Archive for September, 2007
Saturday, September 29th, 2007
A few weeks ago, I climbed in the ol’ crime cruiser about 5:45 a.m. on a Saturday, clicked on the radio, and heard the last part of an emergency message, what the DRAGNET folks used to call an APB:
“…domestic battery. He is believed headed south on Route 26 from….”
Interesting, I thought.
Then I signed on. “30 is 101.”
And I immediately got sent to the truck stop north of town. The one that sits along Route 26. See, Route 26 south puts him right on Main Street.
Damn. I hadn’t even had my breakfast yet. Saturday morning on duty breakfast has become quite the ritualized Dr Pepper and strawberry flavored, iced Pop-Tarts.
When I arrived, I asked the deputy whom I was relieving what kind of car we were looking for. He gave me the model exactly as it was passing right before my eyes.
I followed the guy for a few blocks while dispatch gave the license plate number again. . It was like watching the Lotto numbers come up outta one of those bingo machines. With each number that matched, my gut got tighter and tighter.
Bingo. It was him. Driving down the middle of my town like he hadn’t a care in the world. And by the time I ID’d the vehicle, the charges had been upgraded to domestic battery and sexual assault.
Within just a few blocks, two other officers showed up and we lit the guy up, me directly behind him as he was forced to pull over by a SUV in front of him (and didn’t THAT guy have a great story: three cop cars, lights and sirens blasting, one coming directly at him to cut him off!).
The suspect hesitated for a moment, and in that moment, I knew. I could see it in his body language and the way he looked at his rearview mirror and scoped out where the other two officers were.
Boom! Up and over the sidewalk, through the yard, and down the street. And I went with him. Over the sidewalk, through the yard, and down the street.
Twelve minutes later, myself and another deputy, and the suspect, were nearly twenty miles down the road. It ended when the suspect tried to make a U-turn in front of the other deputy (at better than 40 miles an hour), got hit by said deputy, then drove around that car to ram mine head on.
Yeah, it was exciting…hitting speeds better than my IQ (yeah, yeah, hold your jokes about slow-speed chases).
And yeah, it was scary…realizing after it was over that we’d driven that fast in the rain and thank the Gods it was early Saturday morning and damned few people were about.
But mostly? It was thoughtful. Rather, it made me thoughtful.
After all the testosterone moments, and the retellings, and the watching of the videotape and listening back to the radio traffic (including when the state trooper dispatcher called for my status literally every 30 seconds and to which I wanted to say, “Dude, I’m trying to drive. We’re headed east at better than 100, if that changes, I’ll tell you!”), I was able to slow down and take a breath and think about what had happened.
Was it dangerous? Sure as shit it was. Not so much to the public because there were exceedingly few people on the road at that hour. But certainly to the suspect and definitely to myself and the other deputy. Roughly 115/120 miles an hour, a winding road, rain off and on, wet pavement. Hell the speed alone could have killed us. Add those other things and it kept me from sleeping very well for a few days.
I’d never really thought about pursuit policies before. This is a small county, after all, that kind of thing doesn’t happen here (except that kind of thing and the other kind of thing and all kinds of things happen everywhere). Yes, my supervisor was listening to the chase and yes, had the suspect turned south and tried to go into one of our small towns, that supervisor would have called it off and yes, if I’d felt the public was more at risk I would have called it off and if the other deputy had felt it was too risky he would have called it off.
That wasn’t what got in my head. There were a thousand different ways to have called it off if it got terribly out of control. What got in my head was this: was it worth it?
Aside from the adrenaline and the excitement and the three banged up cars and the torn up yard, was the suspect, in and of himself, worth the chase?
Yes. This time.
An instant conclusion. This time.
The guy allegedly beat his fiancée up, forced her to give him a hummer, then stole her car. Yeah, he was worth that chase in those circumstances. But what if it had been during the rush hour? Would it have been worth it then? Probably not. The difference being a handful of people on the streets versus hundreds of people on the streets.
There are departments around the country that will pursue anybody for anything. There are also departments around the country that will pursue no one. I think both of those positions are bereft of common sense.
Would you forgo pursuing this guy in Nevada who was caught on tape sexually abusing a three year old? No, you’d go after him because you know there are kids in the past and kids in the future and society has said that is someone we want off the streets and locked away from my Johnny and Joannie.
Some chases have to happen. Sometimes, the cops have to hunt down a bad person. I think society – at least the part of society (writers and coppers) I deal with – is okay with that. I think society says, generally, do what you need to do.
But society also wants it done with common sense; with as much restraint as we can use; with as much care for the son or mother or grandfather who might get caught in the madness as we can possibly have.
