What kind of dream was that?

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Badge415

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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.

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.

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 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.

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.

An inside joke that lives on

Posted on October 31, 2015 by Badge415

In Orange County, 901T is the radio code for injury collision. 902T is the radio code for non-inury collision and 901 means traffic collision with unknown injuries. It’s just those three unless it’s a hit and run. Then there are a few more codes.

Last year on Halloween night of 2014, a new radio code was born that no one new about. It’s not an official radio code, but it’s the source of a great inside joke that will go on for years.

On that night a 901T involving a pedestrian went out in the southern part of the city and two patrol officers were dispatched to it. My partner and I were on a different call at the time in the east end of our city. It was raining cats and dogs so we had to seek shelter under the porch of someone’s house just to get away from the craziness. At that point I needed a towel more than an umbrella.

We were standing there feeling miserable when an officer got on the radio and said, “This is a 901 Frank.”

What the heck was a 901 Frank? None of us had ever heard that before. The dispatcher said something on the radio and then the officer spoke again.

“It’s a major and start a traffic.”

“Traffic is 10-6,” replied the dispatcher, advising him we were busy.

“Confirming you conveyed the message to traffic that this is a major.” The tone in his voice told us this was more than just a regular crash.

“10-4,” replied the dispatcher.

After hearing the word “major” it was time for us to drop what we were doing and head to that call. We had a long drive and I knew we were going to have some good natured fun with the officer who said 901 Frank when we got there. How could we pass it up?

When I pulled up to the call, I went up to the cop and we started having fun with him. “What’s a 901Frank?” I asked.

The officer said, “It was bad. There was blood coming out of his eyes.”

He was an experienced officer and a great guy, so if he said it was bad then it was really bad. He meant 901 Frank (901F) to be fatal or possible fatal collision. Either way, you’ll never find it in any radio code list ever.

In the end we finished the call and the pedestrian survived. From that point on the term 901 Frank achieved legendary status among some of us who worked that night. It’s one of the funniest inside jokes around and was the subject of numerous memes that I may or may not have created.

Thanks MW for the laugh. It’s still a great story and it’s hard to believe it happened a year ago.

But really? What the F#$%k is 901Frank?

The funny things people say

Posted on October 24, 2015 by Badge415

Tonight, the same call provided me with two different opportunities to laugh and shake my head. The first one involved a man who was driving with his family when he collided with a DUI in a minor crash.

His girlfriend was in the right front passenger and their two children were in the backseat. They were 5 and 2 years old. His girlfriend had an appointment she was late for. Someone drove up and dropped off grandpa and gave her a ride.

That left dad, grandpa and the two kids. I asked dad what his 2 year old son’s name was. He answered it pretty fast like he should since it was his own flesh and blood. He then ran into some trouble.

“What’s his birthday?” I asked.

“Ah…..”

“You don’t know his birthday?”

He started to squirm as he looked around for help. He looked at me like I was going to save him from the embarrassment rocket that was plummeting back to earth to land on him. He then said the dumbest thing I heard all night. “Ah. June. I don’t know. My wife knows.”

It was like the loser music from the Price is Right started up in the background when he said that.

“You might want to work on that one.” I said.

I looked at grandpa and thought I’d give it and shot. “Do you know his birthday?”

“Ah,” he said as he shifted back and forth. “My wife knows it.”

I looked to the 5 year old brother to save the day. I thought how cool it would be if the kid could throw a strike down the middle and deliver the ultimate game winning performance to show up dad.

“Do you know your brother’s birthday?” I asked.

The child started talking about something else as he dashed my hopes to poke at dad for not knowing his youngest son’s birthday.

“What’s your other son’s name and birthday?”

He told me the child’s name and then said, “October. Ah.”

It was on the tip of his tongue and it was painful to watch since there were only 8 days left in the month. Then by some miracle he blurted out his son’s birthday like he beat the buzzer on a timed test. At least he got that one.

I walked away wondering if he was going to remember Christmas. My only regret was not asking for his girlfriend’s birthday. I’m sure he would’ve crashed and burned on that one too.

I then watched the end of the DUI investigation. The driver attempted to raise a foot in the air for the test, but he kept putting it down like a horse trying to do Morse code with his front hoof. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

He rose the other foot and it came down like the other, but more often and faster as he lost his balance. He was either doing Morse code again or he was bull getting ready to charge at a matador.

At one point the driver just turned around in defeat and put his hands behind his back as he said to arrest him. The officer told him to turn around. The driver did and attempted Morse code again.

There was another test, but the driver turned around and put his hands behind his back as he tried to get me to handcuff him. I gave him a coach pep talk and said, “Go back over there.”

When the investigation was over, the officer told him to put his hands behind his back. He turned around and did as he told. That’s when a big smile appeared on the driver’s face as he said, “See, I told you.” The tone in his voice was hilarious like he knew he was more drunk that we thought.

A patrol unit arrived to transport the DUI to jail. One of the officers in the car only had a year on the job and was young looking.

The DUI looked at him and said, “The fucking new guy is taking me?”

You just can’t make this stuff up.