I was working during a concert being held on campus, and during such events, we often have lots of people hanging out, drinking alcohol, smoking pot, doing other drugs, etc. in our parking garages. This tends to make the students and staff who are not attending the concert, concerned for their safety. So we do a lot of foot patrols and we issue a lot of tickets. It is a very effective tool of the trade that when one person is seen receiving a ticket, many others decide it is time to go to the venue and not hang out in the parking garage.
I saw one young man drinking a can of beer (drinking alcoholic beverages on campus is a misdemeanor) so I approached him and asked him for ID. He was with his friends so he smiled broadly and told me that he had forgotten to bring it with him.
“Okay, so what’s your name?”
“Ummmm. Troy Lindsay.”
“And your date of birth?”
“Ummmmmmmmmmm. May 3rd, 1980.”
“Okay, and what year did you graduate high school?”
Dead silence. His face got red and I could see his eyes trying to perform the appropriate addition and subtraction, which had been fogged over by a couple of cans of beer. “Nobody remembers that!” he sputtered out.
I placed him in handcuffs (to keep him from running away-I was old and fat even then and chasing people is not my thing) and sat him on the ground as he was technically under arrest for drinking alcoholic beverages on campus.
“Does this help you remember your name and date of birth?”
Also, at this point, his “friends” left to go to the concert.
He provided his true name and date of birth and I issued him a citation for minor in possession of alcohol (he was just 18) and the false information. When we were done, he took his citation and apologized, saying he just wasn’t thinking.
Fast forward about twelve years and I was attending an awards ceremony for police officers who had demonstrated excellence in DUI arrests. An officer from another agency approached me, his award in his hand.
“Sgt. Blalock, it’s good to see you again.” It was Ofc. “Lindsay.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” and I used his real name (okay, it was on his name tag).
Lindsay introduced me to his Chief of Police, who happened to walk up and I introduced myself and said, “Yes, I’m the one who arrested him.”
Lindsay’s face reddened and he looked very serious. “You didn’t have to throw me under the bus with my Chief,” he whispered.
Flashback: About seven years before this, I met with a background investigator for this other agency. He asked me about Lindsay’s arrest and what my thoughts were on whether or not he should be a police officer. Sitting in my office, I thought about it and asked, “Well, what was his response when you asked him about it?”
The background investigator consulted his notes and said, “He said that he had been really stupid and after having a couple of beers, had compounded one bad decision with another. He said that your interaction with him, treating him politely and as an adult who simply made a bad decision later made him think he wanted to have career in law enforcement.”
I smiled. “I don’t think he could have answered that any better, do you?”
Back to This Day: The Chief leaned forward and whispered, “We wouldn’t have hired you without his recommendation. It’s a public record, not a secret.”
It was a little after 11:00 PM on a cool, November evening. The University operated a theater a few blocks from campus, in the downtown core, and I had decided to make a trip over there and circle the building as part of my patrol pattern that evening. Oh, by the way, I was on a mountain bike at the time. I contacted a homeless person who had camped out in front of the doors to the theater, issued her a new court date for a warrant she had, and then asked if she needed directions to a shelter. She thanked me for the new court date and declined the shelter, packed up her stuff, and walked away.
As I slipped my gear into my bag and began to ride back toward campus, I heard voices shouting behind me. I saw two young men walking quickly in my direction and two other men shouting at them, trying to start a fight, circling them like sharks. I rode my bike over to put myself in between the two groups to separate them. But the aggressors refused to be slowed, they simply walked around me and continued to taunt the other two men who purposely tried to ignore them and their taunts. Clearly, this was going to be more work than just chasing away the aggressors and letting everyone go on their way.
I hopped off my bicycle to physically stop the two instigators and find out what was going on. During this time, I did not hear on my scanner that there were a group of three men running around downtown, physically attacking people. I did not hear that the last attack was only half a block from my current position, just minutes before. I reached out to grab one of the men by the arm, while keeping the second man in my field of vision. I did not see the third man run up behind me from the shadows and punch me in the side of the head.
The first blow actually struck my bicycle helmet, but it was jarring. The only thing my brain could equate it with was when I was in a car accident as a teenager. My brain told me that I had just been hit by a car. I turned and was immediately struck in the face, repeatedly. My confusion turned to anger. While taking blows to the face, I reached down with my left hand and keyed up my microphone. I told dispatch that I needed Code 3 backup at the theater. I said this calmly and clearly, although my speech was interspersed with blows to my cheek and jaw. With my right hand, I grabbed the handle of my firearm, but thought, “I’m not there, yet.” I instead drew my baton. After taking perhaps a dozen blows to the face and head, I grabbed my attacker’s shirt and ordered him to the ground.
