Cop Stories & More

I was a university student, majoring in English, preparing to be a high school English teacher, and working part time at the University Police Department. On this particular night, I was working in the dispatch center, helping out the only dispatcher on duty by handing out equipment to police officers and other student assistants at the public window. We had a new sergeant on duty; he had come from another local university, only because it was a large, famous, private university it was far more well-funded than the public university that I worked for. But as many other police officers who had left that agency called the private university “The Evil Empire,” I had to assume that excellent funding did not equate to a comfortable working environment.

So I was standing at the window when the new sergeant came in, joining me, the dispatcher, an officer using the typewriter (Yes, typewriter. This was before computers. Actually, I think we had one of those cute little Apple MacIntosh towers), and at least one other student assistant. The dispatch center was actually fairly small, so this was a large crowd for the room, but it was early in the shift and we hadn’t started working in earnest, yet.

The new sergeant, we’ll call him “Ted,” moved to the space between the two dispatch consoles, which put him right next to me, him facing into the room and me standing right behind him, waiting in case anyone came to the window. Sgt. Ted was friendly and jovial and checked in with each of the employees, calling us all by name and chatting for a few minutes, earning small degrees of respect each minute. Sgt. Ted also told excellent stories from his time as an officer in Orange County and at The Evil Empire. Stories like the time officers chased a drunk suspect, on foot, all the way to the beach where the man ran off the cliff and fell to the beach below. The man shouted, “Call me an ambulance.” Sgt. Ted said one of the officers on the scene shouted back, “You’re an ambulance.”

This night, as he stood there in front of me, he was telling a story about a dispute between the Orange County Chiefs of Police and the local Border Patrol Commander. As he told the story, I looked at the gear on his belt. Sgt. Ted carried a large, Smith & Wesson revolver, even though all the other officers at our agency carried semi-automatics, so this was a curiosity to me. I examined the revolver, sitting in the holster and then moved on to looking at the other gear. I recognized all the gear, including the speed-loaders at the front of his belt. But there were two small leather boxes with front snaps on the back of his belt, behind the revolver, that I didn’t recognize. As Sgt. Ted told his story, I figured that I would just surreptitiously unsnap one of the boxes and glance inside. I reached out and unsnapped the box.

And the box flopped open and bullets spilled all over the floor.

As my face flushed hot in embarrassment, I dropped to the floor and began scooping up bullets. I expected that I might be shouted at but that being laughed at was a certainty. But it didn’t happen.

“Oh, Wes,” Sgt. Ted said, matter of factly. “You found my drop pouches.” He turned to the others in the room, who had not started to laugh at me yet, and asked, “Have any of you seen drop pouches?”

Even the other officer in the room, a young man, not much older than me, shook his head. Sgt. Ted, allowing me to collect all the bullets on the floor, continued. “So drop pouches contain extra bullets in case I go through both speed loaders in a gunfight. I just reach back,” and he demonstrated with the empty drop pouch. “Unsnap, and let the bullets fall right into my hand. Then I can load them right into the gun.”

I handed him the bullets and he replaced them in the drop pouch. “Thanks for getting those, Wes,” he said. And that was the last I heard of the incident. Sgt. Ted was only with us for a few weeks before the Command Staff sent him away to look for another agency. I don’t know why he was dismissed, because in the few weeks that I worked with him, he made a significantly positive impact on me and helped me form the basis of how I supervised my staff when I became a sergeant; treat people with respect and always take the opportunity to teach them something new (or old, as the case may be), acknowledge mistakes, but don’t overreact. When I look back on my law enforcement career, all the things that I did right and all the things that I did wrong, I feel like the good outweighs the bad. And Sgt. Ted? I hope I made you proud.

Ghost of a Chance

Another officer and I decided to walk one of the parking garages on campus that was closed for the holiday. We cleared a few trespassers, but as we reached the 4th floor, we saw a vehicle parked near the far corner. Both of us clearly saw a man seated in the driver seat and moving around. Because we were on foot and didn’t want to take the chance that he would spot us and take off, we skirted the perimeter of the 4th floor and moved quietly, placing supports between us and him. Several times, we were able to clearly see him in the driver seat, moving around. When we reached the area where we could approach the car from behind, we moved up on either side of the car. But there was no one inside. We had not heard car doors open or close. We had not heard footsteps walking away. The car was cold, empty, and still.