I think society also wants us to skip the chasing bullshit. For instance, ain’t no way in hell I’m chasing the kid who was smoking a joint. Nor will I chase the woman who just dumped a $54.97 bad check at my bookstore (yeah, she really did!)
I guess there’s really no point to this whole post other than that I had a chase. Yeah, it was interesting and, in a way, fun, but it was also scary and thought-provoking. Sort of a microcosm of all of the police work I’ve discovered so far.
ps – I never did get my Dr Pepper and strawberry Pop-Tarts.
Posted in CopStories | 1 Comment »
Sunday, September 16th, 2007
Okay, so I had a sort of a brush with the Phelpians yesterday. You know, the whackos from the cult that calls itself the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas? Run by that creepy ass Fred Phelps…www.wbc.com…with the webpage titled “God Hates Fags.”
Right, the ones who protest the funerals of dead soldiers with signs saying things like “We’re glad you’re soldiers are dead,” and the ever popular “God is killing your soldiers because American tolerates fags.”
Wow, if what America does to gays is tolerance, I’d hate to see their definition of hate and oppression.
Okay, let’s understand, I didn’t actually brush the Phelpians yesterday, but I was in town trying to head them off at the pass. I volunteered my time, in uniform, to block traffic for the funeral procession and to watch and make that, once they left, they didn’t slip back in to disrupt the funeral procession.
See, we had a local guy die in a motorcycle wreck recently. He was up in Wisconsin without a helmet and had an accident. The guy was a lawyer and, from everything I heard, a nice guy. I think I maybe said hi to him once or twice over in the courthouse. Didn’t know him, didn’t know his family.
Also didn’t know he was a Patriot Rider.
Ringing a bell? The motorcycle guys who go to soldiers’ funerals to shield the grieving families from the Phelpians?
This guy was a Patriot Rider and so something like 200 other Patriot Riders showed up for his funeral.
As did 6 members of the “Fred Phelps there but for the grace of God and undegenerate DNA go I” club. They were coming to town, they announced, to protest the dead lawyer’s funeral. Because, they said, he was a Patriot Rider and therefore someone who condoned homosexuality.
Follow me, if you possibly can. He rode with a group that tried to give grieving families some peace during funerals of fallen soldiers, soldiers who, according to Fred and his Whelps, were murdered by God because America, as the bastion and headquarters of Godlessness, doesn’t round up its GLBT community, ride them in train boxcars, as did the Nazis, with Jews into a holding pen and shoot them as though they were cattle stricken with hoof-and-mouth disease.
I don’t give a crap what your political viewpoint is. I don’t care if you think W. hung the fucking moon or ought to be hanged by the moon, you don’t protest funerals. And you damn sure don’t protest the funeral of someone who wasn’t even in the very military you keep deriding. And you damn damn damn sure don’t protest the funeral of someone who gave his/her life for their country, regardless of the political realities behind that giving.
I’m all for protests and giving full throat to the First Amendment, all for it. My DNA bleeds First Amendment. But there is a time and place for everything and even a time and place that can be edgy and startling, but a funeral ain’t it. With the freedom of the First Amendment comes, I think, the responsibility of the First Amendment.
Flag burning, for instance. I have no problem with that. You wanna fry up the flag, have at it. But I also understand that if you’re going to exercise your right to do that, you have to understand that it makes quite a few people crazy and they then have a right to protest your protestation.
With freedom comes responsibility.
LuAnn, my wife, wanted to organize a counter protest. And she would have done it brilliantly, gathering up all her Princeton lefty cronies and all the gays and lesbians in town (and yeah, for those of you reading this who live in Princeton, there are quite a few gays and lesbians…suck it up and deal with it) and marching right the hell into the midst of the loony fringe and kicking their asses…verbally and spiritually…not violently…I don’t think.
But LuAnn decided that a funeral is NOT the place to protest.
Besides, the funeral was attended by 200 bikers…one of whom actually had a baseball bat strapped to his handlebars. Hilarious, that. There was no way the Phelpians were going to get any sort of rhythm in Princeton.
At first, according to Officer Friendly, they were quite polite. Yes sir and no sir and where do we stand sir (there is a 200 foot stay away protest law in Illinois) and “We only want to let people see our signs, nothing else.”
But then, when the bikers got there and the cops got there and the family got there, they started singing. Patriotic songs with all the words changed to reflect that God does, indeed, hate all fags and faggots and rump rangers and butt pirates.
And who came to the rescue? The Princeton Fire Department. They drove two giant firetrucks right up between the Phelpians and the church. And when the singing got louder, they revved those giant firetruck engines.