Now that I was armed and giving orders, he tried to get out of my grip and fell to the ground, pulling out of his shirt. I ordered him to stay down, but when he to get up, I had to use the baton to keep him from continuing to attack me. One of the other aggressors came toward me to help his friend, I ordered him to stay back and when he continued toward me, I used the baton on him as well. Then all three ran away. One of my officers drove up across the sidewalk and chased down the primary attacker, using a TASER to take him into custody. Another officer arrived in time to catch the other two instigators.
Before the ambulances arrived to take us all to the hospital, I went to speak to the primary attacker. With blood pouring down my face and my lips and jaw swollen, and my teeth completely out of alignment, we made I contact. I was 51 years old at the time, and easily fifty pounds lighter than this young man of about 20, and while I was working on a bicycle, I was not an athlete in any way shape or form.
“When you get down to the jail, and you decide to brag about how you attacked a cop, remember this. You attacked a little, old man, from behind, took him by surprise, and you couldn’t even knock him down. Brag about that.”
I was then taken to the emergency room by ambulance where I was X-Rayed and MRIed and then referred to a couple of specialists. Diagnosed with injury caused TMJ, my jaw will only worsen over time. A few months later, I lost a front tooth and had to get an implant put in, following a surgery called an apicoectomy, a result of being punched in the face. While I did not have to pay for any of my medical bills, my final Workers Comp costs were about $75,000. And my injuries were relatively minor.
And why did all this happen? Those three men were just out to have a good time.
When I told the man that he had a warrant for his arrest, his eyes showed no surprise, just the same desperation that they held when I had originally stopped him. It was early on a Sunday morning and the only other officer on my shift that day had called in sick. In order to maintain our minimum of two police officers on duty at any time, one of the night shift guys was holding over to cover. But he was actually holding over to finish a report from an arrest he had made the night before. We were killing two birds with the same police report.
At the beginning of our shifts on the weekends, it’s a good idea to make a quick sweep of the University campus to make sure no buildings had been broken into, no homeless were camped out someplace they shouldn’t be, no dead bodies were littering the ground (you don’t have to believe me on this one, but periodically, on a University campus, we found people who had died of exposure or suicide, that no one had noticed previously), or that no one was vandalizing anything. But Sunday was normally a very slow day, and I counted on that, being the only one on patrol, with my backup typing away in the police station.
I saw him trying to get into the library, yanking on the door like it was the rip cord handle to a lawnmower, so I decided to see what his particular concern was, before he broke the heavy, decorative, glass door. As I walked up, he turned to see me and his face seemed familiar, very similar to the face on a BOL that I had reviewed at the station during briefing. He looked like a man that the detectives wanted to talk to regarding a sex crime committed in the very same library building just a week ago. But he was just different enough from the grainy, video still photo that I couldn’t be sure. But the man’s name was on the flyer. And that I remembered.
So, just a look at his ID should clear it up. I saw the fear in his face when I said, “good morning” and asked him what was going on. He said that he was trying to get into the library. I told him it was closed and pointed to the large “closed” sign in the glass door in front of him. I then asked for ID. He said that he didn’t have any, but that he was just going to leave.
I told him that he was detained for an investigation involving both a crime that occurred in the library last week and for potential vandalism to the door that I had witnessed and asked him for his name and date of birth. I explained that if he was not the person that I was looking for and that there was no damage to the door, that he would be on his way in a few minutes. He responded in a way that made me feel like he wasn’t lying about his information and I ask dispatch to run a records check on him and confirm his identity.
Dispatch told me that he had a very sizeable warrant. Since I never wore an earpiece, the man was able to hear what dispatch told me and we looked at each other for a moment. I nodded and told the man that he had a warrant and that it appeared that the judge really wanted him to be taken to court. I was not going to be able to issue him a citation with a new court date for this warrant. He said he understood and the lack of surprise in his eyes told me that he was aware of the warrant and had been dreading this moment. And then I saw something else in his eyes. An escape plan.
Just as I called for emergency backup, the man took off. I grabbed him on his third step and we both crashed to the ground. He fought to get away from me and I fought to hold him down until my backup got there, but his adrenaline and my adrenaline appeared about evenly matched. Every time he started to get the upper hand, I took it away, but I couldn’t get actual control of him. He would push up off the ground to get his legs under him and I would sweep an arm out from under him and we would fall back to the ground and start again. According the clock in dispatch, when I checked the records later, we fought like this for about three minutes.
If you have never been in a knock down, drag out fight, three minutes is a LONG TIME. I realized that my strength was draining and that I might lose this fight if it dragged on too much longer. With all my weight on top of him (I was old and fat then too, you’d think that would have been enough) I reached back and drew my collapsible baton.
