Where the blame belongs?

I have not been one to jump on an blog about political or social issues.  A recent event near where I grew up in Southern California had brought me out of the wood work so to speak.  On July 5^th a subject that was apparently being arrested ended up in a physical struggle with members of the Fullerton Police Department and subsequently died.  I don’t have very many of the details, only what I have read in the media and in comments of blogs.  The only videos I have seen show very little if any of the actual incident but rather all of the spectators reactions.  I know many of you that know me will assume that since I am a cop I will side with the cops.  Well the simple fact is I have not seen enough information, I have not interviewed any witnesses, I have not reviewed the evidence, i.e. video, and audio recordings;  to side with anyone about anything.  Do I have concerns with what I have seen (only part of the picture)?  Yes I do.  Do I think it warrants an investigation?  Yes I do.  It’s hard to tell what is fluff and what is fact in this case because there is so much emotion attached to it. 

The subject that died was a local homeless transient named Kelly Thomas.  I did not know him and I am not a mental health professional.  Most say he suffered from sczchophreina.  Most say he was homeless because of his SMI (serious mental illness) for nearly 20 years.  I have read just about everywhere that he was a kind and gentle person.  I have also read that his mother had a restraining order against him because he had choked her and stripped naked then urinated on her front porch.  Again, I don’t know exactly what happened that night, I wasn’t there, I haven’t reviewed all of the facts so it would be irresponsible for me to comment as to guilt or innocence.  Like I said before, there are concerns that should be investigated.

Just about everything I have read has morally convicted the officers.   And let’s face it that is the easy path.  Our proxy guilt seeps in on situations like this and takes over.  We are outraged that a mentally ill homeless person gets beat up by cops and dies.  The second easiest place to assign blame is on the family.  Why let their child live on the street to be cared for by nobody?  That’s an easy place to point the finger too.  I am of the opinion that the real blame resides with all of us, you me and everyone we know.  I will get to the specific reasons for that claim in a bit.  But first I need to explain a few things.

We as society have assigned police officers to deal with the things and people that we don’t want to.   We have them deal with the problems that we don’t want to take care of deal with ourselves.  If the neighbor is playing his music too loud, we call the police and want them to tell the neighbor to turn down their music.  We have the police deal with the criminal element of society because again, we don’t want to.  We have officers deal with suicidal persons because we don’t want to.  We want officers to take bad guys to jail when they break the rules we make.  We also have them deal with our mentally ill.  Law enforcement is the gateway to the mental health industry more often than not.  You may not like this or agree with it, but it is a fact and you have tasked officers to deal with your mentally ill.  Many of you have even called to have them moved along from the bus bench or from the park.  You get offended when they pull down their pants in public and defecate behind the 7-11 and want them “dealt with”.  You, me and everyone else does not want to deal with them.  We want them out of sight.  We don’t want to smell them as we walk into a convenience store and they ask us for money.  In essence we have asked police officers to be our garbage men.  To deal with the refuse of society is the task we all have given them.  Yet we harbor utter distain when officers acting as garbage men smell (figuratively) like garbage men.

In the 80’s the US Supreme Court decided that we could not keep people locked away in mental institutions against their will any longer.  In order for a person to be seized against their will taken to a mental institution they must present a danger to self (DTS) or danger to others (DTO) and be mentally ill and refusing treatment.  Well, they can only be kept there for a limited time without a court order to do so.

