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Did that spoon come with the car?

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The actual twisted spoon in the ignition

 

Sometimes the funniest things come on while working the streets. It’s the unusual and weird stuff that make the job fun. You just never know what’s going to come up.

A few months ago, I backed up an officer on a car stop. I stood by while he contacted the driver and patted him down for weapons. He had stopped the driver for running red lights and racing another car.

After he patted the driver down, the officer walked around the beaten up 1992 BMW and looked inside. That’s when the officer asked,  “Why is there a spoon in the ignition?”

“I bought the car like that?”

First of all, who buys a car with a spoon stuck in the ignition? We thought it was stolen, but the driver told us he had all the paperwork for the vehicle.

The driver, who was unlicensed, told us his other BMW was impounded last week, so he bought another one. Apparently he only drives BMW cars.

“The car came with the spoon?” I asked.

“Yeah. I just leave it in there.”

“Do you start the car with the spoon?”

“No, I use the key.”

“Why do you have a spoon in the ignition?”

“It keeps the steering wheel from locking. They put in another ignition switch so I can start the car.”

I just stood there shaking my head like I normally do on calls. I also wondered if there was a fork and knife in the car in case he lost his spoon.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

The curb with countless stories

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The curb that keeps taking it like a champ

If you work as a traffic cop long enough you’ll return to certain locations over and over for collisions. It’s just the way it is. Usually these spots are heavily traveled intersections where the volume of traffic means it’s only a matter of time before another collision occurs.

This is true most of the time, but there’s one L shaped intersection where I work that has much less traffic, but has seen plenty of single vehicle crashes. If only the curb could talk.

This was what I thought about while standing there the other night at another single vehicle traffic collision. The only thing different that night was the name of the driver and what part of the curb he hit first before colliding into a tree, a building, a pole or a sign.

Sometimes the drivers say they were going too fast. Other times they say a phantom car cut them off. Either way, they crashed into the same curb.

I looked at the curb and saw all of its battle scars from vehicles that were traveling way too fast over the years. Each chipped portion of curb told a story of a vehicle that tried to go up against it, but lost like the others before it. All suffered the same fate and were towed away after their wheels were reduced to twisted metal and flat tires.

This particular curb has withstood the test of time and everything that man has tried to do to it with a car. Maybe one day people will figure it out and slow down. Unfortunately, it won’t be long before I go back and have another story to tell about this spot.

By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever had a woman crash at this location. Good job ladies. Too bad the guys can’t figure this out.

The phantom car

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I love the excuses people try to come up with when they crash into parked cars. First of all, when it’s 2:15AM and you’re not DUI, then you shouldn’t be crashing into stuff. It’s pretty simple when the road is straight and you want to go from point A to point B. Just drive straight.

When there are parked cars on the side of the road they don’t move. They’re parked. They’re actually giant paper weights on wheels at that moment. In fact, the parked car is as harmless as a sock on the floor of my son’s room.

Tonight, this guy tried telling me the lane got narrow and that was how he crashed into three parked cars. I pointed to the street and asked him if the lane width at the collision scene was the same as it was 500 feet down the road. He looked and told me it was the same.

I told him his story didn’t make sense and it wasn’t working for me. I asked him to help me out so I could write a report that people could understand.

With a confused look he fell back on an old collision investigation favorite. He blamed the phantom car, which allegedly moved into his lane and caused him to crash.

The phantom car has been the cause of many collisions at night. You’d be amazed on what kind of damage the phantom car has caused over the course of my career. 

The phantom car is like the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot. It’s been seen, but its existence has never been proven. 

Of course, he couldn’t stop at the phantom car excuse. He had to throw in one more excuse to make the unbelievable more believable. He told me one of the parked cars was sticking out, yet he never saw it before the crash. 

I often wonder if people realize how silly they sound when they try to pull stuff out of their ass.

Until the next time the phantom car strikes. I’m sure we won’t have to wait long. 

My 6,000th crash

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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

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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.

What kind of dream was that?

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I rarely have dreams about work. If I do, it has to do with going back to the academy for some reason, but that’s another story. The other night I had a dream with an accident investigation twist to it.