“Sir, I need to effect this arrest and I am authorized to use all reasonable force to effect an arrest, so since I can’t seem to get control of you like this, I’m going to have to use my baton to break your right leg. Do you understand?”
Please keep in mind that physically, based on my strength at that moment and on the angle that I would have had to hit him, I would have been lucky to raise a welt with the baton, much less break anything.
A bystander ran up with his phone and said, “Don’t worry, Dude. I’ll record him breaking your leg.”
I swung the baton, expanding it with a very intimidating sound of metal links locking into place. I pointed the baton at the camera man. “Sir, you are allowed to keep filming, but I need you to step back a few feet.” The camera man followed my instructions.
I turned my attention back to my suspect. “Sir, I’m sorry that I have to do this, but on the count of three, I’m going to break your leg. Okay? One…”
“Please don’t break my leg! I give up! I give up!”
I dropped the baton and quickly handcuffed the man before he changed his mind. And just as my backup drove up, lights and siren in full display.
The camera man walked away swearing, unhappy that he didn’t get the video that he had hoped for.
And no legs were broken during the course of this arrest.
I was sitting at my desk, staring at the bodycam footage of one of my officers, as required by my department, to make sure I don’t see my officers doing anything ridiculously stupid, or I guess, even mildly stupid. Either way, I was sitting at my desk, in the middle of the afternoon, when I heard a parking officer call for assistance right outside the police station. I got up, stretched, and walked down the hall to exit the police station and see what was going on outside.
The University police station is situated at the entrance of a parking garage and at the end of a cul-de-sac, where people who don’t want to enter the garage can turn around. I saw that a parking officer was standing beside a compact sedan stopped in the roadway and trying to direct other cars to go around the sedan, but there was limited space to do so.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
The parking officer shrugged. “I don’t know. I just came out and saw this car blocking the roadway.”
I saw that the hazard lights were on. So someone knew that they had left their car not in a parking space. I told the parking officer to direct all the cars into the parking garage and close off the cul-de-sac and took a moment to examine the car. It was an older model, Japanese car with bad maroon paint. I also saw that the registration was expired more than six months, which means that I can just tow it away. I had a citation book with me and a tow form inside the cover, so I pulled out the form and started filling it out. It normally took about ten to fifteen minutes to complete the form, so if the driver returned before the form was completed, I would entertain their story, and perhaps, not tow the car.
So the parking officer continued to direct traffic and I completed the paperwork. Once I had finished, there was still no driver. I sighed and called the dispatch to request a tow truck. Tow trucks usually take about twenty to thirty minutes, so perhaps if the driver showed up before the tow truck arrived, I could still listen to what they had to say and decide if I was going to cancel the tow truck. Now, in order to tow the car, I needed to conduct an inventory search of the sedan, per policy.
I opened the driver door, since it was unlocked and was hit with a wave of skunk smell that was indicative of significant marijuana use. I let the car air out a little so that I could breathe while I conducted my search, and then with latex gloves, I set off into the Corolla, which turned out to be filthy. Filthy. Everything felt as though it was covered in grime, including the two child restraints in the back seat, that also smelled of marijuana. Other than the child seats, the car contained several empty fast food packages and bags, some assorted tools, and one of the largest glass bongs I have ever seen.
In order to reach under the front passenger seat, I had to move the bong, which immediately fell over and broke in half, spilling bong water all over the floorboards of the car. I escaped the car and closed everything up as I finished my search. While I stood outside the car about two feet from the driver door, waiting for the tow truck driver, I saw a man walking toward me from the inside of campus, wearing a red polo shirt with a food delivery company logo (we’ll call it FoodFlash) and carrying several bags of fast food from a number of restaurants located in the Student Union.
The man walked up to the car and I expected him to ask me what I was doing, but he simply ignored me and stepped around me to get to the rear door. He opened the door and placed the bags of fast food onto the back seat, between the child seats. He closed the door and sucked on the straw to a fast food drink as he tried to squeeze past me to get to the driver’s door.
“I’m sorry, sir. Can I see your driver license?”
The guy looked at me, finally, and reached down, slowly, and patted his pants pockets.
“Uh, I forgot my wallet.”
I asked for his name and I could tell by his uhs and ahs, that he was making up a name. When I confirmed that he had lied about his name, I called for another officer to come help me out. I also saw the tow truck driving up the street, toward me.
As I worked with the tow truck driver, I saw the other officer place the FoodFlash driver in handcuffs. I asked what had happened and the officer explained that our driver had a significant warrant for his arrest and, by the way, his driver license was suspended. As the other officer took the driver to jail and the tow truck driver drove away with the car, I thought about the food piled in the filthy back seat, destined to never see the clients that had ordered it. And I thought, is this where my food sits when I order FoodFlash? Ewwww.
