A Most Unusual Suspect

The tough part of police work is the late night patrol. When you’re action oriented like me, long dark nights can play games with the mind. Around 1am last night, I came across something very unusual. Now I know what my tactical training tells me (this can not be) but my eyes are saying, look it’s right there in front of you. This is what I found just behind a tool shed at the pipeline site:

To me this looks like a very large footprint. Now I know some of you “civilians” are thinking this is looking very unusual. Well, when its dark and you are the only cop for miles around and you see some big ass footprints like this, it’s scary! I pulled out my tactical flashlight and whistle and dove behind the shed. The only problem was misjudging the distance to the shed in the dark. I slammed into the tool shed in the midst of a Pete Rose-style headfirst dive.

The impact jammed my “combat whistle” down my throat, causing a violent cough to blow through the whistle in my gullet which sounded like a shrill whales cry.

Thankfully the cough caused the whistle to shoot out of my mouth. I quickly realized that whatever was out there now knew my location. I had given away my tactical position. I belly crawled through the grass into a thatch of trees. At this point I heard the first of a series of strange howling sounds. It was not a wolf or a dog but altogether different. Part of me wanted to turn back, but I’m a cop at heart so I pushed a bit further into the trees.

Within minutes I was in the woods and noticed a terribly foul smell. Using my flashlight to look around I noticed the largest pile of feces I had ever seen. The size of the pile made me think for a moment that an elephant might be responsible. But that didn’t fit the footprint.

I tried to block the foul smell out of my mind and slowly walked towards the howling sounds. Two more huge footprints pressed into the dirt for me to follow. A twig snapped just in front of me! The brush had grown thick and visibility was next to nothing. Another twig snapped only a few feet from me. It was now or never. I pushed the button of my flashlight and screamed, “you’re under arrest”!!!

What I saw standing in front of me was shocking…

You’re Hired!!!

As some of you who follow my blog know, I don’t have the best of luck lately. But I can say all that changed about an hour ago! Let me tell you how my luck went from downright terrible to great.

I spent the morning installing the new siren I bought for Squad 1. The dang directions are all in some language I don’t understand and the pictures are in black & white so colored wires meant nothing either. Turns out the language is Korean, that’s where my siren comes from. The only mistake I made was not disconnecting the battery before attempting an electrical installation and I blame this on the damn Korean instructions. This was plastered across the package:

I touched that red wire to Squad 1’s battery and that’s it, lights out. I came to and noticed that the electrical jolt had caused all my muscles to instantly contract. Little did I realize, but your bladder is essentially a muscle.

Anyways, it was nothing a change of clothes didn’t fix. The siren installation took about 6 hours to complete, but nonetheless it was ready to test! I sat in Squad 1, fired her up and then flipped the on switch for my siren. It has a strange sound, unlike the normal police sirens. This is a siren that was probably meant for Europe, so it sounds odd to you Americans. Though I too am an American, when I’m operating a European sounding siren, I consider myself European.

It didn’t take Mom long to fuss about the “loud-ass, annoying sound coming out of that beat up ole’ pile of crap.” I kindly reminded her that she was addressing a police chief in his police car and maybe she wanted to watch her mouth. She took off her shoe and threw it, hitting Squads 1 right on the hood. “Quit it Mom” I yelled in my command voice.

It was time to test it out on the road! In an attempt to show Mom a thing or too, I backed out, put on my Tom Cruise Top Gun edition mirrored sunglasses and threw Squad 1 into gear. Slamming my foot down on the throttle, and giving her a “how do you like me now” smirk I gunned it. Squad 1 revved up hard, lurched forward and let out a massive backfire with a rather large cloud of black smoke shooting out of the tail pipe.

Mom laughed uncontrollably as I tried to start the car back up. After about ten minutes of trying, it fired up and I was on my way. To test the siren I choose a remote road so that no civilians would accidentally pullover believing they were in trouble. So far so good; I would turn it on and then off, on then off. Now at one point I reached down to flip the siren on and noticed something in the corner of my eye. About the time my brain registered that a large deer with huge antlers had walked out into the road, my police reflexes kicked in. I jerked the steering wheel like hell and…

Squad 1 was approximately 7 feet off the ground flying due west on a north south road.

“Shiiiiiiiit,” I screamed as I noticed the road, the deer and a small tree pass below me. What goes up must come down, and Squad 1 landed like a brick. That old suspension did all it could, but it still felt like a hand grenade had gone off in my rectum. Again, I issued a high pitch scream, this one from the sheer pain you know where, “Oh, my AaSssssss!” Man that hurt.

