Cop Stories & More

Working a regular patrol shift on a particularly, hot, bad day (rough calls for service, angry people, no-win situations, difficult co-workers), I was frustrated and distracted. I was thirsty and headed back to the police station to write my reports and wait for the next stupid call that would test my patience and push my buttons. When I saw the 7 Eleven, I decided that I would grab a guava soda.

Many of you may not remember, but in the 1990s, there was a brand of sugared, flavored, carbonated, mineral water sold under the brand name, Koala Springs, and the guava flavored variety was my favorite. I grabbed a 24 oz. bottle, just about every work day from the 7-Eleven, for only about $6. Yeah, I know, that is an expensive way to purchase diabetes, but don’t worry, I used cheaper options, as well. Anyway, like Lifesavers soda, and Jolt Cola, Koala Springs fell out of favor (following a Benzene scare and complete recall of thousands of bottles of soda) and eventually disappeared. But back in the early 90s, I was still buying my highly flammable sodas by the quart.

So anyway, back to my bad day. Now, I don’t know if I was trying to put together the details of my report or if I was thinking of inventive ways to tell off my annoying co-worker or if I was simply shutting my brain down. I don’t remember what I was thinking. I walked into the 7-Eleven, strode to the cooler, grabbed my Koala drink, and walked toward the front of the store. I walked past several people waiting at the register and exited, unlocking my patrol car and getting in. I sat there for a moment, thinking, “did I forget something?” and slowly realized that I had not paid for my drink.

I climbed back out of the car and meandered into the 7 Eleven. Everyone watched me as I walked to the back of the line and waited with my drink in one hand and my debit card in the other.

“Sorry, I don’t know what just happened there. I think I thought I was at home.”

Everyone laughed. Thank goodness.

One of my officers had stopped a car and after a few minutes called for a supervisor. I responded out and saw the officer standing beside his car, behind the Lincoln Town Car he had pulled over. It was about 1 AM, and dark, with street lights in a downtown neighborhood with a high crime rate.

“DUI?” I asked.

“No. There are two guys in the car and neither one of them has any ID on them. The driver keeps telling me he’s a famous football player, Blah Blah.” (I’m not going to include his name because I don’t want to get sued).

I shrugged my shoulders because I had never heard of him, but then again, I’m not really a football person and this guy had played in the late 70s, early 80s. The original officer was not a big football fan either, so we were a little stumped as the guy had a somewhat common name and we were not finding a match in the database for a drivers license.

I approached the driver and asked him his name. He looked at me in shock and said, “I’m Blah Blah,” in a manner that suggested, of course he is. He then handed me his Superbowl Ring. I can now say that I’ve held a real Superbowl Ring. He kept telling me, “I’m Blah Blah,” like repeating it was going to make me realize who he was. Finally, I handed the ring back and walked back to the other officer.

I asked the officer what the stop was for and he explained that the Town Car had been driving around the small neighborhood several times, driving into a couple of different parking lots and driving back out, and finally did so without turning on their headlights. The officer believed that the two men were looking for either drugs or prostitutes or both, but just weren’t familiar enough with the neighborhood to know where to look.

But since the officer didn’t have anything else to go on and a couple of tries on the date of birth finally brought up a driver license, the officer let them go with a warning.

The next morning, I called my brother-in-law who happened to be a die hard fan of the team that Blah Blah had said he played for. I asked my brother-in-law if he knew who Blah Blah was and said that we had stopped him earlier that morning. My brother-in-law was very excited and said that of course he new who Blah Blah was and gave me a run down of his career.

Finally, he asked, “What did you guys stop him for?”

I responded, “We thought he might be looking to buy drugs or prostitutes.”

My brother-in-law didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, yep. That would be him.”

It seemed like a regular call from the library security guards that someone had attempted to steal some library materials and was detained at the entrance. I arrived with another officer (Ofc. Paulson) and we spoke to the young man who tried to leave the library with materials that weren’t allowed to be checked out. He was a regular, someone who caused trouble periodically. He imagined himself some kind of tough guy with his gang tattoos and “you can’t do nothin’ to me” attitude, but we had never seen him with any other gang members and he seemed semi-homeless. A tattoo on his neck declared his particular ethnic pride in a culture half a world away, and not an ethnicity I normally saw in the Hispanic gangs in my work area. But his ethnicity in the tattoo was misspelled. I don’t know if he gave bad instructions due to his own lack of schooling or if some jailhouse artist was messing with him, but either way, it left a prominent and embarrassing mark on his public persona.

