you're on my highway now so you'll deal with me. Have you had anything to drink tonight?"

"I just told you--I work for American Airlines. Can't you see this?" She touches her uniform. "They drug test us, so no, I don't drink when I'm at work."

Whatever. I go back to my cruiser and scratch her out a speeding ticket. The airport guy waits with me. I ask him if all of the stewardesses are like that. He laughs and rolls his eyes. "Oh no. Most are worse. They think that they're the boss everywhere just because they're in charge of passengers on a plane or two. We get this crap from them all the time."

"Friendly skies, huh?" I ask. We laugh.

I walk back and hand her her $165.00 ticket. She's steaming. "Your supervisor will be hearing from my husband shortly," she announces.

"Fine," I tell her. "Have your boss call my boss." I turn to walk away as the airport guy bursts out laughing, not even trying to be discrete.

I may get a complaint just for that last line, but you know what? It'll be worth it.

Winter fun

2010-01-31T11:23:00.001-08:00

So last night, because we got pounded with a serious snow storm that darn near shut our roads down, I was paired up with my sergeant in one of our 4WD SUV's. All was pretty dull until just before midnight, when we happened to spot one of those pesky 4x4 ATV's riding on the bike path in one of the local parks. The ATV operator saw us and turned his headlight off, but apparently forgot that when he brakes, the brake light comes on. So we could still see him as we drove on past, then doused our own lights, u-turned without braking, and coasted back into the park to have a talk with him.

Now as luck would have it, my sergeant was driving. Had it been me, I'd have snared that ATV in a heartbeat. But with Grandpaw Sarge driving... Well we'd see.

Sure enough, he pulled into the park entrance just as the ATV was trying to sneak out. Sarge actually thought that the ATV would stop for him just because he was blocking the drive, but the little 4x4 jumped the curb and shot past us.

Now my sergeant is a great guy, but sometimes he's not the most motivated person. He probably wouldn't even have been messing with the ATV in the first place had I not been sitting there in the passenger seat saying "get it, get it, get it!" But now the ATV operator had just blatantly defied his authority, and now I was yelling "Oh, I know that you ain't gonna let him punk you like that..." So with a shift into reverse gear, it was on.

The ATV left our park and crossed the highway into a pretty upscale neighborhood, and we were right on it. Sarge turned the lights and siren on, but the ATV operator wasn't stopping. Instead, he kept going, right down the middle of the snow-covered street, with a passenger hanging on the back. He ran a few stop signs as he twisted and turned through the neighborhood, and had we been in a cruiser instead of a 4WD SUV, we'd probably not have been able to keep up with him like we did, but we stuck on him.

Of course I was offering motivational comments like "If you can't catch him, you're a pussy!"
Sarge reminded me that he was still my sergeant, and I replied that he could be both, especially if he let that ATV get away.

We hung on the ATV for a few minutes, and finally he ran up a cul-de-sac. As he tried to turn around and pass us again, we popped the doors open and jumped out. I was all set to tackle at least one of those riders off the machine if it tried to get past me, but at this point it stopped and the operator turned out to be a 40 year old with his wife on the back. He tried to tell us that it was just all in fun and that he wasn't doing anything really wrong besides playing with his new ATV in the snow. He readily admitted that he'd been trying to lose us and that he knew that he wasn't supposed to have the ATV out on the streets or in the park. He also smelled strongly of alcoholic beverages and when I pointed that out, he got huffy, told me that yes, he had been drinking but that he wasn't drunk, and then started trying to berate us into letting them go by explaining again that he was "just having fun" and "not doing anything really wrong".

Now had he just stopped for us the first time, he'd have probably got sent home with a warning, just like we'd given some other kids on dirt bikes earlier in the night. But now he'd fled from us and was admitting it while throwing attitude at us and with alcohol on his breath to boot. Not too bright. And then as my sergeant and I discussed how to handle this (I was in favor of summary execution and he was inclined to go with something a bit less), the guy's wife kept coming over to us and interrupting to tell us how her husband has a security clearance and doesn't need this trouble, again implying that it's all our fault, not theirs. She also kept asking "Is this going to take much longer?" every few minutes, as if the only ones with anything better to do at midnight was them. And finally, when I asked the operator to consent to field sobriety tests, he told me that he'd rather wait for his lawyer.

Well once again, we arrived at a point where attitude decided how a close decision was going to go. Had there been any suggestion of remorse or an attempt at an apology, things might have gone a bit different, but now we were catching flack from these two after they caused this whole mess by breaking numerous laws. So the operator wound up getting issued Mandatory Appearance citations for Reckless Driving, Fleeing to Elude Police, Unregistered Vehicle, and a few other traffic violations. He finally did consent to a breath test via our RBT and came in at a rather low 0.05 so we didn't take him to jail for DUI, but we did impound the ATV (and we'll be holding it at his expense until the court case is resolved) and unless he's got a really good lawyer and draws our one rather weak-sentencing judge, he'll likely draw a few days in jail when he appears in court.

Oh--and that security clearance? If true, sucks to be him. This mess will likely cost him that.

And because we released him at the scene instead of trucking him back to our department for fingerprinting and photographing, we were clear in under an hour from the moment that we first saw the ATV's lights in the park. Not bad.

About an hour or so later, we headed into a nearby town to get some food. As we rolled through the still-hopping bar district (mere snow emergencies don't stop the party set from getting trashed), we were flagged down by a cab driver and a maitre d'from one of the restuarants.

Well "flagged down" is a bit mild. The cabbie threw himself in front of us, forcing us to stop or run him down.

They pointed out three guys walking away who had broke the cabbie's mirror off and slugged the maitre d'. Well this wasn't really our area, but what the hell--we U-turned and went after the three, who were now about a block away and walking with a purpose along the sidewalk.

We pulled up alongside the three and I rolled down my window and told them to stop. And the three of them looked at the police officer in the marked police vehicle and just kept walking. So I jumped out and grabbed one, and sarge shot up ahead of the group and cut the other two off with the truck. All three had been drinking, and as my luck would have it, I grabbed a lawyer. (a drunk lawyer as it turned out, but in his mind, he was Perry-fucking-Mason.)

When I put the Habeus Grabbus on Matlock, he started to spin to face my so I shoved him back up against the wall and yelled "POLICE! I SAID STOP!" very loudly. This not only told him that I was serious, but it let any of the bystanders know that this guy was being noncompliant and not just getting rousted for my amusement. I told him to give me his ID, and he started in with "What did I do?" "I SAID GIVE ME YOUR ID!" I repeated. He came up with it, and then he said that he was offended that I had grabbed him and was yelling at him. I told him that I didn't really care and that I was offended that he wasn't listening to a police officer who was trying to stop him, and that trumped his being offended over being stopped as far as I was concerned. About this time, my sergeant was walking the other two back to me and the cabbie and the maitre d' were running up screaming "That's them, that's them!" So sarge took the victims aside and I started to run the three stooges names over the radio. And I'm right in the middle of running the lawyer's ID when he interrupts me and asks when he can get it back. Apparently I'm inconveniencing another upstanding citizen now...

It turns out that it's one of the other two that actually damaged the cab and hit the maitre d' so he's the one we're focusing on, but the lawyer keeps dipping in, telling his friends over and over not to say anything and asking me if he's being detained.
"Yes, you're being detained," I tell him.
"So you're saying that I'm not free to leave then?"
"That's correct."
"So you're detaining me why?"
"Because. Now shut up."

About this time, the local police who were actually called to this show up in a bunch, and we turn it all over to them. They can sort this mess out better, and we still want food. They wind up kicking the lawyer and the other guy loose and telling them to move along while they wrap things up with the main perpetrator. Of course Matlock wants to stand around anyway and yell "Don't say anything to them! Nothing! I'll fix it all in the morning!" Then he hands a card to one of the local officers and says "I'm his attorney and you can talk to me."

The local looks at the card and disdainfully flips it into the gutter. Turns out that the wanna-be defense attorney is really a patent lawyer from New York City. We're nowhere close to New York City.

Anyway, with the arrival of a quantity the local officers, our job is done and we clear to go get some wings. The best arrests are truly those that someone else has to do all of the writing on.

Sometimes lightning really does strike twice

2009-12-27T15:31:00.000-08:00

A couple of years back, I tagged this gal for DWI one night. Smoking hot and a recent Russian immigrant. Turned out that she was one of those mail-order wives and some sap had paid big bucks to bring her here to America. Then he enlisted and went to fight overseas while she lived with his parents, cashing his checks, driving his car (and getting it impounded) and hanging out at the clubs until closing time...good wife, eh? I locked her up and her in-laws or husband or whoever ponied up for a lawyer who got her a plea deal, so the case never went to actual trial. I'd forgotten all about her until one night almost a year later when I found a car parked in a dark park a bit after midnight. I went up and interrupted a couple who were about to get busy, and when I did, I noticed the smell of alcoholic beverages. I also saw that the engine was running. Good enough. I pulled the two of them out and discovered that is was my little Russian friend from a year prior, still smoking hot and apparently unfaithful as ever. The car was her husband's but the guy she was with...not him. He's still overseas and this is just some casual hook-up.
Now I have to ask myself about the odds of this. My agency's coverage area is huge, spanning several smaller municpalities. A year ago, I'd tagged her near the northen end of it, and here, just by chance, I'd caught her again about forty miles south of there. With literally hundreds of thousands of people in our area, it boggles the mind to figure the odds of this happening.

So I hooked her for DWI again after she failed the field sobriety tests and exhibited enough other signs of intoxication for me to take her even though I hadn't actually seen her driving the car. (mere possession and control of the car is enough for the arrest here, and here being in the car with the engine running works.)

Her shack-up actually had the nerve to ask me how he was suppoosed to get home as I was hooking her up. No concern for her or curiosity about her charges--just interested in how he was supposed to get home.

I pointed out that he had feet and suggested that he use them. Then I took her back to out jail.

And on the way back, it finally dawned on her that we'd met before. She hadn't recognized me at first, and I didn't say anything. But half way back, the light came on and she told me that she knew. "Small world, eh?" I replied.

She was silent for a few minutes, and then she leaned towards the divider and told me off:
"You know, last time you arrested me, that was total bullshit. I was hardly drunk at all."

I didn't say anything; I never respond when prisoners start to ramble. Sometimes they say really cool spontaneous (and admissible) stuff if allowed to just talk.

"Yeah, I'll admit that you got me good this time. I'm fucked up. But last time I was hardly drunk at all and that was wrong."

I had to shake my head to be sure I'd just heard that. "What did you say?"
Thinking quickly, I grabbed my radio mike, keyed it, and held it up near the divider.

"I said that the last time you got me, I was hardly drunk at all. This time's solid because I'm fucked up, but last time I was hardly drunk at all and you shouldn't have arrested me."

Then she saw the microphone I was holding up.

"Oh, fuck you!" she screamed.

"Dispatch, please mark the tape and have a copy ready for pick-up prior to EOT," I said.

That confession was a nice addition to the little Tsarina's case jacket...and because I'd done nothing to solicit it, it was perfectly admissible. She wound up getting five days for this second DWI and the husband's car was impounded yet again.

I have to wonder if her husband has mailed her back to Moscow yet, or if she's still here, driving around in his car and waiting for our next encounter.

Dispatch blues

2009-12-05T13:44:00.000-08:00

Lucky me...due to a serious shortage of dispatchers recently, I've been blessed with the opportunity to pick up some serious overtime working off the street in our communications center.

However, it has not been without it's frustrations, some from idiots who call in asking for help, and some from idiots in uniform who should know better.

So, just to get everyone back on the same page:

1. Citizens. When you call 911, it is an EMERGENCY center you have called. Give me the nature of your call--keep it brief--and make sure that it's something we can do something about. DO NOT call to whine about:
a. People who are "recklessly" passing you after you set your cruise control right at the speed limit. (Aside from bothering me, you're driving like an ass. Sell your car and take the bus.)
b. Deer on the road. We all know deer cross the road. It's just one of those things. Don't call and tell me about the deer that you almost hit, or ask why we do not have more "deer crossing" signs up. Trust me, the deer won't cross there no matter how many we put up.
c. The guy who cut you off a few minutes ago, especially if you didn't get a license number and he got off at the last exit. WTF are we supposed to do about that? You probably deserved to be cut off because you were driving like caller a.

2. Citizens. When you call in, if you do not know where you are, do not get mad at me because I keep asking you to figure it out. I cannot send anyone to help you if I do not know where you are. I cannot magically divine your location, and it's really important. So if I ask you to go find a street sign or something else that will clue us both in, don't get all pissy with me. I know where I am.

3. Officers. If another officer has just asked me to check a tag and I acknowledge him or her, your silly-assed query really needs to wait fifteen seconds until I give him or her their return. If you are in a chase or a gunfight, fine. But if you just want to announce that you've checked a "special attention" location and found nothing wrong, or if you want your own tag checked, just wait. The real dispatchers may be able to handle you tag-teaming them, but I'm not there yet and I know who you are. This bullshit where the radio is totally silent for twenty minutes and then suddenly eight people have traffic all at once needs to quit.

4. Officers. When I call you several times because you do not answer up (because you weren't paying attention), don't get snide with me. You only have one real job: answering the radio. I do it when I'm out there and you can do it. And to be honest, some of you have this problem a lot more than others. You know who you are; so does everyone else. (And yes, CM, I mean you in particular.)

5. Unnamed neighboring jurisdiction: STOP TRANSFERRING ALL OF YOUR DAMNED CALLS TO US! Your calls are yours, and turfing callers off on us isn't going to make us take them; it's just going to get the callers and--us--pissed off, resulting in hurt feelings when I transfer the call back with the polite suggestion that you learn your geography and pull your own calls.

That's all for now.

Back in court

2009-11-19T10:31:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the absence--I had training and then took some leave.

But I'm back and I had court today. It was a four-year-old case where the defendant had failed to appear and just been coasting around until our warrant squad picked him up.
Actually they’d stopped by his mother’s house looking for him, and though he wasn’t there, he got spooked and turned himself in.

As I recalled the arrest, I’d been sitting alongside a road, minding my own business, when I saw a car go by at a high rate of speed, weaving in and out of the moderately heavy traffic. I went after it, and because it had a broken tail light, it was easy to track it among all of the other cars. As I stopped it, I noticed that there were no brake lights, either. The car was also missing a side mirror and had a cracked windshield—basically it was a rolling piece of junk.

Of course the driver had a nice stereo installed, one that was worth about twice what the rest of the car was, but that’s really not all that unusual in this area. Also not unusual for this area: His license to drive was suspended.

So I hooked the guy up and called for a tow truck. Shortly, a flat-bed truck showed up, and the driver dropped the rear ramp then started up the defendant’s car and drove it up onto the ramp.

Next thing I knew, the car was rolling back off the ramp right at my cruiser as the tow truck driver tried to stop it without success.

“I forgot to tell you, man,” the prisoner said just before his car impacted the front of my cruiser, smashing in a corner of the bumper and the headlight bucket, “that car ain’t got no brakes!”

Turned out knucklehead had been stopping it with the emergency brake alone for the past two to three weeks. (This explained the absence of brake lights.)

So now I had an arrest, an impound, and a “damage to government property—official vehicle” report to do. The latter did not make me a happy guy.

The pin-head bonded out and never appeared in court. A warrant was put in the system, but since he didn’t have enough money to pay his fines, get his license reinstated, and pay for impound fees, insurance and repairs on his car, he just lost the car to the auction block and got a bike. Since he wasn’t driving, he never got stopped by the police and that meant that he never got picked up on the warrant.

Well today he was back in court. He was offered a plea deal where everything would be dropped other than charges of operating an unsafe vehicle, operating after suspension, and failure to appear in court. That meant that all of my equipment cites got tossed along with operating uninsured and the Reckless Driving that I’d hit him with. I’d really wanted to see him get hit with the Reckless, but this particular prosecutor plea-bargains everything down to crazy levels. I was still grumbling as the case was called and the judge gave him a fine for the Unsafe Vehicle charge and probation for the Operating After Suspension hit. But then the judge told him that his probation would begin right after his thirty day sentence for failure to appear was served. Based on the look that I got from the bench, I think the judge heard my whispered “YES!!” But that’s ok, because the world is a just place after all.

How urban legends get started

2009-10-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

There was this kid I arrested a few months ago. He was a 17 year old who was dealing dope and I was helping one of our detectives pick him up because a confidential informant said that he was carrying a large quantity of drugs and a pistol.

We saw him walking down the street so we passed him in our unmarked car and cut him off. He turned to bolt and I banged a quick J-turn, chased him back down the street and cut him off again, pulling right up onto the sidewalk and nearly flattening him. This time he gave up and we put the Habeus Grabus on him. Then we searched him and although he didn't have the gun he was supposed to have, he at least had distribution quantity of both weed and crack in his pockets.

Of course he wanted to know how we knew he had the stuff and since we didn't want to reveal that we'd been tipped by an informant, I told him: "Dude, didn't you hear? The city's got these new weed detectors up on the light poles now. You walked right past one." Him not being very bright, he asked how they worked. I said "You know how dogs can smell weed a long ways away? Well now they have machines that can do that too, and the city bought a bunch and put them all over the place. They detect weed and take your picture and send it right to us."