So why is this all of our faults.  Because you, me and everyone else has turned our back on the mentally ill, we chose to pay our CEO’s Billions of dollars a year.  We chose to pay our sports stars billions of dollars a year all the while our mental health system is underfunded by millions.  We as a society have placed more value on our entertainment than treating our mentally ill.  Look at our country compared to other countries.  In Japan, CEO’s make 11 times what the average worker makes compared to the US were the Average CEO pay is 200 times what the average worker makes.  How much do professional athletes in other countries make compared to the US?  How many mentally ill live on the streets compared to the US?  Yet we all sleep just fine in blissful denial of our massive problem of how we have turned our back on the mentally ill in this country.  We as US citizens have decided that we want the state (government) to care for our mentally ill.  We have also decided to cut funding to the programs that help treat these people.  You can point your finger at the officers involved for this incident, but the root cause for this happening is our collective denial of taking care of our mentally ill.  The officers will be held accountable for their actions here.  But it is your guilt for how you have treated the mentally ill that fuels the fire of outrage over this incident.  And if the officers are found guilty of a crime, what will change?  You will still be sitting on your ass watching your flat screen TV super duper NFL game day package and expect police officers “deal” with the homeless mentally ill.  So it will happen again, and you will shove the dirty secret into a corner until your guilt overcomes you again and you will voice your outrage, but we will still be standing in the same place asking the same questions.  So if you want someone to blame for this incident and the thousands just like them.  Look in the mirror.

As with all in death incidents, it would have been investigated.  With in custody deaths they are treated like a homicide from the onset.  The important thing to look for with an in custody death is cause and manner, which in this case the medical examiner was not able to determine.  The most common “cause” of in custody deaths is MI (Myocardial Infarction or heart attack) this would be indicative of a subject struggling so intensely that his heart gives out.  The second you would expect in a case like this is BFT (Blunt Force Trauma) from intrusive impacts delivered  by the officers.  Once the cause is determined they can move to the manner.  Which is Homicide (death caused by another) suicide, natural or other.  So until the professionals can definitively determine what caused his death everyone is just speculating. 

I have seen many comments about how people can’t understand why they just couldn’t restrain him.  When I see that I see a comment from a person who has never attempted to restrain a person in a full blown psychosis (SMI or drug induced).  As with most things it’s not as easy as it seems.  In fact the last person in a psychosis I was restraining was a 105 pound female.  I weight 215 and with 33 lbs of equipment on makes 248 lbs.  And she threw me off of her (and two paramedics) like we were rag dolls.  She literally sent me flying.  All the while she was biting big chunks meat out of her cheeks and spitting  the bloody chunks out.  You see she was in a psychosis and thought we were devils and were trying to destroy her.  She thought by destroying her mouth she could keep us from defeating her.  When dealing with SMI people in crisis or worse a full blown psychosis it is not as easy as people make it seem.   Have you ever seen the orderlies at a mental facility?  The look like pro football linemen.   So when I hear people say how they can’t understand how it takes so many officers and tasers and such, I think the person is ignorant to the facts of life.  Not ignorant as in not smart, just no experience in dealing with mentally ill persons in crisis.

As to if the officers or Kelly Thomas were right or wrong in this situation, I do not have enough information to make an educated statement.  I think it needs to be investigated.  I think the video needs to be reviewed as well as audio recordings and witnesses interviewed.  What bothers me about the whole situation is many of the people outraged and protesting are the same people that have called the police to move along smelly SMI transients from in front of their business or from the park.  I hope the guilt that drives their rage is not misplaced and they look into the root cause of this situation.  I hope they have the courage to make the hard choice to finally look at how we treat our mentally ill in this country.

Fun and Games

Those of you that know me know that I have an odd sense of humor.  However, I do find great joy in practical jokes, unless they are done on me.  In law enforcement, like any job there is a certain amount of competitiveness in everything we do.  We are measured by our stats, i.e. how many felony arrests, how many calls taken and stuff like that.  Well of course it’s fun to be the leader in competition.  So when the competition turns to practical jokes, the ultra competitive nature of cops tends to get things out of control. 

I will not incriminate myself or others on any disgusting practical jokes but I will share a few.  What caused me to write about this was an incident that occurred on Saturday night, but I will get into that a bit later.  I think one of the best ones that happened to me was at Banner Desert Hospital.  Working late swings, by the time we can break for lunch most decent places to eat are closed.  So we often eat at the hospital, the food is good and you can see them make it so you know you’re not getting an extra portion of spit.  We all park along the side of the emergency lane that ambulances and other emergency vehicles pull in.  It is pretty common to see three or more cars at the hospital, not because we are all eating because there some officers working on a call that takes them to the hospital to follow up.