I asked the security guard what we were going to do with the young man, whom we will call “Toby.” The security guard wanted him cited, as they had contacted him too many times recently and felt Toby needed consequences. So I began to write out a citation for theft, which incensed Toby. He stood up and started shouting at the security guard until the police officer with me sat him back down. Grumbling and periodically throwing evil glances up at the security guard, Toby then took out his cell phone, dialed and waited.

“Yeah, there’s this big, fat, Mexican security guard at the library. He’s about six feet tall with a stupid Mexican mustache and he’s getting me arrested. I want him taken out.”

“Give me that,” Ofc. Paulson said, taking the phone from Toby’s hand.

“Wow. Did you just phone in a death threat in front of two police officers?” I asked him.

Now Toby decided that he had gone too far and told us that he was just kidding. I asked him who he had called and what their phone number was so I could confirm that. Or even if I could just look through his phone to get the last number he called. Toby said that he couldn’t do that because he wasn’t a snitch.

Paulson, the security guard and I conferred and we decided that instead of arresting Toby for felony threats, we would take a report and follow-up with a search of the cell phone so that we could call the last number and see what happened from there. No one there really believed that Toby had the authority to order a hit on anyone. But better safe than sorry.

I issued Toby his citation and told him to leave the library. He asked for his cell phone back. I told him that we were going to hold the phone for evidence, so that we could get a search warrant and find out who he had called. Toby flipped out and began screaming for his cell phone back. I told Toby that he wasn’t getting the phone back until we were done with the investigation and that since he was now causing a full blown disturbance in the lobby of the library, immediately after threatening to kill an employee, we were issuing him a notice to leave campus for two weeks (626.4(a) PC for anyone who wants to look that up).

Paulson and I escorted him off campus and watched him walk out to the middle of the street…where he stopped and screamed at us that he wanted his phone back. When it finally looked like Toby was leaving, we walked back up to the entrance of the library. But when we turned around, we saw that Toby was running back toward us, back on campus property and now in violation of the 626 Notice. Paulson and I grabbed him and we all fell to the ground where we put handcuffs on him and Toby began to cry, with full blown tears and snot.

He cried all the way to the jail. Don’t do the crime if you can’t…just can’t.

I was walking in a parking garage on the campus during the holidays, when the campus was closed. The garage had gates on the doors, but the vehicle entrance was open so that the police cars and maintenance vehicles could go in and out. I was on the second floor and had seen one of my officers on the first floor, writing a report in his car. I saw a man also walking on the floor ahead of me, technically trespassing, as the lights were out, the pedestrian gates locked, and signs at the vehicle entrance said, closed. I contacted the man who said that he had no ID. I asked him if he had any weapons and he said he did not. I asked if he could raise his hands and turn around so that I could see if he had any weapons at his waistband. He did not, but he did have a wallet in his back pocket. I asked him if he could check the wallet for ID.

And he took off. I chased him out the entrance of the garage, right past the officer in the car who looked up as we went by. I still remember the look on the officer’s face as he watched me run past. The suspect was bigger than me, and older, but he was still outdistancing me. Panic is a big motivator. I shouted at him that if he didn’t stop, he was going to get hurt (empty threat because I had no intention of beating him for trespassing and I wasn’t even sure I was going to catch him). He shouted that he didn’t care. So much for that lie. He cut into an alley behind an apartment complex that I knew was a dead end.

As I caught up to him, I ordered him to get on the ground and put his hands behind his back. He calmly turned to me, raised his fists, and said, “I can’t do that.”

I pepper-sprayed him right in the face. He shook his head and, again, calmly said, “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Just as I was thinking it was time for me to retreat and reassess my tools, the other officer pulled up in his car, lights and siren blaring; he hopped out and racked a round into the pump shotgun. And we made an arrest.

