“I have an ID card.”

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Badge415

The other night I went to a call that was a little different. When I got there I saw two crashed cars at a three-way intersection in an industrial area. It was actually an unusual spot for a collision because of its out of the way location.

There was a witness driving westbound and saw a vehicle approaching from the opposite direction with no lights on. The witness was going to flash his high beams at the car to get its attention, but decided against it in case the car was full of gang members. The witness kept going and passed the car with no lights on. He then looked in his mirror and watched the crash happen as a car pulled out from a side street.

I next spoke to the driver and asked, “Were your lights on?”

“They were dim.”

That was a new excuse I had never heard before. He probably meant they were so dim you couldn’t see them on.

After that I went to speak to the woman, who made the left turn from the stop sign. She also said the other vehicle did not have its lights on. At the end of the interview, the translator asked if she had a license.

The woman replied, “I have an ID card.”

“Do you have a license?”

“No.”

“Have you ever taken the test? I asked.

She replied she had, but failed it.

“When did you fail it?”

The woman said, “In 1989.”

After hearing that, I told the translator I was impounding the car. The driver heard this and asked, “Why?”

Her husband then interrupted and said, “But she has an ID card.”

Was I missing something here? I thought it was pretty self explanatory. She last took the test and failed it 26 years ago! Since she failed the test, we’ve had four different presidents in office, the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended.

In my head I wondered why I was even here. An unlicensed driver crashed into a car with no lights. Then the unlicensed driver had the nerve to ask why when her vehicle was going to get impounded?

The only thing missing on this call were clowns and a monkey playing with a jack in the box on the corner.

Here’s the best part. This isn’t unusual for me. Something like this happens almost every night at work. Well, except the clowns. But one day that will change when a clown crashes on the way to a birthday party. It just has to happen because this is police work and anything goes. Even clowns.

What is it like to have the helicopter looking for you?

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Badge415

The other night a call went out about suspicious subjects and a car behind a business at 2AM. When officers got there they went in foot pursuit and requested additional cops to assist.

Based on the radio traffic it sounded like the officers interrupted a burglary in progress. I was close by and raced to the area. I took a perimeter spot and parked in a neighborhood southeast of where one of the suspects was last seen. I pointed my spot lights in the direction where he might pop out and left my lightbar on so the red and blue lights would bounce off the houses.

Everything was quiet outside with the exception of the radio traffic and the idling engine of my patrol car.. That’s when the sound of our helicopter could be heard in the distance. I looked to the northwest and saw it coming our way. The sound got louder and louder as it approached the sea of police lights below.

A calm and familiar voice came on the radio as a friend of mine broadcasted from above. He told us our perimeter looked good and asked where the suspects were last seen. Officers on the ground gave a description and a direction of travel.

The helicopter then went to work circling overheard as I stood next to my car watching it fly by. The only sound in the night were the rotors making their familiar and comforting noise.

While the sound of the helicopter was comforting to me, it must’ve been horrifying to the person hiding. I never gave it much thought until that night. I wondered what was going through the guy’s head as his heart pounded inside his chest like an 9.0 earthquake. His mouth must’ve been as dry as the Mohave desert during the summer on the way to Vegas. What was it like to know it would only be a matter of minutes until the inevitable happened?

That’s when a homeowner flagged an officer down about someone being in their backyard. The officer gave the address and a moment later the observer came on the air saying, “”He just jumped over the fence into the next backyard going eastbound.”

The suspect was now in the backyard of a house on a cul-de-sac one street behind where I was. A few moments later three patrol cars drove by on their way to the cul-de-sac. One of the cars was a K-9.

The officers advised over the radio they were on scene of the house a moment later. The sound of the K-9 must have been deafening to the suspect as the dog got out of the car. The sound from the K-9 and the helicopter must’ve been too much because the guy just gave up.

The search continued for about an hour and eventually everyone was caught. It was great team work setting up the perimeter so fast. The dispatcher also did a good job on the radio keeping everything in order. It was a great example of good police work that people never hear about.

When a Big Mac hurts

Posted on November 8, 2015 by Badge415

One night I responded to the McDonald’s drive thru for an injury traffic collision. When I got there I saw a woman with an injured leg being treated by fire personnel. I thought she was a pedestrian that somehow got hit by a car. The drive thru was also blocked by a car with no driver.

I started asking around and found out the injured woman was the driver of the car at the window. Now I was confused. How the heck did this happen?

In turned out the woman, who was in her late 50s, was in the drive thru when she pulled up to the window. She gave the cashier money and waited for her change. The cashier handed money to the driver, but some coins dropped to the ground.

