Tag Archive for: arrest

Crooks say the darndest things, especially when operating their mouth parts while under the influence of alcohol, coke, and/or meth.

Here are some (only a few) of the things the little darlings said to me over the years. Use your imaginations to determine my response(s).

1. “Pepper spray me. Go ahead, I dare you. Spray me. That hot stuff don’t bother me.”

Okay, you asked for it …

2. “I’ll kill your family.”

3. “I know where you live.”

4. “You think you’re man enough? Well, you’re not. And your backup’s not so tough either. Bring it on …”

Sharp-dressed cops

5. “I’m not getting out of my car, and you can’t make me.”

6. “I’ve got a gun.”

7. “You’re not big enough or man enough to put me in that police car.”

8. “Don’t put your hands on me.”

9. “You won’t live long enough to put those handcuffs on me.”

10. As he rips off his shirt and flexes, while backing up … “You don’t want none of this.”

Why is it that even the smallest of the small think they’re toughest of all when they’re intoxicated?

11. “If I ever catch you out of uniform …”

12. “Does your dog bite?”

13. “If you think that fancy nightstick will stop me, think aga … OUCH!”

14. “Yeah, what are you going to do if you catch me?”

15. “You’re going to have to come in and get me.”

16. “I’m not scared of you or your police dog. I don’t care if it is a rottweiler.”

Police K-9

17. “You can’t arrest me. I play golf with your boss.”

18. “You can’t prove none of that.”

19. “I’m glad you’re the one who caught me. We’re friends, right? Want a chicken?”

20. While working undercover narcotics. “You have to tell the truth when I ask if you’re a cop, right?”

21. If you think my dog will let you take me out of this house, well, think again, Barney Fife. Sic ’em, Blue!”

Finally …

The list, my friends, is endless. As is the stupidity.


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I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge. Actually, I’ve rarely shunned any sort of obstacle, including wading into a group of angry armed men to arrest one of their group.

I like other officers, have tackled the biggest and the baddest, the meanest and the ugliest, and I, like many of my peers, received plenty of bumps, bruises, cuts, scrapes, and other injuries as a result of arresting those behemoths.

It’s all part of the job. It’s what cops do.

But there was one guy who caused me to stop dead in my tracks to rethink what I was getting into when or IF (and this was a big IF for a few seconds) I attempted to handcuff him.

The offender, a quite large man who weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of three-fifty and towered above me at height of … oh six-six, or so.

He was a real badass.

Built like a bodybuilder and as tough as the soles of a circus sideshow fire-walker’s feet.

He was mean, nasty, and he hated cops.

He was this guy … well, at the time this is how he appeared to me.

20170124_115558Still, his massive size, bloodthirsty demeanor, and bulging muscles weren’t an issue. I’d tackled men, and women, who were bigger, and nastier.

The fact that he’d backed himself into a corner and was begging me, using both hands to motion for me to come closer, was slightly intimidating. But not the sole act that slowed my approach.

Drool dribbled down his chin. His eyes had that look of “I’ve bitten the heads off of live cobras and giant scorpions.”

Still not enough to stop me.

He growled, like a crazed and rabid beast.

Nope. Still had to go to jail.

He flipped over a large piece of furniture like it was no more than child’s toy.

No, not enough to make me back down.

Actually, none of these aggressive acts of strength, defiance, and animalistic behavior were what stopped me in my tracks.

The thing that held my feet to the floor was the fact that this mountain of a man, the crazy killer of his brother, was totally and completely naked, and he’d covered his shaved body in cooking oil. He was as slick as eel snot, and his skin glistened like the top of a freshly buttered dinner roll.

My first thought, I kid you not, was, “Where and what do I grab?”

Typically, cops have the luxury of grasping and holding on to clothing when tussling with unruly suspects. Clothing is also a welcome barrier between the officer and the offender. There is no touching of nude body parts. No accidental brushes against things no one one other than an intimidate partner should ever “brush.”

