Guns and Knives

I've been waiting for the Professional Standards Unit (PSU is our version of IA) and the Disciplinary Review Board to clear me before posting this story. It's the closest I've come to shooting anyone in my 10 year career.

It was a chilly winter evening, about 10:00 PM when I responded to a home for a domestic dispute. The couple was arguing and 911 was called. Apparently the husband broke the news to his wife that he has a venereal disease. That she didn't give him. She is. of course very upset. This isn't the first time I've been here for this couple, so I'm aware their relationship is volatile to start with.

I arrive with another officer and his rookie in training. The rookie recently graduated the academy and is riding with the experienced officer for training. We get to the door and hear the arguing and we are let in by the irate wife. She is angry and yelling at us that she wants her husband out. We try and explain to her that she can't kick him out, they are married. She gets angrier and angrier and marches into the den. The other officer and I follow while the rookie starts talking to the husband, trying to get information.

The other officer and I try to calm down the wife but she's hearing none of it. She wants him out and she wants him out, NOW. Despite our efforts to calm her she's getting angrier. She stops suddenly and throws her arms up in the air. Angrily she declares, "Fine! I'll handle this MY way!"

She storms past me and marches toward the rookie. I begin to follow her as she passes the rookie and goes into the kitchen. She's a few feet behind the rookie, with his back to her. She slams open a drawer, thrusts her hand in and draws a steak knife out.

I see her hand plunge into the drawer. I know kitchen drawers can be full of sharp and pointy weapons. Time slows for me, milliseconds drag out to eternity. The rookie is the only one between her and her husband and he doesn't see what's happening behind him.

As I see the hand come up with the knife, I break leather and draw my gun. Years of drawing it in practice, and sometimes fear, have made the move a barely conscious action. I think "gun" and it appears in my hand. I shove the rookie away with my other arm as I raise my gun and point it at her. Before it's on target I'm yelling at her to drop the knife and get her hands up. I have the gun up, center mass, and I'm closing the distance. Now it's me and her. I'm the one getting cut or stabbed, nobody else, they are behind me, out of danger. I'm about to use my gun to make sure I don't get hurt.

In a moment of clarity she drops the knife back in the drawer. I'm not going to give her the chance to grab it again so I thrust out my empty hand with open palm, and I knock her back as hard as I can. I want to stun her and distract her from trying to get another weapon. She topples backwards to the floor. I holster up the gun as I step in and grab her. The rookie helps me roll her and cuff her up. She offers no resistance at this point, which was what I was aiming for.

Had she not dropped that knife, I would have shot her.

She begins weeping and says, "You should have shot me!" Then she becomes angry, "I'm writing Obama! He'll fix this!"

We finished getting the information we need and she gets taken to jail for obstruction of justice.

She tells us afterward that the back bedroom is locked and they use the steak knife as a key to open it. Had we been having a normal, rational conversation and she said that before getting the knife, I wouldn't have blinked about it. But her angry and irrational state leading up to announcing, "Fine! I'll handle it MY way!" led me to believe she was retrieving that knife for her husband, with another cop in her way. I think this is a specious excuse with her sobbing, "You should have shot me." I believe her intent was more violent but we'll never really know.

I knew the complaint was coming, and had nothing to fear. I wrote a detailed report and completed the required "Use of Force" form. Her complaint to the sergeant changed several times in the course of telling him the different things I supposedly did.

I was called into PSU a few weeks later and spent about an hour talking to one of the investigators. He recorded my statement as I described what happened. I know the other officers were interviewed as well. The entire case was presented to the civilian Disciplinary Review Board recently. I got the letter today that I was exonerated.

In the end she claimed I kicked her. I didn't kick her, I didn't need to. But she needed something she thought sounded more outrageous than pointing my gun at her and pulling up the slack in the trigger.

Independence Day

This is my 4th of July, Independence Day, call by call. I drove 104 miles, mostly three to four miles at a time. My car consumed nearly 3/4 of a tank of gas doing it. ETA: About 20 cops handled 240 calls during my 10 hour shift.

I picked up the cruiser and went to head to "line up" at the building. Right in front of me, a car busts a "No U-Turn" sign. *Sigh* If I gotta be here working, I might as well work. I stopped the car and was informed, "I was paying more attention to the light than the signs." That was my first ticket for the night.

It was like a ghost town for a while after line up. I finally caught my first call. Fireworks. News Flash: It's Independence Day, people light off fireworks. I rolled up on scene and found a family with friends and a bunch of children. They were lighting off little stuff in the yard. I wished them a "Happy Fourth of July!" and told them one of their neighbors hadn't heard about what day it is yet.

I went to a disabled motor vehicle call. The car was stalled out in the median. It was there, but not any hazard to traffic and nobody was around. Back in service.