And a minute later when his auntie and a batch of his cousins came running up to see why we were locking him up this time, the kid yells out to the whole block: "They said I walked by one of the new weed-finding machines! It's up on a light pole somewhere. Watch out for them poles!"

With any luck, there will now be a whole bunch of dope boys looking up at the utility poles for a bit, at least until this knucklehead realizes that one of his own pals dropped a dime on him and squelches the rumor.

All wet

2009-10-14T11:25:00.000-07:00

So we got rain. Lots of rain.

And a low-lying section of highway predictably flooded when the poorly-designed drain backed up like it always does when we get lots of rain.

The highway is under water for a stretch, anywhere from several inches to nearly three feet of water. It’s impassible to most cars at this point so our DPW crews put up barricades to close the flooded section, complete with signs directing people to a detour.

Of course this area is chock filled with stupid people. Not ignorant or uneducated stupid people, but the special kind of stupid people who think that because they drive expensive foreign cars and have high-paying jobs that don’t require them to ever perspire or get dirty, that the laws do not apply to them. Many of them also don’t think that they should have to take detours just because a sign and a few barricades suggest otherwise.

So because these people won’t stop going around our barricades and getting stuck in the water, I get assigned to go take up a traffic post at the south end of the flooded zone to direct the people to the detour and prevent them from going into the water. In other words, I have to force people to not do stupid stuff that any five-year-old would know better than to do. And trust me—they are not grateful. About one in ten feels the need to pull up to me, inform me that they need to be on the other side of the closed section, and ask if they cannot be allowed through.

Sir, that’s a BMW, not a U-Boat, so no.

And then they get all pissy because they don’t know any other route and don’t want to follow the detour signs. Fine. Go home then. See if I care. All I know is I have to sit here all day because if I didn’t, your dumb ass would drive into the water and get stuck, which if I had my way, you’d be allowed, even encouraged, to do. It might even teach you a lesson.

So I sit. And I fend off countless members of the “better-than-you” set who are mad because we’ve dared close the road. But then the inevitable happens, and the unit on the north end gets called away to deal with some sort of actual emergency and a car goes through his barricades and gets stuck in the water. The driver gets on her phone and cried about how she’s trapped and the water is rising—which it isn’t—and she makes such a fuss that I gget called and told to go find her and deal with it. And of course this means that I have to go through the flooded area to get to her.

Oh well…it’s not like it’s my car.

I drive around the barricade and slowly move through the water. At least I know enough to go slow and avoid creating a bow wave that will get sucked into the intake. I also know which sections of the roadway are just a bit higher, so I manage to avoid the really deep holes.

I get to the woman in short order. Her Mercedes is on the other side of the Jersey wall, stalled out in about a foot and a half of water. She’s hysterical and won’t open her door because she doesn’t want the water to get in and wreck the carpeting and seat. She thinks that I’m going to tow her car out with my cruiser. Once I disavow her of that notion, she insists that I call her a tow truck.

Under my breath, I have already called her much worse than that.

I put the call in for Triple A and of course they’re backed up and give us an ETA of three to five hours. This is too much for her, so she finally opens her door—flooding her car’s interior—and climbs over the jersey wall to my car, which is sitting up on the raised shoulder sufficient to keep my interior dry. I then carefully turn around and drive back out the way that I came, because I know that there’s a deeper spot ahead that I could not otherwise get through.

On the way back—a distance of about a mile and a half—there are now EIGHT cars stuck, all of which went around the barrier right after I did, each trying to either command the water to get out of their way or re-enact that scene from the movie Risky Business where Tom Cruise put the Porsche into Lake Michigan. They all either came through too fast and drowned their cars, or drove cars with less ground-clearance than my Crown Victoria.

I then spent the next hour ferrying each of them out, making sure to issue each one a citation for Drive Around Barricade as I did. Surprisingly, they all took the cites without much complaining, but that’s because I don’t think that any of them realized that these citations would give their insurance companies cause to deny towing and repair claims later. But then being stupid is supposed to hurt, or at least cost money. And hopefully they all realize now that no amount of money and no impressive job can exempt you from the laws, particularly the laws of nature and physics.

Poor judgment can be expensive

2009-09-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

And then there was the day that we were all out making overtime bucks on a crackdown on speeders. Pretty much every officer not on regular duty was in making some extra cash, and I was no exception. I’d taken a laser and a few ticket books and gone down to one of my favorite hunting spots—the bottom of a long descending section of highway that’s about a mile past a point where the speed limit drops ten miles an hour from 55 to 45mph.

Now prior to this point, there are four signs either announcing the speed limit change or warning people of the impending speed limit change, so as far as I’m concerned, tagging people here is fair game. They were clearly warned.

What I do here is simple: I stand just off the side of the road with my laser, spot speeders, estimate their speed visually, then confirm with the laser. Then I walk out into the roadway, flag the speeder to a halt, then bring them over onto the shoulder to conduct business. It’s quick and easy and I can bang out dozens of tickets in relatively short order here, all of them for seriously excessive speed, typically well over and above even the 55pmh limit back up the highway. I understand that almost everyone speeds a little, so I’m casting my net for the big fish: the ones who are driving in excess of 75mph and who are therefore eligible for a Reckless Driving cite, which anyone doing more than 30mph over the limit here qualifies for.

I ding a few people without incident for a while, and then I see this Mercedes convertible whipping down the highway at virtually light-speed. I estimate 90mph and laser confirms 92. (Damn, I’m good…) I step out to wave this man down, and as he slows to a stop, I can see that he’s waving something and shouting “I already got one!”

OK, He got something. But what? And why should I care?

However, me being the curious sort, I ask him the first question. He responds by telling me that he just got a ticket from my “friend up the road.” As he’s holding it, I ask to see it, and sure enough, one of my fellow overtime whores has just stroked this guy for 86 on a 55mph zone. All I can do is smile as I direct him over onto the shoulder.

“But I just got a ticket!”

So now I have to explain to him that we do not operate under a system which grants carte blanche to anyone previously cited for a specific violation to commit it again for the rest of the day. “This ticket is for speeding back there,” I tell him as I hand his first reckless Driving ticket back to him. “Now we’re going to address your speed here. This is totally different.”

“Look, I’m on the way to the airport for a flight and I’m late! You guys are going to make me miss my plane!” He even showed me his airline ticket, which appeared to confirm that his flight was due to depart in a bit less than an hour.

So let’s see…he knew what time his plane was supposed to take off, but he dithered and now I’m making him miss his plane? Like I went into his house this morning and hit his alarm clock’s “snooze” button too many times? Whatever. If he was trying for sympathy, all he managed to do was compel me to write out the ticket just that much slower. I also took a moment to phone my compadre back up the highway and let him know who I just stopped.

“He was a total tool,” my squad-mate said when he heard the name. “Nail him hard.”

So I nailed him, just like I was going to do anyway. And predictably, when I walked back up to him and handed him his latest citation—his second Reckless Driving cite of the morning—he was in a lather. And of course it was all our/my fault.

“Now I’m really late! It’ll be a miracle if I make my flight now, thanks to you guys!” Just give me that ticket.”

But I held it back to make sure that I had his full attention.

“Sir, you need to know that your speed is not safe nor is it appropriate. Now I can understand your frustration as being late, but maybe next time you’ll want to get up a bit earlier so that you can get to the airport in a legal, safe manner.” I then proceeded to explain to him that he now has a second mandatory court date, but that because I was nice, I scheduled it for the same day as his previous mandatory court date.

“Just give me my license,” he yelled, visibly upset. “I have to go!”

“Sir, if you can’t calm down and drive safely, you won’t be going anywhere. I’m not having you driving badly like this on my highway, so what we’re going to do here is that I’m going to give you your license back, but then I’m going to follow you as far as the airport just to make sure that you drive safely. And if I see you exceed the speed limit even by a few miles an hour—or if I see you do anything else that’s unsafe—I’ll not only stop you again but I’ll be taking you off the road and arresting you, do you understand?”

“You can’t do that!”

“Well Sir, you just watch me in your rearview mirror if you think I can’t, because I’ll be right there.” And I handed him his license and his new ticket back and went back to my cruiser.

He was watching me as he pulled out, and I could almost feel his rage reflecting back as I pulled right out behind him. Some people are worth giving up a honey hole for.

I followed him all the way to the airport, about seven miles. And all the way there, he held his speed just under the limit as he alternated between watching his speedometer, watching me in his mirror, and occasionally actually glancing at the road ahead. It took us almost ten minutes to get to the airport ramp, but he kept it under 45mph the whole way. I checked the dash clock and it was 27 minutes before his plane’s scheduled departure time. He’d never park and get inside now in time to board. Oh well…

He did show up in court though. And the judge was less than moved, finding him guilty of both Reckless Driving charges after he rejected the prosecutor’s offer to dismiss one in exchange of a guilty plea on the other. He earned twelve points on his license and half a year on the bus following a six-month license suspension. I’m betting that insurance for that Mercedes just got pretty expensive, too. But if you’re going to be dumb…

Did I mention that I really enjoy my job sometimes?

Oh, deer!

2009-09-30T07:29:00.000-07:00

So one evening, I’m just driving along on patrol on a rural back road, minding my own business of course, when this stupid deer bolts out in front of me.
I brake, I swerve…I still hit it and send it tumbling into the ditch.

Damn.

I get out look at my cruiser. The left front headlight is shattered and the whole headlight bucket area is dished in. Fantastic. Now I get to do an accident report. I hate accident reports with a passion, even ones that don’t involve my own personal data.

Next I walk up to the deer. It’s laying there looking at me, making no effort to get up. I figure it must be hurt pretty bad if it won’t even try to run away.

I key up my radio, call in the “10-50 involved”, which indicates that there’s been a collision and I’m part of it, then notify our dispatcher that I’m going to be shooting an injured deer.

Almost like it understood, the deer looks at me as if to say “shoot who?!” and then it stands up and runs off into the woods.

For a few seconds, I’m happy for the deer. But then it dawns on me that without the deer, it’s just me and a busted patrol car and no way for me to prove what just happened.

“Come back!” I yell into the woods after the deer. But alas, the deer is not willing to cooperate.

A few minutes later, my sergeant shows up. He’s rightly skeptical of my claim that the damage was caused by a deer that’s not even here, but fortunately, there was a bit of deer fur and blood on the car at the impact point, so he believed my story.

My squad-mates were another matter, however. It was several days before I stopped hearing references to “the alleged deer” in the locker room and at roll call.

Ah, Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, Eugene...

2009-09-17T08:51:00.001-07:00

So one day, I'm just tooling along through the neighborhoods when I see this white Ford Escort with a messed up left front fender pass me going the other way. The driver gives me that "Oh-shit-it's-the-police" look as we pass, so I know instantly that he's guilty of something even though I have no idea what it is. I bang a U-turn to begin following him with the hope that I can find a lawful reason to stop him, but he makes it easy for me by punching the gas and trying to jack-rabbit away.

Dude--you've got a Ford Escort and I've got a Crown Vic Police Interceptor. Come on...

I hit the lights and siren and of course he refuses to stop. I put the pursuit out on my radio, but no sooner do I get the words out than he skids to a stop in front of an apartment building and bails out. I slide to a stop and go out after him, but he gets to the building door ahead of me and runs inside. I'm slowed down a bit by my need to quick-peek the doorway and subsequent corners, and he gets up the stairs and into one of the apartments on the third floor before I can make it up there. I have no idea which unit he's in, and of course I can't expect any of his friends and neighbors to rat him out. OK, fine. But I still have his car downstairs. I go back down, and when my back-up arrives, I toss the car to find the name of the owner and discover a bag of weed in the center console. Turns out that the car is unregistered and the tags are expired and belong on another car. (Big shock in this neighborhood...) At least I got the guy's dope, and I'll impound the car, which means that someone is going to have to pony up some cash and ownership documents to get it back from the tow yard or forfeit the car altogether. Other than the fender and the typically filthy interior, it's not really a bad car.

So as I wait on the impound tow truck, knucklehead starts yelling at me out the window, taunting me for being slow. He quits laughing when I yell back that I'm taking his car.
A few minutes pass, and then a woman walks out of the building and tells me that the car's driver is her baby's daddy and that all of her tax documents are in the car and she needs those to get her tax refund. She wants to get them out. I tell her that I'm not letting her or anyone else take anything out of the car, but that if he wants to come down and surrender himself, I'll leave the car here instead of impounding it.
"Oh, he not gonna do that," she replies.
"Tough break," I say. "That's the only way I let this car or anything in it go."
She goes back inside. A minute later, he starts cussing me out of the window. Unfortunately I can't tell which window. Oh well. I take another look in the car and sure enough, there's an envelope inside with filled-out income tax forms and documents. At least I know who she is and her apartment number now. But I still don't know his name and I won't be able to get a warrant for her apartment with what I've got, especially since all the charges at this point are traffic violations.
I wait some more. Then a large woman walks up to me and tells me that the Escort is her son's car. She says that he's not a bad boy and that he's actually trying to do right and provide for his babies (I note the plural) and that he has a job that he was just coming back from. She says that he really needs the car and that he was just scared because his driver's license "might" be suspended (I'd be surprised if it wasn't) and she begs me to just leave him and the car be. I ask her what his name is and where he's at, and of course she says that she can't tell me that. I tell her to have a nice day and to let him know that he can get the car back from the impound yard if he shows up there with a valid registration and the towing and storage fees. I also wish like hell that this city would require a valid driver's license before releasing an impounded car like so many other cities do, but they don't and the hood rats all know it which is why many of these cars go through cycles of being impounded by the police and redeemed by the same owners who don't have drivers' licenses and probably never will. Once they get a few hundred dollars in fines, it's really not cost-effective to pay them as the fine for driving without a license here is minimal and can be paid at the police station without even having to show up in court.

Big Mama steps away and goes to sit on the stoop, where she is joined by other people--friends, relatives, or whoever--all of whom take to pleading with me over and over to just let him and the car go. Meanwhile he's still sporadically cursing me out the window, so I tell his mother that the more he does that, the less charitable I feel towards him. So she stands up, walks out to the sidewalk, looks up at the building, and hollers: "Eugene! You stop that right now! You making it worse!"
Eugene yells back. "Dammit Mama, you just told him my name!"
I have to laugh. Real rocket scientists, this bunch.
I call up to Eugene and tell him to just come down and take the arrest like a man and quit putting all of these women to so much trouble. He curses me again and tells me not to be putting his business out in front of everybody. I respond by shouting back and asking him what he's going to do about it. Come down here, maybe?
He curses again but says nothing more until the tow truck arrives. At this time, nearly a dozen people are standing there with Big Mama and Baby's Mama, imploring me not to take the car. Kind of touching, all of this concern for a knucklehead, but not nearly touching enough. The car goes away and we all clear.

I have my scheduled days off, and when I get back to work early the next week, I check with the tow yard, and sure enough, Eugene or someone on his behalf showed up and redeemed the car. It cost them about $400.00 but they got it back. Of course I still have no last name for Eugene, but I know where he's staying, what he drives, and more than likely, what time he gets home from whatever job he has. So I go back out there a little before the time that I saw him last week and I and a back-up officer just sit in a parking lot near where I first saw him driving and we wait.

Sure enough, there goes that same white Escort with the messed-up front fender, and the same knucklehead is driving. He sees us right about the time that we're shifting our cruisers into "Drive" and he takes off again. We go after him, and it's clear that he's going to try the same trick. He races right back to the same apartment building and skids to a stop in front of it, just like he did the last time, but I'm closer now, and when he throws open his door to bail out, it just hits my bumper as I slide to a stop next to him, leaving him with no way to get out of the left side of his car. He jumps across and tries to go out the passenger side but we're on him and this time, Eugene gets grabbed and taken off to jail.

And for good measure, I impound his car again.

I charge him with everything that I can hang on him for today's dumb stunt--Operating Without a License, Operating Without Insurance, Unregistered Auto, Fleeing to Elude (at this time, only a misdemeanor in that city) etc., and I get warrants for him for the same charges based on the preceding week and serve those on him too before we let him go. I also hang a Possession of MJ charge on him, but as expected, the city attorney ash-canned that one since I didn't take it off him and because the car that I found it in wasn't registered to him. Eugene spent the night in jail and was released the next day pending his court appearance.

OK, now I felt like we were at least even, but we have a thing here for making sure that the community understands that it's not a good idea for individuals to try to punk us. Come Saturday afternoon, I head back over to that area and sit and wait again. Like clockwork, there goes Eugene in that Escort again. Since I already know that his license is suspended, I go after him. This time he stops his car on the left side of the street so I can't block his door, and he bails out again. So I run my cruiser up over the curb and use it to cut him off from the building's door, and I jump out and tackle him. Once more, Eugene's off to jail, and his car's off to impound. And this time, since he's already got an open case and is out on supervised release, his getting re-arrested on new charges means that he has to sit in jail until his public defender can get a pre-trial release hearing for him, and that usually takes a few weeks. Plus I impounded his car yet again.

A month or so passed, and I'd not thought about Eugene much, but then one afternoon I happened to be driving through that neighborhood again and coming up the road towards me was that White Escort again...and Eugene was driving it!

I stopped, waiting for him to pass so I could U-turn on him and chase him back to his building again, but this time Eugene just pulled over to the curb, parked his car, and stuck his hands out the window.
"I'm tired of this, Officer Krupke," he said, "I ain't even gonna run no more!"