I had been assigned to supervise the civilian security staff at the new library on campus and we were still a week away from the grand opening, allowing the public inside. But, for one day, we needed to have the doors open for library staff to enter and exit for trainings being held throughout the day. Now sure, we put up “Library Closed to the Public” signs, but the doors were electronic and simply opened with the motion detectors. And we couldn’t put security staff at the entrances because they were in training, too; nine hours of “Verbal Judo.” So much fun. So another police officer and I each sat at an entrance to direct the unauthorized back outside, but we were allowed to be in plainclothes. So there I was, in my business casual Hawaiian shirt and black slacks, gun and badge on my belt.
I was sitting at a security kiosk, saying good morning to the staff I recognized, asking for ID from the staff that I didn’t, and directing members of the public back out of the building, in a polite and friendly manner. Late morning, and no one had come in the door for a while when a guy about my age (we’ll say early 40s at this time) comes in, walking right past the “closed” sign, and says, “So is it open, now?”
“No,” I smile. “We’re still closed to the public. We needed to have the doors open for staff to access the building today. I’m asking members of the public to exit the building.”
“Oh, can I look around?”
I sigh. It had been slow. “You can look around for a couple of minutes, but I can’t let you past this kiosk,” I say, being extra nice.
“Oh, thanks.” The guy mills about the lobby in front of me and I’m able to watch him because there’s no one else around.
A couple minutes later, a young woman, we’ll say she’s in her late 20s, early 30s, walks right past the “closed” sign and asks, “Are you open today?”
“No,” I smile. “We’re still closed to the public. We needed to have the doors open for staff to access the building today. I’m asking members of the public to exit the building.”
“Oh, can I look around from here? Like him?”
Dammit. “Sure, for a couple of minutes.”
The guy came over and started a conversation with the young woman, both talking excitedly about the new library. I watched their meet-cute as it travelled about the lobby until they began to move past the security kiosk. It was completely apparent that the guy was more interested in the woman than the library and it was just as apparent that she more interested in the library, than him. I could tell that he had no shot. I directed them back behind the invisible line I had imposed and they moved back. But it didn’t take long for them to encroach just a little bit more. It had been ten minutes at this point that they had been in the building. I felt that I had been nice enough.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I do have to ask you to exit the building,” I told them, with a smile and a pleasant, apologetic tone. But the response was not what I was expecting.
“Well, that was rude!” the guy said. Clearly, by his extreme reaction, he was being cock-blocked and he needed to take some control. Redeem himself in her eyes.
“Yes, you are being very rude,” the woman added.
That was it. I stood up, pulled my badge from my belt and showed it to them. “Be that as it may, I still need to ask you to exit the building.”
They began to argue with me and question my authority until I explained that I was a police officer and that if they did not leave, I would arrest them and take them to jail. They left. Grousing every step of the way.
I went back to sitting at my kiosk, when about twenty minutes later, I received a phone call. The shift supervisor told me that a man and a woman had come in to file a complaint against me for being rude. He asked them what had happened and they explained things pretty much exactly as it had happened and finished their tale with my unprofessional level of rudeness. The shift supervisor said that he told them that I had been nice, just letting them into the building in the first place, that he would have directed them to leave immediately, like he was supposed to. He then accepted their written complaints against both me and the shift supervisor.
I never heard anything else, so I don’t know what the resolution of the complaints were, probably “Unfounded.”
When I was in college, I took a geology class (to meet a minimum requirement) that happened to have a field trip to a large, local park that had a very demonstrable landslide area. We traipsed around the area seeing what had once been a neighborhood road that was now buckled and jumbled, completely impassable without scrambling up and down the rocks. Our professor explained that there had actually been several homes along this street when he started the field trips, but over the years, the houses slowly slipped over the horizon and into the gullies below.
I returned home and told my Dad about this and asked if he had heard about it. My Dad worked for thirty years for the City. Not San Francisco, mind you, but for a nearby city with slogans like, “Small Town Heart. Big City Soul,” and “We are growing up.” If anyone recognizes either of these slogans, let me know if you remember any more. I’ll update this blog entry. Our city has had a gaggle of ridiculous slogans and mottos. Tax money well spent.