One night I walk out after eating I walked out and saw that my car had been moved.  I reached down to the key holder on my belt and found that I still had two keys.  Not only was my car moved, but it is now facing the wrong way, and parked 6 inches from another patrol car driver’s door to driver’s door.  So there is a line of patrol cars parked nose to tail along the fence, then mine in the middle parked the wrong way.  I look around to see if I can find any snickering cops.  I am totally puzzled as to how anyone could have got my key from me.  So I crawl over the from the passenger seat, over the center consul filled with buttons, and switches, modems and all kinds of electrical stuff.  It was no easy feat with my 32 pounds of gear on and my vest feels like a turtle shell.  So I looked over and saw that the helicopter flight crew was watching me climb in and chuckling, it must have looked like a hippo trying to squeeze into a VW bug.  So I finally slide into place and look over to the flight crew and give them “What” tough guy nods like “What are you looking at”.  All three of them turned away so I could drive away in dignity.

I found out the perpetrator of the car parking thing was my buddy Brandon.  He heard me check off on the radio and got the spare key while he was at the station at lunch and moved it while I was inside eating.  So the next night I was riding with my buddy Jake as a two man unit.  We heard Brandon check off on the radio at a local park.   So we head that way to see if he gets into anything good.  As we arrive we see him trolling through the center of the park with his alley lights, takedown and spot light on.  So Jake drives up the curb and sneaks our way over to him with our lights off until we get right behind him.  I blast the big horn (like a fire truck horn) and flip on all the over head lights at once.  Brandon later told me he about pooped.  He was not expecting it.  So we played spot light tag for a few seconds and went our way. 

Speaking of lights, our patrol cars have what we call alley lights.  They are essentially a head light mounted to the side of the light bar.  It shoots lots of bright light to the side and is very nice when cruising the alleys behind business at night.  It is also very fun to ask someone if you have left something on the roof and when they look up, hit the light.  LOL, I never get tired of that one.    So one day I was ridding two man with by buddy Steve and we were on our way to a violent subject freaking out at the ER at Banner Desert.  Well as we get to the intersection my buddy Chris pulls up alongside.  He has a sneaky grin because he is poaching our call so he can have fun tackling a violent crazy person.  So as he looks over at us.  I hit the alley light on his side and he squints and turns away from the pain of the bright light.  Steve is laughing so hard he can barely drive as we pull away from the green light.  Chris is still seeing green spots so he can’t tell the light is green so we get there first.  All three of us are laughing very hard as we run into the ER, one of the nurses says, well you’re not going to be any good if you’re all laughing.  Good times. 

So Saturday night I was a bit late hitting the street because I was meeting with my sergeant going over my annual review.  So it was dark by the time I got out of the staion.  I get dispatched my first call as I am pulling out of the QT parking lot.  When I answer up on the air it felt like something fell into my lap.  So I put the radio mic back on the bracket and reach for my hand held flashlight on my vest and light up my lap.  HOLY CRAP!!!!! There is a tarantula sized gray spider on my right thigh, instinctively, I stab my light into my thigh and thrust the spider off.  I throw the car into park and jump out.  By now my mind is telling me that it is not real but is a rubber spider.  But what has me freaked out is in the spider looked very much like one that freaked me out in China when I was there on business 10 years ago. In that case the spider  was the size of a tarantula but was gray and slimy looking like this one but it ran across the room as fast as a rat or mouse, not your typical spider mosey. 

I shine my light to the floor board but the spider is gone.  I look over behind my car and there is a car behind me with a 20 something female looking at me like “what the heck is wrong with you”. And two other people back at the parking lot with similar looks.  So I give them the “What?” tough guy look and nod.  So she drives around and the others go inside.  I still can’t find this wicked fear inducing spider.  Now I am starting to wonder if it was real.  How could it disappear?  It had to walk off, right?  Could this be a real spider?  I am now starting to check all over my body to make sure it’s not still on me.  I am getting freaked out big time now.  I turn on the internal light on the car and search cautiously for this stupid bug.  After a few tense moments I found it in between the seat and the consul.  So I pulled out my collapsible baton and poked it to make sure it was fake.  Yep, it’s squishy, but it’s one of those sticky slimy rubber toys.  So when I pull my baton back, it sticks to my baton and comes towards me.  I freak out thinking its walking and thrust my baton into the rubber spider and jump back.  Now I am just being paranoid so I stare at it for a few more moments, nope it’s not moving.  It’s a toy, were code 4, time to go to my call.  But it was a good prank.  I just don’t know who to prank back yet.  