I was so proud of Eugene for learning his lesson that this time when I arrested him again, I didn't even impound his car.

Eventually all of the charges that I'd laid on Eugene from these four encounters got him probation, a heap of community service, a year in jail--suspended of course--and a promise from the judge that if he got arrested again, he'd do the whole year. I gave myself two weeks to nail him again and make that come true, but Eugene either moved away or sold the Escort because I never saw him or that little white Ford again. But at least he was good for four arrests in my stat book and hopefully served as an object lesson to his neighbors. Moral of the story: If you're going to run from the police, don't just try to run home, and once the police have your number and know that you're suspended, it's probably not a good idea to keep driving the same distinctive car down the same roads at the same time every day.

Some people's Kids, again.

2009-09-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

So I was checking a local park one day when I saw a lone car parked way off in a remote parking area. Being the curious sort, I coasted over to it and saw on my approach that it contained two people. I parked behind it and got out and walked up on them just to say hello (because I’m really working on my “Officer Friendly” people skills), make sure that everything was all right, and see what they were doing.

As it turned out, they were high-school-aged teens and they were drinking beer. Additionally, his pants are open and he’s exposed. It looked like he was getting some action before I rolled up and killed the mood.

Uh-oh…Busted!

So I pull the male driver out of the car and get his ID. He’s actually being fairly cooperative, so I sit him down on the grass ahead of and to the left of his car where I can keep an eye on him, and then I go around to have a few words with his girlfriend and fellow underage drinker in the passenger seat. And here’s where it started to get stupid.

I get her out of the car, noticing that she has just set an opened beer can on the floor by her seat. I ask her for her ID and she replies that I don’t have any probable cause to ask her for her personal information. I let her know that I don’t need “probable cause” to request her ID and that me seeing her in the car with the beer is more than enough reason for me to ask for it. Then she starts trying to break this down, telling me that she doesn’t believe that I had any probable cause (that phrase again) to even approach them, and therefore I have no grounds to ID either of them. I let her know that I have every right to walk up to anyone sitting in a public place just the same as anyone else does and I tell her to come up with her ID.

Now all this time, her boyfriend is sitting peacefully on the grass, not causing me a bit of trouble. But this one, she’s giving me more than enough for both of them. And as it turns out, she’s just getting started.

Next she tells me that she had no ID with her. I tell her that if she wants to stick to that claim, I’ll just figure out who she is after I arrest her for minor in possession of alcohol. Then she smugly tells me that without proof that she’s a minor, I can’t arrest her for that.

I debate just locking her up right there, but I really don’t want a juvenile arrest, so I have her sit down on the grass and I ask her boyfriend if he minds if I take a look through his car. He quickly says that he has no problem, even as she’s trying to tell him that he doesn’t have to let me (I’m starting to suspect that she’s some sleazy defense lawyer’s kid by now) so with his consent, I reach in, pick up the purse that’s sitting on the seat, open it up, and extract a pocketbook with a driver’s license clearly visible in a plastic holder on the outside. “Well that was easy enough,” I say as I take the license out of the holder.

She’s on her feet in a flash. “You have no right to touch my purse!”

I explain that the owner of the car gave me consent to search the car, and the purse was unattended in the car, so yeah, that means that I get to look in there. And since it means that I don’t have to take her to jail, she should count her blessings and sit back down on the grass. She backs onto the grass but remains standing until I tell her that if I have to tell her again, she’s going in cuffs. Now she sits.

I give the car a cursory once-over and take the beer out. Both kids come back clean on the record checks so I tell the boy to call his parents and let me talk with them. He complies and in short order, I have his parents coming down to get him. Not a big deal at this point—he’s just getting a juvenile cite for the beer and I’m not letting him drive. He’s actually fine with that.

But then I get back to her. She won’t call her parents. She tells me that she doesn’t know their phone numbers. Her newest claim is that they refuse to give her their numbers, because they belong to a bike gang and travel around the country. Going on, she tells me how they only call her from pre-paid cell phones with blocked numbers so that she can’t even see their numbers on her caller ID.

I’ve had enough of her so I go back into her purse, take her phone out, open it up, and check the directory. As expected, there are listings for both “Mom” and “Dad”. She now gets upset and jumps up, launching into a profanity-laced tirade, so I grab her and cuff her and put her in my back seat, explaining as I do that she’s not under arrest yet but that she is being detained “for her safety and my own”. (I’ve never understood how that’s for their safety, but then I’ve never really much cared.)

Before I can even get the tickets finished, his parents show up. They seem like decent people and mom tells me that the problem is his girlfriend. This of course elicits a shout of “Fuck you!” from my partially-opened back seat windows. Mom look back at her and replies: “And that’s right where you belong, Jennifer! The back seat of a police car on your way to jail!” Jennifer starts to curse some more, but I slap the window with my hand and tell her to knock it off, actually silencing her for a minute. After I give him a quick PBT to make sure that he’s not totally drunk, (he wasn’t), Junior’s mom and dad took him and his car away. And since he had been nothing but cooperative I didn’t even bother bringing up the lap action that he was getting.

And then Jennifer’s parents showed up.

With no leather or chains or visible tattoos, they sure didn’t look like bike gang members. What’s more, they were very polite and apologetic and struck me right off as normal, decent people. And when Jennifer started to run her mouth again, her own mother told her to shut up before I could. I talked to them out of her earshot for a bit, explaining things. This time I did mention the lap action, and I got the impression that if Dad ever saw the boy again, the boy wasn’t going to come off too well. Mom was very apologetic and thanked me for not arresting their daughter, who, as it turned out, had already been arrested and convicted twice for underage possession.

Well that explains all of her “legal knowledge”…And to make it better, Jennifer was now 18 years old, so she got a ticket for grown-up court this time.

I took her out of the car, uncuffed her, and told her that she was going to get to go home with her parents but only if she cooperated with the PBT. As expected, she tried to fake blowing into it, but eventually I got a sample (and a result for my court case) and I set about finishing up her ticket and my notes. She began to argue with her mother at this point, and in no time at all, she yelled “Fuck you, bitch!”

Her mom immediately and without hesitation slapped her face. Hard. I mean, that slap cracked so loud that it produced an echo.

Jennifer gasped, then turned to me and screamed: “That’s domestic abuse! You have to arrest her right now! I demand that you arrest her for that!”

Nice kid, trying to get her own mom locked up when Mom was only here to keep her from going to jail.

But I told Jennifer that I’d been looking away and hadn’t actually seen the slap. I also told her that I’d heard something, but that it just sounded like a parent giving her kid some basic discipline. Mom looked at me, grinned, and mouthed “Thank you” and I gave her a wink as Jennifer ran to their car and got in the back seat, slamming the door shut. I looked over to Dad and he gave me a “thumb’s up”. Both parents told me that they don’t let her run wild and that they try to keep control on her, but she’s been running wild and threatening to call Social Services and claim abuse whenever they try to punish her. They were ecstatic to see that Jennifer’s first actual attempt to get them in trouble had failed spectacularly.

They took her away, and I didn’t see or hear from them again until her court appearance, when the mother came up to me, shook my hand, and thanked me again for not taking either her or Jennifer to jail. I already knew that the boy had pled guilty in Juvenile Court and gotten a deferred sentence and a driver’s license suspension until his 18th birthday pursuant to state law, but when Jennifer’s case was called in regular (adult) court, and after I’d testified, the judge gave her 120 hours of community service. The judge asked her if there was anything that would pose a problem with that sentence, and Jennifer exclaimed that she’d planned on spending the summer at the beach with her friends. This judge is a funny judge though, and he told her that if she was lucky, perhaps the city would let her work on their golf course because the sand traps have sand so it’d be just like the beach.

It’s not every day that you hear people laughing in court, but that one had everyone except Jennifer cracking up.

Some people's kids...

2009-09-01T07:35:00.000-07:00

So one summer night about 1AM or thereabouts, I’m driving along, minding my own business, when I see an SUV go by in the other direction with four teens in it. Of course these are white kids from the ‘burbs, so they don’t have a clue about playing it cool. Instead, they treat me to a fantastic display of the “Oh shit—we’re busted!” look as we pass each other.

Now I don’t know what these idiots are up to but I know that there’s something going on, so I bang a U-turn and go after the SUV. Fortunately the driver has decided to make it easy for me by rabbiting up to the next cross-street and then pulling into a subdivision and quickly dousing the lights. Granted, I had lost sight of the vehicle for a second or two while turning around, but this trick is so predictable that when I didn’t see the SUV on the road, I just knew where I’d find it. Sure enough—As I rounded the first right-turn corner, there it was, making like a parked and unoccupied.

I pulled up behind it and activated all of my lights. Marking out with the stop, I used my PA to tell them to sit up and raise their hands so that I could make sure that no one was holding anything dangerous. I also told the driver to lower all of the windows then turn the engine off. Then I walked up to see him.

As I approached and looked into the back seat at the two scared high-school boys sitting there, the smell of beer was almost strong enough to wrinkle my shirt. I asked the visibly nervous driver for his license and registration, then I asked him where the beer was.

All four immediately started to deny having any beer at all.

Come on, guys…Do I really look that stupid?

Back-up arrives and I step all four of them out and seat them on the curb. Sure enough, there are partially-full beer cans under both front seats. Beer is also sloshing around on the floorboards, the result of four panicked kids trying to shove opened beer cans under seats that aren’t high enough to allow beer cans to be shoved under them vertically.

The SUV belongs to the parents of the driver. It’s not even three weeks old. It probably still had that “new car” scent to it a few minutes ago. Now it’s going to have a “stale beer” smell.

I give each kid a breath test on my portable breath tester. All four have consumed alcohol and each gets cited for underage consumption. And now comes the fun part…calling four sets of parents at one in the morning to tell them to come get their kids.

One boy begged me not to call his father, an Army Major on the nearby post. He said that his dad had promised to send him to military school if he messed up one more time, and he really, really didn’t want to have to go to military school. Of course I didn’t believe him, but even if I had, I wouldn’t have cared. I started calling and in short order, four very unhappy parents were on the way to the scene of my traffic stop.

Typically when this sort of thing happens, the parents are often madder at me than at their precious little darlings, so I was expecting to get some attitude from a couple of them. However the Major arrived first.

I explained to him what had happened, and showed him the beer. He looked into the SUV and saw all of the spilled beer that was quickly reeking it up. Then he turned and began to dress down all four of the boys in a manner worthy of a Drill Sergeant. He went on and on about stupidity and thoughtlessness and the risks to their future, then he excoriated them for wrecking the interior of the SUV. They wouldn’t even make eye contact with him as he went on and on, pacing back and forth in front of them.

As the other parents arrived in short order, he joined me as I told them what had been going on, and he apologized to each of them for his son’s role. He also requested that the other parents wait around for a few minutes, and when the owners of the SUV showed up, the Major made each boy apologize to them for dumping the beer all over the floor carpeting. I was really liking this guy. Why can’t more parents be like him?

Finally, after the other boys were sent home with their parents and their juvenile court appearance tickets, the Major put his son in his own car, then apologized to me for all of the trouble. I told him that it was just my job and that it wasn’t a problem for me. I then told him that his son had claimed that the Major was going to send him to military school if I’d called him. I’d expected the Major to get a chuckle out of that, but he looked at me with a serious expression on his face and said that he had told his boy that, and that he’d meant it. Apparently this wasn’t the boy’s first screw up and as a result of this incident, the boy was going to spend his upcoming junior year and probably his senior year at a nearby military prep school where he could get a bit more structure away from his bad-influence friends.

I cleared the scene thinking that if every parent cared as much as this one did, my job and that of most other cops would be a lot easier.

Truth in comics...

2009-08-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

Garey McKee nails it sometimes.

Disclaimer: Any resemblance between these characters and the characters in my beat area is completely coincidental.

Of Hummers and gals not too bright...

2009-08-25T08:19:00.001-07:00

So one night I’m driving south down the highway, minding my own business, when I see a vehicle traveling northbound on the other side of the median at a pretty good clip. I hit my radar and confirm that the vehicle is traveling thirty-three miles over the posted limit.

Normally I don’t bother jumping the median for something like this since it’s almost a given that I’ll lose sight of the vehicle, making a positive identification problematic, but in this case, it’s a bright yellow, full-sized Hummer with a radio station logo on the side, so that won’t be a problem here. I hit the grass and bang a u-turn and go after the Hummer.

I catch up and stop it about a mile up the highway. It’s being driven by a young black girl who denies speeding. I tell her that I got her on radar and there’s no doubt at all, and then she asks: “Well how do you know it was this Hummer?”

Yeah. Because there are so many bright yellow Hummers with radio station logos on the side driving around.

Then she asks for a break, telling me that she’s “Hottie Melinda”, a DJ with the radio station whose logo decorates the side of the vehicle. She says that she’ll get in trouble with the station and not be allowed to drive the Hummer if she gets a ticket in it.

My heart bleeds. Really it does. In fact my eyes are so teary back in my cruiser that I almost have trouble writing out the Speeding and Reckless Driving citations that I’m giving her. Of course when she gets them, she gets upset and tells me that because of me, she won’t be allowed to drive the Hummer any more. And then she starts crying, and the tears are running down her cheeks like water from a faucet.

Whatever. I explain her options and point out her mandatory court date and send her on her way. Hopefully she’ll show up on the assigned date and just plead out to the usual deal that the prosecutors offer to anyone with a decent driving record—pay the speeding fine and the Reckless gets dropped. Almost everyone takes that deal because the Reckless is a heavy hit, with the fine and points involved, to say nothing of the hike in insurance rates.

A few weeks later though, I get the subpoena. Hottie Melinda wants her trial on the matter.

Now maybe some people think that they have a good chance of beating a ticket just because the officer may not show up. Well here, we get in trouble if we miss court, and my attendance record is flawless. Besides, if we ever need to miss a day and we let the Prosecutor’s Office know even a few days in advance, they’ll just get continuances on all of our cases. The defendants will show up, get all happy when they find out that we’re not going to be in court that day, and then get served with a new court date instead of the dismissal that they thought they’d get.

However it seems that in this case, my defendant really wanted her trial, because she had what she thought was a winning argument:

“Your Honor, I don’t think I was speeding at all. I think that the officer just stopped me because I was in a Hummer.”

This piqued the judge’s curiosity. “So why would the officer stop you just for driving a Hummer?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe because he’s jealous.”

The judge looked at me. I so tried not to roll my eyes, but I know that he saw me. How could you not?

The judge asked her another question. “The officer has already testified as to his determination of your speed. What do you have to say about that, if anything?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But I know that I wasn’t speeding. Oh—and Your Honor, I just want to let you know that I’m not just some kid…I’m Hottie Melinda!”

Ah yes…the old “I’m sure that I wasn’t speeding” claim, followed by the fabled “do you know who I am?” ploy. That almost always sways judges, right?

But alas, it didn’t seem to persuade this one. He replied by outlining my allegation, including my testimony regarding my radar reading, and asked if he should not credit my testimony because she thought that she wasn’t speeding and because she worked for a radio station.

Apparently she could read the writing on the wall, because she began to cry again. And I was impressed; this ability to just turn on the waterworks on cue like that is something not every girl can do.

“I know I wasn’t speeding,” she said again between the sobs. “I don’t speed, because the radio station won’t let me drive the Hummer if I do, so I wasn’t speeding! He just stopped me because I’m a young girl driving a nice shiny Hummer…and because I’m black!”

All right! There it was! I knew that one was coming sooner or later and I’d have been disappointed if that tired old ploy hadn’t been trotted out in this case. And now it was the judge who was rolling his eyes. He’s heard that one before, too…about a thousand times. And he knows me well enough to know that I don’t care about race, sex or any other criteria—I hammer every violator equally.

So he finds Hottie Melinda guilty of Speeding and Reckless Driving, and he suspends her license for ninety days because she’s got a few previous violations on her record, including a prior Reckless three years previous. Of course now she’s sobbing and hyperventilating, so the judge asks her if she’s going to require medical help from the court nurse. It was actually an honest question asked with legitimate concern, but she was angry now and snapped back at the judge.
“I don’t want nothing from this G-ddamned Cracker court! Just wait until my listeners hear about this bullshit!”

And quicker than you could say “contempt of court”, Hottie Melinda, was on her way back to the holding cells with the Bailiff. Some people just don’t know when to quit digging, and the defendant was obviously one of them.

She was apparently a bit more contrite when she was brought before the judge the following day though because I heard that he let her go.

Fools in da' hood

2009-06-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

Ah, Copwatch and Indymedia… Never before have I seen such a bunch of pathetic losers venting their impotent rage at the police. I’ve just read on the Bitches in Blue blog about how the local hemorrhoids have been harassing the Chicago Police Department and claiming—without merit—that the police in that city are and always have been power-crazed bullies.

I have to admit that we have those simpletons here in our area too. Mostly they just make harmless noise and I still laugh when I recall the last time that I had anything to do with their antics.

This encounter stemmed from their outrage over the fact that our agency was responding to an increase in violent drug-related crime in a particular public housing complex by engaging in a practice known as “jump-outs”. In a jump-out, officers roll around in a van all inconspicuous until they see what looks like a group of drug dealers or other assorted thugs. The van pulls up, the officers jump out, and everyone in the group gets detained, run for warrants, and at least frisked if not searched. Typically this results in a warrant hit or two and the recovery of some quantity of drugs and/or a weapon is almost guaranteed. You see, jump-out squads don’t just hit up any group of people—or even any group of black males. They know what the signs of drug dealing and gang affiliation are, and they target the ones who fit those criteria. The goal is the interdiction of bad people, not just harassing groups of teens or young adults.

