Rookie Police Experiment
The first time someone shoots at you, it’s a little unnerving.
I’m sure everyone knows the term firing pin associated with guns. The terms most folks are unfamiliar with include cylinder, timing, primer, ratchet and pawl.
You don’t need to know what all that means any more than you need to understand the inner workings of an antique watch, but you do need to know, like the watch, everything needs to be in time, or nothing works right.
If the primer, the thing the firing pin strikes to fire the bullet, is misaligned, and we’re talking about being off by as little as 1/64th of an inch, the gun might misfire. What you get is an off-center dent in the primer and no bang.
Nightwork follows midnights, it’s when most of the activity happens. Dark is coming, so are monsters.
When midnights ended, I faced two days off before I could get back into the fray, making the world safe. And, it was a long two days, what we called the big apple.
If midnights ends on a Friday, you are off from eight in the morning Friday through Saturday and Sunday (your RDOs or Regular Days Off), and you don’t have to be back to work until four in the afternoon Monday.
This is the big apple, almost a four-day weekend.
I was looking forward to nightwork because the academy and cop friends said everything happened on nightwork. They weren’t kidding.
The bosses were still trying to figure out what to do with us, and I hadn’t particularly messed up yet, so patrol car 1712 was still mine. The sergeant eventually reassigned me another car, and the guy who replaced me on 1712 rode it for 20 years.
I did my usual routine despite solid advice not to. I checked the oil, checked the lights, and checked the car for damage. I filled the gas tank in case I needed to pursue someone to the seashore.
The same rule applied to damage on the police car as applied to burglaries in your sector. If you were the first to find it, it was on the guy you relieved. If your relief found it, it was on you.
After I did my routine check, I went straight to Washington Avenue to see if I could get a ticket or two, or more, before things started to get busy. I stopped a couple of cars. Made some new friends and was about to make a run to the perimeter of my sector when the call came out.
In the 17th District. 1500 Point Breeze Avenue. On the highway. Robbery point of gun. Committed by a male, black leather jacket and blue jeans. Last seen on foot southbound on Point Breeze in the 1500 block.
Now, my route to work passed by this area of the district, and I remembered seeing a low-rise project in this block.
My neighbor, a veteran police officer, told me, “When a robbery call comes out, if you’re not the car assigned, don’t go to the scene. Figure out where the bad guy is going and go there and wait for him.”
I considered three possibilities:
1. Across the 25th Street demarcation zone toward the West side of the district,
2. Into the 1st District to confuse the cops,
3. The project.
I chose the project.
Along with the academy staff, and other observers, poachers were appearing on our calls. Burglary teams from other districts were among them. Our 17th District Burglary team was awesome. Some of the others, I was to find out today, not so much.
I rolled up to Point Breeze Avenue and pulled my car over to the left side of the street. As I opened the door and started to move toward the project, I saw two men in plain clothes moving toward the project.
I looked at them sideways but thought they carried guns, and how else would they know to be there if they weren’t police officers?
One of them saw me. He looked like Alfred E. Neumann on a bad hair day. The other looked like a bad Fonzie impressionist.
The bad hair called over, “He ran in here.”
They ran through the parking lot of the project right down the middle, which gave me the creeps. The way they ran, flanked on either side by low-rise buildings with large standing bushes, shouted danger. The intense overhead lights, the kind around all city installations, could give you a sunburn.
It was just getting dark, too. The worst time of day for visibility. I thought a little more caution was in order. So, I drew my revolver and started to move cautiously down the lane in the shadow of the bushes.
These bushes were overgrown and taller than me. And, close enough together, they touched.
I was creeping along, checking both sides in case our bad guy was taking cover in one of these bushes. You can say I was being over-cautious, and apparently, the burglary team thought so, too.
Bad hair called out, “Hey. What are you doing? Come over here!”
I froze. I looked at him standing under the light in the middle of a project parking lot. I thought of a police officer – shot the previous year – standing under just such a light in a neighboring project.
He shouted again, “Hey. Can’t you hear me? Get over here. And put that gun away.”
OK, I thought, he’s a veteran, he must know something I don’t. Against my better judgment, I holstered my revolver, snapped it in place and stepped into the light.
Then I heard it. A revolver clicking is a creepy sound. The good thing is, if you can hear it clicking, it’s not going bang. I swung my head around.
Standing just to my left, between two bushes, stood a male with a black leather jacket and blue jeans. He pointed a gun at my face, furiously pulling the trigger!
Luckily for me, he was either too stupid to load it, or it was out of time and misfiring. Either way, I didn’t wait to find out. I hit the ground, and rolled up with my revolver at the ready.