Back to the landslide area. My Dad said, “Oh, of course. That had all been county land and a big developer kept trying to get permits to build homes there, but it was deemed a landslide area and unsafe to build homes. So the developer was able to arrange for the City to annex the land, contract for a geologist to report that the area ‘wasn’t that bad’ and sign off that homes could be built, and approved the permits.” Tah-dah! At that point, I knew the story that homeowners almost immediately noticed problems with the homes. “Within a few years, the developer had disappeared and couldn’t be held accountable, so the homeowners sued the City, who was forced to purchase all the homes back and add the land to the existing park that had been situated below the homes.” Millions, nay dozens of millions of dollars, back in the 70s, when that amount of money meant something.
That was when I realized that my Dad had some serious, scandalous stories. I began to listen. Some were very simple stories, like the ones about his time in the Navy; how he chose the Navy because as he was concerned about being drafted into the Korean War, a local veteran told him that the Navy provided a lot more comfort than the other branches. My Dad told me that he joined the Navy, ultimately, because he could get real butter there. And during basic training, he remembered after the day’s training, doing laundry and hanging it out to dry near the river. All while at the Marine base on the other side of the river, Marines were marching, chest deep in the river, holding their rifles over their heads. My Dad said that he and his shipmates held their beers high so that the Marines could see that they were drinking in their honor. There was also the time his ship was docked in Okinawa and he and his shipmates had to cross through the Air Force base to go to town. He said that when they returned to the base, all drunk and unruly, they called the Air Police officers at the gate, “bus drivers” due to their plain uniforms and hats. They would then be beaten with police batons and thrown into the back of a pickup truck and dumped out in front of their ship. It was very nice of those Air Force guys to give them a ride like that. Or when the ship he was on would perform big gun target practice on a banner attached to a seaplane as it flew by. The seaplane would drop the target when they were done and the sailors would use a grappling hook to pull it out of the water. The only holes in it were from the grappling hook. Thank God they never actually went to Korea. But sometimes the stories were more sad, like when he spent his last six months in the Navy at Treasure Island, processing out sailors who were being discharged for being gay.
After the Navy, he was hired by the City and worked in what would now be the IT department, back then, it was Data Processing. And the City had scandals. Like the time an accountant assured the Finance department that a particular broker was the way to go with city investments. Unfortunately, it seems like the brokerage should have been named Fast Buck Financial with the slogan “We’ll Invest Your Money til It’s Gone.” The City lost a significant amount of money. And then there was the guy responsible for managing all the money from the parking meters; he had the collectors drop off the money in his office, where he had a safe and he would reconcile the money and deposit it into the bank. His mistake was taking a vacation. When he was gone, the parking meter collections were three times higher than they were when he was working. His next vacation was likely county jail or just the unemployment line if he was lucky. And the guy that worked for the police department property unit. He was supposed to be auctioning off bicycles, but he was pocketing the money instead.
There were also the small corruptions that must have been commonplace during that time period. When my Dad went to his boss, explaining that one of his best employees was going to the City of Santa Cruz, because they paid better, the boss told my Dad to add 10 hours of overtime to the employee’s timesheet each week. Not assign him overtime, just write it on his timesheet. Or the obsolete discriminations, like when he worked with a data processing employee from the police department. My Dad complimented him to his boss and asked why this particular employee wasn’t a supervisor? The police department manager simply said, “He’s not tall enough to be a supervisor.” My Dad didn’t know what to do with that information so he ended his questioning. It wasn’t until later that someone explained to him that all supervisors at the police department were police officers, themselves. And there was a height requirement back then.
But one of my favorite stories had to do with when he started dating my mother. My Dad said that when he met my Mom, she was also dating a young, City, police motorcycle officer. The officer, Bill Danforth, had broken his leg and so every time my Dad saw him, Dad called him “Gimpy.” Ultimately, my Mom stopped dating Danforth and started dating my Dad. I had heard this story at some point into my 20s, probably early on in my own law enforcement career in the University police, a separate agency from the City police.
But about ten to twelve years later, I was riding a bicycle on patrol when I heard that there was a house on fire about three blocks off campus. Since the call had just gone out, I rode over there to see if I could help. I saw an older City police lieutenant giving instructions to officers and coordinating with the fire department. I rode up to him and told him I was the Watch Commander at the University and if they needed assistance, I could direct some of my staff their way. The lieutenant said that they were good but thanked me for stopping by. As I started to leave, I glanced down at his name tag. W Danforth.
And you know what happened. I didn’t mean to do it. Not out loud at least, but out loud it came.
“Gimpy!”
He looked at me, then at my name tag. He smiled a little, just the tips of the corners of his mouth rising as he lifted his eyes to make contact with mine.
“Tell your Dad, he’s an asshole.” And then the smile was full. I smiled back and we went our separate ways.