Five or so years later, I was working as a public information officer and the local newspaper called me. They wanted a statement from me since that same suspect had just been arrested again, by the FBI. It seems that a few years prior to my interacting with him, he had killed several women in the Kansas City area and that the FBI had just linked him to the killings with DNA. I had arrested a serial killer and didn’t even know it.

Does that qualify for retroactive PTSD?

Long ago, in a land just downtown, I worked for a university during the time when maniacs seemed to be mailing anthrax to people in a way that suggested postage needed to increase significantly. An office on the university reported that they had just opened an envelope that contained a white power substance inside. I think the dispatcher specifically told them “don’t move” until the officers arrive. Once we got there, I had an officer go into the office that called us, wearing all the appropriate protective gear; it was a white, Tyvek (a DuPont chemical material-a cross between plastic and paper-feel free to buy one on Amazon) jumpsuit, that we called a “bunny suit.” Not completely sure why, since it didn’t have either long ears or fluffy tail, but what do I know. I waited outside and kept the office quarantined (for lack of a better word). The officer came out and told me that the office staff had actually opened the letter on the first floor, discovered the white powder inside and then brought the envelope up to the second floor for a second opinion. This suddenly made the entire building “infected” and I was now inside the quarantine.

Well, that changes things. I sighed and arranged to have officers seal off the whole building. I was now part of the problem instead of the solution and I called to have a supervisor take over for me as Incident Commander, because I couldn’t continue to manage the response from the inside the containment area. But before another supervisor could arrive and relieve me as Commander, I was approached by the University Provost, the second in command for the entire university, whose office was in this now closed and sealed building.

He expressed that the building needed to be evacuated, because there were too many people at risk and we had to get them out before they were infected. He was clearly distressed himself. I explained that the County Protocol was to seal the building to prevent any spread of disease and allow us to identify potentially infected people. The Provost, whose position on the Org Chart was far above the Chief of Police, and has significant power in the university to hire and fire people, told me that he disagreed with the protocol and that he was going to evacuate the building. As my adrenaline began to rise, I told the Provost that would not be happening.

The Provost stared me down and said, “We’ll see about that. I’m going to talk to the Chief.” And he started to walk toward the door.

I told him, “Sir, I cannot let you leave this building.”

This man was about my age, and he was much larger than me, a former college football player; if I was going to have to physically prevent him from leaving the building (all by myself, as all my other officers were outside, except for one officer upstairs actually investigating this case) I was going to have to use a significant amount of force. In my head, I saw my career shrivel up and die.  

He turned and looked down at me and asked, “What?”

I said, “Sir, I can’t let you leave this building.”

He puffed himself up like a Sage-Grouse and glared at me. “And what are you going to do about it?”

I took a single step toward him, with my hands on my belt and said, “Sir, I cannot let you leave this building.”

We stared at each other waiting to see who was going to blink. With each breath I took, I became more resigned to losing my job. Costco was always hiring. Finally, appearing completely flummoxed, he thought better of his position and went to his office. I did not hear from him again for the entirety of the investigation.

When it was all done, I returned to the station and was called to the office of the Chief of Police. Well, I’ve been here before, I thought. Letter of reprimand, maybe a day or two on the beach. I can handle that. The Chief asked me in and asked for my version of events. I explained what had happened, then sat quietly to await my fate. The Chief had received a call from the Provost complaining about the process and demanding that the building be evacuated and that something be done about the insubordinate sergeant. I was told the conversation went like this:

Chief: Who’s the sergeant?

Provost: Blalock.

Chief: Better do what he says, he knows what he’s doing.

It was hot and humid, and the nighttime crept into every crevice, like the swarm of cockroaches in my own cheap downtown apartment, where lately I’d taken to expressing my displeasure with their presence by use of a number three wood…Sorry, got carried away. Actually, it was a warm night and I was on patrol with a trainee in the driver seat. Driving through campus, well after last call, we began hearing laughter and voices in the dark, winding along the walkways, until we saw a crowd of young, drunk people in mobile party mode. The trainee crept up on them (in a full size, Crown Vic, engine growling, headlights illuminating them all) until we could see that each and every one of them was carrying a sign, or barricade, or traffic cone, or in other words, something stolen.