The driver opened her door, stuck her foot out and…….Wait. Can you see where this is going? Did you cringe yet?

She opened the driver door, stuck her foot out and reached for the change while her right foot was still on the brake. Of course, her foot came off the brake and the car rolled forward. The door hit the McDonald’s drive thru wall and closed on the woman’s leg. It didn’t close all the way, but just enough for her to never want McDonald’s again for the rest of her life.

Just the thought of her leg getting smashed by the door makes me say ouch still.

Not too long after that I was in a drive thru when a cashier dropped change as she handed me money. I opened the driver door and looked at the change. That’s when I repeated the famous line, “It’s Déjà vu all over again,” by legendary Yankee Yogi Berra.

I had already seen this before and it wasn’t pretty. I took my food and left the change on the floor. I didn’t need it that much. Just a little food for thought if you ever drop change in the drive thru. Leave it. If you’re not careful, it might be the most painful hamburger you have had with a super sized injury.

Do you have a license?

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Badge415

The excuses people tell me never get old. Sometimes it seems like the excuses are the same every time, but every once in a while you get to hear a new one.

The other night I was watching a stop sign when an SUV drove through it at approximately 15 miles per hour. I went after the car and stopped it. I walked up to the car and waited for the driver to lower the window. The window was broken so she opened the door. The fact that the driver side window was broken was probably a hint of things to come.

I asked, “Why didn’t you stop for the stop sign?”

The woman, who was in her mid-twenties said, “I made a fast stop,”

I pointed to her car and asked, “Is your car stopped right now?”

“Yes.”

“Did your car ever get like this at the stop sign?”

“No,” she said as she lowered her head.

“So, how fast were you going when you went through the stop sign?”

“Maybe 15 to 20 miles per hour.”

I asked, “How come you didn’t stop?”

“I stopped last time I went through.”

At least we can count on her stopping 50% of the time. Since she was being honest I decided to let her go with a warning, assuming she had all of the correct and current paperwork. But you know what they say when you “assume” something?

In the Badge415 world, you at least need a driver’s license to get a break from me. It’s not too much to ask for a person to have a driver’s license and current insurance. Call me crazy, but those are basic laws people are supposed to follow. A person should have those instead of excuses when I stop them.

The moment of truth came for the crucial question of the evening. I threw all caution to the wind and asked, “Do you have a license?”

“No. It’s expired.”

I just laughed inside. It always seems to happen like this. The person was so close to driving away with a warning, but instead they’re the subject of a blog story. Oh well, I tried to give her a break. It just didn’t work out.

I asked, “Why is your license expired?”

“I renewed my identification card by accident thinking it was my license.”

What?

Now, that was a new excuse I had never heard. The funny thing was her identification card was issued in 2014 and her license expired in May of 2015. Either way the math didn’t add up, but I applauded her creativity.

In the end she got a ticket for being unlicensed and I gave her a break on the stop sign. She also had to wait for her brother to show up and take the car. If she had only stopped, I would’ve never found out about her expired license.

Until the next time I stop someone. Maybe they’ll have a driver’s license…… I hope.

Don’t tell your kids I’m going to take them away

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Badge415

“See the police? He’s going to take you away if you don’t listen.”

This is a statement we, as officers, have all heard at one time or another when parents try to scare their children into listening to them. I’ve heard it said in restaurants, in stores and on neighborhood streets while on calls for service.

Now, the statement, “See the police? He’s going to take you away if you’re bad,”
is correct if you’re committing a crime. If you’re stealing something, assaulting someone or driving drunk, then yes, the police are going to take you away. But why tell that to a child?

As a kid, I never saw the police as people who were going to take me away if I didn’t listen. That was what my mom’s wooden spoon was for.That’s also what a spanking from my dad’s right hand were for. I didn’t have to worry about the cops. I had to worry about my parents.

If I acted up, there were consequences. It was simple. We had rules to follow and if you didn’t follow them then you knew what to expect. Listening, following the rules and respect were instilled in us at an early age. My parents didn’t have to point at a cop and threaten they were going to take us away. They just had to give me the evil eye and I knew I should listen.

So, rather than tell your kids the cops are going to take them away for being bad, try telling them you’re going to punish them for their actions and follow through on it. It’s OK to be the boss in your house. When I was growing up I sure knew who the boss was in my house.

Remember, officers can’t fix the problem when a parent didn’t do their job 10 or 15 years ago.