My wife, Mia, had just had a major surgery the night before. She’d had her gall bladder removed, but that is another story for another time. Today, she was recovering; she looked good and felt good and was looking forward to just going home. At lunchtime, a tiny, Vietnamese nurse came to bring her lunch. Her name tag said “Vinh,” but the dry erase board listed her as “Vicky.” Vicky was friendly and attentive and told my wife that they had to move her from the bed to the chair in order to change her sheets and it seemed like a opportune time to feed her; if she wanted to go home that day, she was going to need to meet some benchmarks. Mia eased herself down to the floor and then sat in the chair while Vicky opened up the lunch and placed it on the tray.
Mia paled and turned to look at me. “Wes, I don’t feel good.”
She then began seizing. Vicky tried to get Mia to respond and told me to hit the “Code Blue” button on the wall, near the bed. I followed instructions. Almost immediately, another nurse, Hope (Huan on her name tag) ran into the room. These two tiny women, perhaps 180 pounds altogether, tossed my wife onto the bed like a sack of potatoes as more nurses walked and jogged into the room. In order to be helpful, I pulled chairs and tables and trays out of everyone’s way.
I was still an active police officer at this time and all my instincts told me to DO SOMETHING. And yet there was nothing I could do. Nurses were attending my wife and I was just trying to stand out of their way. Waiting, outside the flurry of activity at my wife’s bed.
“Is she breathing?” I heard a nurse ask.
I did not hear an answer.
I saw a single doctor standing in the doorway, hand on his chin, contemplating. I wanted to scream at him, “Why aren’t you doing anything?”
“Does anyone have a pulse?” I heard another nurse ask.
I did not hear an answer. Again.
A deep pain throbbed inside my chest. I had lost her. I had not prepared for this and it was just beginning to hit. There were no tears yet.
And then:
“Okay, she’s looking good.” A lead nurse thanked everyone as they began to file out of the room.
Hope and Vicky continued to attend to Mia and a third nurse turned around and startled as she saw me standing there for the first time.
“Oh my God. Have you been there the whole time?”
I didn’t answer, as I could not form words, and I just nodded my head.
She could obviously see the tears forming in my eyes and she just stepped forward and hugged me. She held me tightly and then there were tears. Tears of fear, tears of frustration, tears of relief. She hugged me until the tears were gone and then she disappeared into the hospital, just like the angels that nurses are.
It turns out that Mia suffers occasionally from Vasovagal Syncope, a neurologically induced drop in blood pressure that can mimic a seizure and cause a brief loss of consciousness. Usually the most serious complication is injury from a fall.
That is the story of how I lost my wife for about twenty seconds and I can’t comprehend or fathom what that loss would feel like if it were any longer. It is her birthday this week. She’ll be XX years old and each birthday that she shares with me is a gift that I try not to squander.
My son, Albert, was attending the very same University where I worked (Yes, we got a discount) and while he was there, he met a young, graduate student who was living in the Dorms. She had just arrived from out of State and he was there in her dorm room to install her phone. There was immediate attraction. So for a short time, we began to see not so much of him at home; a significant amount of his time was spent “at school” as in, “Mom, Dad. I’m going to be at school.”
“Oh, you have class today?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Anyway, they had been seeing each other for about six weeks and appeared to be deeply emotionally connected to each other and although we had met Diana and she seemed genuinely nice, we didn’t really know her very well.
On a particularly cool, October (Homecoming) night, I was working the Fire on the Fountain Homecoming Celebration Tradition. For a 150-year-old university, this tradition was only about six years old. My university, no matter how much they tried, was not very good at maintaining any sort of meaningful tradition, beyond sexual violence in Intercollegiate Athletics. So I was working this event, assigned on foot to stand around and make sure nothing bad happened, or when it did, to call an ambulance (like last year when the sword dancer cut off his ear). And during this time, one of the patrol officers, Matthew, stopped by to chat with me.
Meanwhile, at the University Police Department, one of our dispatchers, Katie, answered a non-emergency number. A young woman called and asked to be connected to me, but I was out at a special event, so I was unavailable. The young woman said that she just needed to let me know that she was having some medical issues, and asked if she could have me call her back. Katie’s ears pricked up with “medical issues” and she dug for more information until the words “something is wrong with my heart” came out. She immediately dispatched officers and paramedics to the young woman’s on-campus apartment.
While I was talking to Matthew, he received a medical aid call in the Dorms, in the graduate student/faculty tower. As he drove away to the call, I tried to remember the location. It was Tower A, and on the 7th floor. What was Diana’s apartment number? I didn’t want to bother the dispatcher, because they were obviously busy, so I called my wife and asked if she remembered Diana’s apartment number. She couldn’t.