Gross Warning: this will be gross

I get asked on a regular basis what is the grossest thing I have seen at work.  To me it is just shades of gray.  I see all manner of unbelievable gross things; so many, that I could never remember all of them all, some, I wish I could forget. 

As many of you know I am an odd person and I have my idiosyncratic issues that make me gross out on things that would not bother others.  For example, I  gag every time I see someone eating in jail.  The smell of the jail with all of those stinky gross people just makes it completely impossible to consume any food products.  I seriously wash my hands a few times after each trip to the jail.  I sanitize my cuffs with alcohol wipes, and then I sanitize my hands again when I get back in the car.  And this is when I was wearing gloves when I was dealing with the person.

Some memorable gross outs that I have not yet mentioned in this blog are, the 400 lb naked dead dude that purged his bowels.  On that one when it came time to roll him over for photographs it took three of us.  All of the other dead bodies I have dealt with at work I was able to roll them myself to check for trauma and let the CST take photos.  Since I was junior to the other officers they went to the head and feet, what do you think I got?  You guessed it, I got stuck with the sausage and chili in the middle.  Eeeuuuuwwww.  Then there was the drunk Native American female last night who ripped her clothes off.   With her floppy jelly belly sticking out and swaying more than her breasts, I told her “Holy crap that is disgusting, cover up.”  Or later that last night when I checked off on the air “with a bloody half naked dude” that had been hit in the head with a baseball bat.  He was a bloody mess and he had a three inch long laceration so deep his skull was exposed.  You can ask anyone, I don’t like blood.  I can’t even watch those medical shows on TV without getting completely grossed out.  However, at work it is very different.  For some reason it does not bother me, I just go down my check list of things that need to be done and get it taken care of.

However, the call that sticks out in my mind as the bloodiest and grossest was a homicide I went to in my beat last winter.  I responded to a stabbing at one of the high call for service apartments in my beat.  When I arrived I was second on scene, the first unit was a two man unit which one of them spoke Spanish.  The English speaking officer was knelt down trying to do first aid on the guy as the Spanish speaker was getting the info.  The subject was a Hispanic male lying on his back in a pool of blood.  The Spanish speaking officer told me that this occurred at a different apartments and his roommate was the suspect.  Myself and the Lieutenant that just pulled up ran across the parking lot to the other set of buildings to the victim’s apartment.  As we ran west across the lot the team of paramedics were pulling in and they slammed on the brakes as they saw us running towards them with purpose.  I motioned with my left hand for them to keep going on by to go treat the victim.  I suppose they don’t feel that it’s comfortably safe when we are running around like that.  I don’t blame them; they don’t have a vest or a gun.  There was a blood trail leading up the stairs with blood smears all over the hand railing.  We approached the door and saw that blood droplets were crossing into the apartment on the threshold.  I had gloved up while running over.  I reached down to the door and looked at the LT and he nodded.  I turned the knob and found it unlocked.  I opened the door and pushed it wide open.   I had my gun pointing in as did the LT.  He got on the radio and asked for one unit to cover the rear and at least one more unit to the front door to help us clear the apartment and check for any more victims.  Just a few moments later and FTO and his OIT arrived.  (An FTO is a senior officer that trains new officer’s fresh out of the academy; the OIT is an Officer in training that is still being evaluated)  The OIT spoke Spanish so LT had him give verbal commands for anyone inside to exit or make their presence known in English and Spanish.    We went in with me covering long (down the farthest part of the apartment as the FTO and OIT went right to clear the living room.  The LT was behind me and we moved down the hallway with me covering the kitchen now as LT covered long and the OIT went into the bathroom door to the right.  As we move down the hall to the back of the apartment I am in the front position on the stack so the next door is mine.  I peeled right to open the door and LT covers long into the last room that is right ahead of us as I open the door I see blood all over the place.  Spurts of it all over the wall in the south east corner of the room and a pool about 2 feet across on the floor.  It literally looked like a horror movie scene, but it was real.  My heart was pounding and I was starting to feel tunnel vision creep in, but I need to check the far side of the bed. I fully expected to find another victim but I didn’t.  I was glad because as pumped up as I was I probably would have shot them.    I had never seen that much human blood, that was until I went to the hospital later this same night.