A suspicious person call. They were suspicious because they were sitting in a car. They were gone before I got there. Evidently they got tired of sitting and drove off.

A call from an off duty deputy working loss prevention at a grocery store. A car in the lot has expired tags and inspection. When I get there he points it out and the driver is unloading groceries into it. There's nothing we can do with the car on private property so we drive nearby and wait for her to drive off. She's onto us and won't leave so I hide at the other end of the lot and have my backup clear. Several minutes later I see her pulling out of the lot and I get in behind her. Sure enough, expired tags. She tries to whip into another parking lot before I can get her but I light her up and get her stopped. The tags expired last December and the inspection last September. Her license to drive is also suspended. Although I wrote a couple of tickets the judge will dismiss them as "complied with law" if she comes to court with current registration and inspection. So it's just incentive to get the issues fixed.

I respond to a shots fired call but the other officer got there first, determined it was nothing, and called me off before I arrived.

I went with another unit to a disorder and assault on the other end of the city from me. The reports are that the boyfriend is beating up his girlfriend. We find her and she's got a laceration on her forehead. It has bled all over face and shirt. She's covered in old bruises, big ones. She swears up and down he didn't hit her. She broke an ashtray and a shard of glass bounced up and cut her head. I may have been born at night, but not last night. No victim, no crime. There's nothing we can do.

Dispatch informs me they have another call for a woman needing help in the woods behind our location. It's where we found the girl with the cut forehead so a quick check of the area showed nothing and we cleared out.

I get another fireworks call but it's been holding for hours. Nobody is there anymore.

A prowler call comes in close to me. The caller can hear someone tapping on her windows. The first officer to arrive finds nobody and calls me off before I get there.

I head to an officer who got to the location of a 911 hangup. Someone called 911 and hung up and our dispatchers can't reach them so they send us. The officer hears an argument inside and someone yells, "I'll kill you!" They won't answer the door for him. Before I get there other cops arrive and he makes contact with occupants. He calls off any more responding units.

I went on another suspicious person call but never made it since the first cop there found nothing.

A noise call turns out to be some people and kids in a yard talking.

I went to a call for an active fight. An acquaintance showed up at a family gathering and picked a fight with one of the women. Her brother stepped in and wore out the aggressor who fled, tail between his legs, before we got there. I suspect there will be retribution.

I cleared there and went to the scene of a fight involving a hammer and a two by four board. The original caller says his neighbor came to his door (at nearly midnight) and knocked. When he answered it, the suspect didn't say anything but reached to pull out a claw hammer in his back pocket. The guy answering the door figures the best way to come out of a fight with a hammer is to go on the offensive. He puts his elbow in the suspect's face and the two tumble down the front steps. The suspect gets the hammer out so the other guy retrieves a two by four and continues hitting the guy. He makes a tactical retreat into his house and hammer boy smashes the window in his door.

If you knock on my door at midnight and pull a hammer on me, you won't get an elbow and you won't need a medic. The only thing you will need is a referral by the Casket & Funeral Supply Association of America. Hammer boy is very lucky the other guy didn't have anything else besides his elbow and a two by four board.

We find hammer boy and his face is bloody. He says someone stole his money and he was knocking on the other guys door looking for the suspect. He was at the wrong house. He initially admitted having a hammer but then began denying it. Of course he's good and drunk too. Imagine that. He got taken by the district officer to the Graybar Hotel for lodging tonight.

I backed up an officer on a DUI stop. The officer was with the driver on a call where she had some kind of domestic issue with her husband. She's obviously drunk and ignored the officer's offers to give her a ride, get a family member for her... Anything but drive. She drove anyway. We were behind her and watched her horrible driving before stopping her. She couldn't recite her alphabet or count backwards. The alphabet is so easy to recite but something about alcohol changes the order of the letters... "A B C D E F G H I W Y K Z." Despite giving her several opportunities, she couldn't do it.

When I cleared I got another fireworks call.

Then a caller at a motel said the female in the next room was screaming for help and for police. We got there and she was fighting with her boyfriend. Both of them had knots and injuries. A knife was laying in the parking lot. Both went to jail.

I cleared there and went to a disorder. Security officers in a neighborhood could hear a couple arguing in their apartment. When they knocked on the door the residents told them to go away. So the security guards called police. Giant. Waste. Of. Time. They were having an argument and didn't feel the need to share it with security. There was nothing indicating an assault or anything else.

Next, a fight with drunk parents arguing because he wanted to drive off with the one year old baby. Everything was calm when we arrived. We explained the consequences of DWI with a baby in the car and everyone agreed to stay put. The baby was wide awake at two in the morning. Quality parenting there.