So I waited, listening to Matthew on the radio as he contacted the patient and gave instructions for the paramedics. Matthew happened to know my son, Albert, as Matthew was an Olympic-level Judo Athlete (I even found that he has his own Wikipedia page) and Albert was also involved in the Judo world. My cell phone rang and I saw that Matthew was on the phone.
“This is Wes.”
“Sarge, why am I looking at a picture of Albert on this young woman’s fridge?”
My adrenaline spiked. I had heard the dispatcher’s instructions involving possible chest pains, a high priority medical call. “Is it Diana?”
“Yep? Is this Albert’s girlfriend?”
Matthew let me know that Diana was definitely going to the hospital, but that Diana, who had come to us from Puerto Rico (and if your first thought was, ‘Oh, she’s a foreign exchange student,’ you can stop reading this now, goodbye) had insurance, but didn’t know what hospital to go to. I knew that she was far from home and far from family, so I made the split-second decision that she should go to Good Samaritan Hospital, which was just blocks from my home and would make it easier for us to provide support.
Then Matthew asked me if Albert was on campus. He was. He should be in class in the Engineering Building, on the opposite side of campus from the Tower A.
“Well, if he wants to go to the hospital with her in the ambulance, he needs to get here, soon. I’ve already spoken with the paramedics.”
I called Albert’s phone, and he answered, which surprised me, since he was in class, but I explained what happened and told him that the paramedics were going to be ready to go very soon. The only things that Albert said were, “Hey, what’s up?” when he answered and, “Okay,” before he hung up.
Less then four minutes later, Matthew called me to let me know that Albert had just arrived and that the paramedics weren’t sure who needed oxygen more, him or Diana. After they arrived at the hospital, Albert called to give us an update and let us know that Diana’s mother and sister were going to be coming and could we recommend a hotel. We immediately offered a spare bedroom in our house, again, just blocks from the hospital. Ultimately, her medical condition was resolved and a few years later, they married.
Usually, young couples try to carefully orchestrate the meeting of their separate families, but for this couple, our families were thrown together in crisis. We met, we connected, we bonded, and just a few short days ago, Albert and Diana welcomed their first baby into the world. Congratulations and thank you.
There was a local “drunkard” that we dealt with on a regular basis. He was Native American and had lost a foot at some time in the past, so he was in a wheelchair. We will call him Clarence Running Dear. Nearly every time we saw Clarence, he was completely intoxicated, usually unable to even push his wheelchair forward. Unfortunately, we often had to take him to jail for drunk in public because he was just too far gone. There, he would sober up and be released without charges (time served, they called it) and he would return home near the campus by bus or light rail.
Once, early in my career, when I was still a young officer, I had chosen, instead of arrest, to take Clarence home. He was not so blotto that he couldn’t take care of himself. He told me his address and I pushed him home (he had an apartment across the street from campus). I’m certain that it was an odd sight, a uniformed police officer pushing a drunk, one-legged Indian across town in a wheelchair. Once inside his grimy, tiny, first floor, studio apartment, I saw paperwork on the table from the Department of Veterans Affairs, addressed very specifically to him. I am nosy by nature, and I glanced at the paperwork to know all I needed to know. Clarence asked me to help him into bed. I lifted him from the chair and helped him balance while he turned around. Clarence sat back and fell into the bed. Within seconds, he was snoring. I swung his leg onto the bed and stood there for a moment, wondering what I should do next, but knowing that I didn’t have the power to do anything more for him.
We interacted many, many times after that, but usually, he was too drunk to be reasoned with and ultimately ended up in jail or just wheeling his way off campus shouting at the wind. There were still those times that I was able to roll him back to his apartment, but they were few.
Rest in Peace, Sergeant Running Deer. Your long, long fight is over. Thank you for your service.
There came to be a day when a group of officers in my agency had to go to training and that training was held in the capital city of Sacramento, a two to three hour drive from our jurisdiction. A Captain and three sergeants, myself included, all dressed in street clothes, piled into a marked police car for the trip. Our travel up and the training itself was completely uneventful, to the point that I have no recollection as to what the training was about. Probably just as well. Anyway, it was the way back that presented a significant series of problems for us.
Of the four of us, I was perfectly happy sitting in the back seat where I could sleep for the entire trip. I shared the back with Tom, who was a smidge more senior than me, and was nicknamed “Gadget” because he carried inordinate amounts of equipment with him whether on or off-duty, various tools hiding in pockets throughout his ensemble. Roy, our least senior member of the trip, was driving and had decided to share with us a secret shortcut that he had learned that would reduce our commute time back home. He explained that Highway 84 would take us past the City of Livermore and we wouldn’t have to deal with the traffic at the 680/580 interchange.