We pull back out and I get tasked to go to the hospital while the crime scene gets set up and locked down so no persons in or out until we have a search warrant.  I got to the hospital and they were working hard on the victim to save his life.  I talked to the paramedics who were first on scene and they said his blood pressure was 40 over zero when they arrived.  They were stunned and in complete shock as we watched what the medical staff was  doing.  There was a crowd of about 30 people watching a dozen or so medical staff work this guy.  One of the paramedics leans over and says.  “This is crazy; I have never seen them do this out here before”.  I looked over and they were cutting the victims chest open.  The doctor was yelling for another set of chest spreaders.  I guess it’s not too common to do this in the trauma room so a nurse had to run to the OR to get the second set.  I saw the doctor spread his chest and reach in with his hands and splash out the blood as the suction was not taking it out fast enough.  I could not believe my eyes.  8 feet from me I could see this guys heart and lungs.  I saw the stab wounds in his lungs bleeding into his chest cavity.  It was like watching TV and being right there except I could smell the metallic smell of blood and tangy stink of human organs.  It was amazing to see them apply the internal paddles to his heart and watch his whole body jump as the defibrillator restarted his heart.  They did it three more times as they attempted to stabilize him to get him to surgery.  I observed them putting nearly 20 units of blood into him.  Nearly all of it poured back out onto the floor.  The pool of blood around the bed was about 12 feet in diameter.  All of the carts and machines supporting the effort were in the puddle of blood.  The doctor and all of the staff had blood up to their knees.  The hallway was covered in bloody foot prints from the nurse’s running back and forth getting more blood and supplies.  They worked him for an hour and twenty two minutes.  I approached the middle-aged grumpy lady who seemed to be the drill sergeant nurse barking orders and yelling out times and numbers.  She looked at me and said “Son, this is our crowning achievement, we have never had this much blood on the floor.” I asked her if he was going to make it to which she responded “oh heavens no.” Watching the chaos was like watching some weird sporting event that you don’t know the rules to or what is going on, kind of like cricket or some other foreign sport I know nothing about.  In the end he did not make it.  He was 17 years old.  By know a parade of ghouls (hospital workers) was walking by in to see the carnage.  I guess to people in the medical field this is a cool thing to see.  I suppose it is like when I worked in the body shop of a Cadillac dealer and the owner drove his Ferrari or Lamborghini in, we would all parade by to check out the sweet car.  Anyway, I had never seen that much blood. I hope I never do again. 

TLD Gloves

As you can imagine being a cop I get to carry lots of cool gadgets on my batman belt, on my person and in my car.  Things like a taser, gun (okay, more than one), neato flashlight, weapon light, baton, handcuffs, AR15 rifle, bullet proof vest just to name a few.  But when it comes down to it my favorite tool I carry is a pair of Troy Lee Design gloves.  Now these are not just any gloves.  Sampson in the Bible had his hair, my gloves are my power.  I put them on when I need to overcome the forces of evil.  The most amazing thing happens when I ware the gloves; everyone listens to me and obeys me.  Somehow, I have tapped into the magical powers these gloves possess.  I haven’t figured out how or why they work so well or if they only work for me, and I don’t care as long as they work for me, I’m OK with it.