I wasn’t part of the actual jump-out squad, but I was assigned to loiter in the area as rapid-response back-up when needed. If the thugs broke and ran, or someone began to fight, I was right around the corner.

Well we’d been doing this for a few weeks, and we’d wrapped up a number of bad guys. We’d also snared about a dozen guns and a fair bit of narcotics. In fact, it was going so well that the local newspaper got hold of it and did a story on it. And this brought the kook brigade out in force.

Now when you’re policing a minority-majority city (one where the population is predominately black) and there is no outrage from the usual suspect who claim to speak for the black community—the local Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson wanna-be types in addition to the NAACP—you’re probably on pretty safe ground. And none of these folks were complaining, because they knew that we were surgically removing from the community the very scumbags who were preying on the decent people and making life hard for the elderly and the single moms who just wanted to get through the day without becoming crime victims. But then the angry white kids showed up.

And these are the fools who run websites like Copwatch and the various Indymedia sites. Self-proclaimed “anarchists”, most are really spoiled suburbanite kids whose parents either don’t know how to raise them to be decent, responsible young adults or they just don’t care. Within a day or two, these little nit-wits are posting all sorts of smack talk on the internet, sending letters to the editor at the newspaper, and posting Xerox-copy fliers around the project telling people to rise up and resist the oppressive police.

Yeah, I know… there’s just no curing stupid.

Well that alone wasn’t really very noteworthy, because everyone knows that there aren’t more than a couple dozen of these little turds in the group, and none of them actually live in our city but only commute in to try to rile things up and then go home to mommy’s and daddy’s basement in one of the more trendy suburbs to watch MTV and play video games in lieu of actually working a job or going to school. But in this case, the kids decided to take it a step further and one day they just appeared in the projects with video cameras, looking for our units or any other signs of police activity, and then dipping in from the sidewalk, telling anyone that we were dealing with that they didn’t have to answer our questions or consent to searches. They basically succeeded in getting us to suspend operations for the day because the unit supervisor didn’t want to give them any publicity by letting them gin up some incident to put on Youtube, so in that regard, they actually accomplished something.

However, a couple of hours after we’d pulled out, some of these little cretins actually walked into our station, looking a bit beaten and battered. It seems that after we’d left, some of those “fine, upstanding people” who live in the projects jumped them and took all of their money and their video cameras—the very cameras that they’d been using to harass US—and roughed them up a bit, either because they didn’t immediately comply or because they displayed some of their trademark “We’re superior to you” attitudes. (I’m betting on the latter.) Now—incredibly—they want to make a police report and they want US to roll back up into the neighborhood in force and recover their stuff for them.

We are, of course, professional enough not to laugh in their faces, but I’m sure they could hear us busting up in the hallway behind our lobby area. Karma can be a real bitch at times, can’t it?

Is it real, or is it...

2009-06-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

A couple of recent posts over on Officer Smith's blog reminded me of the time that I stopped a seventeen year old punk kid for speeding on my highway.

I'd approached his car and was standing just behind his door post as usual. I told him who I was and why I'd stopped him, and he was collecting his license, registration and proof of insurance as instructed. As I watched him open his center console to get the paperwork, I suddenly saw the butt of a pistol inside that console, and his hand was going right towards it. I had a second or two to decide what to do, and my phone with patent lawyer David Woycechowsky's phone number on it was way back in my cruiser, so I had to make a fast decision.

Fortunately, my training took over, so I was spared the need to reflect and contemplate probabilities. My sidearm was in my hand in an instant as I stepped sideways behind his door post (and not back into traffic) and yelled "STOP!" as loudly as I could.

I did not yell "freeze". Only Roscoe P. Coletrane yells that. No real cop ever yells "freeze". That word is too long and does not lend itself to enunciation under stress.

Fortunately for both uf us, Junior actually did stop, and he pulled his hand away from that pistol. He was literally less than four pounds away from dying right there.

With a quick sideways glance to make sure that no traffic was coming, I reached down with my free hand and yanked his door open, then reached in and grabbed him by the hair and extracted him from the car and away from that gun.

It may not have been an Academy-approved technique, but it worked.

I pulled him from the car and proned him out on the pavement, grateful that I'd at least positioned my cruiser such that there was at least a small safety zone to work in. I quickly got him cuffed then got him up and moved him to the safety of the grass for a proper search, calling for backup as I did so. In a few moments, the back-up units began arriving, so I turned the kid over to another officer and went back up to recover the gun.

Damned if it wasn't a very realistic BB gun made to resemble a Beretta Model 92. It was the same size, had the same finish, and junior had even gone the extra distance by painting it's orange muzzle cap black. at a glance, it was indistinguishable from the real thing.

I'd almost killed this kid over a toy. To say that I was pissed beyond belief doesn't begin to describe it.

Well now this had gone out over the radio, and supervisors were aware and enroute, so there was no way I could just kick the kid in the ass and send hm on his way even if I'd been so inclined--which I wasn't. We have a statute here that allows a charge for pointing or brandishing a weapon or an object similar in appearance, and even though it was a bit of a stretch since his hand never actually touched it, I reasoned that his having it in a spot where it was likely that I or someone else would see it was good enough to at least hook him up. Let the lawyers argue it later. He went to jail and his car went to car jail.

It should have ended here, or more precisely, it should have ended a few days down the road when the prosecutor quietly dismissed it after things had cooled down, but Junior's dad was a big wheel who was more upset that his son had been:
--sworn at by a police officer,
--struck by a police officer, and:
--nearly shot and killed by a police officer for no good reason.

At least that was the gist of the formal written complaint that was served on the department the very next day, along with notice of intent to sue. Dad was going to show us all now that we couldn't scare or disrespect his darling kid like that.

As it turned out, he should have quit while he was behind.

I quickly called the prosecutor and he agreed not to drop the case. I was investigated, per the complaint procedure, and I was exonerated as I'd acted in compliance with our policies and my training, save for the his claim that I'd given him a ding on the dome with my pistol, which I officially deny having administered. (I did bring the muzzle of my cocked pistol into contact with his forehead during the vehicle extraction, but I didn't beat him with it like he claimed. Not that he didn't have a good ass-whipping coming... But we just don't give those out any more.)

A couple of months later, the case wound up in court on the misdemeanor docket, but even the high-priced defense attorney that daddy dearest shelled out for couldn't negate my testimony coupled with the presentation of the pistol as evidence. Not unexpectedly, the kid didn't testify, but I had my transcript of his post-arrest interview in which he'd stated that he was carrying the pistol to "goof" people who disrespected him and that he'd painted the muzzle black "so that it would look more real." The best line that his attorney could come up with was "if you really thought it was a real gun, why didn't you shoot him?" I replied that I didn't have to because he instantly complied with my instructions. On re-direct, the prosecutor asked me if I would have shot him if he hadn't complied, and I replied: "God help me, I sure would have." When he asked why, I said that I wasn't about to die on the side of the highway because I'd second-guessed my training and guessed wrong.

Junior was convicted, and largely because I spoke prior to his sentencing and asked for it, he got ten days in jail, to be served on week-ends for five weeks. He also got 18 months' probation and a condition of the probation was that he wasn't allowed to own or possess real or toy firearms. and then the judge actually praised me for my level-headedness and told the boy and his father that they should be grateful every day that the kid didn't did in the front seat of that car because of his stupid choice to carry that toy gun. They left the court room without even making eye contact with me. And believe it or not, I was still angry over what could have and almost did happen. While I can deal with shooting some slug who had it coming, I don't appreciate being put into a position where I almost wound up killing a kid whose only real crime was being immature and overly-coddled.

Law Students...

2009-06-10T09:06:00.000-07:00

So one evening, I’m out driving along with one of our new assistant prosecutors in my car because they have to do ride-alongs with us to get a feel for what we do and how the cases actually get to their office.

Of course since I have a ride-along, I can’t find a damned thing to get into. I never can when I have a rider who needs to actually see something. It’s a curse, really.

But then I stop the car being rather stupidly driven. It’s speeding and it seems to be having a bit of trouble staying in it’s lane. I point out to my passenger the number of times that the car crosses the right shoulder fog line and/or the center line ( three times and twice in less than a mile, respectively) and then I light it up. The pulls over onto the next highway exit ramp, but instead of stopping immediately, it goes to the top of the ramp, then turns onto the connecting street and pulls to the curb.

I approach the driver and sole occupant and see that she’s a young blonde woman in her late twenties. I also immediately detect the odor of alcoholic beverages and observe that her eyes are red and that her pupils are dilated, all signs of alcohol use.

I introduce myself and explain that I’ve stopped her due to her speed. She’s smiling and cooperative, and in response to my “casual” follow-up questions, she says that she’s coming from a dinner put on by her law school and that she’s on her way to her boyfriend’s house.

Law school. Great. Experience has shown that there are few people as reliably stupid and/or aggravating as a law student. They think that they know it all, and most of what they “know” is, of course, wrong.

I congratulate her on being a law student, then when she smiles and thanks me, I ask her how much she had to drink tonight. “Oh, I just had a glass of wine,” she says.

Now based upon my observations and experience, I know that she’s had way more than one glass of wine. I ask her to step out of her car for a moment so that I can talk to her up on the sidewalk, and she does. I notice that she’s a bit unsteady on her feet, and I get another strong scent of booze as she gets out of the car, still all smiling and cooperative. Once up on the sidewalk, I ask her to submit to the field-sobriety tests. I really don’t need her to at this point, since between her driving behavior, my initial observations and her admission that she’d been drinking, I’ve already got enough probable cause to take her in. But more is always better.

And now the fun begins. Little miss law student has just figured out that she might be in trouble. The smile disappears from her face, replaced by a panicked look.

“Uhhhhh….You’re not allowed to ask me that,” she says.

OK, I’m curious now. I ask her why not. This should be good. My attorney rider seems a bit amused too.

“Well you haven’t explained all of the possible consequences of my taking the test and my refusing to take the test,” she says. People have to understand their rights and this is an important decision that can really affect me.”

I tell her that she’s correct in that it’s an important decision, and then I tell her that there’s no obligation on my part to explain a lot of things. It’s really a “yes or no” question and it’s her choice either way. “Besides”, I add. “You’re a law student. You’re obviously bright enough to understand this.”

“Yes, I know that I am,” she replies. “However, the standard here is what a layperson would understand, and you can’t use my extra education against me. I’m entitled to the same consideration as a layperson, and this is way too important a decision for a layperson to understand. So you need to explain everything to me.”

“Well that’s not going to happen, I tell her. The simple question is whether you’re going to take the test and demonstrate that you’re safe to drive, or whether I’m going to just take you in for a breath test and a mandatory blood test if you refuse that.”

“But I have a right to know!” she exclaimed.

“Yes you do,” I told her. “But that’s your responsibility. You could have learned all of this stuff any time that you wanted to. You apparently chose not to. So think of this as a test that you didn’t study for.”

So she changed her tack. Now she wanted to go at my authority.

“You can’t arrest me for anything,” she said. “You’re from the highway, and we’re not on the highway any more.”

I told her that I hated to disappoint her, but I had the same jurisdiction up here as I do down on the highway; there’s no difference.

“But the jurisdiction rule still applies to evidence,” she proclaimed. “You saw me driving down there on the highway, and if I crossed the lines there, it doesn’t matter because I’m off the highway now and this isn’t the highway…it’s not the same.”

OK, she gets props for originality if nothing else. I see my rider snickering so I introduce him. “I’m sorry, but this is Tom Xxxxxx. He’s one of our new prosecutors here in District Court. And that makes him a real lawyer. What do you think, Tom? You ever hear anything like this when you were in law school?”

Tom said that he didn’t, so I asked her one more time if she wanted to try the field-sobriety tests and convince me that she really wasn’t under the influence. “Last chance…” I told her as I unsnapped my cuff case.

“OK, ok…” she said. “I’ll do it. I don’t have to, but I just want to show you that I’m not drunk.”

So saying, she took the tests. And she failed resoundingly. Click, click. The cuffs went on and I put her in the back of my cruiser. I walked up to her car to secure it.

“Hey!” she began yelling. “Hey, ASSHOLE!”

I stopped to look at her, my attention caught by this latest change in her demeanor.

“You can’t look in my car! You don’t have consent! Touch my car and I’m suing!”

I walked back to her. “I guess you haven’t had the class on ‘search incident to arrest’ yet, eh?”

“The black bag on my seat is personal property and separate from the car! You can’t look in there!”

I just turned to Tom. “Feel free to explain,” I told him as I walked back up. By the time that he presumably told her that anything in the car was fair game, I’d already looked in the bag and observed it’s contents. Not illegal—just amusing. I imagined that her boyfriend was going to be disappointed tonight.

After I finished my inventory search, I went back and asked her if she wanted me to leave the bag of sex toys in the car or take them back and log them in as personal property at the station.

So I took her back to the station and began explaining the breath test procedure to her, but she interrupted and told me that she had a right to an attorney and that she wouldn’t take it until she was allowed to find an attorney and have him present. Fine. I bundled her back up and just took her to the hospital for a blood draw, listening to her caterwaul all the way about how I was violating her rights and I was going to be sued and fired and how she was going to win everything that I’ve ever owned…

It’s times like this that I’m grateful that cruisers come with stereos.

Flash forward two months to court. She walks in all professionally attired, the perfect picture of poise. She’s refused any plea offers, probably because her a blood-alcohol content was in excess of 0.15, guaranteeing her a minimum five days in jail following conviction. The case was presented and she was, of course, found guilty, with the judge suppressing a smile more than once as her antics and claims were retold in court. Finally, she was asked if she had anything that she wanted to say.

“Well your Honor…I just wanted to say that I have always admired this court and you personally and I hope that you can find it in your heart to show some mercy here, as my goal ever since beginning law school was to become a clerk in this very court.”

Wow. We all looked to the judge to see how that line was going to play.

“Well I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he told her. “but nothing will prevent you from submitting a resume once you finish your five days in jail and year of probation.”

Ouch!

Radar love

2009-06-04T06:08:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite pastimes when I have nothing better to do is running radar and hauling our area’s worst speeders into court. I really love my radar, and coupled with my unmarked cruiser, it often provides more fun and entertainment that one guy should be able to have.

Adding to the fun is the fact that my state is one of the very few that still outlaws radar detectors. So when I get the chance to ding a speeder with radar AND find out that he has a radar detector to boot, giving me another charge to bop him with… well it just makes my day.

So how do I find the radar detector violators? Well without giving away too many of my trade secrets, let me state that it’s usually very, very easy.

First of all, there are people like this kid I was behind not too long ago. He had it mounted right up on his dashboard where I and everyone else could see it. Since part of the requirement for the charge of possession/use of a radar detector requires us to prove that it’s being used at the time, I slid my car into a slot two cars back and one lane over from the kid and switched my radar on for a second. I saw his detector light up and he slammed on his brakes. He then began looking around to see where the police car might be, but alas, he was only looking up ahead of his car. He didn’t bother looking over his shoulder. After a few moments, he relaxed a bit, so I turned it on again. Once more, I saw his detector light up and he slammed on his brakes and began scanning ahead of him for the police. As this was fun for me, I did it a few more times over the next mile or so before finally sliding in behind him, making the traffic stop, and seizing the radar detector from him. He was actually angry that I had an unmarked car, and his defense to the detector was—as usual—that he lives in the nearby adjoining state where there are legal, and that our laws therefore do not apply to him.

Yeah, ok. Sign here, please. One more radar detector added to the pile of them in our evidence room.

But usually they aren’t so blatant about it. Usually I get them because the person using it tells on themselves by reflexively slamming on the brakes the moment I activate the radar. That’s what we in law enforcement call a “clue”. And if I radar three cars and one of them immediately panic-brakes, guess which one I’m stopping?

Oftentimes, these folks will try to snatch the detector off the dashboard or window mount and hide it really quick. But that doesn’t work too well when they leave the suction-cup mount stuck on the window (like I don’t know what that’s for) or when they’re in such a hurry to hide it that they forget to turn it off or unplug it and I can hear it chirping away from under the seat, under the hat which was just tossed over it, or inside the center console, warning them of the proximity of the police radar unit in the cruiser now parked right behind their car.

But then we have the real dumb ones, like the guy I stopped one day. As I walked up to him, he immediately began to challenge me, telling me that there’s no way that I could stop him for speeding because his radar detector didn’t go off, which means that I wasn’t using radar, and that I wasn’t behind him long enough to pace him.

Well gee, it’s nice to encounter a citizen who has some knowledge of our procedures. Too bad he wasn’t smart enough to figure out that maybe I was stopping him for something else…like his burnt-out tail light. But now that we’ve discussed that tail light, sir…how about you hand me that radar detector now?

But dumb comes in many strengths, and the dumbest one that I can recall was the kid that I stopped one night because he panic-braked when I radar’d him, and I knew that there was no way that he could have seen my cruiser based on the darkness, distance and location. He was speeding, but he really wasn’t going fast enough for me to have bothered with otherwise, however I smelled the detector and I wanted it so I stopped him.