And Heaven forbid a tussle end up on the floor with you and the suspect scuffling like two angry pit bulls. Because, well, when a man’s trying to escape he’ll do anything and everything to get away—he wiggles and writhes and jiggles and twists and shimmies and squirms. And it is this frantic series of movements that sometimes causes his upper body to wind up at the officer’s knees and, obviously, the lower half of his torso “ends up” squarely at the poor cop’s face. Neither a front or rear-facing suspect in this situation are a good thing, especially when the waggling and squirming guy is wearing his sweaty, stinky, and often extremely hairy birthday suit.

But back to my suspect. There he was, a huge, slimy, angry man who, while frothing at the mouth and for some ungodly reason, wanted to engage me in some sort of bizarre battle.

Well, I had two options … let him go or bring him in. And, since cops don’t let criminals go, it was on!

file7531233893187I lit into that guy like there was no tomorrow. I grabbed and pulled and pushed and tugged and tried to hold on to an arm and/or a hand long enough to snap a cuff in place. But I simply could not maintain a form grasp. His flesh squirted from my hands like a greased pig at a county fair. Unfortunately, my uniform was easy to grab and pull, meaning I was on the receiving end of more than I was able to dish out and he was doling out real pain.

Therefore, after a few punches to my head and being slammed to the floor and against the walls, I’d had enough. Besides, I despise bleeding. So I did what any desperate person would do in this situation—I grabbed his one appendage (and its accomplices) the one body part that sat there mindlessly, without fingers or toes or other useful purpose at the time, and I pulled hard, really hard. Picture a landscaper whose trying with all his might to uproot a stubborn garden weed.

Needless to say, the big ox surrendered immediately. So I cuffed him, covered him with a blanket I kept in the trunk of my car, and hauled his big, nasty self to jail.

Then I went home to take a long, hot, cleansing shower and put on a fresh uniform. And I washed my hands for a really long time.

In fact, I have an extremely compelling urge to wash my hands right now.

Yuck!

 

Age Prediction based on bodily fluids

Lucky Thomas got himself nabbed by a day-shift flatfoot after his latest job, a quick little “in-and-out” B&E of Linda’s Ammo Depot.

The eager copper spied Lucky climbing out of Linda’s office window with a bag of “goodies” in hand. The beat cop yelled, “Stop!” but the word merely shifted Lucky’s feet into high gear, setting the stage for an early morning foot pursuit.

rocky the raccoon

The officer, with keys jingling and jangling and holster slapping and popping against his outer thigh, chased the career bandit down Pleasant Street, two blocks on Happy Lane and then eight blocks up Freedom Way before Lucky ducked into the alley between Ida Sue’s Thrift Store and Rosco’s Rib Shack.

Lucky, a former track star at the local high school, probably would have lost the chubby cop had he not slipped on a pile of yesterday’s slick-as-eel-snot collard greens and greasy ham hocks that Rosco’d left out for the pair of hungry raccoons—Rocky and Roxie—that pay nightly visits to the Shack’s overflowing maggot-laden dumpsters.

An exhausted and nervous Lucky barely had time to catch his breath when he felt the steel cuffs clamping around his wrists. The sound of the jaws ratcheting closed was all Lucky needed to hear to know that he’d been arrested, again.

But is it always that clear to people? Does an arrest always end in handcuffs?

Well …

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Lucky’s lawyer, I.M. Shady, a shyster of less-than-stellar reputation among his peers, who needs not open a door to enter a room (he slithers beneath them), argued that the officer lacked probable cause to arrest his client. However, Circuit Judge Hugh Didit, quickly delivered a guilty verdict and sentenced Lucky to twelve months in the county jail.

Judge Didit, citing the officer’s perfect eyesight and that those two perfect-peepers saw Lucky climbing out of the window holding a bag of stolen goods was all the probable cause needed. “Guilty!” said the judge, in that distinct booming voice that had been known to rattle the feet and ankles of the clerks working on the floor above the courtroom. “Take him directly to jail, and do not pass … well, you know the drill. Get him outta here. Next case! Oh, and counselor, I suggest you study the meaning of probable cause before coming back in my court.”

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Sitting in his cell at Sheriff P.U. Stink’s lockup, Lucky often wondered if things would’ve turned out differently had he ducked inside the restaurant or the thrift store. Could the officer have followed him inside without a warrant?