I got on the public address system and ordered them all to, “STOP.”

And like a nest of Sage Grouse, they took off in all directions. Until the trainee hit the lights and siren. That was the signal that made them all sober up and realize that they were in small trouble, but that it could become big trouble, very quickly. They all stood stock still at this point, as if they realized that I had not said, “Simon Says Run.”

There were nine of them, altogether, and the trainee informed them that they were each under arrest for petty theft. We collected their IDs, except for one young woman who had run for a little bit longer than the rest. She happened to be a little person, and didn’t have the speed to outrun us, especially holding a sandwich board sign that said, “Caution. Wet Floor.” Since we couldn’t fit all nine of them into the car, we walked them back to the police station. Well, the trainee walked them back. I followed along in the car.

But it wasn’t until we reached the station that we developed a problem. We were able to identify and issue citations to all nine of the young people, except one, the young woman with the “Wet Floor” sign. She had given us a name and date of birth, but the date of birth was off by a few days, and she didn’t seem that drunk. And her height was off by a few inches (she stood about three feet, one inches tall, but the driving record we found said three feet, four inches). As we released the other young people with their citations, one of the young men told us that the misidentified women was giving us her sister’s name. Another of the young men asked why he would tell us that. The first young man said that he knew, and liked, the other sister and didn’t want her to get arrested for some warrant because this sister lied. Which shut down the complaints about snitches.

With everyone released except for (we will call her Kim, even though she kept giving the name Kathy), who now sat in a holding cell, grumbling. I asked the trainee what he wanted to do. He had to think about it for a few minutes and then do some research before he came back with his answer. Simply giving a fake name to the police is a misdemeanor, but giving out a real name that could get someone else in trouble, is a felony, and because he was in training, he felt he had to make the felony arrest. The trainee gave Kim one last chance to tell the truth and when she refused, even after he asked if Kim wasn’t her real name, he placed her in handcuffs and told her she was going to jail.

This made Kim very angry. Perhaps she was a perfectly nice human being when sober, but as so many of us know, some people are just hostile when they drink. And this is where she tried to bite the trainee, and then kick the trainee. Using extreme caution, we were able to escort her back out to the patrol car and into the back seat. Kim wiggled her way out of the seat belt, rolled onto her back and began kicking at the windows of the police car. Fortunately, this car happened to have bars on the windows, so I wasn’t concerned. The trainee nearly panicked, pulling the car over to see what should be done next. I told him not to go back and try to fix it because all we needed was to lose a three foot tall prisoner because we were afraid to hurt her, wrestling her back into the seatbelt. I am not an expert in the variety of genetics that result in these conditions, but I know enough that I understand that little people’s bodies do not necessarily bend and move in the same manner as mine, and I didn’t want to experiment with Kim’s flexibility on this night.

I told the trainee to have dispatch call the jail and let them know that we had a combative prisoner who was kicking the windows and was likely going to fight when we arrived at Lower Booking. This usually resulted in several corrections officers meeting us in the sallyport, where we parked the police cars, and taking the prisoner into the jail for us, thus reducing the chance that the overpowered prisoner can get hurt or hurt us. We pulled into the sallyport at jail, and saw the gates at the entrance and exit close, trapping us inside.

While we waited for the corrections officers to arrive, I tried one more time to reason with Kim. I explained that it was likely that the corrections officers were going to carry her in, if she didn’t cooperate. She agreed to go in under her own power, and the trainee and I cautiously removed her from the back seat and walked her into the entrance of Lower Booking. As we walked in, a crew of about six corrections officers double-timed their way past us, out into the sallyport, ready to take control of our combative prisoner. A little embarrassed, because I should have caught them on the way out, I told the desk officer that we were the officers with the combative prisoner.

Seconds later, the officers returned, and saw my prisoner, all three feet and one inch of her, and they began to laugh. They thought that I had played a practical joke on them. They told me how funny they thought I was and that they appreciated the funny break in their shift. Then I told them my prisoner was theirs. I let go of her shoulder as one of the corrections officers took the other shoulder and said, “We got her.”