The other officer looked over at me. “We SAW him. There was a man in this car.”

“I sure thought so,” I told her.

I called Parking Services and they told me that the car was on a list not to be cited as the owner had a medical emergency and couldn’t drive away. The car was gone a few days later and I never learned what had become of the student or the ghost in the car.

Balancing The Scales

So much depends on circumstances. As a university police officer, I responded to one call at a market on campus where a homeless man had stolen a five-dollar sandwich and a drink. Because he admitted that he had entered the market with the intention of stealing the sandwich and the drink, I had to charge him with felony burglary (at the time, the law has since changed). I tried to talk the manager out of requiring me to make the arrest, because, as I told him, “I feel like I’m arresting Jean Valjean.” The college student manager didn’t get the Les Miserables reference, probably a computer science or business major, and again, demanded that the suspect be arrested. I did not like making that arrest.

However, on another occasion, we were called on an art student who walked out of the campus bookstore without paying for a set of five highlighters, valued at about seven dollars. The store loss prevention officer had followed him to a studio in the Art Building, across the walkway from the bookstore. When we arrived, I asked the student if he had forgotten to pay for the highlighters. He said that he didn’t feel like he should have to pay for them, his tuition should cover all of his supplies. I told him that I kinda agreed that his tuition should cover those kinds of supplies, but that unfortunately, it doesn’t, so he should go back and pay for the highlighters.

His response was a big, “Fuck no. No way am I paying for these highlighters.”

Well, that left me very little wiggle room when the loss prevention officer demanded an arrest and off to jail he went for felony burglary. I was less ambivalent about this arrest.

The Hand That Feeds

In a large, metropolitan university, with about 5000 employees, it behaved like a small town. You get to know people and you even make friends with the people you serve. But, just like a small town, it can lead to awkward arrests. And the drama is just as stupid as small-town drama.

I had met an Associated Students employee, Alicia, when I had signed up to work a special event. She was a manager and handled significant amounts of cash. While she was involved in selling tickets to the event, a young man decided that he didn’t like the politics of the speaker in the building and wanted to protest. A short arrest later, followed by paperwork ordering the young man to stay off campus for fourteen days, and the young man left the area. Unfortunately, he would not stay gone. He sued both me and Alicia, in small claims court, of all places. So Alicia and I bonded over court appearances.

Fast forward several years and I was told that we were investigating the loss of more than $50,000 in cash over a short period of time from the Box Office. One of the detectives came into my office and asked if I knew Alicia. I told him I did and described our professional relationship. The detective told me it looked like she had embezzled the money and the University allowed her to pay the money back and walk away. I found out later from other campus employees that she had embezzled the money to pay for her significant other’s medical bills, due to his significant disability and inability to work. She had cashed out her retirement plan to pay back the embezzled money.

The one thing that never really made sense to me was this: Alicia had been living with a man for about eleven years and they never married. He was unemployed due to disability and she was overextending herself paying for his medical bills as he was uninsured. But I ask you, how did embezzling the money make more sense that simply getting married or declaring a civil union and having him covered under her University-paid medical insurance?

Circle Of Steel

University campuses have a real responsibility to allow free speech, and yet do their best to control behavior which “disrupts the academic environment.” On my campus, panhandlers, buskers and the like were allowed, but they had to contact the Student Affairs Office and get a handout (or permit) that listed appropriate hours and locations for free speech that wouldn’t disrupt nearby classrooms.

On this particular summer day, I saw a man near a classroom building, sitting on the ground and playing his guitar, a hat on the ground in front of him with some small change inside. I was on bicycle, so I coasted up to him and introduced myself. I smiled and asked if he had contacted the Student Affairs Office to find out the more appropriate locations that he could practice his free speech activity. He told me that he had not and looked a little nervous. I told him that all they were going to do was give him a handout with the rules and a map of the campus.

He smiled and nodded. “Okay officer. Since you’ve been so kind, I’m going to sing you a song that I wrote just a few days ago.”