Squad 1 came to rest only inches from a large bulldozer. Several men came running to the scene. “Are you ok?” one asked, “man, did you see that?” Said another. One guy in amazement at my tactical driving said, “did you guys see this pile of shit fly!” The men looked in the back seat of my car and asked where my daughter was. I told them I didn’t have a daughter, but they refused to believe me at first explaining that they heard a young girl screaming just after the car landed.

Anyways, the men are working on a natural gas pipeline going from Texas all the way to Savannah, Georgia. Within minutes an older guy came walking up that identified himself as the Foreman of the job. He asked what I was doing out here and when I told him that I was testing a new siren for my law enforcement car, his face lit up. Well, first he asked, “you mean that hunk of crap?” Pointing at squad 1. I considered a 2 second blast of light to the eyes but decided to let him have this one.

Well, the Foreman said that he had been looking for a night watchman to keep the equipment safe. We walked around the job site and he pointed out some of the tools, tractors and building materials and then said, “Just in this one spot, there is four million dollars worth of equipment.” He gave me another look up and down, then asked, “do you want the watchman job?” I felt like a man who had just won the lottery, then he told me it would pay 2,000$ a month!

Aside from the absolutely excruciating pain emanating from my rectal area, the drive home was awesome. I had a real job now, a job that paid real money! The Agency was on the Law Enforcement map and Mom and all the naysayers were gonna have to eat their words.

Thrown Out of the D.A’s Office

My meeting with the District Attorney did not quite go as I had hoped it would. At first we seemed to see eye to eye, and possibly even like a couple of crime fighters just passing the time. Then we shook hands and I started to speak.

He asked twice what department I was with, and when I told him he slammed his fist down on his desk and hollered, “The Agency! What damn agency, and what is that uniform?” Again I explained that I just started up my department and haven’t had time to get any letterhead or business cards or other official things. The D.A. accidentally spilled his coffee cup, causing hot coffee to go all over his hand and computer.

From this point on, the meeting went downhill. I told him about the bull crap the State Police sergeant and his officers did to me at the Farmers Marker. I showed him the picture of my car encased in a ring of shopping buggies. He sat motionless and with a very odd look on his face.

Hoping to move the meeting forward I asked him to sign a letter I had drafted that recognized me as a police chief and the Agency as a true law enforcement division. The letter also advised “all other law enforcement agencies” to show deference and respect to my Squad car and in essence to stop making fun of it. He reluctantly took the letter scanned it then in an act that truly hurt the community did this:

Man how unprofessional can you be? I told him that he was close to getting destruction of police property charges filed on him. With this he grabbed his computer and threw it like a Frisbee against the office door. “What the hell is wrong with you,” he shouted. I didn’t like the aggressive tone so I issued his ass a 3.5 second flashlight shine to the eyes. “What is that shit?” He demanded. I asked if he was ready to be calm or if he wanted a full 4 second burst. With a confused look on his face, he muttered, “but it’s daytime?”

After a few minutes of listening to him curse about never in his life this… And until his dying day he would pursue that…and oh yea, I hope you end up in federal prison for decades and so forth, he allowed me to present my report. I opened my laptop and showed him a few reports. One was from the Farmers Market “Robbery” and the other was from last nights “explosives investigation”. This is him attentively reading much of what you have read:

Shortly after this picture he fell to the ground clutching his chest. I called 911 and prepared to do CPR but he would not allow me to touch him. In his delusion, the D.A. Kept saying “I hate you” and “you’re a complete idiot” and other stuff that made no sense.

Eventually the EMT’s came and loaded him onto a stretcher. I told him that I would be on patrol tonight and could stop by his hospital room to make sure everything was secure. Again in a moment of irrational delusion he screamed, “get this Sonofabitch out of my face before I kill him myself!”

With everyone out of the office I picked up my letter that he so rudely destroyed and pieced it back together. I noticed a little signature stamp on his desk. Thinking of my city, my duty and the criminals who needed to face their responsibilities, I stamped his signature on my letter!

After Action Report

Man, people have no respect for law enforcement officers these days. After fueling up “Squad 1” I rolled out to the Home Depot and bought some strobe lights, black duct tape and some do it yourself spray paint. I sprayed my windows with the tint like the real police cars and then hooked up my strobe lights. All in all, “Squad 1” looked great and aside from that dang backfiring, it was a serviceable police vehicle.

I decided to wear my Farmers Marker Security uniform but took their lame patches off and put a couple awesome replacements on. I found a Delta Force patch for my right shoulder and a Dragon spitting fire for my left shoulder. In my pockets I had a flashlight, high decibel survival whistle that I painted black for tactical use and a pair of black shooting gloves.

