My 6,000th crash

Posted on December 2, 2015 by Badge415

Two of my used steno pads

This past weekend I took crash number 6,000 of my traffic career. Some people might wonder how I know that. Well, it’s because I’ve written down every report number in steno pads since I started working in the traffic detail.

When I first started, my traffic training officer suggested I get a steno pad and keep track because it would come up when I had to testify. From that moment on I started writing each and every report number down. At the end of the month I’d count the number of collisions I took and then add it to the running total.

Over the years I’ve filled up steno pads as the number of collisions continued to rise like the stairways of the world’s tallest buildings. First there was 100 and then 200 as the crashes started to stack up.

I remember the night I hit 1,000. It was a pursuit crash, which turned into a mess after another department chased a car into our city. I thought 1,000 sounded pretty cool at the time.

The years continued to pass as the 2K and 3K milestones were hit. As I got closer to 4,000 I told some friends it was coming up. I’d go to calls and people would ask me what number I was on. Finally 4,000 came when a DUI driver crashed and rolled his vehicle.

The next milestone was 5,000 that occurred when a bicyclist got hit by a car in an injury collision. Not too long after that, the watch commander came up to me and said, “I heard about 5,000. I’m not sure if I should congratulate you or say I’m sorry.”

So, Friday night came and I only needed 3 more collisions before I hit 6,000. Who was it going to be? Which person was going to be unlucky 6,000? It came at 1:30AM when a red SUV crashed into a traffic signal pole. This particular vehicle had such major damage it would never see the road again.

What would be the best way to commemorate 6,000?

This past year my call sign was changed to 729 after I had been 784 for 15 years. I stood in the street and decided I would use my old call sign because that’s what I used at 1K, 2K, 3K, 4K and 5K. I figured why not.

So, I got on the radio and asked for a traffic collision report number for the 6,000th time as I said, “784, time and DR.”

The dispatcher replied by calling me “784” as she gave me the report number. I wrote it down with a smile because 784 was alive and well one more time at the scene of a car accident.

The busiest Thanksgiving night ever

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Badge415

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I started in the traffic detail in 1999 and have worked almost every Thanksgiving night since. Thanksgiving always falls on my normal work day, but I don’t mind coming in because it’s always slow. It’s the one night where it seems like the city calms down and takes a break from the usual nonsense. I usually only take one collision report and that’s about it. Two collision reports would be a “busy” night on Thanksgiving night.

So, when my son asked to ride with me on Thanksgiving night, I told him he was going to be bored, but he still wanted to go.

We had dinner at my mom’s house and I went into work late. I spent the first hour of my shift catching up on paper work as he waited for the action to start. The radio was dead and there were no calls holding just like I expected. Things were going just like I predicted.

Little did I know an unforeseen force was about to unleash its fury on our city. We were like a small boat out in the ocean as a great storm was about to strike. That’s when the flood gates opened and the calls jumped off.

For the next six hours the city exploded with calls. Before I knew it, I had handled 3 DUI collisions and a regular crash where an unlicensed driver ran a red light.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the stabbing call where an apartment floor was full of blood and looked like a slaughter house. What kind of person stabs another on Thanksgiving night?

That was the busiest Thanksgiving night in my career. Good thing I’ll have Christmas off. Who knows what’s going to happen that night.

Happy Holidays. It’s scary out there.

Every corner has a story

Posted on November 25, 2015 by Badge415

As cop, it seems like every street corner has a story. After a while, some street corners have more than one story. Driving around on patrol is like watching a highlights movie of your career as you pass spots that remind you of old stories.

Not too long ago I responded to an injury traffic collision where the vehicles were on fire. The heat was intense as I watched the fire consume the vehicles like they were wood at a campfire.

As I walked up, I saw a lifeless body in the street in a pool of blood not far from the burning vehicles. The person was picked up and put on a gurney. As the person was wheeled to the ambulance, I took a quick peek and knew it didn’t look good. The person died a short time later at the hospital.

Hours later; the scene was cleared and the vehicles were towed away. The streets were opened back up and traffic resumed. People went on with their lives as if nothing happened.

Now, fast forward a week later when I was dispatched to another injury collision at the same location. When I arrived, I saw one of the vehicles stopped in the street a few feet away from where the fire had been.

I contacted one of the drivers at the southeast corner and interviewed her. While she told me what happened, I glanced around because we were only a few feet away from where the body was last week. That’s when I saw a blood stain at the crosswalk. The stain and burn marks in the street were reminders of the chaos from the week before.

It turned out both collisions involved cars making left turns and were almost identical to each other. I found it a little eerie to be standing in the same spot under similar circumstances so soon afterward. If the people from the crash only knew what happened here the week before.

As the tow truck cleaned up, I looked over at the blood stain and wondered how many more stories I will have at this corner before I retire. Unfortunately I’m sure there will plenty.

“Your mom still loves you”

Posted on November 21, 2015 by Badge415

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“Unit involved 902T.”

I was loading my patrol car up when I heard an officer broadcast over the radio that he was involved in a non-injury traffic collision. He gave his location and asked for a sergeant and a traffic unit to respond.