I went and hung out while one of the bars cleared out. Officers there were keeping the fights at bay. This particular place has lots of fights every weekend when they let out and there have been shootings and stabbings there in the past. Nothing really dramatic tonight.

I responded to a call of a burglary in progress. While going we got tones on the radio. Tones are broadcast by dispatch for the highest priority calls. Someone on this burglary has been shot. We get there and nobody is shot. The suspect has fled the scene. There was no burglary. The inability of the victims to speak English greatly changed the way dispatch perceived what was going on. Turns out there was some kind of argument and one of the guys involved retrieved his rifle from the truck. Upon winning the argument then, he fled just before we got there. No shooting, no burglary. Nobody wants to go to court.

That was my night. I ended my shift among a cacophony of shots fired and fight calls going out on the radio. I'm glad I'm done, time for sleep.

A Busy Start

Friday we had a fairly busy start to the Independence Day weekend. It's only going to get worse now. Tonight my call load will triple with all the complaints about "fireworks." Not to mention everyone who started drinking alcohol yesterday will be good and sauced tonight.

Early Friday, I heard dispatch air a call on the radio about a one car accident into a pole. I was going to a silly call that could hold a while so I told dispatch to send it to me. I got on scene to find a large SUV had collided with a telephone pole. The pole was fine but the truck was smashed in pretty badly. The driver had to get extricated by EMS and taken to the hospital. A tow truck arrived to collect what was left and remove it from the scene. As best we could tell the SUV hit the curb and rode over it, hitting the pole. The driver wouldn't admit it but I'll bet there was a distraction happening.

Here we are with several police cars, an ambulance, a fire truck, and a citizen with a bright orange flag who took it upon himself to direct traffic. Lots of blinking and flashing lights, including the tow truck's amber lights. Guess what happens?

Another wreck. A rear ender in the traffic because someone wasn't paying attention.

Ugh.

He wanted to know if I had to give him a ticket. Yes. Most definitely, yes.

I got another call where the caller complained about a neighbor making threats. The neighbor was described as "hops like a duck." That was good for a laugh. Except when I got there, the guy did walk like a duck. He had some kind of limp which I never would have thought twice about except the caller had to point out he looked like a duck. It took a great deal of self control not to laugh.

Later in the night I went on a call where someone was sleeping outside, behind a shopping center in the woods. We got there and went exploring. We found a skunk checking out the trash, luckily we were too far away to bother it. Sure enough, behind the building in some woods is a guy sleeping.

I asked what was going on and he stated he worked in a nearby restaurant. He is working in the morning and the buses aren't running. He doesn't want to walk all the way home and then back again in the morning.

So the guy, who works in the kitchen of a restaurant, is sleeping outside between shifts. Rather than showering and wearing clean clothes.

When we were done I sent a message on the in car computer to everyone working, advising them to avoid the restaurant. An officer informed me he wished he knew about that earlier when they ate there.

Yuck.

Subway

I've mentioned that I enjoy eating at Subway on duty. I can watch them make my food and know it hasn't been tampered with.

No more.

Subway Strips Franchises From Service Member

While serving in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army Reserve, Leon Batie Jr. dodged roadside bombs and scrambled to safety when rockets pierced the night sky.

When he returned to Dallas in early 2006, another battle loomed.

As Batie was returning from Afghanistan, he learned he was being stripped of the two Subway restaurants he bought before mobilizing.

The stores were sold to Subway insiders, with one transaction yielding a Subway executive a $100,000 profit, according to a lawsuit Batie filed last year in state court in Dallas County. One issue in the case is set for trial this week.

If the business was doing that poorly it wouldn't have sold for so much profit.

I have an affinity for service members. Although there are plenty of more dangerous jobs in the world than law enforcement, it is the only one (along with the military) that I can think of that people actively want to murder you just for being there.

Using his absence, and albeit poor business skills of his brother as an excuse, Subway has made a huge profit while screwing a man activated to serve in the military.

I will NEVER eat at Subway again. I'd rather risk food tampering.

Back to your regularly scheduled programing...

Crime Solved

I qualified at the range this week. Roanoke County has kicked us out of the range we helped build with them in Dixie Cavern. Now we are forced to use a really nice range that Norfolk Southern Police built in the city. It's awful, driving to a nice range that's only five minutes away from the department.

Now all we have to do is find someplace flat we can do driver training. It'll be a shame to stop driver training on the side of a mountain with cliffs to plummet off of and landfill retention ponds to land in. Hopefully it will also not be behind the range targets too.

We had great firearms training after running through the normal qualification course. We did some emergency point shooting while moving to cover, attacking the target from a disadvantaged position, and one handed shooting under stress.