Keep in mind that this was a long time ago, when Highway 84 was literally just a two-lane highway that stretched across acres of vineyards and dirt and it only scooted inside the city limits for a couple of miles. Now, Hwy 84 can be described minimally as a multi-lane expressway and perhaps even a freeway for several miles. Either way, as we were just about to exit the city of Livermore proper, we saw that a single car was driving toward us, about a mile away. It was driving very slowly and was swerving slightly, centered over the solid, double yellow lines, and blocking a long line (as far as the eye could see) of cars behind it that wanted to pass. As we got nearer, we could see the driver stared glassy eyed, straight ahead and took no notice of us.
Our Captain, sitting in the front passenger seat, told us that we needed to do something, as though we were going to ignore the guy while we drove past in a big, white police car with a blue stripe and our phone number on the side. As we passed the car, moving onto the shoulder a bit to avoid being hit, the driver still didn’t turn his head, staring straight ahead. Roy flipped on the red and blue light bar (again, this was a long time ago, so the car we were in had an old Jetstream light bar with actual rotating lights inside) and made a quick U-turn, putting us directly behind our road hog. The lights and siren made no impact on our driver who continued along the double yellow lines at about 10 miles per hour.
While the others tried to figure out what to do next, I took out my flip phone and called our own dispatch center, as I didn’t know the phone number to Livermore PD by heart and I figured this would be quicker than dialing 9-1-1 and waiting for all the transfers. Our dispatcher, Drew, answered and asked me if I could hold for a moment. I said, no, with urgency in my voice.
“Drew, this is Wes, we need Code 3 backup from Livermore Police Department. We are northbound on Hwy 84, just south of Vineyard. We are trying to stop an intoxicated driver and need additional units.” I then looked at my phone and realized that I had lost signal…and I didn’t know how much information Drew had gotten.
Meanwhile, back at the University, Drew had been working the dispatch console and one of our supervisors was standing with him when my call came in. This is what Drew heard, “Drew, this is Wes, we need Code 3 backup…” The two of them sat there for a moment, realizing that they weren’t going to get any more information and didn’t know how dire our situation was or if we were in mortal danger. The supervisor looked at Drew and shouted, “Well, do something!”
I told the others in the car that we were likely not going to get any help. The Captain, Martin, while being the oldest of us in the car, was also the most fit; perhaps even superfit. Neither Tom nor I were suited to that category, so this next tactic didn’t even occur to us. Martin opened his door, while we were moving, got out, ran up to the other car, reached in through the open driver’s side window and ripped the key from the ignition, shutting the car down. Like a superhero.
Now that we were stopped, Tom and I hopped out and took the driver into custody, Tom producing a pair of regular, duty handcuffs from his jacket and securing them on the driver’s wrists. I then moved the suspect’s car and our car out of the street while Roy, the tallest of us, ran down the street holding his flip phone as high as he could, looking for signal. Can you hear me now?
We had the suspect in custody, sitting quietly on the curb, very likely under the influence of PCP and nearly catatonic, both cars were safely parked out of the street, and Roy was running down the dirt shoulder toward us, because he had reached Drew, explained our situation, and asked for Livermore PD to come take care of everything. Now we wait.
I’m about to punch Livermore PD in the eye, but it isn’t like Livermore is a bad agency; it could have been any agency. Cops in general, tend toward laziness, so we should have seen this coming. The first officer on the scene was an older guy on a motorcycle and weighed in a little on the large side. He listened to Martin (remember, a police captain) carefully, then with no hint of irony, said, “So, what are you going to do with him?”
Three unarmed police officers, and Tom (who knows how many guns he had on him at any given time), all in street clothes, in a car designed to hold no more than four adults, thirty miles outside our jurisdiction, in a neighboring county. We were not equipped to book a prisoner in a county we’ve never worked in.
Martin: “We’re turning him over to you.”
Livermore Officer: “Aren’t you guys real cops?”
At this point, Martin lost his temper. “Tom, uncuff him. Wes, give him back his car keys.”
A Livermore supervisor arrived on scene and saw us starting to release the driver.
Supervisor: “What are you doing?”
Martin: “Turning him loose. Good luck stopping him. It wasn’t easy.”
The supervisor and the motorcycle officer had a talk a little distance away, and while we could not hear them, we knew what the content of the speech would consist of and how many “F” words the discussion probably contained. After a few moments, the motorcycle officer returned and switched his handcuffs onto the prisoner and loaded him into the back of the supervisor’s car.
And then we were free. We climbed back into out car and continued on our way, headed for home. Tom looked at his watch.
“Roy? That shortcut just cost us 53 minutes.” Not counting our report writing time, when we got back to the station.