He played his guitar and then began in on an obscure Gordon Lightfoot song called Circle of Steel (1974). He finished two lines before I joined in with him singing along. I’ve always been a huge Gordon Lightfoot fan and I have owned the Sundown album (yes, vinyl) since I was a kid. Our busker stopped singing and stared at me.

“How did you know that song?” he asked.

“Because I’m University police. We know everything.”

Shall I Take A Look Under The Hood?

I stopped a car that had committed a minor traffic violation. I had no intention of issuing a citation, but I wanted to talk to the driver about the violation to make sure they understood why the driving maneuver they made was illegal. While I was talking to the driver, I kept hearing a small, squeaking noise from under the hood. I asked the driver if he had heard the noise too. He said he had and that his car had never made that noise before. He exited and we both lifted the hood. I ran back to my patrol car and pulled a pair of heavy-duty leather gloves from the trunk and ran back. I reached into the engine compartment and pulled a small, gray kitten from inside. Some of his fur was singed and a small spot on his back was burned, but otherwise, he looked good. The driver took him immediately to a vet and had him checked out. The driver took the kitten home and named him “Sparky.”

That was the only time I checked the engine of a car I had pulled over.

The University that I worked for often held special events which included rock concerts. We had one big concert coming up, a Seattle grunge band that was very popular that I will call Gem Jelly. They were big enough at that time that they were going to fill our outdoor football stadium, which was a rare occurrence. And in a nod of thanks to the University, the promoter allowed the University box office to sell advance tickets to students, faculty, and staff for two days before the tickets were released to the general public. Anyone with a valid University ID could buy two tickets for $40 each, during those two days.

Early on the first day, the box office called the police department to report a couple who appeared to be scalping Gem Jelly tickets outside the box office. The dispatcher thought that this sounded weird as ticket scalping was a very specific crime (selling tickets on the venue property) and there didn’t seem to be a way for them to be scalping tickets that were just going on sale. So the dispatcher sent me. First, I phoned the box office and spoke to the manager who explained that there was a couple outside who were talking to and giving money to students outside the box office. The students would then buy tickets. The manager said, “I know that they aren’t actually scalping tickets, but…they’re doing something!”

Okay, they were doing something. I went out there and it didn’t take me any time at all to figure out who they were talking about. I saw a couple in their thirties, near the box office, who were interacting with students who would then buy tickets and bring the tickets back to the couple. Definitely something I could investigate. I approached them and explained that the box office had called and were concerned about their activity. They were only too happy to explain to me how their scheme worked. They were handing a $100 bill to a student who would go buy two tickets and bring the tickets back to the couple and the student would keep the $20 bill that they received in change. They already had 18 tickets and still had a stack of $100 bills. They were pretty certain that they had found a way to make more money.

I asked several more questions and they seemed to be avoiding anything about their job or kind of work they were engaged in. They said that they were not married to each other, they had different last names, but that they were friends and were just working together. And they were both wearing wedding rings.

I explained that it appeared to me that they might actually be employees of a ticket broker (they smiled but admitted nothing) and that they were involved in the commercial purchase of Gem Jelly tickets on campus as part of their business to obtain discounted tickets to the Gem Jelly concert prior to the opening of the general sale. Again, they smiled at me. “Nothing illegal about that,” the man said.

“Actually,” I told him. “You’re standing on University property, where the California Education Code and the California Administrative Code prohibit any commercial transactions without the express permission of the University. Do you have a University permit to engage in commercial transactions?”

Now, the smiles were gone. I issued them both citations for a misdemeanor violation of the Education Code and confiscated all their tickets and all their money as evidence of the crime. They asked when they would be able to get it all back. I told them after their court date, which was on their citation and was going to be about three weeks after the Gem Jelly concert.

The woman called every day asking if she could pick up the money and tickets and every day we told her that we couldn’t until either her case was adjudicated or the District Attorney’s office declined to file charges. I was told later that she called the District Attorney’s office every day, too.

About two weeks after the Gem Jelly concert had come and gone, I received a note from the assigned Deputy District Attorney saying that the case had been dismissed. There was also a personal note to me that said, “Justice served. I think you made your point.” Followed by a smiley face.