The gloves look like normally motorcycle gloves with the exception of a carbon fiber shield going across the knuckles.  Now I have to admit that the carbon fiber shield on the knuckles is where most of the mystical power lays.  Normally carbon fiber is a material that is lighter than steel and just as strong, not to mention looks super neato, but this carbon fiber on these gloves is special.  As soon as I put on my gloves everybody listens attentively.  

The first night I found out about the magical powers was when I arrested a huge mammoth of a man for DUI.  It was his third DUI and he was likely to get prison time for his crime and he was not very friendly.  I did my best to keep him calm.  He was wearing an Iron Maiden concert shirt (from the Killers tour, excellent) so we talked music for a bit I told him how I had seen “Maiden” back in the day and they ROCKED live, I even gave the metal horns (you know, forefinger and pinky up, middle and ring finger down with the thumb crossing over the middle and ring finger, you know the international sign for rockin it metal style) as I told him how the 10 foot tall Eddy came out on stage and fireworks went off as they played “Run to the hills”.   “On a scale of one to awesome that is killer bro!” was his response.

So he was pretty cool till we got to the jail.  Then I guess it sunk in that he was located in unsanitary tributary without locomotion (up poop creek without a paddle).  As I helped dislodge him from the back of the car, seriously he was 6’4” 340 lbs, and it was a major squeeze to get him back there.  He was very verbally abusive and started trying to pull away and bump back into me to push me into stuff as we made our way through the corridors.  He told me he was going to “kick my ass” as soon as the cuffs came off.   I sat him on the bench; I pulled my magical gloves from my left cargo pocket.  It was like they were glowing, his eyes got bigger as I put them on.  The other dude on the bench looked at the gloves, them me, then the big boy then he looked away like he didn’t want to see what was coming.  I put the gloves on slowly, making sure they were snagged up.  I punched my each fist into the other hand to try out the fit.  As I was putting them on I told him the following.  “I am going to take off the cuffs to process you for DUI and this could go one of two ways.  The easy way, for all involved or the hard way, the choice is yours.  His eyes were staring at my gloves as he said “I’m cool, I won’t do nothin”.  To which I replied, “Excellent, that makes it easier on all of us” as I gave him a sly smile.  He did in fact stay cool.

The gloves have become a ritual for me as I talk people from the precipice of getting a beating to a calm submissive state.  The conversation usually goes something like this.  “F-you cop, I aint going to jail.”  In most cases I put on the magic gloves before I get there so I check the fit of my gloves and tell them.  “This can go a couple of ways here, the best way is with you putting your hands behind your back (or sitting there being cool, depending on the situation) or with me kneeling on the back of your head and you spitting out blood as I cuff you up.   I get paid the same either way.”  Now those words said with those gloves  is like mustard on a hot dog, it always works. 

My gloves have a couple of mended tears in them.  The mends I did myself, so I don’t disturb the mystical powers.  As you can imagine, I am no seamstress so the mends look like Frankenstein scars, but I think that adds character to them.  I am about ready for a new pair and you can bet that I will get another pair of TLD APEX gloves, the best gloves a cop could ever ware.  I just hope the next ones have the same magical carbon fiber.

Here Kitty Kitty

So with budget cuts you might imagine that services get cut.  Well our humane (animal control) department has been cut to nearly nothing.  This means that we as officers have to go drag dead dogs out of the road, pick up wounded animals or strays and take them to the pound.  I have been called to all manner of animal calls but my least favorite is cat calls.  I don’t like cats.  I see them as evil animals that are nothing more than parasites.  But what bothers me more is perfectly healthy people call us to have a police officer come pick up a stray dog or cat that they have caught instead of taking it themselves.  I guess it makes more sense to someone to have me take a cat to the pound then patrol for crime.

One night in January I was dispatched to “priority cat pick up” Apparently there was a feral cat in the neighborhood that had been run over by a car. I was ridding two man with my buddy Kenny that night who loves animals, most animals but cats.  We arrive and the guy points to his bush out front and says there it is. Now Kenny has about 11 years of service on me so guess who gets to pick up this cat?  Not Kenny. 