When I walked up to him, there was no detector in sight. But there on his windshield was the mount for one. I told him to hand me his license, registration and radar detector, and he immediately denied having the detector. I explained why I knew he had one—including his driving behavior and the mount affixed to his windshield—and told him that I’d rather he just handed it over instead of making me search the car for it. He replied that I could not search his car without a warrant or his consent, and rather haughtily told me that he was a law student at local university. Well I just couldn’t let the opportunity to give a little real-life lesson in the concept of “probable cause” pass by, so I stepped him out of the car, listened to his protestations and his promise of retribution in the form of a lawsuit as I secured him in my cruiser for the time being, and proceeded to search for the detector that I had determined was probably in his car. I had to look no further than his center console to find the detector…and a bag of marijuana and two pipes. The brilliant law student had hidden the radar detector right on top of his stash. He wound up getting fifteen days in jail for that, all courtesy of a radar detector and an “I’m smarter than you” attitude.

Man, I love this job.

Open mouth, insert boot

2009-05-03T16:55:00.000-07:00

So one night not too long ago, I'm checking an area adjacent to one of our larger cemeteries a little after midnight when I spot a parked unoccupied car. The hood's still warm to the touch so I mark out and start looking for the owner as no one has any business being out on foot in this area this late. My guess is that they've jumped the wall into the cemetery, and sure enough, not thirty seconds later, I hear a sound and turn to see two young people in their early twenties climbing back over the wall. I'm back in some bushes so they don't see me right away. Once I'm sure that there's only two of them, I call out for them to stop. But they ignore me and keep right on walking as if I hadn't just yelled out. I call out again as I start moving after them. "Hey! Yo! You two! Police! Stop!"

And they just keep right on walking, as if I'm talking to someone else or something.

I call out a third time, and this time I also flash my light at them and this apparently gets their attention and they finally stop and turn around. Now I'm kinda peeved since I'm figuring that they must have been ignoring me as there's no way that they couldn't have heard me. And I let them know it. "Are you two fucking deaf, or what?"

A minute later, I found out that yes, they both were indeed deaf. It turned out that they were resident students at the local school for the hearing impaired. And I'm so thankful that with my light in their eyes, they could not read my lips when I asked that last brilliant question.

I'm also glad that I was running single car that night. That's the sort of flub that even the best partner can't resist sharing at roll call or at "choir practice".

Ah well...

As for the deaf kids, I ID'd them, wrote them a note advising them of the cemetery trespass policy, had them each sign it, and sent them on their way. I could have hooked them up, but once you arrest one deaf person, you learn that it's not something that you want to do again if you can avoid it.

The Great Banana Caper

2009-04-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

Did you ever have one of those times when you go a little out of your way to try to be helpful and it comes back on you? well I had one of those not too long ago. It's still referred to around my department as "The Great Banana Caper".

It all began one day when I decided to camp out in a local highway construction zone and slow traffic down a bit. As i did so, I got to talking with a couple of the construction workers and they told me that for the past couple of weeks, a woman had been driving through every morning between 7:30 and 8:00AM and throwing a banana at them. Not a banana peel, but a whole banana. And she did this every weekday.

I admit, my first thought was that this was kinda funny, and they'd thought so too, until a couple of guys had actually been hit by the flying bananas. Apparently a banana launched from a car at 40-45mph hurts when it hits you. I had to take their word for that, but being a nice guy, I promised to come back for the next few mornings and see if I couldn't catch the Unknown Fruiter.

That was my first mistake. The second was when I put a slip in identifying my special enforcement project so that I would not get a bunch of low-priority calls during that timeframe. You can bet that that one raised my sergeant's eyebrows at the next roll call.

"You want to be blocked out to catch WHAT?!"

And word spread around the station that I was on the hunt for a dangerous criminal. Support was offered by small containers of milk and recipes for banana bread left--anonymously of course--in my mailbox.

What made it worse, however, was that I couldn't actually catch this woman. For almost two weeks I failed to make the connection with her. Either she wouldn't show up, or else she'd come by and pelt the workers when I wasn't there waiting. It actually got to be pretty embarrassing, especially when my co-workers inquired daily as to when they might expect to read about the arrest of this criminal mastermind in the morning papers.

Finally I caught a break. I showed up one morning for my stake-out, which had now been dubbed "Operation Dole" by my professional peers, and the work foreman told me that she'd just come by not two minutes before. I sighed. But this time was different. This time someone had actually gotten her LICENSE NUMBER--something that hadn't happened this far into the game. I ran the tag and got the name of the owner, along with a local address within our jurisdiction.
As I figured she was probably on her way to work in the morning, I decided to go pay her a visit in the later afternoon, just prior to end of shift, and talk to her about her little game.

And later that day, I drove up to a nice townhouse and saw the vehicle in question parked under the carport. Finally I could put this one to bed.

I rang the bell and a rather attractive woman about 40 years old answered the door. I asked for my suspect, and she admitted that she was the one I was looking for. And when I told her why I was there, she laughed and freely admitted that yes, she'd been throwing bananas at the workers almost every day for the past month or so. She actually stopped at the local stop n' rob to buy one every morning along with her coffee and paper. It was a joke that she thought was quite funny, and when I asked her why she threw bananas, she said it was because construction workers reminded her of apes. Nice gal, eh? And she was a money market manager at a big firm downtown.

Well I advised her against doing it any further and I left, figuring that this was finally over. I went back and wrote up my reports, including her statements, and submitted the packet, expecting to hear no more about it. I let the road workers know that I'd talked to her and that it shouldn't happen again. I did get a round of applause at roll call the next day, but what I didn't expect was the call from the prosecutor's office a couple of days later, telling me to come in and pick up the arrest warrant. Apparently one of the workers had called over there saying that he wanted to press charges, so now I had to go pick her up for multiple charges of FELONY ASSAULT since she'd thrown objects--bananas--from a moving vehicle, which under our criminal code, was a felony regardless of what the object was. So that afternoon, I once again drove to the townhouse and rang the bell. The banana lady came back to the door, laughing and claiming that she hadn't thrown any more bananas, so if there was fresh fruit out there, it had to have come from someone else. I asked her to step outside on the stoop for a moment, and when she did, I informed her that she was under arrest and suggested that she get her ID and her credit cards and lock her door. It took her a few seconds to figure out that I was serious, and when she did, she tried to jump back inside, but I grabbed her and pulled her back out and got the cuffs on while she screamed and hollered and basically caused a scene in front of her neighbors and anyone else who might be around to watch. Now she wasn't friendly any more, and she bitched about how embarrassing this was, and how ridiculous, and told me several times that she was going to sue me for emotional distress because all her neighbors would think that she was a criminal now. And she said that she should have thrown the bananas at cops, because we were all apes, too. Again with the "ape" thing in reference to men who do real work. Now I'm thinking that someone's probably got some interesting fantasies.

But I brought her back in, arriving at shift change, and both shifts got a good look at the Rotten Banana, as she was now known. Sigh... Everyone else in the processing center has drug dealers and thieves, and I have a banana-tossing money manager. Freaking great. And she ran her mouth the whole time, just making it all that much more special.

Long story short, it was pled down to a misdemeanor Disorderly Person charge and she actually got twenty days community service, roughly a day for every banana that she'd thrown. So for ten week-ends, she got to don a day-go vest and go out and clean up trash with the rest of the local petty criminals. I have to wonder how many banana peels she picked up while she was out there.

As for me, I learned to just stay on the highway and mind my own business.

So there I am one night, just minding my own business...

2009-04-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

Not bothering anyone. Nope. It was about 4AM, the night was dead, and I'd just finished my reports and was on the way to the local Stop n' Rob to get a cup of coffee.

I was rolling down a highway, about to get off at the exit where the coffee was, when I saw headlights in my rearview. They were way back and had just been visible for a second when they'd crested a hill. I almost let it go, but since it was so slow out tonight, I pulled to the shoulder just before the ramp and doused me lights, figuring I'd at least check this guy's speed on my rear radar as he came past. If he was really speeding, I'd peg him. If not, at least one more guy would see that we actually ARE out here at night. So I waited that few seconds...

My radar unit screamed and nearly jumped off of the dashboard. 112 mph. Holy Shit! I turned my lights back on as the car rocketed past me and had just put my hand on the gear shift when he slid into the curve just past the exit ramp--a curve that was the reason for the speed limit in this area being posted at 50mph. And sure enough--going into the curve, he lost it. He skidded and slammed into the left side Jersey wall, hitting it hard enough to bounce off and spin completely across the two-lane highway to impact the wall on the right side. The car--a full-size Mercury Marquis--disintegrated before my eyes, car parts large and small flying everywhere.

I got on the radio and called out that I'd just witnessed a crash and that Rescue and additional police units were going to be needed, then I rolled up to the wreckage, expecting to find a dead moron or two.

A teenager got out of what was left of the car. He was a bit woozy, but actually appeared uninjured. "Inconceivable!" as Fezzini would have said.

I sat him down and had just started talking to him when everyone else started to show up. I smelled booze on him and when I asked him if he'd been drinking, he admitted it. He also did not have a driver's license. He was 18 and had never had one. The car was his sister's. Great. So much for getting off in two hours like I was supposed to.

Now I wanted to pop the little turd for DUI, but he quickly figured out the score and even though he'd told me several times that he wasn't hurt. he began asking to go to the hospital once I told him that he was going to be taken back to the station for a Breathalyzer. And of course as bad as the crash was, I couldn't deny him. So I let Rescue package his dopey ass up and he was probably thinking that he was getting over, not realizing that I'd be following him down there with a blood draw kit.

But first I had to deal with the questions from my peers.

"Dude--what were you chasing him for?"

Of course I hadn't been chasing him, but no one wanted to accept the fact that I'd just been parked on the shoulder when this goofball came by and coincidentally destroyed himself right in front of me. Cops being cops, everyone was jumping to the conclusion that I'd been chasing this kid without putting the pursuit out over the radio and only called in the wreck to cover my ass. I must have been asked at least once by every other cop who showed up. "What were you chasing him for? You know they're going to hammer you for chasing off the radio..."

I really can't blame them. I'd have had trouble believing my claim too. I mean, what are the odds?

Even my sergeant pulled me aside and told me that there were liable to be some questions later about my role in this, and that I might want to call up the shift union steward.

I finally exploded. "Look, dammit! I was NOT chasing this kid! I was really just sitting over there minding my own business! Hell--go to the hospital and ASK HIM! And do it before I get there so there won't be any question about him being coached! In fact, Sarge, I insist that you go ask him and get a statement from him right now."
My sergeant, being a good guy who takes care of his people, said that he would go over and do that just to make sure that nothing bad came down from the Monday morning quarterbacks at headquarters. I'd hoped that he would. I quickly grabbed a blood kit from my duty bag. "Oh--and while you're over there, would you be so kind as to get a blood draw for me?" I could play the game too. That just saved me about an hour and a half that I would have blown over at the hospital. Besides, I still had to document all of this carnage and I had some questions for the actual owner of the car.

The sister came to the station to talk to me just as I was finishing the crash diagram. And she was incredibly cooperative, admitting freely that she'd let her brother borrow her car and that she'd known that he did not have a license. She even said that she'd known that he was going to a party and figured that he'd be drinking. And all of those statements went into my report. I also cited her for allowing an unlicensed driver to use her car, and I found out later that based upon my report and the citation--which she paid (basically admitting to the charge)--the insurance company denied the claim on the car. It was only two years old. She also got a bill for damage to the Jersey walls, and that's never cheap.

Long story short, the kid did state that he'd been speeding long before getting to that curve, and he also stated that I was not chasing him and that he hadn't even seen me when he passed me. And his BAC turned out to be 0.21, so he got pegged for DWI, Underage Consumption, Reckless Driving in addition to Operating Without a License and Uninsured Motorist.

DISPOSITION: A plea deal where he took the DWI and OWL and got 15 days jail and no driver's license until his 21st birthday, with the judge telling him that if he got caught driving again before then, he could count on being locked up for at least thirty days.

And of course big sister was out a car that she was probably still paying on.

The story behind the picture on the wall

2009-03-29T19:41:00.000-07:00

My squad sergeant called me into his office one day several years ago. When I arrived and--per his instructions--closed the door (gulp!), he threw a photograph onto the desk.

It was a photograph taken by one of those infernal speed cameras on a highway not too far from our station.

It shows a car. It's a police car. It's clearly visible as one of ours.
It also shows the date, the time, and the vehicle's speed: 123mph.

The speed limit on that section of highway was 50mph, so I was summoned one fine day to explain to the sergeant how it came to pass that a cruiser signed out to me on that date and time was photographed traveling 73mph over the posted speed limit.

Oh--and a speed limit sign was clearly visible in that picture, just to make it all the more farcical.

"Well you see, Sarge..." I began. It didn't help that I was a relative newbie and still on probation. I paused, reflecting on the fact that my career might well be hanging in the balance.

"Go on," he said. "I've been waiting for you to come in and explain it all day, and I expect that this is going to be good."

And for a moment, I was at a loss. Why the hell would I have been going 123 mph? The date was over a month ago and this was the first I was hearing about it. I couldn't remember that day. What was going on that would have made me drive like that? The only reason I'd ever do it was if...

And then I remembered. A call had come out for an officer in trouble in our neighboring precinct. Our dispatcher had put it out and as luck would have it, I was the only one not already on a call or a traffic stop of my own. So I pulled onto the highway just before 2AM and punched the gas to the floor. I'd forgotten all about the presence of those stupid cameras and wouldn't have cared in any case. One of our own needed help and I was the only one available.

That night I'd made the scene in pretty good time, arriving just after our guy had finished kicking the ass of a punk who'd swung on him during a frisk and then knocked out that punk's cousin after he'd decided to dip in and jump our guy. Hood rats tend to be cowardly when there's just one of them, but when they have numbers on you they get brave, and they'll jump you if they think they can outnumber you. well that had happened here, and it was still simmering when I arrived in a cloud of brake smoke and burnt transmission fluid. A couple of other local mooks were crossing the street to join in, but on my arrival they changed their minds and took off. I didn't even get to hit anybody so I just helped our original guy secure the two that he'd cleaned up and I watched his back while he searched punk #1's car and recovered a small quantity of dope to augment the stash that he'd already taken out of that knucklehead's pocket. I transported one of the two to our lock-up for him and had forgotten all about that wild ride until the sergeant threw the speed cam picture on his desk and demanded an accounting.

So I told him where I'd been going any why, and as soon as he confirmed it with a call to Dispatch, he looked at me, smiled, and said "Good job". Then he proceeded to have the picture framed and it hung on his wall until he retired. I don't know what happened to it--I sure would have liked it--but it appears that he decided to take it out to pasture with him. But he was old school and a real cop's cop, so I won't begrudge him that photo. Hell, I'd even have autographed it if he'd asked. Step off, Jeff Gordon. You and that NASCAR crowd ain't got nothing on a cop on a mission to back another cop. Because that's how we roll.

Savages dance while four better men die

2009-03-22T13:28:00.000-07:00

Fuck the City of Oakland. Straight up.
I don't mean the police officers there, or the firefighters, or the other couple of dozen people who live there who actually have jobs and no arrest histories, but the rest of them--the mouth-breathing, liquor-drinking, dope-smoking, wife-and-child-beating, welfare-getting, ex-con losers like these scumbags standing across the street from the scene where two police officers were murdered by a parolee and yelling "fuck the police".
Ultimately four brave, selfless police officer were murdered by parolee Lovell Mixon before other officers put him down like the rabid dog that he was. Meanwhile, the surviving officers have to put up with taunts from this band of mutts?

Screw that.

There was a time when my department actually had balls. Had something like this happened back then, we'd have had something for the savages. At Roll Call the next day, every spare officer would have been told to head into that area as part of a total "zero tolerance" campaign. Every violation would result in police attention, meaning that every untagged car would be towed, every observed moving violation or equipment violation would result in tickets and warrant checks on all occupants, all suspicious persons would be contacted and searched, and anyone who could be arrested for any violation would be hauled in. At the same time, the warrant squads would be hitting the houses of anyone known to have outstanding warrants in that area and the narcotics team would be closing up every dope house that they knew about. In short, life would become very unpleasant for the savages while the decent citizens would enjoy a few days with little or no crime.

We used to do that back in the day in instances where a group of residents would decide to harass or interfere with out officers during arrests or traffic stops. We'd hit that neighborhood hard for days on end and just rack up a hellacious number of arrests. Meanwhile, the drug dealers couldn't operate as we were scooping up their street sales boys and nailing their customers who tried to get into or out of the neighborhood. Oftentimes after a few days, the drug boys were known to administer summary punishment to a few of the offenders just to get us to back off. Oppressive? Damn straight. Unconstitutional? Don't care. What mattered was that these thugs learned to show respect for the police. They didn't have to like us, but they damned sure had to show enough respect to think twice about challenging us. And in instances where we had fools like those in Oakland running their mouths...well our sweeps might not have caught all of them up, but you can bet that we'd eventually snag their friends or relatives and their local dope connection, and often if we made life hard enough for the savages around them, someone would eventually make their life hard too.