For many, many years, I supervised patrol shifts with no policy on when to call a police manager at home and notify them of something that had happened on campus. (After hours and on weekends, when no managers were on duty). It was left to our discretion and for the most part, notifications got made. Finally, a policy came out that was vague but provided some general direction and it seemed okay. But then an officer reported to me on a Sunday, at 5 PM, that she had lost her department ID and her card access key (which opens the entire campus) a couple of days before. We checked to make sure that the card access key had not been used and that it had been deactivated and we sent out the appropriate notice to other agencies about the lost ID. I figured that could wait fourteen hours, until Monday morning at 7 AM when the managers would come in, as nothing was going to change and there was no threat out there. Nope. I got chewed out for not making an appropriate notification to management.

Okay. Mea Culpa. A week later, officers on my team responded out to a call of two intoxicated males, walking through one of the residence halls, talking to girls in their rooms (because their doors were open) and in the hallways and common areas. The men were gone by the time we arrived, but we collected video from the security cameras, took a report, and determined that no actual crime had been committed. We weren’t even certain that a policy violation had taken place. No crime, no detentions, no follow-up available, seemed like a routine occurrence, especially on the weekends when parties start happening in the off-campus housing. Nope. I got chewed out for not recognizing the serious implications of the incident. I should have called a manager at 1:00 AM to make sure they were aware of drunk students in the dorms.

Finally, several days after that, I was called into the Lieutenant’s office to get chewed out for not making a notification for an incident that was so routine, that I don’t even remember what it was. When I got chewed out, my reaction was…well, flummoxed was the best word that I can come up with. And this time, the Lieutenant said that if I got called in again for not making an appropriate notification, he would have to “write me up.” Meaning that I would get a letter of reprimand. Now, I had never in my career, received a letter of reprimand. Sure, my file had room for it, but if I was going to get a letter of reprimand, I wanted to at least enjoy it. Geez.

So I apologized, and I changed my mindset. I began to think in terms of, “What could my managers think is notification worthy? What might induce further administrative questions or increased liability?”

My officers in foot pursuit of a suspect with a warrant, at an elementary school, more than a mile from campus? Sure. Notification.

Put an angry suspect in the WRAP? (A device used to secure a suspect so that they can’t fight and won’t die of positional asphyxia). Notification. (AND Use of Force form).

A student in the dorms held for a mental health hold after threatening to jump to their death? Notification.

A very public and very loud arrest of a homeless person in the Library for exposing himself? Notification.

And so many more.

Finally, my Lieutenant called me into his office. “Wes, have I said something to you that has made you start calling in all these notifications?” He seemed truly confused and concerned and unsure why I was making all these after hours and weekend phone calls.

“Yes,” I said, honestly shocked at his memory loss. “You said that if I missed another notification, you were going to write me up.”

He was equally shocked and I don’t think he even remembered telling me that. But it caused him to retreat and regroup. He tried to say that none of the things that I had called in required a notification. I responded that neither had the things I had gotten chewed out for. Our conversation stopped there. He clearly had no idea how to move forward from there.

About a week later, a newer notification policy came out that specified when to call managers after hours, and none of the things that I had been chewed out for would have qualified. I felt vindicated, and even though I hadn’t been trying to be an asshole, I knew that I had been an asshole. I had been waking up the Lieutenant for things that I believed were not notification worthy.

But really, how could I be sure what his bosses thought?

For a police officer, traffic court can be fun.

I got to watch a man come in with a dry erase board, rolled up maps, drawings and a stack of photographs. He waited his turn and when his name was called, he carried all his stuff up to the defendant’s table, ready to argue his case. The judge read from some paperwork and said, “Mr. Jones, the officer in your case has been transferred to another work area and is no longer available to appear in this case. Shall we dismiss this case today?”

I could tell by the look on his face, the man didn’t want to dismiss, he wanted to argue his case and win. The judge asked again, “Do you want me to dismiss this case, Mr. Jones?”

He relented and the case was dismissed.

I was there that day because I had written a young man a citation for failing to obey a no left turn sign. He asked for a court date and I received a notice. I showed up to traffic court and waited my turn, we happened to be third on the docket, so we only had to watch these two cases first.