There was then a flurry of blue jumpsuits surrounding what looked a little like the Tasmanian Devil from Warner Brothers cartoons whirling about. Now, there was still laughing, the kind of surprised laughing that comes with the phrase, “Wow, that nail went all the way through my foot,” or “Who knew a dachshund could do that kind of damage.” Instead, amid the laughter was shouts of:

“Ow, she bit me.”

“Look out, she’s kicking.”

“Jesus, doesn’t anyone have her?”

“Somebody call a supervisor.”

“Waist chains won’t fit.”

“Ow, she bit me.” (Again).

“I’m not laughing anymore.”

And then we dropped off our paperwork, and we were gone, scurrying away like squirrels in a large dog’s yard. Done.

The following week, I returned to the jail to book another prisoner. As I went inside, the desk officer pointed at me and then pointed down. On the wall in front of him, I saw a piece of masking tape about four feet off the ground.

Written on the tape, in black Sharpie was, “You must be this tall to be booked into this facility.”

It is a nice idea, but it is not a consistently achievable goal. First, let’s remember that according to the Brookings Institute, one of the academic think tanks that dwells on these topics, “‘Defund the police’ means reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality.” The goal is that those programs can be more effective and reduce the need for law enforcement further down the road, thus reducing crime and improving the community’s quality of life. It does not mean “eliminate the police” or “abolish law enforcement” or “punish the police by taking their budget.” People who espouse “Defund the Police” in order to accomplish any of these alternative definitions are, well, I’ll use the term “uninformed.”

Second, you have to look at the reasons the theory began. Primarily, police are trained to investigate crime and apprehend criminals; most of their training is focused on this task. Police are generally the only public employees in a jurisdiction who are on duty and able to respond to all the miscellaneous calls for service, so our elected officials, to save money, have delegated all those calls for service to the police. As a police officer, I responded to a whole slew of non-law enforcement responsibilities, not the least of which was mental health crises, homelessness, civil disputes, and even university policy violations. These were all things that the powers to be decided must be handled by a law enforcement agency, for no other reason than there was no one else to take care of these issues. I have heard the phrase “is this really something that the police should respond to?” uttered by every officer I worked with at one time or another.

How expensive would it be to create whole new agencies whose responsibility is to respond to all these non-law enforcement calls for service  24/7? Very. We’ll have the police do it. They are already on patrol and they know how to take criminals into custody, how different is it for them to take mentally ill persons into custody, or arrest the homeless, or interpret civil law and policy?

This is the same decision-making process that goes into many of our quality of life issues that we ask police to handle: Drug/Alcohol addiction, Landlord/Tenant disputes, and many other non-criminal problems that we send police on. Elected officials look at the issue and think, well, it’s too expensive to add a whole new 24/7 agency and staff, so we will just have the police do it. And when it is something that the elected officials decide police must respond to, they add a training component, which can be anywhere from two hours of initial training to eight hours of bi-annual training (four hours of training a year-is there anything that you train four hours for and still remember how to do?).

So the idea that other agencies could be funded to handle these other, non-criminal duties, is optimistic and, in my opinion, forward thinking; their head is in the right place.

Third, we have to realize that defunding is more expensive than we are told. The theory says that we can just use the money taken from the law enforcement agency to spend on social services, but that won’t cut it. Most police agencies in the United States are small, under 25 sworn officers or deputies. These agencies are already underfunded and while they would love to have their workloads reduced from responding to non-law enforcement related calls, their local jurisdictions could not afford to cut three or four positions to fund no more than two or three social workers to handle all those other calls for service. Defunding might work in some of the largest jurisdictions, New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego (and especially San Francisco where the police don’t seem to respond to these issues already), but even moderately sized agencies can only cut so much and will have no real impact on the local social services agencies which are generally county run.

Fourth, cities and counties have to really commit to these new or augmented social services agencies up front. Having worked in government for 30 years and having seen that if an organization says, we will start this agency to respond to mental health incidents with two people and we will gradually increase it as we cut the police department budget, they are lying. They may not know they are lying, but they are. If you want to augment your social services agency to respond to mental health crises, 24/7, you have to pick a date and say, “It will hit the ground running on this date, fully staffed and fully equipped to meet its mission.” And then you can cut the police budget, but not before. If they don’t, you won’t ever have your social service agency. And how expensive would it be to implement properly? VERY. Elected officials and bureaucrats will get lax and it will fall back into the laps of the police when the social workers don’t have the staff or equipment to do their jobs. And we will be back at square one.