It was largely because of that policy that we were able to run single-man cars long after the other area agencies doubled up, and why we had fewer chases and fights than neighboring departments. The bad guys knew that to go out of their way to mess with us was risking bringing a ton of heat down on the whole neighborhood in addition to the very real possibility of getting an ass-whipping. Our guys didn't play and our brass didn't expect them to. And if a criminal came in a bit banged up--or had to be arraigned on release from the hospital--so be it. Our officers were expected to win every time and complaints from lumped-up prisoners or their angry mammas were shrugged off. And the predictable result was that our officers got respect and grudging compliance from mutts that would have given crap to any other agency, and criminals often decided to do their thing in other areas because they didn't want their asses kicked. That type doesn't mind going to jail, but the possibility of a fat lip or a black eye on the way resonates with them like conscience or reason will not.

Alas, we're not allowed to do that any more. The unwritten but accepted policy of street justice, aka: "holding court in the alley" or "beat-and-release", was ended several years ago by a new "reform" chief that the higher-ups brought in from outside the department. It took a while for the mutts to catch on to the fact that they could now be as disrespectful to us as they were to other police agencies and everyone else in their little thug world, but they've figured it out now and we have the same problems that all of our neighboring agencies have--and as our brothers in Oakland are now having--where the thugs act as if they own the 'hood and taunting and harassing the police is not only condoned but encouraged. The police-hating, anti-American lawyer groups like the ACLU have done their best to handcuff us, and the tragic result is that now the honest citizens are that much less safe. Evil triumphs when good men aren't allowed to do anything, and it also triumphs in places like California where scumbags like Lovell Mixon are even granted parole.

Look west, people. Because as California is today, much of the rest of America may well be tomorrow. And if I can't stop it, I hope that I'm no longer around to see it happen.

Pursuits can be fun

2009-03-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

Who am I kidding? They ARE fun. However most departments frown on them these days because oftentimes people get hurt. Now if it's just the jerkwater who decides to run, that's no big deal in my personal opinion. Call it a case of the Karma fairy settling accounts. But sometimes it's one of the good guys, and that's bad. And sometimes it's an innocent, totally uninvolved citizen. And that's unacceptable.

I remember my first pursuit like it was yesterday. I'd been on my own out of training for two days and a couple of hours when I saw a beat-up, tinted-out ex-police Caprice going down the road.

Now other than cab companies, only two kinds of people buy ex-police cars: Geeky, unpopular high school kids who are still a step above the Columbine trench Coat Mafia, and thugs.

The first group are mostly harmless. It's just goofy, antisocial little white boys who think that if they buy an ex-police car, someone might think for a moment that they're police officers instead of nerds and they hope that someone might actually respect or fear them. Usually they trick these cars up with as many lights and do-dads as they can to make them look even more like police cars, often to the point of actually getting in trouble for impersonating real police when they start using those lights in traffic, but usually they land a fat girlfriend who treats them like crap and they gladly ditch the toy cop car for her.

The second group is the dope boys and assorted hood rats who think that if they get a car that was once used to arrest many of the people that they know, it'll give them some sort of "street cred" and also allow them to flee from the real police, because everyone knows that an untrained fool driving an ex-police car that hasn't been maintained for crap can out-drive any seasoned police officer in a newer car that's actually been taken care of.

Well it was one of the second sort that I saw on this day, and sure enough, as soon as I went to stop the driver for the window-tint violation, he stomped on the gas and took off. I hit the lights and gunned it, all excited because I had my very own first pursuit. Go, me! And I called it in on the radio, just like I'd been taught, clarifying that it was a pursuit for traffic, giving a description of the vehicle, our direction of travel, and road and traffic conditions. I was doing everything right, just like I'd been taught to do for months in the academy. My fellow recent graduates were no doubt listening, green with envy. This was a great game.

Then a voice came over the radio. It was the shift Lieutenant, ordering Dispatch to tell me to break it off and quit chasing.

WTF?! I was right on this guy! I practically had him, other than the fact that he wasn't stopping. Dispatch relayed the command to me. "Break it off."

And here's where I almost ended my police career in it's opening days. I pulled a trick that I'd heard other officers do, both on TV and even in Field Training:

"Repeat that, Dispatch...you're breaking up." I pretended that I couldn't hear the order to stop. Just give me a few more seconds and I know that this guy'll stop and surrender to me, or something. He'll, that car's probably chock full of guns and drugs...

But it only lasted long enough for Dispatch to repeat the command, the tone making it clear that they weren't buying it.

I immediately wised up and complied, doing it "by the book" again. I turned my lights off, and I slowed to a stop, preparing to make a U-turn and leave the area so that I wouldn't even be accidentally going in the same direction of the Caprice that was now a two blocks away and disappearing fast. I gave it one more wistful glance. I'd almost had him...

Then I saw him hit the pedestrian--an old man who was just crossing the street three blocks down. The old man flew through the air like a rag doll, his bag of groceries scattering everywhere. SHIT!!!

"Dispatch! I stopped chasing but he just hit a pedestrian! Roll EMS! Get some people over here!" This wasn't a game anymore. Now somebody was really hurt--somebody who wasn't even playing. It wasn't supposed to work like this.

Fast-forward a lifetime as I pulled up and did what I could to render aid and keep the growing crowd back. I was deep in the 'hood--the only cop or white guy for a long ways--and everyone knew and liked this guy. Not good. Several of the crowd tried to rally the rest to attack me, but I was able to exert enough command presence to convince them that my goal was to help this guy and that they needed to help me by staying back. It bought me time until the cavalry got there.

Long story short, the guy was medivac'd out, and turned out to have relatively minor injuries, despite flipping clean over the car that had hit him. Apparently as drunk as he was, he was relaxed and he bent instead of breaking. He was angry about one thing, and that was the destruction of his recently-opened 40oz. malt liquor.

But then the perjury circus started. A million witnesses surged forth to swear on their last food stamps that I'd still been in full pursuit when the man was hit, and some even claimed that I'd hit him. It always amazed me how no one could be out on the street when something goes down, but if the police is involved, hundreds of them still see "everything"--even people who arrived ten or fifteen minutes later in cars or got off the city bus. And they all want to be witnesses against the police.

Fortunately my supervisors and the investigators knew what was going on, and they managed to find one honest person of the bunch who said that he'd seen me shut my lights and siren off and pull to the curb three blocks away, well before the fleeing Caprice had hit the man. This man's honesty might well have saved my job, an act which caused his wonderful neighbors to subsequently vandalize both his house and his car. I was found to be not responsible, even though I heard a few references to my "radio trouble" as part of the counseling session that followed. But the point was driven home to me that day that chases aren't kid games like you see on TV. They're serious safety hazards to anyone around, and each has the potential to hurt or kill someone who doesn't deserve it. I still chase, but always with that incident in mind. And now I break them off myself if the risks get too heavy.

But sometimes, chase endings are pre-ordained based simply on where you're chasing. There is a section of road in my area that ends in an on-ramp to the highway, and that ramp has a fairly steep descent that conceals from view a 15-mph, nearly 90-degree curve. Any vehicle hitting that curve as any kind of speed winds up on it's roof and/or in the woods. We chase three or four cars a year into that curve and the end result is as predictable as it is inevitable. Here's one that I chased into it a while back:
The driver was a early-twenties woman from a local "better-than-you" wealthy family who'd decided that she didn't want to get a third DWI. Well needless to say, she got it anyway and went to jail for 120 days once the judge heard my testimony and saw the pictures. Sometimes there is a happy ending.

Oh--and the best part about pursuits that end in that curve? The bottom of that ramp is the state highway patrol's jurisdiction. They get to handle the crash reports and clean-up!

It's a car--it's a plane--it's a SUBMARINE!

2009-02-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

It started out as a quiet summer night a few years back.

I was just driving along, minding my own business, when a small late-model car with two teen girls passed me going the opposite direction. They weren't speeding or anything, but the driver clearly had that panicky "oh shit, it's a cop!" look on her face. That look on the face of a driver, passenger or pedestrian is usually a red flag and a good reason for closer investigation, so I braked and U-turned on that car just to follow it for a bit.

Immediately that white car became a rocket and took off.

Oh, yeah. Here we go. I hit the overhead lights and called out with a pursuit in progress. It was about 11PM or so on a dark, deserted rural road with no traffic and nowhere for this car to go. Or so I thought, anyway. The driver of the car immediately made a sharp left turn onto a narrow dirt road that led into one of our parks.

I let dispatch know that the pursuit had now turned into this park, and that the chase was about to terminate as this road was less than a mile long. I knew that it came to a dead end in a small parking area for the boat launch that was there. I guess I naively assumed that these girls knew it too as I expected them to start slowing down any time.

But they kept their speed up, reaching highway speeds on this narrow dead-end dirt road.

"They gotta know this is a dead end," I kept telling myself.

But apparently they did not. And before I could even say "WTF?!", they shot into and across the parking area, hit some logs meant as a barrier to stop cars from rolling past the parking lot boundary, and went airborne for a brief moment before impacting with a huge splash into the water beyond.

They almost cleared the whole dock, but they wound up taking that out, too.

"10-50 into the water! Roll Rescue and start a Hook," I told Dispatch.

But as it turned out, the girls weren't injured. Both clambered out of the car and waded ashore. And just my luck--they're 17. Juveniles. I really, really hate dealing with juveniles just because of all of the extra hoops that our department makes us jump through.

As it turns out, this all started because they had a beer in the car between them. One beer. And when they saw me, they panicked. Of course being teen girls, when I asked where they got the beer, they lied and claimed that they just found it sitting alongside the road.

"OK, so you're in the habit of stopping to pick up any bottle on the ground that looks like it might have beer in it and drinking it, is that right?"

"Uh-huh," they both said with straight faces.

So I asked for their ID and parents' contact info.

"Do you really have to call my mom?" the one asks.

"Gee, do you think?"

So rescue came and checked them out and pronounced them fine but wet. I then administered a PBT (Portable Breath Test) to both, because, being under 21, any alcohol in their system is illegal and the PBT is sufficient for a citation. Both had positive scores so each got an "Underage Consumption of Alcohol" citation.

Then the real fun. The moms showed up. No fathers--just two very angry mothers.

And predictably, they were not angry at the girls, but at each other, and, of course, at me.
Each mom blamed the other girl for getting her daughter into this mess. Then it got positively comical when they learned that the car--owned by om A--had been driven into the water by the daughter of Mom B. So after Mom A jumps on me for chasing darling daughter into the water, she demands to know who is going to have to pay for the damage to her car.

"That's between you and your insurance company," I tell her. "And you can also expect a hefty bill for that dock."

"But my daughter wasn't driving!"

"Apparently not," I explained. "But you entrusted your car to your daughter. Your daughter entrusted it to this girl. And when I called your insurance company, they told me that neither of them are covered drivers on your insurance policy. This is probably going to go against you since it was your car and you'll have to sue this other girl through her mother to recover the amounts that you're going to wind up being held liable for."

This of course started a screaming match between the mothers that looked like it was about to go Pro Wrestling. Since it wasn't taking place in front of my cruiser's video camera, I moved in to break it up before the fists flew and the hair extensions came out.

I quickly got everyone documented and sent them home, and then hung out to write my report in peace while waiting for the tow-truck to show up and yank the car out. And it's lucky for me that I got rid of Mom A before the hook showed up, because that chimp that the tow company sent out probably did more damage to the car by carelessly yanking it out (and dropping it back in at least three times due to bad hook-ups) than the Dukes of Hazzard stunt that dunked it in the first place.

This damned case wound up bouncing back and forth in the juvenile courts and civil courts for at least three years and I can't even recall how many times I was subpoenaed or deposed as the park, the insurance company and the two moms battled back and forth over the bill and tried to mitigate the fault by fighting the Underage Consumption charges, but it was a lot. (Overtime = Ka-Ching!)

Moral of the story: If you have a spoiled brat daughter, don't let her and her girlfriend borrow your year-old car without at least making sure that they're both covered drivers.

Funny thing about warrants...they last

2009-02-19T05:55:00.000-08:00

Diana Arrington just learned that lesson the hard way.

It appears that Diana was stopped for a traffic offense and arrested for DUI in Anchorage, Alaska back in September of 1995. because authorities didn't know that she had two prior DUI convictions in Georgia--making this one a felony--she was allowed to bond out on a promise to appear. However she immediately jumped bail and fled to Florida, where she then tried to have a lawyer get the case dismissed in her absence. When that failed, she simply gave the court the bird and refused to appear.

However, for some reason, she decided to return to Alaska twelve years later, and when she was stopped for another traffic violation, that vintage warrant was waiting for her, along with a new felony Failure To Appear charge.

And evidence usually sticks around, too, so it was nothing for the prosecutor--who was still in college back when Arrington was first arrested--to convince a jury to convict her.

Her sentencing is in May. Hopefully they don't let her leave again. Come, on, jail time!

Now this reminds me of a guy that I dealt with several years ago. I was working a traffic closure post for a big local event. This entailed my sitting at a barricade at an intersection where traffic had been blocked, just to keep people from going around it.

And yes, I was making overtime money for this.

So I'm sitting there, minding my own business, when I see a couple walk away from the event. Right in front of me, the male turns, steps into a patch of trees, and proceeds to take a leak. Now since I'm sitting right there in a marked police car, I have to wonder what this guy's thinking, especially since there were plenty of porta-potties back where he'd just come from. So I get out of my car and walk over as he's finishing up, and he's got a case of attitude from the get-go. I explain that what he's done is illegal, and he tells me that it's ridiculous because the porta-potties are nasty and have long lines and that since nobody saw him, it's not a big deal.

Well anyone else could have come along and seen him in this very public location, so yeah, it is a big deal. This again was one that could have just been handled with a warning but the guy was obviously trying to show his woman there that he was the Alpha Dog so instead of saying "gee, you're right...I'm really sorry and won't do it again," he argued with me about it. So I wrote him the ticket for Urinating in Public and told him to show up on the mandatory court date or else a warrant for his arrest would be issued. I figure if he's going to be an ass about it, he can take a day off work and come down to stand before the judge in open court and explain why he was peeing in public in broad daylight. No big deal.

Time went by, and I'd forgotten all about it until I got a subpoena for this case almost a year later. Here I'd figured that he'd shown up in court, paid whatever fine, and had the case dealt with short of a trial, but apparently he'd decided not to appear at all and a warrant had been issued. That warrant sat there, quietly waiting until...

Fast-forward ten months. As it was relayed to me, this guy was at the airport picking up his fiancee's parents--parents that he was meeting for the first time--when he was involved in a minor collision with an airport shuttle bus. (I can sympathize with him here...those shuttle bus drivers all suck.) Responding Airport Police show up to take the report, run the dirvers' liceses as a matter of course, and...

"Sir, you're under arrest."

"For what?"

"Well apparently there's a warrant for your arrest for urinating in public..."

Right in front of the prospective in-laws. So much for first impressions.

He wound up being taken to jail and booked on the UIP charge and he had to post a bond, which I understand he had to borrow from his soon-to-be dad-in-law.

Fine for Urinating in Public: $125.00
Getting arrested for peeing in public right in front of your fiancee's parents on that special night: Priceless.

It never pays to ignore things like court appearances. Arrest warrants don't get old and you never know when they're going to just out at you and yell "Surprise!"

Writing tickets on doctors and nurses

2009-02-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

Now I know that this is going to be a controversial subject, between those brothers and sisters of mine out there who don't believe in ticketing medical professionals and the civilians who think that any exercise of police discretion in issuing tickets (unless they're the one who got stopped) is wrong, I expect some flack back from both ends of the spectrum. But I think I can handle that, especially since I've heard more than enough about it from some of the so-called "professionals" in the medical field.

Here are a few of my stories, which go a long way to show why I now no longer subscribe to the idea that doctors and nurses all automatically have breaks coming.

Case #1. One nice morning, I was out standing alongside the road, minding my own business and shooting laser in an area designated for special attention due to problems with speeders. I happened to tag this Jaguar coming on at 27 mph over the limit. I stepped out into traffic and was just able to flag him over into the turn-out area that I was using for the stops. I walked up, introduced myself, and told him why I'd stopped him.

"Yeah, ok, that's fine. But I'm a doctor and I'm late", he says. His tone made it apparent that he was expecting me to just let him go without any further questions.
"Is there some sort of medical emergency that you're being called in for, sir?"
"No. It's just that I have to get there to make my rounds and check on my patients."

Ah, ok. No medical emergency. Just a guy late for work. but he said it with that sharp tone that indicated that I was annoying him by asking and detaining him, and that annoys me. So I figure that I'll give him a break, but only after he gets a bit of a lesson on basic roadside manner. We're not in your hospital now, doc. This is my road and now we're in my office, such as it is.
I ask him to produce his license and registration.

"I just told you that I'm late," he replied. "I need to get to the hospital." Again with that tone that suggested that he's the boss here.

"Sir, are there other doctors at that hospital?"

"Huh? why of course there are. It's "XXX Hospital! Just down the road.

"OK," I told him. "So then there are other doctors who can handle any emergency that might come up while we're taking care of this basic traffic matter. I just wanted to make sure."

He clenched his teeth but didn't say anything back, choosing to turn away from me and just stare out across his hood as if I was no longer even there. In other words, I was dismissed.

OK, we can play this game. I went back to my cruiser and sat down and began to write him out a warning violation. It wasn't going to be a ticket--I was still going to give him a warning, and hopefully he'd get the message from my simply detaining him a few minutes to write one out in lieu of a ticket.