One of the jailhouse lawyers, a long-timer who charges a pair of tennis shoes, two pieces of cake, and a month of cell cleanings to write a Writ of Habeus Corpus, explained the law to Lucky, saying that, sure, during a foot pursuit if the officer sees the bad guy run inside a building she can indeed rush in after him. However …

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During the discussion of “what’s legal and what’s not” it didn’t take long before a crowd of inmates stopped by to listen to the jailhouse lawyer explain the various laws and scenarios. So, enjoying the attention, the self-taught legal eagle further explained why pat-downs (frisking) are legal. He said …

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In fact, the faux attorney even cited the case where it all started, Terry v. Ohio.

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Lucky, after the lecture was over, climbed onto his bunk and stared at the ceiling, wondering what some guy in Ohio had to do with his getting caught two states away. He also decided that he’d never again eat a meal of ham hocks and collard greens.

Saturday 2345 hours – It was not at all unusual for the sheriff to schedule his patrol deputies to work the graveyard shift alone, covering the entire county with our nearest backup—a state trooper or a police officer from a nearby city, or a deputy or two from the next county over—sometimes 30-45 minutes away, or more.

At first, the thought of covering such a vast amount of real estate was a bit daunting. But we did it without complaint. After all, to question the high sheriff, a man as rough and gruff as any typically stereotyped southern TV sheriff, was practically a death sentence. Or, at the very least, a guaranteed trip to the unemployment line.

The boss seemed to enjoy applying pressure, holding his employees held tightly beneath his thumb. Needless to say, at times conditions, were a bit stressful, to say the least.

So this particular Saturday night, after enjoying a nice, hot TV dinner (single dad with daughter away for the weekend), I did the usual routine of walking to my driveway where I took a seat behind the wheel of my milk-chocolate-brown patrol car. I checked the light bar and wig-wag headlights to be sure they were working properly, moved a pair of cheap sunglasses from the dashboard to the center console, and then used the radio to let dispatch know I was on duty.

10-41, the 10-code in our neck of the woods for “On-Duty”

A few minutes later I was deep in the county, making the rounds to the various businesses—hotels, restaurants, bars, convenience stores, nightclubs, etc.—to let the night shift employees and partiers see a police car cruising through the parking lots. Not that it was any real crime deterrent, but it made the lonely clerks feel better. Seeing another human let them know they weren’t alone in the world. Those of you who work the late-night shifts know the feeling.

I also drove through the lots of businesses that had closed hours earlier, shining my spotlight through storefront windows and into alleyways, checking doors, and calling in the license plates and VIN numbers of cars that shouldn’t be parked where they were (sometimes a quick check revealed a stolen car or one that was used while committing a crime).

0115 hours – A little over an hour into the shift and I’d already covered a lot of ground. Nothing major had occurred. I’d checked a vehicle I spotted a hundred yards down a dirt path—a couple of half-dressed teens who’d steamed up the windows in dear old dad’s station wagon—, stopped a car that  suddenly veered from one side of the road to the other (the guy, a sort of rough boy with a large scorpion tattoo on his neck, said he’d dropped a Twinkee onto the floorboard and was trying to retrieve it, causing him to jerk the steering wheel).

I was heading to the north side of the county to make my rounds there when dispatch called to report a disturbance at a south-side hotel next to the interstate. She said she’d heard yelling in the background and then what could’ve been gun shots. I was at least 20 minutes away.I made the trip in fifteen, driving like a bat out of hell with my foot jamming the accelerator to the floor.

On the way, my alternating headlights, the rotating overhead lights, and the strobes in the back window, all winked and blinked and flashed at once, but were totally out of sync with one another. To add to the confusing light show, Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog spewed from the car speakers. John Bonham’s syncopated drumming, already sort but not quite of out of time with Page’s lightning-fast guitar licks, added a Twilight-Zonish back-beat to a constantly revolving kaleidoscope that should have been quite distracting. I, however, paid it no mind. Tunnel vision is normally a cop’s nemesis. This time, however, it kept my focus on the roadway and not the ten ring circus that was going on in and outside of my patrol car.