The second case involved a man who had been cited for the same violation, failing to obey a no left turn sign, by an officer from another police agency. The man argued that he had made a safe turn and that he wouldn’t have made the turn at all if he had known that the police officer was hiding around the corner waiting for him to make an illegal turn. He continued to argue that the officer should be in plain sight in order to issue a citation for that violation.

The judge explained that the violation was for failing to obey the sign, not for failing to notice that a police officer was waiting to give him a ticket. Judge found him guilty. Based on this, I thought that my driver might change his plea to guilty and try for traffic school, but no, he still plead not guilty.

I get to testify first, and so I went down my list; on this date at this time, in the city of blah, blah, blah, a sign so posted, saying no left turn, blah, blah, the driver turned left, I stopped him, blah, blah, I wrote a citation. Done.

The judge turned to the driver and asked him for his testimony.

The driver said, “I’m sorry, Your Honor, I just didn’t see the sign.”

Judge. “Like you didn’t see the big, ‘No Parking, Judges Only’ sign when you parked in my space about an hour ago?”

When the other defendants laugh at you, you’ve lost.

I worked in a large university with a population of between thirty and forty thousand students, faculty, staff, and visitors, which was situated in a downtown neighborhood of a city with a population of around one million people. The city liked to imagine itself as a real city with real city problems and the university still touts itself as a “Metropolitan university.” We were more urban than suburban, but less urban than any real city that you would think of. It was certainly not the kind of nineteen square city blocks that would make you think of as a serious ecological environment. But animals abounded around us.

We will start small. Several times throughout my career, the campus would either discover a previously unknown beehive or would be the resting place for a travelling swarm. On one occasion, a beehive fell from a tree just outside the entrance to the library and hundreds, perhaps thousands (I wasn’t able to count them all) began swarming the area. I was walking nearby, so was the first officer on scene. I asked dispatch to have the library close up shop and asked someone to bring me some caution tape. I was about ten feet from the fallen hive and bees were landing on me, but not in any dangerous way. One passerby asked me if I was going to put up some “Police Line-Do Not Cross” tape. I asked him, “Why? The bees can’t read.” He did not think I was funny. A police car drove up and I approached the driver’s side window to talk to my officer. He refused to roll the window down and popped the truck from inside the car. I went and grabbed the caution tape and secured the area until beekeepers arrived.

Another time, on a midnight shift, we found a door open to one of the older campus restaurants. Two of us searched the entire place to make sure that there were no burglars inside. Throughout the search, I kept hearing a pinging noise, not like water onto metal but perhaps like marbles dropping onto cymbals. Once we knew that no one else was inside with us, I began searching for the noise. I found a carnival-style popcorn machine in a back hallway, a popcorn machine that I had seen thousands of times, out on the campus serving free popcorn to students. But inside, the kettle was not full of popcorn, it was full of cockroaches and every time one of them tried to fly out of the kettle, they struck the lid with a “ping” and dropped back into the kettle. I never ate popcorn on campus again.

There were lots of little stories:

One of the midnight shift officers took a photo of a herd of deer wandering through in the dark.

An owl landed on the hood of my patrol car as I drove slowly through the campus. It stared at me for several minutes before driving off.

Racoons and skunks galore, after dark. On one occasion, two of my newer officers and I had to search a construction site that had an intrusion alarm, but all we found were two juvenile skunks playing in the construction. They were not afraid of us in the least and my two young officers moved with all alacrity to the exit. We left a note for the construction workers.

During broad daylight, I saw a Red-Tailed Hawk rip a rat right off the roof of the Student Union and a Red-Shouldered Hawk pull a squirrel out of the tree. The Red-Shouldered Hawk landed in a parking lot with a squirming rodent in its talons and seemed to look around at the dozens of people who were watching and say, “Yeah, I did that,” before flying away with its lunch.

There were lost dogs all the time. I even had a leash in my gear bag. On one bright and sunny Thursday, I went on a call of two lost dogs wandering into the Social Sciences building. I arrived and saw them, a medium sized beagle mix and a small Chihuahua mix, but every time I approached, they ran away. When it looked like I had them cornered in a courtyard, I got out of my car and opened the back door in preparation of grabbing one of the dogs and throwing it in there. I was worried though, because once I grabbed one dog, I might lose the other one. But once the door opened, both dogs ran to the car and jumped in like, “Thank Goodness you found us. Please take us home.”