The night Uber needed a taxi

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Badge415

Last week I pulled up to a collision call and saw three disabled vehicles in the road and one parked at the gas station on the corner. It seemed like there were a ton of people standing around being treated by fire personnel or speaking with officers. It was as if the cars threw up people all over the place.

Everyone was calm except for one loud mouth drunk who just liked to hear himself talk. He pretty much yelled the entire call and was downright obnoxious. His dumbness wasn’t directed at us, but he certainly was the fart in the elevator.

After a few minutes I figured out who was who in the zoo and started interviewing the drivers. One driver was stopped for a red light when his truck was turned into an accordion with four wheels. He was the first to get rear ended and was pushed into the car in front of him. The truck’s rear end was smashed and its front wheel broke off like it was a small Lego piece. One look at that poor truck and you knew it was going straight to car heaven.

I next spoke to an Uber driver, who told me the soon to be accordion was stopped behind him when they were rear ended. The impact turned his poor Uber mobile into a metal paper weight. The damage on that vehicle was bad. It was also getting a trip to car heaven.

I went on to interview the fourth driver and asked him what happened. In a weird twist, he was also an Uber driver with a carload of passengers.

The two Uber drivers were unrelated and just happened to be Ubering in the wrong place at the wrong time. At least they didn’t crash into each other. That would’ve been too weird.

I learned that both sets of Uber passengers had been drinking and did the responsible thing by getting a ride. Unfortunately, there was an unlicensed DUI driver behind them who wasn’t responsible. What are the odds of drunk people getting rear ended by a DUI driver?

And in the final twist of irony, we had to call a taxi to pick up some of the Uber passengers because they needed a ride.

You can’t make this stuff up.

“Was he in the crosswalk?”

Posted on November 2, 2015 by Badge415

There’s a certain detachment that I have about my job as a traffic cop. It’s simple. A crash goes out and I go. Whether it’s a minor fender bender or a fatal traffic collision, you go and do what needs to be done.

Once at the call we handle it, clear and move on to the next. There’s no time to get emotionally invested because of the nature of the job. I’m like a band-aide. Just a temporarily fix on the wound.

Later on I finish the report and staple the pages together. I walk over to the inbox in the traffic office and I toss it in. My role in that particular collision is over.

I never see the physical or emotional scars that were inflicted by the collision after I clear the scene. I’m not there for the pain and suffering, nor am I there for the funerals or physical therapy the injured have to go through.

I don’t remember their names or their license plate numbers. My memory only gets jogged about a crash when I drive down the street and pass certain locations. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just better to keep an emotionally safe distance away from the injuries and death that happens every night.

It’s how I can keep doing this job and still feel like a normal person when I’m at home, away from the madness. That’s what works for me.

A few weeks ago I took a major injury collision involving a pedestrian on the west end of the city. He had already been transported to the hospital before I arrived. The only thing left in the street were his shoes, clothes and a lot of blood.

Once I cleared the scene, I moved on and wrote the report just like I always do. There was no attachment because I never saw the victim and I didn’t know anything about him, other than what was on my paper work.

On Friday, I had to call the victim’s daughter because she was trying to track down her father’s identification card. Part of me didn’t want to call because that would put a human voice to the report I had already turned in.

I spoke to her and explained that her father did not have an identification card in his wallet at the scene. The family couldn’t find it and she had no idea where it could be. She then said, “I don’t even know what happened.”

I instantly felt bad for her because he was in the hospital with life threatening injuries and she had no idea what happened.

I then told her how the collision occurred and what the witness said that night. I felt bad telling her he ran out in front of the car because I’m sure it gave her a visual to go with what her father looked like in the hospital.

When I was done explaining what happened she asked, “Was he in the crosswalk?”

“No.”

The word hung in the air like a thick fog that swallowed up everything around it as she took in what I just said.

I broke the silence by asking how her father was doing. I knew the injuries were major that night, but I didn’t have any further information about him. She started crying and told me the doctors suggested they pull the plug because he was in a vegetative state.

She sobbed and took a deep breath as she said, “I can’t do that to my father. God is good and I’m praying for a miracle.”

Her words were hard to hear because of the emotion and deep pain behind them. Even though she was a stranger, I still felt for the family. He was someone’s father.

I wished her luck and we concluded our call. There wasn’t much to say after that.

Before the phone call, the collision was another in a long list of fatal and major injury traffic accidents that I’ve handled. It was report, a piece of paper that I prepared and turned in. It was nothing personal. I was business.

After the phone call, it was different. Now there was a voice of pain and sadness attached to it. That’s just part of the job.