However, about a minute or two into it, I heard a horn blow. I looked up and he was holding his arm with his watch on it out his window, and reaching out with his other hand to point at his watch. Oh, no...

So I reached out my window and held up my ticket book, and then I pointed to it the same way that he was pointing to his watch. Check, Jackass. Then I pulled my warning notice off the clip board and began to write him a moving violation.

When I went up and handed him back his license and the $275.00 ticket, he snatched it from me and said "You must be a rookie. When you get good at this you'll learn not to ticket people who might have to save your life!" So saying, he sped off.

I Googled him later. He's a podiatrist. A foot doctor who probably couldn't find the Emergency Department with a map and a Sherpa guide. Yeah, he just might save me...if I ever get a bad case of Athelete's Foot.

Case #2. Different location on another morning. I'm set up to catch people who like to use an inappropriate lane or run up on the shoulder to pass slow traffic at a particularly congested spot during morning rush hour. Previous road rage incidents here beginning with that sort of thing have caused the powers that be to assign me this particular plum assignment.

And here comes a little car racing right up on the shoulder, passing a half mile of barely moving cars which are all creeping along in the proper lane. Oh, it's my lucky day--it's a Porsche. Obviously the representative of the "Better-than-you" crowd has arrived.

I stop this one, and it's an older blonde woman. before I can even say word one, she cuts my introduction off: "Yeah, yeah, I know...I'm technically not supposed to do that, but I'm a doctor at XXX Hospital and I'm late for work."

"You're right, Ma'am," I reply. "You're not supposed to do that. And there's no 'technically' about it. May I see your license and registration please?"

She sighs and rolls her eyes and digs into her purse for her documents. "I just told you that I'm a doctor..." she says. Then she hands me her license and her hospital ID card. I hand her the hospital card back, and she says "I just wanted you to see that so you'll know that I'm a doctor."

"OK, I get that," I respond. "Just wait here." I began walking back to my cruiser.

Now normally I don't cut anyone breaks on this particular violation because I myself have sat in long lines only to watch people breeze past on the shoulder, but she cinched the ticket when she yelled back "Well you don't have to take that tone with me! You could show a little more respect!"
Respect for what? A prima-dona who thinks that her job entitles her to pass us all of these other people who are now inching past us in the proper traffic lanes? Screw thast. She can have the ticket just like any other driver would get from me for this.

And of course she wasn't done with her commentary. When I walked back up with her ticket, she snatched it from me, made it a point to read my name tag, and said nastily: "Well thank you Officer XXXX! You'd just better hope and pray that you never wind up on my table in the E/R!"

This caused me to ask her if she would prefer to discuss this matter--and her threat--further in her hospital administrator's office. Not surprisingly, that didn't seem to appeal to her and she drove off. I went out of my way to stop red Porsches for a while after that. I didn't catch her again, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't trying.

Case #3. Pulled over a serious speeder one night, and as I walk up to the car, the driver takes a stethoscope off of her mirror and holds it up to me, saying "It's ok...I'm a nurse!"

I explained the reason for my stopping her--a speed well in excess of the posted limit--and she just grinned and said "Yeah, I know. I get stopped here a lot when I'm running late. But you guys aren't supposed to ticket us."

So here she is, admitting that she speeds on purpose with the expectation that there will be no consequence just because she is a nurse at some hospital. (And as it turned out, she--like the doctor in case #1--worked in some specialty field and had nothing to do with the Emergency Department.) So she got her ticket, and a mandatory court date due to her high speed. When I explained that she would have to appear in court in two weeks, she threw the ticket on her floor and exclaimed: "God, you're an asshole, aren't you!"

These three cases are my reasons for not automatically giving people a pass just because they hold a certain job. (Fellow cops notwithstanding, of course.) In each case, the people who were obviously expecting and used to getting "professional courtesy" were totally unwilling to show any sort of courtesy to me. In their eyes, they were important enough to warrant treatment above and beyond that of ordinary people, and apparently too important to even show me any of the courtesy and respect that they felt entitles to. But courtesy is a two-way street, and because of those three, while I may extend a break to individual medical care providers based on the circumstances and merits of that particular encounter, it's by no means automatic or a given.

Stopping the special people

2009-02-02T05:39:00.000-08:00

In my work area, it's a fact of life that you will eventually stop someone famous or powerful for a traffic infraction. Some will be very nice, while others will be total tools. As an example of the former, I will always remember stopping Tony Nicely, CEO and President of GEICO Insurance.

It was a little before 11PM if I recall, and I was just pulling out of my station's driveway in a marked cruiser when this car shot by like a rocket, well in excess of the limit.

"Oh no he didn't..." I think to myself. I mean, my boss is still in his office. How are you going to fly past our building with my boss possibly looking out his window and me sitting right there in the driveway? I punched the gas and threw gravel as I fish-tailed onto highway after him. I quickly caught up with the car--a high-end sedan--and it was still zipping along. I got a quick pace on the vehicle at 23mph over the limit, then hit my radar and confirmed it. I was going to have this guy for sure. I hit the lights and pulled him over on the side of the road. "Dispatch, hold me out northbound with traffic, vanity tag "GEICO 1".

When I got the return--car registered to GEICO Insurance--I had to smile at the irony. I exited my vehicle and approached the driver.

The driver was a distinguished-looking older gentleman in formal attire, and he had a woman next to him who was also dressed up for a party. I was already thinking that I might get the night's first DUI right here. People who go to parties usually drink. So I started out by introducing myself and telling the man why I'd stopped him. He was immediately apologetic and deferential, and quickly handed me his license. He could not, however, find the car's paperwork, and he apologized for that. He also said that he and his wife had been talking about the dinner they'd just left and he hadn't been paying attention to his speed. He also hadn't seen me sitting there as he passed. As we spoke, I checked his eyes and saw none of the tell-tale signs of alcohol, and I didn't smell any, either. So since he mentioned a dinner, I pressed for a bit more information, just to keep him talking and to check his general attitude. "Where was this dinner at, Sir?"
He told me that the dinner was at a local hotel and that his company had hosted it for the family members of their employees who'd been called up for military service.

Well damn. That, if true, was just nice. I'm nothing if not supportive of our troops myself, and how many companies would do something like that for their employees? And I believed him. Generally most of us know when someone's lying to us by the way that they act, and this fellow seemed sincere. Plus, that story wasn't the sort that people just make up out of thin air when asked. And then his wife even held up a program and asked me if I wanted to see it.

Aw, hell... now I'm not so inclined to even write the speeding ticket.

"Not a problem as far as the registration goes," I told him. "I already know that it's good. As for your insurance...well I'm going to guess that you either work for GEICO or you really like their policies."

He smiled, and told me that he was, in fact, the CEO of the company.

"Wow," I replied. "A speeding ticket for 23 over would sure blow a big hole in that safe driver discount program that your company offers, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," he replied, smiling resignedly. "I'm sure that it's going to."

And that clinched it for me. He didn't even ask me to cut him a break like most people do.

I handed him his license back and told him to pay a little more attention to his speed and his surroundings. I then shined my light quickly around the inside of his car. "You don't have that little lizard in here, do you?"

They both laughed, and he told me that it was a gecko, not a lizard, but that tonight was the gecko's night off. Then he thanked me and wished me a nice night as he drove off.

"Now that guy has class," I thought as I walked back to my cruiser. So many of those folks get so hung up on telling me who they are and how important they are--often followed by dropping names of other people that they think might keep me from writing them a ticket, but this guy didn't try any of that. He was honest and respectful, acknowledged his error, and appeared ready to accept the ticket without any argument whatsoever. Those people are rare and they seldom get tickets from me, even if they aren't the CEO of a big insurance company.

Guns in church?

2009-01-25T19:12:00.000-08:00

So today when I was in church, a lady gave me a big hug and when she did, she immediately noticed that I was carrying my off-duty sidearm in an IWB holster. And not being shy about such things, she asked me why I felt I had to bring a gun into church.

"Well let me tell you," I said. I explained that I had not always done so, because it just didn't seem right to bring a weapon into God's house. Surely God can protect his flock, right? But then I thought about it one day, and I realized that maybe God's plan for protecting it was me.

I went on to explain to her that I was trained and commissioned to protect the public, both when I'm on duty and off. While I only get paid for 40 hours or so, I, like most cops, am never really truly "off duty" and I'm expected to take action when emergencies arise. Granted, serious crimes in churches are rare, but they're not unheard of in this country, especially these past few years. Armed crazies have attacked church congregations before, often with devastating results. And while such a thing will probably never happen in MY church, I could not live with myself if it did and I was unable to do anything about it because I'd made the decision to leave my primary lifesaving tool at home. Sorry, but as a trained professional, I owe a duty to the public and to those around me, and that includes my friends and fellow church members, and yes, even God Himself. I would not want to have to stand before Him some day and try to explain why I'd let His sheep get slaughtered by a wolf because I'd chosen to make His church the one place that I did not go prepared to respond to evil. By department order and by my own choice, I carry my firearm virtually everywhere else "just in case" and I'm always ready to defend perfect strangers if the need arises; how could I shirk that responsibility in a place filled with people that I know and love?

So yeah, I carry my pistol to church. I don't apologize for it, and I have it there so that I won't ever have to apologize for not having it there.

Some criminals make it easy

2009-01-24T16:05:00.000-08:00

Some criminals are so dumb...

German Castillo comes to mind as a perfect example. When police in Anchorage, Alaska went to the motel that he was living in to arrest his stupid ass for misdemeanor assault and underage drinking charges, he fled.

He didn't get too far, though. Seems that his parents didn't teach him to look both ways before darting out into traffic and when he bolted into the roadway, he ran squarely into the path of an Anchorage Police cruiser which--naturally--wasn't able to stop before it struck German.

He survived and is now in custody. Whiny cop-haters and liberal criminal apologists will no doubt begin screaming about this shortly.

Bottom line: it happens. Crooks run, we chase them in cars...sometimes they zig when they should have zagged and we accidentally hit them with our cars. Call it an occupational hazard of being a fleeing criminal pedestrian in the roadway.

I remember the first time I accidentally clipped a fleeing criminal back when I was still a rookie officer. The guy ran right in front of my cruiser and even though I slammed on the brakes, my bumper tagged him on the leg and sent him sprawling. I was in shock for a second--I'd just hit this guy with my car in front of the public and other officers. I saw my job evaporating like steam from a grate. But as it turned out, it didn't hurt him. It just knocked him down and I and other officers picked him up and put him in the back seat for transport. I even got an "atta boy" from my sergeant for being on the spot and stopping the guy.

Of course looking back, that probably sent the wrong message, because when I accidentally clipped two more fleeing suspects in the next couple of months, I got another talking-to from my sergeant, and this one wasn't quite so complimentary. I haven't accidentally hit any more since. Ah well...We all gotta learn somehow, right?

Here's hoping that German learns to quit running from the police.

First dumbass of the New Year

2008-12-31T12:17:00.000-08:00

Sadly I won't be working tonight. Pity, because I love New Years Eve.

That's when the real stupid people come out. And if I'm on my game, I can get one and start the year off right.

The last New Years that I was out, I stopped a kid for drunk driving. BAC of .24. He was all over the road when I saw him and there was no shortage of cause for the stop. He failed SFST's miserably and I locked him up. He was a college boy and he literally cried all the way back to the station and accused me of ruining his life and sentencing him to a lifetime of poverty because his dad had told him that if he got a DWI, there'd be no more money for college.

So he went out drinking, got blitzed and decided to drive, yet it's somehow MY fault?

Disposition: 15 days jail time, to be served on week-ends around his school schedule.

The year before, it was another stupid college kid. This one decided to step out into his parents' back yard at midnight and fire off an AR-15 rifle. Incredibly, I was just finishing up a traffic stop in front of that house, and my red and blue lights were bouncing off of everything. How he coulnd't have seen that I'll never understand, but sure enough, just as I was walking back to my cruiser...BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

My first reaction was to dive for cover behind a tire. Then when I realized that it was just some New Year's dumbass--one who was very close by--I went looking. And since I could hear him and his buddies laughing and see his muzzle flashes, it wasn't hard to find him. I peered around the corner of the house and watched him finish off his magazine, and when he dropped the empty to reload the rifle, I rounded the corner with my service pistol drawn, proned the three of them out, and eventually took bright boy and the rifle into custody.

And the shocking part was that you could clearly see the lights from my cruiser still bouncing off of the wall of the neighbor's house. When I pointed that out to the moron and his two buddies, they claimed that they hadn't noticed that. Idiots.

Disposition: Plead to misdemeanor Reckless Discharge of a Firearm. No jail, one year probation with conviction set aside on completion. Rifle forfeited and now in service with our department's training branch.

Oh--and I got yelled at for not calling for and waiting on back-up.

Anyway, be safe and be smart tonight. I won't be out there but lots of my peers will be. Don't be one of those people that we have to protect everyone else from. Trust me--you won't like it.

Working hard to be stupid

2008-12-07T14:33:00.000-08:00

Some people really have to get up early to make sure that they're the stupidest one on the block.

In the case I recall, it was some of the angry upper-class spoiled suburban white kids that make up the local Indymedia / Copwatch faction.

For those not familiar with these losers, it's as I've described--a bunch of patchouli-reeking white kids whose parents sent them to college, probably just to get them out of the house, but who skip classes to sit around smoking dope and hating the police.

Now why would a bunch of suburban white kids hate the police, you ask? It's pretty much a combination of resenting any and all authority (because their parents didn't teach them to respect it) and anger because the police keep getting between them and their dope. So they form a group called "copwatch" that has no purpose other than to harass the fine men and women who go out to protect and serve their often thankless communities. They put up websites where they make up lies about police abusing people and they typically find glee in any situation where a police officer is injured or killed...basically they're punks.

Well it wasn't too long ago that some of these little vermin read in the papers that several of our local police agencies were engaging in proactive police work in a couple of public housing complexes that were seeing a serious spike in street crimes. Part of what we were doing was "jump-outs" where we'd roll around four deep in an unmarked car, or six to eight deep in a van until we saw a suspicious person or group and then we'd...well, we'd jump out, stop them, identify everyone, and determine who was and who wasn't supposed to be in the area. This was easy to do and completely legal because the complexes are municipal property and have posted rules barring non-residents from being present unless visiting a resident. Typically we'd wind up searching a lot of people and recovering all sorts of drugs and guns, and we also scooped up quite a few who were either wanted on outstanding warrants or had been previously barred from the complexes. we made tons of arrests and removed a lot of hard-core criminals from these complexes, undoubtedly while deterring others from even coming around. The street crime numbers started to go back down and life was starting to get a little better for the decent non-lawbreaking residents.

And then the Copwatch kids showed up.

When they found out about our jumpouts and other selective enforcement practices (like towing all unregistered cars), they issued a press release stating that they would start patrolling these complexes to protect the "rights" of the citizens that we were harassing. basically they meant to stop us from stopping the criminals, and to hell with the residents that the criminals were preying on. And after announcing plans to show up and start videotaping us and educating citizens as to their rights vis-a-vis the police, they popped up one fine Saturday and started walking around with their video cameras, eagerly anticipating some police misconduct, no doubt.

Well sad to say, we weren't doing any operations at that particular time, so they didn't get to see any police in action. But they did get to see some real crime, because four of them showed up at our station with assorted black eyes and split lips (still reeking of patchouli) and demanding that we--the police that they hate--DO SOMETHING. Apparently the sight of these dopey white kids walking around this all-black housing project with expensive video cameras, watches and cell phones was just too much for the local hoods to ignore, and the Copwatch kids wound up getting beaten and robbed by the very hood rats that they were there to support.

And then they came to US--their sworn enemy and sole target of their harassment campaigns--and demanded that we go back up in there and find the criminals who had their stuff.

Yeah, ok. Just as soon as we finish laughing at you.

Needless to say, we never saw those particular doofy losers up in 'da hood again. I'm betting that mommy and daddy eventually bought them all new electronic toys to replace the ones that they'd "donated to the Urban Way".

The first time

2008-11-30T19:08:00.000-08:00

I remember the first time I ever drew my gun and pointed it at another human being.

I was just out of the academy, and still riding with a Field Training Officer, or FTO.
We'd just initiated a traffic stop on a car for some minor violation and I was riding in the passenger seat. As we exited our cruiser to approach, my FTO on the driver's side talking on the radio to dispatch and me walking up on the right, I saw the driver of the stopped car suddenly reaching under his seat, making what we refer to as a "furtive movement". To me, it was obvious that he was reaching for something and I called it out to my FTO.
"He's going for something under the seat!"
I quickly ran up to the open passenger window, drawing my gun as I did so, and pointed it at the fact of the driver. I can still recall the shocked look on his face as he complied with my order to get his hands up where I could see them. At least that's what I thought I said. I kind of got caught up in the moment and went on autopilot for a few seconds, reacting as I'd been trained to do. I don't recall the exact words that I used, but I know that they brought instant compliance.

It turned out the the driver was not reaching for a weapon; he was only trying to hide a bag of marijuana under the seat. Because he obeyed immediately, he didn't get shot but he did go to jail for the weed.

Afterwards, my FTO critiqued me performance. He was particularly impressed because I had seen the suspicious actions of the driver before he did and reacted instantly and decisively.

"OK, first of all, good job on spotting that. I was answering dispatch and didn't see it."

I felt pretty good.