And finally, on a warm summer night, I responded to back up another officer on a car stop in Fraternity Row. As I approached the car stop, I saw about twenty or thirty people in the roadway, about half a block away. The officer put out that he was safe and didn’t need any assistance, so I turned to see what the party was about. I parked my car and turned on my flashers and climbed out.

“What’s going on?” I asked. The crowd parted and there, on the roadway, lay a nine foot long boa constrictor, crossing two traffic lanes. “It doesn’t belong to anyone here?” I asked.

“No,” came a chorus of voices. So I reached down and picked up the snake. I used to catch snakes as a kid, so I know to grab right behind the head to avoid getting bit (yes, even constrictors have teeth). There was now a collective gasp and one voice that said, “Nice snatch.” I think he was talking about me grabbing the snake, but I don’t know for certain. When the other officer finished his car stop, he drove to me and I asked him to open the trunk of his car.

“Nope, I’ve seen that movie,” was the response. I had him open the trunk of my car and I took the snake back to the police station. Unfortunately, the snake was unable to pass any of the field sobriety tests and was taken into custody by Animal Control.

I was a young university police officer and working a night shift when I was dispatched to a report of a person trespassing in the basement of the Natural Science building. Now, while the university is not private property, the buildings and grounds are governed by the Board of Trustees and are restricted from access in certain places and at certain times. It was near midnight, and the building had been closed and locked since about 9 PM. The dispatcher gave me a description of the person and let myself in with a key and walked down the stairs to the basement.

At the near end of the hallway, I saw a woman, wearing clothing that matched the description, standing there and sweeping with a broom. Oh, I thought, the grad student that reported this just mistook a custodian as a trespasser. That’s easy to fix. I approached the woman and asked if I could see her university ID really quick so that I could confirm that she belonged in the building.

“No, you cannot.”

Oh. Now I’m confused. “Do you have a university ID?” I asked.

“No, I don’t need one. This is a public place.”

Ahhh. Okay. Something is wrong here. A young man emerged from an office at the end of the hall. I pointed to the woman sweeping and he nodded and gave me a thumbs up, then returned to his haven.

I tried to explain to the woman that the building was closed and that she needed to leave. This is an element to trespassing in California. Most of the time, you must be asked to leave by the property owner or someone acting on behalf of the property owner, like the police, before you can be arrested for trespassing. So, anyway, I explained several times that the building was closed and that she needed to leave.

“I will not leave. I have work to do,” she told me, still sweeping.

“Okay,” I asked. “Do you have any ID on you?”

“No.” Sweep, sweep, sweep.

“Could I get your name and date of birth, please?”

“No.” Sweep, sweep, sweep.

I called for another officer to respond to assist and then made my move.

“Ma’am, you’re under arrest for trespassing.”

“No,” she shouted at me. “You’re under arrest.”

I put a hand on her wrist in order to place her in handcuffs and the fight was on.

Aside: Most people have never been in a knock down, drag out fight with another person, yet they are certain that they could overpower and subdue someone better than the cops in the videos on the news and on the internet. They are mistaken. People fight hard. They believe they are fighting for their lives. And we can’t do things that would injure them unreasonably. If you have ever watched a judo or wrestling match where both opponents are on the ground, unmoving, they are not resting. They are both exerting equally massive force against the other, force that can break bones, that could cause death. That is what a fight is like. For minutes that feel like hours.

So, for a small, mentally ill, homeless woman, she fought hard and I was unable to get control of her as she screamed “Help! Police!” over and over again.

I kept trying to tell her that I was the police, but she kept telling me that I wasn’t and that I was under arrest and that I was going to be in trouble when the real police arrived. Could the issue be that we had not converted to blue uniforms yet and were still in tan, like the highway patrol? I don’t know. Another officer arrived and she flipped out more, screaming for the police to save her.

The sergeant arrived on scene and helped us get her under control and handcuffed. We walked her out of the building, while my backup officer went and got a statement from the grad student I had seen earlier and who had, in fact, called us about the woman. By the way, he had a pass to be in the building.

Once we got her to the car, we realized that we had handcuffed her in a way that we couldn’t get her backpack off of her. We unhandcuffed her and removed the backpack, and then put the handcuffs back on put her in the car.