Now I’m not the kind of cop to shy away from action so I drove Squad 1 to a particularly rough part of town everyone calls “The Trailer Sale” due to the large number of Mobil homes in the area. A powerful and moving feeling rushed over me as the thought struck home, this is the first official patrol of The Agency, America’s newest police department,

Shortly after sundown the popping and cracking of firecrackers started. Now I wasn’t sure this activity was illegal, but it seemed like it ought to be. We would all agree that fireworks are dangerous and I wasn’t about to let people go and hurt themselves. My Radio Shack police scanner hummed to life with the voice of the dispatcher. The female voice was directing a police car to an address on the street that I was already parked at. I wasn’t sure what all the number talk meant, but it had to be about the fireworks. I could be therein 3 minutes!

Putting Squad 1 into gear I accelerated down the street. I plugged the strobe lights into the cigarette lighter and was off to my first call! The feeling was pure adrenaline. As I approached the halfway point of the street I noticed multiple suspects smiling and clapping as an adult male lit various firecrackers. One suspect was sitting in a stroller.

I hit the breaks and came to a screeching, tire shredding halt only a foot from the suspect in the stroller. The young suspects mother began yelling at me as she ran to the stroller. I stepped out of my squad car and asked the group what they were up to? “Just lighting some firecrackers for the kids,” one male suspect stated. I shined my flashlight in his eyes, “Let me see your ID.” He asked who I was, what department? I told him that I would ask the questions around here.

Suspecting that there was probably something going on inside, I used my duct tape to “cuff” everyone in the street. The little suspect in the stroller was too small so I just taped him into the stroller. The people inside the house refused to let me in. “We’re calling the police,” they cried. I am the police I yelled back, but they would not open the door. This left me with one choice, to kick the door down SWAT- style.

My first attempt didn’t work too well. I kicked that dang door as hard as I could and felt a terrible pain shoot up my leg and into my back. “Oh for the love of God,” I screamed out. The people secured on the street asked if I was ok and whether I need a doctor so forth. “Silence,” I hollered, a couple of them snickering. For the second attempt at the “barricaded” door I stood back about 15 feet and got a running start. Hitting that door at full speed…did absolutely nothing. I bounced backwards, all the air escaped my lungs “HoooAhh” I involuntarily yelled. This one hurt me. I staggered off the porch and nearly lost consciousness on the grass. Rather than calling out officer down, the neighbors began laughing uncontrollably. This really pissed me off so I decided right then and there that they would now see what the PD could do.

I again charged the door, however this time just before making contact, I jumped up and kicked my feet forward striking the door about 4 feet high laying flat on my back. The door gave way and in I went like an upside down superman. Once again I landed hard, the wind escaping my lungs like a squeezed bellows. This brought more laughter and sneering from the crowd outside. When my vision finally cleared up I saw this extremely rude young suspect with no respect for the law:

In the distance I heard sirens! My backup, thank god. The young thug yelled obscenities at me. In the heat of battle I gave him a 4 second burst of my whistle. The shrill blast of sound sent the little troublemaker running outside. I went after him planning to arrest him and take him downtown. Unfortunately when I got outside there were about six police cars.

The police had cut all my suspects loose. “What are you doing?” I demanded to the cops that had freed everyone. The police from the other department looked at me and burst out in laughter. “Holly shit,” said one, “what is this?” Another said, “Hey Dummy, you know halloween is in October!” This rude treatment went on for about 10 minutes before I had enough. I explained that I was a cop too and was here on an illegal fireworks case. “Fireworks aren’t illegal in this city or county or state'” the lead joker said. Ok, maybe he had a point about that, but I said that didn’t excuse the young punk in the house who flipped me off. “You broke into his house,” they said. Seeing that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with these clowns so I choose the high ground and walked towards Squad 1.

The lead officer gave me about an hour long lecture on illegal detainment, illegal search, illegal lights on my “squad car” and false impersonation of a police officer. He said that tonight was a warning but if I showed up on another call, “dressed like a Half-assed, Barney Fife looking, old-ass beater third hand police car driving idiot,” I’d go straight to jail. When I pulled away from the scene, Squad 1 let out a shotgun like blast of a backfire that sent people diving for cover. In a moment of anger I rolled the window down and flipped the police off. See how they liked it!

Well, we will see about that. I have a strong feeling the District Attorney will side with me and maybe even give me a badge. He’s going to know a good cop when he sees one. He will see one in the morning when I show up at his office.