As I approached the chain hotel’s parking lot I turned off my lights and the radio (Zeppelin had long since finished their time on the turntable and the Beatles were then in high gear). I keyed the mic and signed 10-23 (arrived at scene).

The lot was packed with cars of all types, but I saw no signs of a fight. I decided to drive around the hotel to hopefully get a feel for what was going on before speaking with the night manager (often, callers exaggerate situations).

When I rounded the first corner I quickly realized that this was no exaggeration. I needed backup, and plenty of it. There must have 200 people outside, with at least 75 engaged in a massive fight. There were another 15 or 20 going at it on the upper walkways.

I told the dispatcher to send everyone and everyone she could find. A second later I heard the dispatcher calling for troopers and any other available help from the nearest city. Shoot, they could’ve sent every cop on the payroll and that still wouldn’t have been enough to suit me. At that point, I’d have welcome a boy scout troop and a church choir as long as they didn’t mind possibly loosing a couple of teeth.

I even saw one woman in the midst of delivering a flurry of punches to the head of another woman. The recipient of the vicious pounding was overdressed for parking lot brawling, to say the least. I say this because each time she was struck, the pearl necklace she wore whirled around her neck like a cowboy’s lasso.

10-33, our 10-code for “Officer Down” or “Officer Needs Assistance”

Delivering the “Hot Sauce.”

I checked my arsenal of weapons. I had my Beretta 9mm, a PR-24 (side handle baton), a riot-size can of pepperspray, and a shotgun. I looked back to the crowd. Then back to my little 9mm and tiny PR-24. Both seemed to be shrinking in size as the seconds passed. The odds were not in my favor.

I sounded a blast from my siren, hoping the masses would realize that the police were on the scene and ready to start kicking butt and taking prisoners. Nothing. No reaction whatsoever. Time for plan B, to sit in my car and wait for the cavalry, meanwhile, hoping the crowd wouldn’t turn my car over on its roof with me inside.

But doing nothing was just not in my nature. Instead, and sort of foolishly, I got out of my car with my trusty side-handle baton in my left hand and the other on my still-holstered gun. Somebody, and I didn’t care who, was going to jail.

Luckily, the troops began to arrive just as I hitched up my pants and waded into the pile, spraying a mist of pepperspray as I went. The other officers entered the fracas at different points, and we began to separate the instigators from those who really didn’t want to fight, but were because everyone else was doing it. Still, this was an all out brawl, the kind where police defensive tactics are often abandoned in favor of the ever popular “do-watcha-gotta-do” tactics. In fact, I remember seeing one officer using a baseball bat to prevent a group of men from attacking him. Where he got the bat, I haven’t a clue.

Eventually, the group’s size diminished and we were able to gain control with very few bruises, scrapes, and torn uniforms. Each of us arrested as many people as we had handcuffs and other restraints, and we had them packed in police cars like sardines. I’d arrived there alone, but left leading a long caravan of assorted police cars from several jurisdictions.

Once each of the little darlin’s had been booked and tucked in for the night, I thanked everyone for their help and watched as they all drove away. It was nearly 0500 when I headed back to the county for a final pass of the night.

0520 hours – Dispatch called to report a fight at yet another south-side hotel. Yes, she’d said, there were weapons involved and shots had been fired. Ironically, ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man was playing on the radio at the time I received the call. I looked down at the spot where my badge used to be attached to my shirt. My shoes were scuffed and my pants had streaks of ground-in asphalt across the knees and along the side of one leg. The knuckles on my gun hand hurt and my lower lip was swollen. Sharply dressed, I was not.

ZZ Top Was My Backup. Yes, “That” ZZ Top

I switched on my emergency lights and siren and mashed the gas pedal to the floor. Then I turned up the volume on the radio and I and ZZ Top headed south like a bat out of hell.

“Clean shirt, new shoes, and I don’t know where I am goin’ to…”

Man, I loved that job.

But these days, well, I’m 10-42 … Off Duty

Have mercy
A haw, haw, haw, haw