A couple of weeks later, I was notified that I was expected in court in the next two hours. Our trespasser was refusing to waive her right to a speedy trial and was acting as her own attorney, so her trial was immediately scheduled to prevent a violation of her rights.

I testified, my backup officer testified, my sergeant testified, and the grad student testified. Finally, the trespasser testified. She explained that she was never in Natural Science building. She said that she was nearby and that she saw us bring another woman out of the building, but that for some reason, we unhandcuffed that woman and let her go. Then our trespasser testified that we grabbed her and arrested her instead.

“Why?” she asked. “Would the police do something so ludicrous and awful as to let the guilty person go and then arrest an innocent person in their place?” And I think at that moment, we all realized what had happened. Our trespasser, among her other mental health issues, suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder, or something similar (I’m no psychiatrist, just guessing).

The woman was found guilty, placed on probation with time served, and ordered to stay away from the university. After the trespasser had left, the judge smiled at us and asked us if it was standard policy for the police to allow the guilty person to go free and then arrest a random innocent person in their place.

The other officers laughed. I didn’t. With a straight face, I said, “Ever since the grassy knoll in Dallas, your honor.”

I was on routine patrol at about 10 A.M. when I saw a car stopped in the traffic lane, with its emergency blinkers flashing. I pulled over and saw that there was no one in it, so I ran the license plate, prepared to tow the car out of the traffic lane. The dispatcher immediately told me that the vehicle was stolen. That wasn’t something I expected, but I got out of my car and started filling out my paperwork to recover the stolen vehicle. As the dispatcher gave me the information I needed about the vehicle, he asked me, “Do you want to know who stole the car?”

Well, that’s new. I told him that I did.

“The report says that the suspect is Bob Sanders, white, male, adult, six foot two inches, 180 pounds, wearing a blue cotton, button-up, long sleeve shirt and tan slacks.”

I acknowledged the report and looked up and saw a white, male, adult, about six foot two, 180 pounds, wearing a blue cotton, button-up, long sleeve shirt and tan slacks. He saw me and hesitated, then started to turn down a side-street.

I called out, “Mr. Sanders, can you talk to me for a moment?”

Sanders’ whole body sagged as he stopped and turned to walk over to me.

I placed him under arrest for vehicle theft.

Now, my county engaged in a sort of competition during the holidays in which all the law enforcement agencies would try to arrest the most DUI drivers. This was highly publicized in an effort to reduce DUI incidents altogether. This incident occurred during that time frame. When I returned to the police station with him and read him his Miranda Rights, he agreed to talk to me. He explained that the vehicle was his employer’s and he had been sent out to pick up some materials. Instead, he found himself in a bar with some of his friends and they drank and did drugs into the wee hours of the morning. I asked when he had stopped drinking and doing drugs and he said “About two hours ago.” I asked him to perform field sobriety exercises and he failed miserably. I added the charge of DUI, based solely on his statement, well because it was that time of year.

Months later, in court for his preliminary hearing, I was on the stand to testify. His attorney, who appeared fairly young approached and asked me (in a condescending tone), “Sgt. Blalock, as a University police officer, how many DUI arrests have you actually made in your career?”

I’m certain that she was expecting me to answer, “Well, I’ve seen the CHP do it a couple of times, but I haven’t really had to do it myself.”

But instead, my answer was, “About 300.”

This flustered her and her eyes got big; her whole defense of the incompetent investigator had vanished. She shuffled through her reports and her notes and she regrouped and asked, “Sgt. Blalock, my client was on S. 4th Street when you stopped him. Do you usually patrol this far off the university campus?”

The prosecuting attorney actually started laughing out loud, as University police in California are State Law Enforcement officers and have a one mile radius jurisdiction from campus properties. And S. 4^th Street bordered the campus. The defense attorney withdrew her question.

I learned later that he simply pled guilty to all the charges, including the DUI, even though I never even saw him in the vehicle, much less driving. He definitely deserved a better attorney.