After qualifying, I went to work on the street. I caught a burglary call at an empty house. The owner is remodeling it to prepare for renters. He has new walls, carpeting, ceilings, kitchen floor, and windows. It'll be a nice place to live. Over the span of several days however, someone has gone inside and trashed it.

Most of the new windows have been broken out. The carpet was set on fire in one room. A broom handle was used to poke holes in the ceilings. In fact a bulls eye target was drawn on one wall and the broom handle used for target practice. All that new plaster work, and painting, is ruined. It's textured plaster as well so it's not easy to patch. I suspect it will have to be ripped out and re-done because the damage is so extensive.

A can of white paint was opened and spread around too. In fact there are foot prints through the paint into the house and outside. Painted hand prints on a window screen. The painted foot prints lead up through the woods into a neighborhood behind the house.

I was taking the grand tour of the damage and noticed the hand and foot prints look small.

Several small children then began walking out of the woods toward us. I nab the leader and the others run off. The leader is ten years old. His sneakers are covered in dried white paint and the soles match the size and pattern in the foot prints all over the scene. I seized the shoes for evidence.

The boy is crying and sobbing because I have his only pair of shoes. He swears he didn't do anything. Then he acknowledges walking through the paint. Then putting the hand prints on the windows. He blames the broken windows and other damage on other kids from the neighborhood. I have no doubt he had help but he's the only one I can prove was here causing damage.

His father was not pleased when he was informed he was going to be civilly responsible.

That's the first cold burglary I solved and made an apprehension on while still taking the report. Of course it helped the suspect returned to the scene with evidence.

The kid's lucky though, the owner was planning on a camp out that night in the house with his firearms.

I'm not sure what will ever happen in court to a ten year old, but I have to try and obtain juvenile petitions on him for this. There's too much damage to let it go.

I also worked a domestic assault. An adult brother and sister, who still live together with mom, got into an argument. He began punching her, so she picked up a glass off the counter to throw at him. His response was to pull a gun on her and threaten to shoot her. Classy. He was gone before I got there.

I'm looking forward to a couple days off.

Move Over

Here I am, sitting in the hospital emergency room, guarding a guy who is having a mental health evaluation. Officers were called for a "man down" and found an extraordinarily intoxicated guy laying on the pavement. He was evidently outside for several hours getting drunk. He has the worst sunburn I've ever seen. His legs and arms are a deep red, almost purple. His face is already bleeding and peeling. While dealing with the officers he threatened to commit suicide, and here we are. I'm enjoying Carilion's Public Wi-Fi while being cooped up in here.

Last night I was on the highway and came upon a Virginia State Trooper conducting a traffic stop. While with him, several cars came buzzing down the fog line at highway speed, inches from our cars. This happens often on the highway. Despite having two other empty lanes, in the middle of the night, people will disregard our emergency lights and see how close they can come to hitting us.



I have decided to work on a new project. Whenever I find a trooper or cop on the highway I'm going to park in front of them and pull over people who buzz our cars without slowing down or moving over. The charge is a Class 1 Misdemeanor.

Edit to add:

After leaving the hospital, I was headed down Rt 581 and saw a trooper on a traffic stop. I hit the median crossover and pulled up on the trooper. I parked in front of him about 50 feet and blacked out. I watched the traffic. Many people moved over or slowed down. I got one who buzzed us though. I stopped them and issued the summons. While I was writing the summons the trooper finished his stop and pulled up with me. He got a car that buzzed me. We could have leap frogged each other all night up and down that highway if we had the time.

Time ran out for this project though when the call came in for the shooting. I went and helped out. I can't say anything about it. It's not the first time I've seen bullet wounds. Won't be the last time either, I'm sure.

Sweat

His car is still in the parking lot. That means he's probably still in the hospital getting treatment for his suicidal threats.

I started the day off trying to wash my cruiser before lineup started. Lineup is when a sergeant or lieutenant reads off the important stuff that's happened the last few days. Then we start taking our calls.

I took the car to the fire station because they have all the nice equipment for washing cars. Unfortunately it's in the sun and with the heat and humidity I was sweating my butt off. My uniform and body armor were over heated and soaked in sweat by the time I was done. I got to lineup feeling like I was inside a wet soda can.

I took off my uniform shirt and body armor and let them dry out during lineup. I got all set up again and headed out to handle calls. Right away, some warrant service units got into a foot pursuit. They set up a perimeter and I got there about the same time as a couple K9 officers. They started a track with one of the dogs and I went along with them to help in case we found the suspect. The dog immediately began tracking and we were all running our butts off. Unfortunately our perimeter wasn't set up fast enough and the guy got away. It's ok because we know who he is and he's got more charges coming, on top of the warrant they were trying to serve on him when he ran.

When we were done I was just as sweaty as I was after washing the car.

Oh well.