The dream started out with me driving down the street in my patrol car in the early evening. There was also a clown and a midget singing a Barry Manilow song in the backseat.

I’m kidding. My dreams aren’t that weird, but if yours are, you might want to seek out some help.

Back to the story. I was driving down the street when I saw a car going the same direction as it suddenly swerved to the right. The passenger side tires went up the curb as the car started driving down the sidewalk. The car swerved back to the left and ran a red light as it crashed into a car.

This is where the dream gets weird. OK, maybe more weird.

After the initial collision, one of the vehicles went toward the corner and crashed into the parking lot at a car dealership. It seemed like every car was hit as a shock wave went through the parking lot.

That’s when I wondered in the dream how I was going to measure all of the points of impact for the report. I also thought about how I was going to do the diagram with all of those crashed cars in the parking lot. If you work traffic, you know what a pain in the butt this would be. This probably became a stressful dream at this point.

Anyways. The suspect vehicle stopped and two guys started running northbound at the intersection. I got out of the patrol car and started chasing them. Somehow I caught one (it’s a dream) and then fought to get his hands behind his back. That’s when I woke up wondering what kind of dream I just had.

I told my son about my dream and he said, “Who dreams about stuff like that?” He then made me laugh even more when he said, “I guess 20 years will do that to you.”

Maybe in my next dream every driver will have a license, be sober and actually have insurance. Probably not, but one can hope.

Be thankful for your family

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How many of us will go to Thanksgiving dinner and truly be thankful for what we have? Will you be thankful for the family around you today or will we go through the motions because that’s what you have always done?

On Wednesday afternoon, I dropped my daughter off at my mom’s house on the way to work. After I said goodbye, I drove down the street and stopped for the stop sign before making a right turn. While I was stopped, I saw a man sitting in a chair at the southeast corner.

The sight of the man made my heart ache as a father because I knew why he was sitting there. He was there because this was the spot where his son died many years ago in a traffic collision.

He was sitting in a chair in a small grass area next to his son’s memorial, which included a skateboard and pictures. He was alone with a book in his hand as he looked down, lost in his own thoughts as traffic went by. I have seen him here before over the years, along with a woman, who I assumed was his wife.

I watched him for a moment and couldn’t imagine the emptiness he felt. This was his spot to mourn a life that was taken away too soon. This was his spot to be close to last place his son ever stood on earth. This spot was his last connection to his son.

After I turned, I thought how different my Thanksgiving was going to be compared to this man and his wife. I’m sure they wished they could have one more Thanksgiving dinner together as a family with their son.

This is something to think about when you sit down to have your Thanksgiving dinner with your family. Take a moment and be thankful for the people around you because there are others who wish they had one more chance.

Every corner has a story

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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”

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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.

 

“The car was going fast”

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“The car was going fast.”

“Did you see it before the collision?”

“No.”

This exchange happens all the time at traffic collisions. In most cases, the same person did one of two things. They turned left in front of a car or pulled out from a driveway in front of a car. Either way they crashed into another driver, who was minding their own business while traveling down a road.

When this happens, the driver who is at fault tries to blame the other car because it was “going too fast.” My next question always is, “How do you know the car was going fast if you didn’t see it?”

This question usually triggers a twitch in the driver’s face that causes them to squint and give me that deep in thought look. It’s almost like I have a hidden switch that I flicked with my finger to get them to do that because it happens every I ask that question. Actually, there’s no switch. It just their confused look.

One confused driver once replied, “It felt fast.”

“It felt fast?”

“Yeah, it felt fast.”

I think the better way to describe the crash was that it felt hard, but who am I to point that out?

“The car was going fast” statement is alive and well in the traffic collision world. It is said a few times a week without fail. In fact, it came up again on Wednesday night in a four-car crash involving a driver with a suspended license.

I guess when there are five points of impact, four cars and a vehicle in someone’s front yard, a person might want to deflect blame onto someone else by saying, “He was going fast.”

I have an idea. How about following the f#$%ing rules and not drive? It would be easier for everyone out there on the roads.