A brilliant stroke on all fronts. No one inside could hear or see the Phelpians and the Phelpians themselves were ecstatic because they had caused such a commotion that cops AND firemen had to come deal with them. Mission accomplished.
But the sad part is this: of the six, three were children. Standing alongside the adults, waving signs, screaming that all faggots were going to hell and God hates anyone who even knows a gay person and who knows what all else.
Officer Friendly told me it was the most depressing thing he’d ever seen. “How can anyone have that much hate inside them?”
I had no answer. I’ve heard them on TV but I’ve never seen them live. I’ve never had to hear the rawness of it.
Who did have at least some sort of an answer for him?
Irony of ironies, the local LESBIAN pastor. She was out walking and stumbled across the funeral and the protest. She asked Ben what was what, he told her, and she knew instantly he was upset. She calmed him down, basically told him not to sweat them, they’d be gone pretty quickly and that they weren’t even remotely Christian, regardless of what they called themselves.
But I don’t think she had anything to say about the children. What can you say? They will be just as warped, just as twisted and broken, as the adults shepherding them around the country to various protests. At less than 10 years old, those kids are probably lost forever.
And that’s the saddest part of the entire affair. Not the horror of protesting a funeral, not the horror of shoving a family’s collective face further into the pain and ache of losing a part of themselves, but that those children have never had any part of themselves.
Posted in Random Thoughts | 4 Comments »
Saturday, September 1st, 2007
Wow, has it really been that long since I posted? Have to remedy that, I guess, get back in the groove of posting.
First of all, posting to a journal seems like really intense navel gazing and while I’ve got a great navel, it doesn’t actually do much but just sit there.
Secondly, I frequently feel like the cop stories I have are pretty much only interesting to me and other coppers. Yeah, some of the stories are cool to regular people, but only other cops really understand the punchline, “Well, the license plate was covered.”
See, you’re not laughing.
I do have a really great GREAT story to tell, but I have to wait a bit longer to see how the court part of it shakes out.
For now, how about this: remember a while back I stood toe to toe with some precooked barbeque? Three in the morning and I faced off with a giant slab of loose beef?
Well, let me tell you, goats are much easier to herd than cows.
I got this call about ten minutes before I get off, lady complaining about her neighbor’s goats…again. Seems the little grass munchers frequently get out and the woman is tired of her rhododendrons getting eaten.
So I head out, thinking, “how am I going to write up this overtime?” I can put, “herding goats,” I guess, but I’m not sure how my sergeant will take that.
I get there, figuring the goats are probably already gone and there were probably only two or three. No, hell no, there are SEVEN and they’re still there, some of them standing on their hind legs (reminded me of ANIMAL FARM) and eating the leaves off the trees.
The flowers? Forget about them, they were history. Most of the bushes? Ditto history. Not much left but the trees.
She gives me her complaint – not that she has to explain much, they are smacking their gobstoppers as she talks to me – and I go to the neighbors to get them to get their goats.
Who comes out? The lady of the house. Mid 40s…crippled! She’s got a cane and a golf cart, for cripes’ sake.
A cane!
And this is who I expect to round up the goats.
“They’re my sons,” she says.
(Actually, that would be “They’re my son’s,” wouldn’t it? Although it’s sort of funny the way I originally wrote it)
“Well, your son’s goats are eating the neighbor out of house and home.”
“They don’t eat wood,” she says.
“Uh…right. Okay, eating her out of flora and fauna. You have to do something.”
“We’re trying, but they’re jumping over the fence.”
“So they’re Billy Gruff versions of Michael Jordan.”
She frowns. “What?”
“That’s a six foot fence…except where the hole is, it’s a little shorter there. Must play basketball to jump that well.”
“My son’s not home right now. We’ll get them when he gets home.”
“Which is?”
“Tuesday.”
This happened last Thursday.
“Uh…no. Right now. Call someone, do something. Otherwise, I’m going to have to cite you.”
Now, normally, I’m not such a hardass, but this was the fifth or sixth time we had been called and the flowerless lady said it had been going on for two years and she’d tried to handle it herself but just got tired of it.
“And what am I supposed to do?” she asks, waving the cane.
I shrugged but knew that somehow…somehow…the answer was going to involve me. And it did. Walking through the yard and bushes, clapping my hands and saying things like “he-yaa,” and “git on home,” and “bushwa,” and who knows what else, helping her get her son’s goats home.
And, as if by magic, they moved. Not like that cow, which just stared at me and dared me to do something. These little fuckers took off, running across the street, darting up and down the rolling hills, and – swear to all that’s holy – jumping that six foot fence.
And one of them had his tongue hanging out just like Michael Jordan.
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