"Second of all, your reaction was quick and appropriate and you let me know what was going on. That was good too."

Now I really felt like I was on top of my game. This was a tough FTO and here he was complimenting me. But then he went on.

"However, the correct command to the suspect is 'Police, let me see your hands', not 'Motherfucker, I'll air you out'. Work on that."

And so concluded my first lesson in the effects of sudden stress on one's vocabulary.

It did work, though.

In the navy...

2008-11-19T14:59:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's true. Little known historical fact, but our department actually had a "Marine Unit" once. We had it for all of a week and I was one if it's two members. And like all innovate and fun things on our department, we went too far with it and they took it away from us.

But it all began several years ago when some government program dropped a Boston Whaler complete with Mercruiser outboard and a trailer on us.

For a few months, it just sat unused in the parking lot, taking up needed space and not being used for a damn thing. Out station at that time was commanded by an old supervisor who had in fact "retired on duty" some years prior. The last thing that he wanted was for any of us to do anything to make him work, and unfortunately that also included a lot of proactive policing that either resulted in a big case or annoyed someone enough to generate complaints.

As a relatively new officer at that time, I was quickly rising to the top of his list because I hadn't yet learned when to lay low or back off and not poke my cruiser's nose into affairs that were too big for me to handle without a sudden rush of back-up from everywhere, to include other departments when we were short.

There was another officer on the squad who had earned the boss's ire by going back into the woods and generating large cases against poachers and other resource violators, and while this was technically within our jurisdiction, it often resulted in our (the supervisor's) needing to liaison with other agencies like Fish and Wildlife and it often exposed the boss's less-than-stellar knowledge of the laws surrounding resource cases. So John wasn't too popular with the boss either.

One day, in response to John's pestering regarding the boat, the boss had an idea. Maybe if he put his two most productive officers out in a little boat in the middle of the water, we couldn't possibly find much to get into and his phone wouldn't be ringing all the time. Plus he could take credit for a new patrol area and maybe get an increase in the budget that would of course be plowed into other things. But we didn't care, John and I. We just knew that we had us a boat and we were going out to do some policing in it. John had an actual license to captain a small commercial boat and I was also a paramedic who'd seen almost every episode of McHale's Navy, so between the two of us, we figured that we were all set.

Packing the bare essentials--lifejackets, binoculars, a megaphone, a shotgun and our lunches--we hitched the boat up and trailered it down to the nearest boat launch and put it in the water.

The first day out, we just patrolled up and down the river, getting the feel for our area and getting used to the boat. It was actually a small boat to have out on that sort of water, and it rode rough and we got wet. But it was also fast and had a blue light and a siren, so we were happy.

The next day, we began checking licenses of people who were fishing from shore spots and we wrote several citations because the people were used to not being checked and few actually had fishing licenses. We also did our good deed by towing a disabled boat back to the marina. And we pulled the boat out with enough time to spare to allow us to stop at a really good Chinese restaurant on the way back to the station. This boat cop stuff was all right!

But then we started doing police work.

Day three had us wondering about the number of violations on the other boats that we were seeing. So we decided to try some traffic stops when we saw people drinking or not wearing life jackets. Of course neither of us knew how to do a boat traffic stop, but hey--what's life without a few learning experiences? We picked a pleasure boat out that appeared overloaded and went after it. When we got behind it, John hit the blue light and yelped the siren. The people on the boat turned and looked at us, but didn't do anything else. So I picked up the megaphone and ordered: "This is the POLICE! Cut your engines, stand to, and prepare to be boarded!"

John looked at me. "What the hell does 'stand to' mean?"
"I dunno," I replied, shrugging. "But they say it in the movies."

Sure enough, they stopped and we determined that they had too many passengers for the size of their boat and they lacked enough flotation devices for all of them. So we transferred the excess passengers to our boat and I went aboard the pleasure boat and we took them back to the marina where we issued the appropriate citations. On the way back, the operator of the violator boat asked me when we started river patrolling.
"Just this week," I told him.
"Can you guys board my boat like this?"
"Well we did, didn't we? Do you think we'd do it if we couldn't?" I made a mental note to check the regs and make sure that we actually could do such things.

As it turned out, there wasn't anything in our manuals on us doing what we were doing--or on boat operations in general--so we just decided that we'd play it like we were in a car and things would probably be ok. And with that plan in effect, we went on our merry way, stopping boats, boarding boats, writing citations, and generally behaving like pirates for a couple of days.

Then on day five, we tried to stop a boat that didn't want to stop. we saw three guys in a bass boat drinking what looked like beer. When they saw us checking them out through binoculars, they threw the bottles overboard and hit their throttle. That was enough for us and we went after them.

With the blue light on and the siren yelping, we took up the chase. They weren't stopping, but we were a lot faster and rapidly closed on them. I got on the speaker and ordered them to stop, and they didn't. Worse, one of them flipped us the bird.

OK, now we had to get them.

We chased them for about ten minutes and finally drew abreast. I could clearly see all three bozos in the boat, but I couldn't see their hands so I grabbed the shotgun, racked a round, and pointed it at them while yelling for them to show their hands. That worked, and all three put their hands up, including the driver.

"Turn the boat off!" I ordered. That worked too, and in a minute we were alongside. I ordered the first passenger to come over to our boat and I gave John the shotgun and he covered me while I cuffed him. The I went aboard their boat and cuffed the other two. It turned out that all three were stone drunk and they were running because they didn't want to get busted for that. They didn't think that we'd chase them. So John got on the radio and made what is still regarded department-wide as a classic radio transmission.

"Marine One."

"Marine One, go ahead."

"You can hold us out off XXX Point with one boat stopped, three in custody."

"Marine One, say again?"

Others back at the station say that our boss popped upright in his chair and clutched at his chest at this point.

"Marine One, we have three in custody for Flee to Elude Boat and Suspicion of DUI Boat"

OK, it sounded good. But back on the streets, the whole force was rolling with laughter as we announced that we'd be heading into the nearest marina and requested cage car transport and a Field Sobriety Officer.

As it turned out, the boat operator had a BAC of 0.21 so he got hooked. We cut the other two jokers loose, and we set about impounding the operator's boat after the operator told us where his trailer was. He didn't want to, but changed his mind after we told him that we'd yank his boat up onto a flatbed wrecker if he didn't.

So the rest of the night was spent with me processing the drunk and John going through the process of trailering our boat and dropping it, then going down with another officer to find this guy's trailer, unhitching it from his truck and attaching it to ours, then going to the marina where we'd parked the bass boat and relieving the officer who had been sitting on it since we left two hours prior. Then John took that boat to our impound lot and got back to the station well after shift change.

But that arrest marked the end of our naval careers. On Monday, we came in to find that the patrol boat had been given to the Parks Department. Aside from the arrest fall-out, the father of the guy that we'd cited for the overloaded pleasure boat apparently knew some people and a complaint had rolled in. So the Marine Patrol was abolished after one week and the boat disposed of and not replaced.

Of course it was a long time before we stopped finding life preservers and nautical stuff in our lockers and mailboxes, and being greeted by mysterious voices yelling "Gilligan!" or "Hey Skipper!" whenever John or I went in service over the radio. (This was obviously before the radios got their unique identifiers that told Dispatch who the jokers were.)

DISPOSITION: The DUI case was pled out in an agreement where the guy got a No-jail DUI (as opposed to a more serious DWI) and the Fleeing charge was dropped. Turned out that the DA didn't want to try a DWI boat case and the fleeing statute that we charged didn't include boat operation but was specific to automobiles, trucks and motorcycles.

Still, we had fun, and nobody got hurt. It was all good.

Sometimes it's the little things that getcha.

2008-11-11T14:44:00.000-08:00

Littering. Just don't do it. Even if you're not wanted.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga.—Police said a man likely wishes he never threw trash on a highway. That's because littering wasn't the only charge filed against him. The man, 42, faces drug charges after deputies seized six pounds of methamphetamine from his vehicle.

He was arrested Friday on Interstate 85. Deputies also learned he was wanted in Louisiana for failure to appear.

The meth was valued at approximately $350,000 on the streets.

The man was charged with trafficking methampetamine, littering and other traffic violations.

———

This one reminds me of a night when I was just driving along, minding my own business, on my way back to my station to do some reports and not particularly looking for any trouble. I was in the right lane on the highway, overtaking a slower vehicle in the left lane, when suddenly a burst of sparks exploded on my grille and windshield. The passenger of that car had tossed a cigarette butt out and it had hit the nose of my cruiser. Oh no he didn't!

I braked, dropped back behind this car, and hit the red-and-blues. They stopped, and when I walked up to the car, the driver was visibly nervous. Turns out that his license was revoked. Step out the car, sir.

The driver complies, but not before exclaiming: "Damn! I'm going to jail because of you!" and reaching across the car to slug his passenger in the side of the head. By the time he turns to come out of the car, I've got my pepper spray in hand, but he's compliant with me. His passenger--a huge guy who is probably closer to 400 lbs than 300--just looks at me and says: "Honest officer, if you wasn't here, I'd be skooshing him."

"No hitting, no skooshing!" I ordered. I cuffed the driver and began the pat-down as back-up arrived. I Found a zip of crack in his watch pocket, and that just made my night. So he went for Driving While Revoked, Possession of Crack Cocaine and Simple Assault. The car belonged to his mom, and when I called her to let her know that we had it, she admitted that she knew that his license was revoked but didn't see a problem with letting him drive her car. "Well I told him that if he got caught it was gonna be on him," she said.

Actually I was going to let her either come get it or with her permission, let Mongo the passenger drive it away, but when she said that, I just told her to call the impound tow company in the morning to make arrangements to get it from them pursuant to our policy on Operating While Revoked, subsection: "knowingly allowing another to do so". She wasn't happy with that.

It was quickly wrapped up as my back-up waited on the tow and then gave Mongo a ride off the highway while I took Smacky in for booking. Oh--and he also got a $75.00 Littering citation for the cigarette that was thrown from his car in the first place.

DISPOSITION: Plea in which he got 10 days jail for DWR, 30 days for Possessing Cocaine, and the Assault was dismissed. Time to be served concurrently.

Denver area police do the right thing--404 DUI arrests over Halloween week-end

2008-11-05T17:57:00.000-08:00

Now this is good police work.

A Halloween drunken-driving crackdown netted 404 arrests statewide between Friday night and early Monday morning, the Colorado State Patrol said today.

Troopers and more than 50 local law-enforcement agencies participated in the crackdown.

Four people in Colorado were killed during the four-day period; two of those crashes were alcohol-related, according to troopers.

Alcohol was a factor in 40 percent of the traffic deaths in Colorado last year, accounting for 226 deaths.

Those arrested for drunken driving face jail time, the loss of their driver's license, and fines and court costs as high as $10,000.

Col. Mark Trostel, chief of the Colorado State Patrol, said arresting drunken drivers would be a top priority for the upcoming holiday season.

"If you take the risk, you will get caught," he said in a statement.

During the crackdown, the State Patrol made 104 DUI arrests; Denver police made 64; Colorado Springs police made 33; Aurora made 29; Adams County sheriff's deputies made 14; Lakewood police made 13; Grand Junction police made 10; Jefferson County sheriff's deputies arrested 10; and Rifle police made 10 arrests.

There are really few things out there on our roads more dangerous than drunk drivers. Each year, drunk drivers kill more people that we've lost in Iraq since the beginning of the war. According to the DUI Death Clock, nearly 12,000 Americans have died so far this year alone due to someone's decision to drink and drive.

I commend my brothers and sisters in the participating Denver-area agencies.

Now my next question: How many arrested DUI drivers were illegal aliens driving without licenses or insurance? Of that number, How many were held for deportation?

Since it's the Denver area that we're talking about, I'm betting that the answers are "quite a few" and "not even one". But I'd sure like to be proven wrong on that last one.

How to get out of a ticket

2008-11-03T17:43:00.000-08:00

People are always asking me what they can do or say to get out of a ticket once they get pulled over.

Of course my first response is: "Don't get pulled over." Duh. it's really a no-brainer, especially when you figure out how many cars are out there on the road with you. You've typically got to put some effort in to get that darn traffic cop to notice you and want to stop you instead of any of those other cars. Many people manage to go years or even decades without doing this, but if you're one of those folks who just had to get that cop's attention, and now you're siting on the shoulder and the red and blue lights are flashing behind you, there's a better than average chance that the decision to ticket or warn you has already been made. But just in case there's still some leeway that you're eligible for, here's how you can maximize your chances of going away with just a warning:

1. Pull over when the lights come on. Don't make me follow you for a mile and then act surprised and claim that you thought I was trying to pull some other car over. If I'd wanted another car, I'd have been behind another car. But I was behind you and that's because I wanted you.

2. Pull way over onto the shoulder, so that I don't have to stand in a traffic lane to talk to you. Show some basic courtesy to me and I'm much more likely to give you some back when I decide whether you need a ticker or just a warning.

3. Roll your window down, turn your engine off, and put your hands on the steering wheel where I can see them. This tells me that I can safely approach without fear of you trying to rabbit away or suddenly producing a weapon. I usually appreciate that, and most of my peers do, too.

4. Turn the radio off before I get up to your window. If I have to actually tell you this, you're not getting out of the ticket.

5. Put out the cigarette that you're puffing on. Smoke offends me and it masks the smell of alcohol and weed, which is why most cigarettes are lit the second I turn my lights on. If you just lit that, you're coming out of the car and a K-9 unit will be arriving shortly. Meanwhile I intend to write as many tickets as it takes to give that unit time to respond.

6. Hang up the cell phone. You and I have business which is more important than any conversation you might be having there. You continuing your conversation as I stand there next to your window is going to be taken as either a deliberate insult or an attempt by you to play a head game. Also, whoever is on the phone is not part of this and doesn't need to listen in and/or offer you advice as you and I talk. If I have to tell you to hang it up, your ticket will be forthcoming shortly.

7. If your license is suspended and surrendered, do not insult my intelligence by pretending to look for it then stating "I have a license, it's just not with me." And when I ask you if your license is suspended, do not deny it. I'm going to find out in a minute anyway, and if you tell me before I go out with it over the radio, maybe we can work something out.

8. When I ask for the paperwork for the car, don't tell me it's not your car and you don't know the name of your friend that you got it from. Like the drivers' license question above, I'm going to figure the truth out in a few minutes anyway.

9. When I ask you how fast you were going, do not tell me that you were doing the speed limit. I have radar, laser and a calibrated speedometer. I KNOW how fast you were going. My asking you is a test of your honesty. Lie and you fail.

10. Don't try to BS me about who you know on my job. Believe me, if you drop a name, I will check with that person, unless of course you drop MY name. Yes, an idiot once told me that he was very good friends with me. Turned out that he knew my name from a prior encounter and didn't remember my face or bother to read my name tag before tossing my name out as one of his best friends. (He got a ticket.) If you do have a friend or relative on my job, just smile and take the ticket and call your friend/relative when you get home and ask them to talk to me. If they like you, they will. And if you weren't a jerk to me or a serious offender, I'll probably pull it as a favor to my co-worker. But that name-dropping on the roadside? No.

11. Don't try to argue with me about why I stopped you. If I wasn't positive, I wouldn't have stopped you and I'm not going to change my mind just because you say "I didn't do that!" It's not my job to argue with you. There is a person that you can argue with, and that's the judge in traffic court. Take your arguement there if you like. I really don't mind, especially as I get paid time and a half to show up. Just remember that if you mouth off on the roadside, you may forget about it by the time the court date comes up but I won't because I'll have written it down. And judges love to hear that trash-talk read in court.

12. Demanding my name and badge number doesn't intimidate me. I don't fear your complaints because I do my job correctly and by the book and my supervisors know it. But if you start out the conversation by demanding those, rest assured that I will oblige and write them both down for you...on at least one ticket.

In sum, I'm not out there just to mess with you and I didn't single you out for a traffic stop just because I wanted to harrass you personally. I have a job to do, and if you make it easy for me to do it, I'm much more likely to just kick you loose with a warning in cases where it's an option than I am if you decide to throw an attitude at me or go out of your way to show me disrespect. If you do decide to be an ass, I'm not going to hold it against you and come down harder on you, but by the same token, you can sure forget about the possibility of me cutting you any slack. It's really up to you to decide how it's going to go. Make the most of the opportunity.

Blog Central, show this unit in service.

2008-11-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

Q. "So are you the good cop or the bad cop?"

A. "Good cop and bad cop went home for the day. Now you're stuck with me."

Yeah, I'm a cop. And I'm a cop with an attitude.

Why do I have an attitude? Well maybe it's because I've spent a number of years out there solving the problems of a bunch of whiners who expect me to fix their lives and then hate me when I make the attempt. Or maybe it's because I've busted my ass for an agency that's rewarded me with the back of it's hand every time I've gone out of my way to do the right thing instead of the easy thing.

Hell, maybe I had it when I got here. I don't know. But then I really don't care. My attitude's not my problem. And it's not your problem if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing or if you need help with something that you didn't cause or aggravate. But if you're a criminal or a scofflaw who thinks that you've got something coming because of where you work, how much money you have, who you know, or because of your race, sex or appearance, well then we're probably not going to be pals. But that's fine. I have a job to do, and if you don't like it, feel free to complain. My name and badge number? I've written them down on this ticket for you. Sign here and press hard please. You're making three copies.