So put on my leather gloves and duck down to take a peak.  Holy crap this cat takes off across the yard using just its front legs as it appears to be paralyzed from about half way down its spine.  I was blown away at how fast this thing was moving with just two legs.  I am trying not to laugh as I am chasing this paraplegic cat around this guy’s front yard.  The guy is watching so I don’t dare do the foot to the back of the neck trick to trap it down.  So I get it cornered and reach down and grab it by the back of the neck, Ah ha, I got ya.  Ironically the cat looks just like our own home cat Elvis.  So I am walking it to the car and as I get to the car my buddy Kenny who is still laughing about me chasing the cat gets on the air and gives a “One in custody”.  This is a joke because you normally say this when arrest someone, it starts the 24 hour clock for that person to see the judge.  But in this circumstance it is just funny because it lets everyone that knows I am on a cat call that I just had a physical struggle with a cat.  Well as Kenny opens the back door so can put the cat in the back the darn thing turns into my hand and bites me. Its top and bottom fangs penetrate the leather and both sink into my right index finger, “son of a …. “  Not realizing that the reporting party is still there, I throw the cat into the car and it bounces off of the Plexiglas divider.  Kenny slams the door shut, and says, “Oh buddy, you got to be careful with cats, there unstable, there not like dogs”.  I’m thinking, “thanks”. 

I pull my glove off and blood is pouring out of my finger.  I get a banaid out of my first aid kit and we head to the pound to drop of this devil animal.  Well sometime during the engagement in the front yard, I became the arch enemy of this cat.  As we are driving to the pound I am in the passenger side (with the prisoner behind me) and this possessed cat starts to climb under the seat to get to me.  Not satisfied with finding a safe refuge under the seat it is trying to get me.  I tell Kenny that this crazy cat is trying to get me and he starts laughing and so do I.  I feel the car swerving with the waves of laughter from Kenny.  Holy cow this cat has made its way up to have its head and front legs exposed under the front of my passenger side seat. I am trying to push it back with the heels of my boots but it is biting my boots and trying to mortally wound me.  I can’t push it back so I grab my mag light and start pushing it to get it back under the seat.  It won’t go its biting my aluminum flashlight to try to get me.  By now I am starting to get concerned that it might make it into our passenger compartment and make us crash.  So I am in the battle of wills, mine against this evil possessed paraplegic feral cat.  I use my flashlight to deliver strikes to the head of this cat to try to drive it back, Kenny is laughing so hard he is about to crash our car.  The cat is just hissing after each strike.  Finally it ducks back under the seat to seek refuge from my three D cell mag light.  I am wondering if it is just regrouping.  It was right, it makes another charge, and I have to strike it again with my light, Hard.  It pulls back under the seat and now I need to drive it back.  The battle has been raging for about 5 min now.  I start to swing my light side to side under the seat like ringing a bell.  Except one side it hits the seat and the other the cats head.  It finally recognizes my superior tactics and weapons systems and retreats to the back seat until we arrive at the pound. 

The worker tries to catch it with a snare, but it out smarts him and seeks a tactical advantage under the seat.  I know its game so I flush it out by “ringing the bell” at the front edge of the seat.  It retreats again and then charges out of the front.  I have to pin it down by the neck with my flash light holding it tight as the worker jumps over me to try to get the snare on.   Finally, we have it hooked up and it is flailing around trying to free itself.  He dumps it into a barrel and says “Holy …. That is a crazy cat”  I said “tell me about it, I had to fight the thing the whole way here and got bit by it”  So because I got bit they had to put it down right away and send it to the lab to get tested for disease.  It came back negative.  But I still had to go to the doctor and have them stick a syringe in it and flush out the car germs.  That sucked.

The worst part of the whole ordeal was by the time I got back to the station it had been circulated that I got my ass kicked by a paraplegic feral cat.  So now when I get dispatched to a “cat pick up” you will hear several officers key their mic and “meow”.    

Running from the cops 101

I never cease to be amazed that people run from us.  More often than not the odds are stacked against them, yet they still keep trying.  I am going to point out some of the mistakes made in an effort educate you in the event you want to run from the Police (pronounced Poleece). 