Finally, one of the most exciting things about living in a country with localized law enforcement is being able to watch other communities experiment without any risk to yourself (my apologies to the residents of Minneapolis and Berkeley). I was very interested in watching how Minneapolis would abolish their police department and replace it with something “different.” Unfortunately (for us), we have all seen the city council back off their pledge to abolish the police and say that they were simply making a symbolic gesture, and since Berkeley’s big announcement that they were going to create a Department of Transportation to enforce traffic laws, I haven’t heard a thing.

While I support the theory of defunding the police, it is my sincerest belief that elected officials will never have the backbone to implement it properly and that communities will never fund it voluntarily. But police departments should support their communities’ efforts to find new ways to perform policing and experimental methods of handling the traditional law enforcement role, including simply not responding to certain kinds of calls because there is no effective way for law enforcement to respond it is the only way that we will find effective and useful alternatives.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-09/suicide-calls-california-cops-stopped-responding

Sorry, though, police departments that are not in my community should do that first. We will be happy to act on what works in your neighborhood after you show us its effectiveness.

Secret Police

I used to live in an area that bordered three jurisdictions. The Sheriff’s Office and two city police departments patrolled the neighborhoods around my home. I have been involved in training police officers since my fifth year at my agency and I know that the simple act of running from the police is not cause for detention and often young officers had to be reminded of this fact, so as you read my story, please understand that my intent in the following actions is “helping.” At 4 A.M. when I was jogging in my neighborhood, if I saw a police car, from any agency, I would turn and start sprinting in the opposite direction, just to see if I could get an officer to “alert” and give chase, like a racing greyhound.

Usually, they would pause for a moment, assess the situation, and watch me run away. Once, however, one of the police cars sped up, pulled alongside me and hit me with the spotlight, while in motion.

“Sergeant Blalock!” a voice called out. “Isn’t this above your speed limit?”

It was one of my former students. I stopped and, huffing and puffing with my hands on my knees, explained that I was trying to keep my exercise regimen secret.

Rainy Day Sunday

For some reason, it was a very busy, rainy day. I only had two officers, other than myself, on duty and we seemed to be running from priority call to priority call. No time for chit-chat, no time for report writing. One of my officers was on a call at a nearby 7–11 and was just finishing up with the reporting party when we got a priority call at the library. I was with the only other officer on a dispute call in one of the residence halls that involved several people, but the officer seemed to have everything under control. The officer at the 7–11, got in his car and took off to the library, but his car fish-tailed on the wet asphalt and he struck a parked car. Unfortunately, the priority call took precedence, so he notified dispatch what he’d just done and continued to his call.

The owner of the car happened to be walking toward his car when he saw a police car spin around and slam into his car…and then drive away. I walked to the scene from the residence hall and found the owner of the car, near tears, talking to his father on the phone, trying to explain that a police car really did hit his car and drive away. No, really. At first, he didn’t comprehend that I already knew what had happened and he began to try to convince me that one of my officers had just hit his car. I told him that I knew, and that I was there to complete the collision report.

As I started to get information from him for the report, he asked, “Are you going to find the officer at fault?”

I looked at his parked car, pushed up against the curb. “I don’t know how I could possibly find a parked car at fault.”

Funny, Ha Ha

I stopped a car for speeding. I approached the driver and saw that she was very anxious. She said that she was sorry, that she knew she was speeding, and explained that she was running late for work. Out of curiosity, I asked where she worked. She told me at The Improv. Assuming that she was a server, and thinking that I was very funny, I asked, “What, are you a comedian?”

She said that she was, in fact, the opening act. Oh, she is a comedian. I stared at her for a moment and then, in my sternest voice, said, “Say something funny.”

Her mouth dropped open as she searched for words.

I smiled and said, “Please slow down, we have a lot of pedestrians here. And please be kind when you make fun of me during your set tonight.”