I was assigned to attend a training at a hotel about a three hour drive from the campus, and I was happy to hear that the new sergeant would be attending with me. The new guy had come from another department and probably had more experience than I did but had encountered some roadblocks in his career, so he joined the university police. He had worked some of our special events and I got along with him well; he was a good guy and I was perfectly okay spending six hours in a car with him. We will call him Tom. To attend this training, we were going to drive down to the hotel during a work shift, in an unmarked police car. I wore my jeans and a t-shirt and sweatshirt with a cartoon character on the front; tucked my gun in the back of my waistband and my badge to my belt. Tom showed up in a short-sleeve polo and jeans; badge and gun in a fanny pack (back when they were popular). We were good to go.

I drove as we headed out of the station into rush hour traffic. It took us ten minutes to get one mile to the South Campus but we were joking around, having a good time, fat, dumb, and happy. We were stuck in traffic, inching forward, waiting for a couple of lights to change and then we would be clear and on our way. Tom, laughing at something I had said, turned and looked out the window. That’s when I heard the voice.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” It was a guy in the work truck in the next lane over, literally screaming out the window.

Tom turned to look at me with a confused look on his face, then slowly looked back at the guy in the work truck. “What?”

“What the fuck are you looking at?” Screaming so loud, he’s almost unintelligible.

Tom repeated his oddly confused look at me and then turned slowly back to the guy, and to my surprise, shouted, “I’m looking at you, asshole!”

With the guy in the work truck now in a shouting match and literally trying to climb out the window to fight with Tom, I reached up to grab the forward red light that folded into the ceiling of the car and pushed it down into the window. Tom watched me and seemed surprised, like he had just remembered that we were on-duty cops, even though we were just on our way to training.

Tom grabbed the radio and called in our car stop while I maneuvered behind the work truck and turned on the solid red light. The truck pulled over and the driver jumped out. We did too, guns in our hands. I ordered the guy to sit on the curb with his hands on his knees.

“I’m sorry, guys. If I’d known you were cops, I wouldn’t have bothered you guys.”

I looked at Tom and back to our guy on the curb. “And it would be perfectly okay for you to start a fight with some random motorist?”

Our motorist, Bob, was high on methamphetamine and driving on a suspended driver license. Two patrol officers from the university arrived and took Bob to jail for DUI and suspended license and towed away his truck. Tom and I wrote our supplements and then got back in the car and continued on our way to the hotel.

Nine months later, I was reading the local newspaper and saw Bob’s name. It turns out that Bob had a road rage problem with some gang members. They chased him all the way home and stabbed him to death on his front lawn.

Some lessons are harder learned than others.

Two of our officers had to go to court for the same court case, but one was on duty and the other came in from off-duty. When the off-duty officer came in and changed into uniform, she learned that the on-duty officer was already on the way to the court house, so she checked out a marked police car and drove to the court house. There is notoriously very little good parking near this particular court house, so the off-duty officer parked in a parking lot across the street from the court house, as she saw several open parking spaces. When she exited her vehicle, the lot attendant tried to explain to her that this was a private parking lot and that the parking spaces were leased to specific individuals. She dismissed him because she was a police officer in a marked police car and she could park anywhere she needed to. Right?

When the two officers finished with court and came out of the court house, the on-duty officer went to his car which was parked on the street and the off-duty officer went…to a parking space that now held an expensive Mercedes. No sign of her marked police car. She began shouting at the lot attendant, demanding to know what happened to her patrol car. The on-duty officer, seeing this, and realizing that she was parked in a private parking lot with all kinds of signs that said vehicles parked in violation would be towed, slowly walked over to her and offered her a ride back to the station so that she could get this all figured out, but she told him that she was going to wait for the lot attendant to produce her patrol car. The on-duty officer slunk off in embarrassment and immediately returned to the station to let the Captain know what was going on.

Apparently, the lessee had come to park his car in his space and found a police car parked there and demanded that the lot attendant have the police car towed away. The lot attendant did what he was supposed to and the officer’s car was in a local tow yard, awaiting payment of towing and release fees. Another on-duty officer picked up the off-duty officer and they went to the tow yard and recovered the police car. The police department was billed and I assume, the bill was paid will all due alacrity from the state, which meant in about eighteen months. And even though the Captain was irate that a tow company that was actually on our list of rotation tow companies would still bill us for the tow, the company was never removed from our rotation tow list.