This past Monday I moved from riding shotgun and mostly observing, to driving the car, using the radio, and being the primary officer on all the calls we took. It was quite exciting going in to work that morning.
It started out somewhat slow, so I asked my Field Training Officer if we could do some traffic stops, as I had never done them before. He said we could since it was morning and nothing else was going on. He began directing me to his special spot, and on the way, we were running tags in the computer to see if they came back expired or stolen. We pulled up to a stop sign behind a truck, and ran the tag; it was an out of state tag. Sure enough, it came back expired. He told me to “light him up” after the traffic light. I did, and we pulled over into a McDonalds parking lot. Then he told me to call the traffic stop out on the radio. I called it out, or more so attempted to. My voice was shaking, and I seemed to forget how to make a coherent sentence. “We’ll work on it.” he said.
We stepped out of the car and my hands were shaking as I approached. This was the first traffic stop I had ever performed, and I had no idea how it would go down. And man, did I get myself into some shit with this first one. I approached the driver, politely identified myself, told him I had pulled him over for an expired tag, and asked for his license and registration. He complied, and handed us all the information while telling us about how he was trying to get his car registered in our state but could not find his title. I went back to the car, and ran his drivers license number. Suspended license. No insurance. Oh boy.
I looked at my FTO and told him what had come up. We started to dig a little further, and found out a weird issue. The license showed it was suspended in 2017, but the license he gave us had been issued in 2019; that can’t be right. My FTO then told me to go back and talk to him to find out what was going on, so I hopped back out and made my way back to the truck. I explained the weird issue we had discovered, and asked if he knew anything about it. He told me he was not aware of that, and had not been notified. He seemed truthful, so we decided to cut him a break. We wrote him a ticket for a suspended license, and gave a warning for an expired tag and no insurance and gave him a very stern warning that he needed to get that all worked out ASAP. We could have towed his car, seized his tag, and if we really wanted, taken him to jail, but we decided not to. Hopefully he will get it fixed. I performed a lot more traffic stops that day, getting better and less nervous with each one. By the end of the day, it seemed somewhat routine and I knew the drill. Besides that suspended license ticket, I only wrote one other ticket for an expired tag, which was a break for the kid because he was doing 60 in a 40. (Expired tag is a non-moving violation with no points added and $116, a 20 over speeding ticket is $250 with points added.)
The next day was a normal day, with one very good call.
Lunch had just ended, and we were sitting in the patrol car, talking about life and all kinds of dumb stuff, when central’s voice pierced the air “Reporting party states his son is standing in the living room with gasoline and a lighter screaming “I am God’s Messenger”“. Oh boy. I piped up on the radio that I would be responding, and off we went. I got to run that way with lights and sirens, weaving in and out of traffic. It was a blast. Luckily, by the time we had arrived the son had calmed down and was sitting in a chair. We spoke to him and the father, and found out he had schizophrenia, was talking about angels and demons, and was off of his meds. He had also stated he was going to kill himself, which means at that point we had no choice but to take him into emergency custody. He was surprisingly compliant, and we loaded him up, finished the paperwork, and took him to the hospital. The whole way there he talked, and I started to engage in conversation back. I really started to feel bad for the guy. He definitely knew he wasn’t normal, and knew that he had messed up. He even admitted he needed to go get help. Once we arrived to the hospital, I removed his handcuffs and him and I waited patiently for the neighbors to come get him. By the time he was ready to be processed, we were buddies, and I told him to do well and “you’ve got this” as he walked through the doors into the psych ward.
The rest of that day was somewhat routine, crackheads arguing, someone trespassing, you name it. But the next day, I stepped into a shit storm.
At around 9am, I got a call from a detective asking me to follow up on a previous call. It was pertaining to a mother who had a son who was on meth, who had made suicidal threats, and who had fell off the face of the earth for a few weeks. It seemed pretty common. Boy was I wrong.
I spoke to her, and got a phone number for her son. I then called that number, but decided to try to determine if it was him before I identified myself.
“Yo is this Steven?”
“Yeah who is this”
“Officer Random with the Random Police Department”.
I then went into the details about why I was calling, and ended up getting him to agree to meet us at the police department at noon so we could make sure he was alright and that he wasn’t wanting to harm himself, in lieu of making a missing persons report.
Around 30 minutes later, I got a phone call from the detective. “Hey Officer Random, some detective from the FBI wants to talk to you about the guy in your last call, call this number”
My heart skipped a beat. What in the world? What could they possibly want? Was this guy some most-wanted type person? I ended up calling them, and felt ever more creeped out after I talked to them.
“We understand you’re meeting with Random Citizen today at noon, right? We want to talk to him. We’ll be there too” they told me. I still have no idea how they found that out, but who knows, they’re the FBI. I gave them the phone number I had been given for the guy, and some other information I had collected. Sadly, the guy never showed up, and I began my missing person’s report.
My phone rang again, it was the FBI. “Hey man, we just wanna let you know this guy carries a shotgun in his truck, and may have a gasoline explosive device with him too.” Awesome. That would’ve been great information to have before I invited him to the police department. I told my FTO, and he got a bit wide eyed, and suddenly our work changed from a missing persons report, to an Officer Safety Be-On-The-Lookout (BOLO). Then a little bit later, we got another call from them. This time they told us the guy had a bomb wired to his car and had threatened to blow up any law enforcement that approached, and he had tested one yesterday. “This is getting out of hand, muttered my FTO.” And he was right, I had been working on this same call since 9am, and the rabbit hole kept getting deeper.
Around 4pm, the radio suddenly started going nuts. It turned out the FBI had been tracking the guy’s phone with the number I provided, and county deputies had spotted the car he was reported to be driving.
I couldn’t help but stiffle a smile. We had found him, that hard work had paid off. Another unit and I made our way out into the county, where the deputies had found him. While we were on our way, they ended up pulling the guy over, and holding his car at gunpoint while instructing him to walk slowly back towards the sound of their voice, until they were able to handcuff him.
We arrived shortly after to the two lane country road, with trees overhanging both sides, and a torrential downpour. Complete with a boatload of police cars sitting all over. Man it would have made an amazing picture.
The Explosives Ordinance Disposal team was called, along with a K9 unit. And then the FBI guys showed up. I felt like a little man compared to them. These were the BIG dogs, and they were right in front of me.
In the end, the guy didn’t have an explosives currently with him, but due to the nature of his threats, he was taken into protective custody for mental health evaluation. In all, at least he’s off the streets for a bit.
You don’t realize how common the crazy people are in normal day-to-day life. This job shows you a much different side of society, and I love it.
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