“729 en route,” I said as I drove out of the police department parking lot.

I arrived a short time later and saw a patrol car in a parking space next to a black car. John, the officer I heard on the radio, got out of the passenger seat and shook his head at me.

“Where’s the other car?” I asked.

John told me his trainee had side swiped a parked car while backing up. That’s when the trainee got out of the driver seat and walked up to us with his head held low. He looked like a guy who lived in a one-bedroom apartment that just found out his wife was pregnant with octuplets.

I wanted to laugh when I saw the look on his face. Not because I wanted to make fun of him. It was because I had that same look over 20 years ago when I crashed two weeks after getting out of training.

The damage on this call was nothing compared to my first traffic collision where both cars were towed away and the other driver was transported to the hospital in an ambulance. Now that was a bad day in 1995.

There’s also another reason why I remembered the day so well. It was because of the traffic officer laughing at me as he tried to make me feel better when he said, “It’s OK. Everyone crashes.”

Nothing was going to make me feel better that day because I was at fault, Of course, that didn’t stop him from joking around a lot. Looking back, that was his way of telling me this wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

After everything was cleaned up I got into my sergeant’s car so he could give me a ride back to the station. As we drove down the street he said, “I’ll buy you a soda.”

He pulled into the Burger King drive thru and said, “What do you want?”

“I’ll take a root beer,” I said with a dejected look.

“Don’t worry, everyone crashes.”

“Have you ever crashed?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said with a smile.

I got back to the station and walked in with my tail between my legs. At the end of shift I got a good dose of humor thrown my way from my co-workers.

I remembered all of this as I stood in front of the trainee, who recently graduated from the academy. Of course, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to make a joke as I said, “Don’t worry. Your mom still loves you.”

I laughed as an uneasy smile came across his face. I took his statement and told him the same thing I heard all those years ago when I was new to the world of police work. “Don’t worry. Everyone crashes.”

“Yes, sir,” was all he could say.

When I was done I handed him a collision card with the report number on it as I said, “Here’s a card.”

It was the same card I give out to regular people at collisions. “Keep this so you can look back and laugh one day.”

He smiled and took the card. Hopefully in a few years he’ll think the card was as funny as I did.

Where’s his foot?

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Badge415

_DSC4559-2 The other night I went to an injury traffic collision involving a motorcycle and a car. The first officer on scene got on the radio and said it was a possible fatality. He also needed more traffic control to shut down the street. I was on a car stop at the time and gave the driver a break because I had to go.

As I drove away with my lights and siren on, I thought how this guy got a huge break on an expensive ticket because the other guy crashed. Kind of weird how one person’s misfortune was another person’s luck.

When I got to the scene, I saw the rider down in the street with fire personnel around him. There was a large group of people standing on the sidewalk watching.

His femur was sticking out of the skin above the knee in wound that looked right out of a war movie. There was also a large piece of flesh in the middle of the intersection that looked like a slice of cheese pizza.

After looking at the injury, I walked around to where his head was. That’s when I did a double take at the victim’s leg. It didn’t look right. From my angle the end of his leg looked like a pointy stub. The first thing that came to mind was, “Where’s his foot?”

I then looked around the area for the missing foot. I didn’t want anyone to trip over it or kick it around. As I did that, I thought how bizarre it was to be looking around for something like that.

I walked around the victim again and guess what I saw? His foot!

Thank goodness it was still attached, but it didn’t look the way it was supposed to. His shoe was off to the side and his foot was pointed down in an unnatural angle. It’s kind of funny now. I just hadn’t seen it right the first time.

One this is for sure, it’s not every day you get to say, “Where’s his foot?” I’m glad the victim survived with both feet still attached.

Two different types of drunks

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Badge415

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The other night we were in the 7-Eleven parking lot on a DUI crash. When I first got there, I saw a male standing in front and didn’t pay much attention to him. Where I work, it’s not uncommon to see people hanging around 7-Eleven with nothing to do. I figured he was just one of those guys.

I did my interviews and the DUI driver was arrested. He was a happy drunk and was very cooperative. He was a carefree guy and was handcuffed with no problems. After he was arrested the driver smiled and said, “Come on. Let me go.” The patrol officer then took him to the car and had him sit in the backseat.

That’s when the guy from in front of 7-Eleven started walking toward us with his hands out like a drunk zombie as he said, “Arrest me instead.”

What a guy, right? It was out of the ordinary for a stranger to act like this on a collision call, but then again, nothing is too weird at work.

We told the guy to step back and go away, but he wouldn’t listen. He kept coming closer and closer. He eventually got arrested and became a bigger idiot after he was handcuffed. The officers took him to the car so he could get a ride with the DUI driver.

Well, he didn’t want to get into the car. The officers took the DUI out and asked me to standby with him. During this time, the other drunk was yelling, screaming and telling everyone what he really thought of cops in his best Rated R language.

That’s when the DUI guy said, “Look at this guy. He’s full of shit. I’m not like that. Let me go.”