The first example I will use occurred just the other night.  One of my buddies attempted to pull over a car for expired registration, which as you can imagine is a very minor offense.  Well dude decided that he did not want to stop.  He just kept strolling along for a few minutes not driving reckless, just kept plugging along.  Well this was mistake number one, because it allows other officers to move that way to assist.  So like a pack of wolves hunting our prey myself and several other officers to position ourselves to pounce.  I saw the suspect proceeding east through a complex with two units behind and I knew that when he got to the end he would go north or south.  So I took a gamble and moved north one street and went east.  It turned out to be a good decision as the suspect decided to bail out of the car part way through that complex and run north.  Well guess what.  I was north to cut him off.  But before he got to me he jumped a fence into a back yard.  This was mistake number two.  What he did not know was the two officers that were out on foot directly behind him were much faster than him.  Part two to this mistake was the yard that he jumped into was home to three dogs.  Well, lucky for him the dogs were inside, but the yard was littered with lawn sausages and by lawn sausage, I mean dog poop.  Lots and lots of dog poop.  You see where this is going right?  Yep, when he was tackled, I mean “assisted him to the ground” he fell into the land of many poops.  He was covered in dog crap.  I mean covered.  His hair, his face, smashed into his clothes.  In my haste to get there and get into the action I did not glove up yet.  So when I grabbed onto him to open up his jacket, not knowing that he was covered in poop and you guessed it.  Dog crap all over my hands.  I was so mad.  I washed my hand with Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer, and soap and water about 15 times.  Then some more hand sanitizer again.  I’m just thinking it’s got to be a really crappy (no pun intended) when you go to jail covered dog poop. 

The next example of what not to do occurred several months back.  I was back up officer on a traffic stop.  The officer observed them leaving a know drug house and when the driver made a traffic violation he pulled them over.  We run them for warrants and find that one of the passengers had a warrant, so he was cuffed up and taken to the back of a patrol car.  The rear passenger who the officer had seen at the door of the dope house was sweating and fidgety and looking very nervous.  We got him out of the car and sat him down on the curb to talk to him separately from the others.  Well after he gives consent to be searched the other officer searches him he has him sit back down on the curb and take off his shoes and when he does baggie of crack cocaine falls out, Here comes mistake number one, He jumps up and takes off running with three cops within 5 feet of him.  Mistake number two was trying to run across granite landscaping rock with only one shoe on.  Well he made it about 30 feet only before he was landing like a lawn dart face first into the 1 inch granite landscaping rocks.  Upon impact his face exploded with blood I was down at his feet manually crossing them then kneeling across them to keep him from kicking the other two officers were cuffing him up.  I went back and checked my call comments and I called out foot pursuit, gave out the description and DOT (direction of travel) and called “one detained” meaning we had him secured all on the same minute.  So let’s review his mistakes.   Trying to take off running from being seated is just asking to get caught.  Secondly, trying to run with only one shoe is, well aside from being funny is another bad idea.

Let’s face it, we have all seen the show Cops.  We know what is going to happen if you run.  More likely than not, running from the cops is going to end in a polyester pileup of officers pouncing onto you like a pack of lions on a gazelle.  You’re going to get dragged out scuffed up and bleeding and you’re still going to go to jail. 

I have been lucky thus far and I caught every bad guy I have chased down.  I think mainly because I try to mitigate my chances of getting smoked.  If I have even the slightest inkling that the person will run I sit them down and warn them that I will use whatever force necessary to keep them from running.  I often let them know that with the taser I can be 25 feet away and turn them into a running lawn dart.  Most times the verbal threat is sufficient to keep them chilled out.

So let’s review what we have learned here today.  Don’t give us time to encircle you. Don’t run into unknown territory.  Don’t run if you can’t run fast.  Don’t run if you’re seated.  Don’t run with one shoe on.  Let’s just leave it at, don’t run from the cops.  You’re going to get caught and going to jail, sweaty, bloody and covered in dog poop.  And that can’t be as pleasant as just going to jail right?