I hope that writing this helped you in some type of way
Strangely enough, doing that actually worked. It helped to get things sorted out and put things back where they belong.
Until I dug up some bad memories, the memories I had of those days were how much fun we had. Besides, I became a police officer because I wanted an exciting job, and believe me, those were exciting times.
…the process of learning to make the daily transition from what can seem like a war zone to "normal life", whatever that is.?… But dealing with it is your gift to the community.
Our head shrink thought it was generally a healthy way to deal with the two different worlds police officers work and live in. He said it was something our minds did automatically to protect us. You just had to be careful to watch for problems when it didn’t work well. An example of it not working was in a story he often told us of a young investigator whose wife brought him into the office. The guy would come home every night and lay down on the floor of their daughter’s bedroom and weep for hours. This was a man who saw dead children at work on a regular basis. What happened was that there was a popular type of footwear that every little girl was wearing at the time, including his daughter. He had seen the footwear several times on crime scenes, and then came home and saw the same shoes in his house. Subconsciously, he made a connection between death he saw at work and his daughter, and would be overcome with grief that he didn’t understand.
Your right about it being weird and it being a gift to the community. Sometimes the right thing to do is keep your barrier up, and other times it’s vital that you make a genuine connection with someone. Knowing when and how much can be tricky.
Lest it sound too depressing, there are a lot of good times too
You are right, and I feel a little bad about purging some depressing crap on Eddie. I feel the need to make up for that. Eddie, here is an official war story for your entertainment.
Riding by myself, no backup available, running a burglary in progress call at a condominium complex. When I arrived, I found the three guys from next door had armed themselves with baseball bats and surrounded the location. Burglar #1 had spotted the welcoming committee and wisely decided to await the police, who he
hoped would be less violent. He came out on the balcony and saw me with my shotgun down below, and surrender negotiations commenced while the boys with their Louisville Sluggers offered him some more exciting alternatives.
Surrendering involved him shinnying down a handy gutter downspout, which of course broke away from the wall at the top just as he got started. General hilarity ensued, he screamed as the ground got closer and I was chuckling when I handcuffed him. But that’s not the funny part.
Part II comes when I realized I had drawn a huge audience. The complex residents were all standing around and watching, which in itself was not unusual. But this crowd had armed itself to the teeth with assorted bric-a-brac. Their choices of weapons ran the gamut from a couple of more baseball bats, a few broom handles, a woman in fuzzy slippers holding a rolling pin, and a 400 pound woman who had apparently snatched up her living room lamp on the way out the door.
The leader of the crowd was so excited that he was almost peeing his pants as he reported in to me. “There’s another one officer, he had a guy looking out for him, and he has to still be here because we didn’t see him leave.” The leader looked like the old actor Wally Cox (who defined milquetoast), but he was playing like the leader of a posse. I admit that I discounted the “he’s still here” part because I figured any burglar worth his salt had already booked for more peaceful climes. But I decided to appease the crowd and do a drive through.
After starting out I quickly realized that the posse was following. They looked like the villagers storming Dr. Frankenstein’s castle, but instead of pitchforks and torches they had broom handles and a floor lamp. My evening had veered off into the surreal. Normally I didn’t mind a competent helping hand when I was by myself, but this crowd did not impress me.
I decided to see how fast they could run.
Accelerating gradually I got them to break into a trot (the fat gal with the floor lamp was soon walking), and then almost a full run. I started chuckling, but the appreciation for my own sense of malarkey got out of control and I started giggling as I made it to about 15 MPH. My prisoner even turned around to look out the window and start laughing. I left my posse in the dust and actually was half-heartedly looking for the other guy when I screwed up and found him.
He was in the back seat of his car, and had lain down and covered himself with junk from the interior, which included his dirty laundry. When the spotlight lit up the interior, he freaked a little and bolted upright. A dirty sock was on one shoulder and a pair of tighty-whities was draped on top of his head like a deflated beret. One eye was looking out of a leg hole.
I got out of the car, and because the shotgun was on my lap I took it with me. That was a mistake. After giving him my usual polite request for cooperation (
”show me your hands **#*$(%!”) I got him out of the car and about halfway in a search position when I realized I should have left the shotgun in the car. He started fighting, and I ran through all the options and realized my hands were way too full of shotgun, I was too close to get in the buttstroke they taught me at Parris Island, and I wouldn’t be able to sling it across my back quickly enough.
I was trying to keep the crook up against the car with my body weight and figure out some masterful move to keep from getting my butt kicked, when a little white fist came from over my shoulder and started beating on the bad guy’s head. Glancing over my shoulder I see Wally Cox trying to climb over me to get at the crook. His eyes were full of murder and the rest of the posse was coming around the corner.
For a moment I thought about handing the shotgun to Wally, but the headline “Cop allows citizen to murder prisoner” flashed in my mind and I decided against that plan. Meanwhile, Wally’s little, girl-like fist was bouncing off this guy’s skull and he was starting to get himself turned around to face me. In a move born out of desperation, I pushed back and gave about half of an elbow jab in what I thought was the area of Wally’s chest to get him off me, and then I tried for a complete 180 degree body twist to the left while pushing the shotgun butt in the direction of Burglar #2’s face.
The bad guy’s head snapped around and then he went limp and laid down for a nap. If my bayonet instructor had been there to see it I am sure there would have been tears of pride in the man’s eyes. I handcuffed Sleepy the Burglar, called for an ambulance and then turned around to put the shotgun away. The rest of the posse was gathered around Wally, who was sprawled on the ground with a broken pair of glasses and a lot of blood.
Great, I’ve killed Wally. This is going to be difficult to explain.
There must have been a miscalculation in my estimate of how tall Wally was, because I had caught him on his cute little dimple with my elbow. He bumped his head in the parking lot - that’s where the blood came from - but after the paramedics cleaned him up we found that the only real damage was a pair of busted specs.
The difficult part was that I had never knocked the snot out of someone who wasn’t also a winner in the free trip to jail contest. While I could have made Wally contestant number three for interfering with an officer, it just did not seem fair. The guy’s heart had been in the right place, and he was the one with dried blood on his clothes, and skull. So before I left, I went over to the guy and told him “I’m sorry about what happened back there, but you were getting in the way.” While saying that, all I could think about was the letter I would have to write in response to the forthcoming complaint.
My good friend Wally beamed up at me and broke into a huge smile. “No problem Officer. That was the coolest thing I ever saw. Man, I can’t wait to go wake up my kids to tell them all about it! Thanks for everything you did tonight!”
God bless that little man. If it would not have been unprofessional, I would have given him a big hug right then.
Eddieb, if you found that story humorous, then you have a sufficiently warped sense of humor to go on to have a successful career in law enforcement. Good luck to you sir.