I told him, “We appreciate it, but we just can’t let you go. We have to do our jobs.”

“Come on. Let me go.”

“You were DUI and you crashed into that woman. Plus, you don’t even have a license.”

“I know, but look at him. I’m not like that.”

It was funny to listen to nice suspect while the other guy was being such an ass. It almost made me want to give the guy a freebie. Not really. I was kidding. It was amazing to see how a regular call could go downhill in a matter of seconds because of a drunk knucklehead who wasn’t even involved.

That’s police work for you though.

Get a license

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Badge415

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I go to a lot of traffic collisions involving drivers who are unlicensed. You’d be shocked how often this happens. It happens so much, I’m amazed when I go to a call where all of the drivers have licenses. When that happens, I want to hug each driver just for following the damn rules.

This past weekend reached new lows when it comes to unlicensed driver crashes. On Friday night I went to a crash where a driver with a suspended license crashed into an unlicensed driver.

It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does I find it kind of ironic. Out of the thousands of cars on the street at that moment, what are the chances of those two finding each other and crashing?

Fast forward to Saturday night.

The night was very busy and I ended up handling six crash investigations. Of those six, three involved unlicensed drivers. On the first call, an unlicensed driver made a left turn in front of a woman with a suspended license. On the next crash, an unlicensed driver was involved in a street race when he lost control and hit another car. On the third crash, an unlicensed DUI driver rear ended an unlicensed woman.

The night left the tow truck companies happy because of all the money they’re going to make from the impounds. I wondered what was going on. Had the world turned upside down and all of the unlicensed drivers landed in my city to conduct a game of demolition derby?

After almost 6,000 collisions and over 15 years of working traffic, I have never seen that many crashes involving unlicensed driver in such a short time.

By the end of the night I just wanted to make it to the freeway in one piece and avoid being another unlicensed driver victim. That happened to me once while I was on-duty a long time ago, but that’s for another blog story.

“You look familiar”

Posted on November 16, 2015 by Badge415

_DSC7442 The other night I was on a three-car collision when I looked at one of the drivers and said, “You look familiar.”

He turned to me with DUI looking eyes and didn’t say anything.

“Have you crashed before?” I asked.

He nodded his head as he said, “Yes.”

“Do you remember me?”

He shook his head no.

There was a tremor in the force because my Jedi senses told me I had run into this guy before. Well, he actually ran into someone else to be more accurate. I spent the rest of the call trying to figure out how I knew him.

A little while later, the arresting officer told me our driver was in a 2014 DUI collision that I was on. I knew it. Later on I did some research and read the old report. Bingo. I knew exactly who that was.

Back in May of 2014, I was stopped for a red light when my partner and I heard a crash. I looked across the intersection and saw two cars that were involved in a rear end collision. I drove across the street and pulled in behind the cars. The striking vehicle had front end damage and smoke was coming out from under the hood.

That’s when the door popped open and the driver fell out of the car. It was as if all of his weight was against the door and he rolled out onto the street. Once on the street, he flopped around like a sea lion at Sea World begging for a treat after doing a trick. The only thing missing was a crowd, a bucket of fish and a large pool of water.

After a few moments of animal entertainment he rolled over and started doing a low crawl like a sniper was shooting at him from a clock tower. It surely would’ve won the grand prize on America’s Funniest Home Videos. In the end, he was arrested for DUI and went to jail.

It was funny to watch because it’s not every day you get to see a grown man fall out of his car because he’s so drunk. It’s also not every day you get to run into him again at another collision.

Here’s the sad thing. This is the second time this year where I’ve contacted a previous DUI customer of mine at a crash where they were DUI again.

When are these people ever going to learn?

“I gotta pee too”

Posted on November 14, 2015 by Badge415

When people don’t stop for red lights or stop signs they give all sort of excuses from “I didn’t see it” to “I stopped real fast.” Some will just lie about it and simply say, “I stopped.”

This past week an old favorite has come up again. A few women have tried using the old “I have to pee” excuse. I haven’t heard that one in a long time, but apparently there’s a reemergence of people relying on their large and small intestines to try and get them out of a ticket.

I applaud them for trying because it just gives me a reason to write a blog story. In fact, two women told me the “I have to pee” excuse while running the same stop sign on two separate days.

That excuse always reminds me of the movie Forrest Gump when he told the president, “I gotta pee” after drinking 15 bottles of Dr Pepper while at the White House.

Whenever I hear someone say, “I have to pee,” I simply reply back, “I gotta pee too.”

The look on their face is priceless. They always pause for a moment as if they’re thinking, “Did that cop just tell me he had to pee?” That’s the best part because they all have the same look. It never gets old. To show them I was reading their mind I’ve always wanted to say, “Yeah, I just said I gotta pee.”

The all time best is when a woman said, “I have to poop” after running a stop sign.

Even though I didn’t say it, I fought the urge to reply, “I gotta poop too,” but it would’ve made everything feel awkward if I had.

You never know when “number one” or “number two” is going to come up in a conversation. This is police work and people say the funniest things.

“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.