He broke cover and ran. I pursued. He cleared the parking lot and crossed Point Breeze Avenue, gaining distance from me with every stride. He turned on Tasker Street. I made the same turn, losing ground. My last view of him was disappearing around the corner a half block away. When I reached the corner, he was nowhere in sight.
I walked back to my car, out of breath and furious. I wanted to avoid any more contact with them. I opened the door to leave, but the team wanted to lecture me.
They were going to teach this rookie something. They were about to realize they weren’t in Kansas anymore.
The Fonzie one said, “Where did you go?”
I glared at him.
Many of the great, unwashed confuse the look I give, calling it a deer-in-the-headlight stare. What they don’t know is they are experiencing the eye of the tiger. I was trying to decide which one I was going to smack first.
The one with the bad hair shouted, “Hey, where did you go? What do you think you’re doing? Didn’t you hear me tell you to come over here?”
I said, “Who the fuck are you?!”
He bowed up, and so did the other one. He said, “We’re the (other district) Burglary team.”
I said, “Well, this is the 17th District.”
He said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
They came closer to me. I felt like a spider when a fly gets close to the web.
I said, “Which word didn’t you understand? This is the 17th District. The other district is on the other side of Broad Street.”
They still didn’t get it. They got closer still. I reached in and picked up my hat and stick. I put the hat on and the stick under my arm.
I got closer and said loudly, “What don’t you get? Do you know what you two stupid mother fuckers just did? Did you not see that asshole try to shoot me from the bushes?”
They looked at each other and back at me.
Hair said, “What are you talking about?”
I said, “Listen, I’m only going to say this once, so pay attention. Get the fuck out of my face and get the fuck off my sector.”
They got a real case of the ass with this and started to move toward me when I reached for the stick.
I said, “You want to rethink this?”
They froze.
I said, “I’m giving you a choice. Get the fuck out of here on my say so, or tell it to my sergeant.”
They backed up. They could see I wasn’t kidding. They looked at each other, walked backwards a few steps, and said, “We’ll see about this.”
I responded, “Go fuck yourself.”
They walked away cursing. I got into my car and left.
Now, this was one of many what-did-I-do-to-myself-now moments in the PD.
I don’t mean the encounter with the bad guy; I mean the interaction with the veterans. I felt lucky to have escaped with no bullet wounds, so I returned to my car and resolved never to listen to a veteran again unless I knew them or someone I trusted vouched for them.
I was prepared to move on and forget the whole thing among cops, but not these two. When I got back to my car, I resumed patrol, but it wasn’t more than ten minutes before the dispatcher called. The dispatcher ordered me to headquarters.
I arrived to find them talking to my sergeant. He asked me to come inside to the roll call room.
The sergeant Said, “I hear you had a run-in with the burglary team here.”
I said, “Yeah, did they tell you what they did?”
He said, “They told me you wouldn’t listen to them and ran off from the project.”
I said, “Oh, yeah. Is what happened?”
I started toward the one with the big mouth. The sergeant stepped between us and said. Let’s talk. He pulled me toward the JAD room.
I told him what happened.
His eyes bugged.
He asked me if they saw the guy.
I said they never saw him, walked right past him in the bushes, led me in front of him and didn’t see when he tried to shoot me. They didn’t even see him when he ran off, and I chased him a block and a half, trying to catch him. I told him the sonofabitch was too fast, and I lost him.
His eyes were as big as saucers.
He said, “What did you say to them?”
I told him I was going to leave until they started to fuck with me, and I told them to get the fuck off my sector. I also told them where their district was.
I added I told them they could either leave, because I told them, or I would bring him into it. I told him I thought they left.
He looked at me up and down.
He said, “He really tried to shoot you?”
I said, “Yeah, either he was empty, or his gun was a piece of shit, but he was working at it hard. I heard it cycle two or three times before I even saw him.”
“I hit the ground and rolled up with my gun, but he was already running. I took off after him. I could hear the big-mouthed one yelling at me as I pursued the guy.”
My Sergeant shook his head and said, “Ok, you resume (cop talk for go back to work). I’ll take care of this.”
I said, “OK.” And left.
Five minutes later, I heard a radio call from my sergeant asking to meet with the lieutenant, a call from our lieutenant to the other district’s lieutenant, and a call from their lieutenant to the burglary team.
The rumor was that all non-17th District persons got the order to stay out of the 17th District unless specifically ordered in. This included uniformed and plain clothes units. The plainclothes units got the additional order to present themselves to every 17th District roll call so each of the squads knew what they looked like in case they came in.
Other than that, their orders were, “Stay out!”
After that, the only units I saw were line squads with their partners, Stake-Out in marked vehicles, and Jimmy by himself when he was in the neighborhood. It was always good to see him.
The others, rarely.