She laughed and went on her way. I wish I remembered her name, so that I could have kept track of her comedy career.

I find that police officers don’t know how to admit when they are wrong. Part of it is because we are taught not to; take a position and stand your ground. In the words of Cmdr. Peter Quincy Taggart, “Never give up, never surrender.” But we all know that is one of the things that least endears us to the members of our community. And we all know that we have been wrong.

Besides the incidents of pulling people over for expired registration, just to realize that the sticker on their car is not six years old, but is actually next year’s color, or thinking we were on a 25 MPH street and then looking up at the sign and realizing that we had crossed into a 35 MPH zone, or even when what I thought was headphones was actually a hearing aid, there was one time that I was truly and embarrassingly wrong.

I saw a student driving around with a car with dealer plates. No big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I began to notice it every day. This seemed odd to me that he would constantly have dealer plates on his car, so I researched the code that governed dealer plates. It seems that only the owner of the dealership or employees of the dealership could drive around with dealer plates on their cars. I decided to investigate this heinous crime of dealer plate fraud.

The student’s father owned the dealership to which the plates had been issued, so it appeared that he was skirting the law by allowing his son to drive around with dealer plates so that he didn’t have to pay registration fees. Unless he was paying his son as an employee. The next time I saw the student, I pulled him over and spoke to him. I asked him if he was an employee of the dealership. He said that he was not. I asked him about the purpose of the dealer plates. He became very scared and said that he could not talk to me without talking with his father first.

At this time, because he refused to talk to me any further, which in my mind was an indicator of guilt, I wrote him a criminal citation. But what I mistook as an indicator of guilt was actually just fear that he was somehow getting his father in trouble, because he didn’t know the answers to my questions. And then he refused to sign the citation. Unfortunately, if someone doesn’t sign a citation, we take them into custody and book them into jail. As I put handcuffs on him, his eyes were literally bugging out of his head.

I took him to the police station to process him when he agreed to sign the citation. That’s better, now I don’t have to take him to jail. I cited him and off he went, leaving behind his dealer plates in my custody as evidence.

About two hours later, I was called into my Lieutenant’s office. The Lieutenant told me that he had just gotten off the phone with the kid’s father, the owner of the dealership, and the father was very, very, very, very angry. I thought, well, then don’t commit fraud. But it seems that the father had actually gotten in trouble once before for this very same thing, so he…

Did everyone catch the question that I did not ask the young man?

…made his wife and children all partners in the dealership. They were all owners. It was completely legal for the young man to drive around with the dealer plates, he just didn’t know why, so he couldn’t tell me. I had actually falsely arrested someone when no crime had been committed. I was wrong.

While the department attorneys discussed an appropriate settlement amount, I wrote a two page apology letter to the young man and another one page apology letter to father. For the son, I specifically ended it with the fact that I hoped that the clearly negative impression that I left on him would not reflect on the other many fine police officers that had not made the same mistake I had and that he wouldn’t be afraid to seek help from the police in the future.

The following week, the Lieutenant called me in, again. I was expecting a Letter of Reprimand, minimum, and possibly a suspension. The Lieutenant told me that both the father and son had stopped by and had accepted my apology, that they understood my explanation of events and that no further action was necessary. Bullet dodged.

But I never made a mistake like that again.

I have decided to write about the time that I, personally, called the police…on accident. Several years ago, I was living in a four-bedroom townhouse in a moderately-sized, suburban city that we will call “Souptown.” I was living with my wife and four young children, so it was a relatively full house, but we always had room for more. On this particular occasion, we were hosting my wife’s cousin, Rosa, and her two small children. Rosa had recently made the emotional and traumatic decision to leave her husband and my wife had generously offered her shelter in our domicile.  

Now there are a lot of moving parts in this story, so I’ll try to keep things straight. To start, I decided to call my father in North Carolina and chat with him and the area code for his part of North Carolina is 919. That’s important and this is a story involving a landline, so if you don’t remember how landlines work, you’ll have difficulty with this story. Anywho, I called my dad, but the call didn’t go through because one of the buttons was sticking. I tried again, but the same thing happened, no completed call. Finally, third time’s a charm, but a few minutes into my conversation, the Call Waiting signal beeped, letting me know that I had someone on the other line. I asked my dad to excuse me and switched calls.

Very polite, professional voice. “Sir, this is the Souptown Police Department, did you call 9-1-1?”

Me. “Um, no. I didn’t…(and then something occurred to me. The button on the phone that was sticking, was the 1 button…oh no)…oh, wait. I bet I called 9-1-1 and hung up twice, didn’t I?”

Very polite, professional voice. “Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, you did call 9-1-1 twice and hang up. Is everything okay there in the house?”

We had a very constructive conversation about my phone’s failure and that nothing was going on in the house. I was asked by the dispatcher if she could speak to anyone else, but my wife was in the shower and Rosa, who is naturally kind of volatile, was busy changing her baby’s diaper, upstairs. My younger son, Bronson, who was seven at the time, spoke to the dispatcher for a moment or two. And then we were done. I switched back to my dad and told him I would call him back later, because, even though the dispatcher didn’t say to expect a visit, I knew better.

I was already walking toward the front door when I heard the hard, staccato knock. I opened the door immediately to two of Souptown’s finest (I had worked for Souptown Police Department as a records clerk while I was in college and had attended training with several of their officers over the years). There was a young, officer, who was all pressed and shiny, accompanied by an older officer with a more rumpled, experienced look. And that means that the young officer was on field training.

The trainer cocked his head slightly and said, “Hi, Sgt. Blalock.”

The trainee looked confused, so the trainer explained, “Sgt. Blalock works for the University police.”

And now the trainee looked even more confused, especially as I smiled and waved. “Hi.”

And then the three of us stared at each other for a moment. The trainer looked at the trainee and asked, “What are you supposed to be doing?”

The trainee collected himself and explained about the 9-1-1 hangups and asked all the same questions the dispatcher had. I answered the questions exactly the same and then waited.

For a moment, we all stared at each other, until the trainer asked, “What are we doing here?”

The trainee started to ask the trainer a question, but the trainer looked at him and asked, “What would you do if he weren’t a cop?”

“Oh.” The trainee looked at me and gulped. “May I come in and look around? Make sure everyone is safe?”

“No problem.” I stepped aside to allow the officers in, but the trainer waited on the doorstep.

“You’re good to go,” the trainer said. “I’ll wait here for you.”

The trainee asked me who else was in the house. I told him that my four children were in the house, my wife was in the shower, upstairs, and my wife’s aunt and her two children were in the house as well. It was a pretty full house.

Although I waited with the trainer, I will describe what occurred from that point on based on witness statements I obtained later.

The trainee checked the rest of the first floor and didn’t find anyone, so he asked if he could go upstairs. I said that he could and reminded him that my wife was in the shower.

Remember, that at this time, Rosa is upstairs, changing her baby’s diaper. And even though she is my wife’s aunt, she is actually four years younger than Mia. As she is finishing up with the diaper changing ritual, she sees a police officer stop outside the door to the bedroom.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, shocked.

“Oh,” the young officer responded. “Your husband called 9-1-1.”

Think about that for just a minute. The officer assumed that Rosa was my wife, but now Rosa thinks that the husband that she just left…forever…has called the police on her.

“Why the hell did he call 9-1-1?” Rosa shouted, getting very defensive and agitated.

“I don’t know,” the officer responded, getting very nervous. “He’s downstairs…”

“Why is he here?!” Rosa was now getting seriously alarmed that her soon to be ex-husband was downstairs with the police and some kind of devious plan.

“Your husband…Sgt. Blalock…he…uh…” I am told by my children that the officer looked as though he was going to jump down to the first floor to escape Rosa.

“Blalock?” Rosa paused. “No, he’s my nephew. He called 9-1-1?”

Now visibly relieved that he wasn’t stepping into the middle of some kind of domestic violence situation, the young officer explained about the accidental 9-1-1 call and Rosa calmly told him that Mia was in the shower and that all the kids were playing in the upstairs bedrooms, so nothing criminal was going on.

The officers concluded that everything was fine and went on their way, although I noticed a second unit arrive, turn around and leave, so I later wondered if the young officer had called for backup.

Either way, it was the kind of experience that led to a great story.