Wednesday. It’s otherwise known as “hump day” and is ironically notorious for its mundaneness. Wednesday isn’t despised or dreaded like its cousin, Monday, nor is it longed-for and exalted like Friday. There’s no reason to hold onto it tightly and hope it never ends like a “Sunday Funday,” nor does it carry any of the romanticized hopefulness of a wide-open Saturday. For most of us, it’s just a day to get through or even look beyond—the halfway point in the daily grind of our work week to be turned over like a blank page in a book.
For myself, and about three quarters of a million police officers working the streets in this country, some Wednesdays can be just that. You go to work, answer your calls, get through to the finish, and head home to regroup before having to do it all again tomorrow, just to be one step closer to the next set of days off—but some Wednesdays morph into something a little grittier than that.
The shift starts out fast with calls piling up city-wide. I cut my meal short and head over to the local Guitar Center for a fraud in progress call. “Another fraud call,” I think to myself as I stuff a grilled chicken club into my mouth and navigate rush-hour traffic, feeling uninspired. Upon arrival, I’m inhaling the last bit of it and observing one of my colleagues standing by with our suspect as some young kid in the Kia parked close by observes me being a sloppy sandwich-eating pig. Whatever, I’m hungry.
It turns out that our guy was trying to sell a stolen Les Paul back to the same Guitar Center location it had originally been purchased from a year ago. Good record-keeping makes our job a hell of a lot easier. I thank the manager for helping us out and tell him to feel good about it because, once they’re gone, most victims don’t often get to lay eyes on the prized possessions stolen from them. I glance over at the acoustic guitar room for a sec and feel tempted to go mess around but take a mental note of the ukuleles displayed on the wall next to me instead, and tell myself I’ll be back to get one before too long.
Back outside, a short investigation is conducted before our perp is put into custody and searched for weapons and contraband. He’s relieved of a loaded Ruger LCP .380 caliber pistol with a serial number that comes back, you guessed it—stolen. It’s a good arrest, and the drugs, electronics, multiple loaded firearms, and tools commonly used to break into cars found inside of his vehicle make it an even better one. After a mountain of paperwork, we’re all back to patrolling the road and answering 911 calls. “Radio to 211,” I hear from the receiver clipped to my left shoulder: “Disorderly Person at the T-Mobile.” I’m en route.
The disorderly guy is gone when I arrive, but the shaken twenty-year-old girl working the store tells me that he’s been there two days in a row acting belligerently and demanding a free phone. Naturally, she feels unsafe closing the store with him hanging around. I check the gas station next door and there he is. I can tell he’s homeless but he’s new to the area—just one of many new emigres from Atlanta, a city on a break from doing nothing about their homeless problem and currently making concerted efforts to push these folks out and into those smaller locales they share a border with, in preparation for the Superbowl they’ll be hosting this year. Think of it as a major American city’s version of tidying up the house quick before having guests over for a dinner party.
I diplomatically explain the wonders of free market capitalism to my newfound nomadic friend as he shoves two fully-loaded hot dogs into his mouth the same way I devoured my chicken sandwich earlier. “Listen brother. You can shop at Verizon, AT&T, or Metro PCS, but you’re not allowed back at this T-Mobile or I’m gonna have to take you to jail on criminal trespass charges.” This is something I neither want to waste my time nor his on, but it is what it is. He licks his fingers clean and hisses something incoherent about T-Mobile’s phones being crap before agreeing to leave and not come back.
I return to my patrol car and now he’s asking me for money. I look over to the juicy Granny Smith apple that I’d brought from home and been looking forward to eating. Oh, what the hell. I offer it to him, but he turns his nose up at it and tells me it doesn’t look good to eat. I give him three sticks of gum instead and drive off feeling as if somehow I’d won as I sink my teeth into my apple. Ten minutes later, I’m being dispatched to a fleabag motel up the road because the picky eater is now roaming their halls and refusing to leave. I arrive, and he’s gone. But instantaneously I see him soliciting money across the street at the bank instead. It’s final warning time. I’m not going to be doing this all night.
I approach respectfully, but the man’s got a different attitude now. There are claims of harassment coming from his mouth now as he cowishly chews the gum I’d just given him. I tell him to take a hike and not stop until he gets into Atlanta. He curses me, but at least he does it with minty-fresh breath. Ok, it feels like a Wednesday, I think to myself. I don’t see him again on this night. Atlanta has him now.
The next call comes in and it’s a report of a stolen auto at the local Pizza Hut. Yes, people steal pizza delivery cars. The victim got out to deliver a pie, left the car running, and came back to an empty parking spot. Go figure. I put out a BOLO for a Toyota Corolla with a Pizza Hut sign attached to the roof and depart the manager’s office tucked away behind the counter, only to walk up on a guy having a meltdown in the dining area over how one of their pizza guys sideswiped him and drove off. The delivery driver cringes as he hears the news that his car has not only been stolen but involved in an accident as well. For me, it’s one report for the stolen auto, another for the hit-and-run, and a third for the accident report, all generated off one call. Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday…
It’s just after midnight and things have slowed down considerably. As I make my rounds and sip on some coffee with the windows down to stay alive, the silence of the radio is broken: “210, 211, 220 – start for a pedestrian hit by a MARTA bus.” The average public transportation bus can weigh anywhere between 25 and 40 tons. This won’t be pretty.
I’m the second officer on scene, arriving while my supervisor is advising the victim is deceased. I get out on foot and understand why. There’s a trail of blood and flesh smeared into the third lane spanning a good 20 yards. I follow it to a body twisted like a pretzel and the first thing on my mind is to get a look at the poor sap’s face, to see if I know him. Then it dawns on me. I’m not really looking at anything recognizable anyway, so I stare at the mess on the asphalt wondering what organs I’m looking at. Sarge gets a linen sheet and we cover the body. I spend the next half hour going through a roll and a half of crime scene tape, cordoning off the area from gawkers and media looking for a juicy story.
No less than four times I’m asked by Hispanic onlookers if the victim was “white or Mexican.” I’m trying to understand why the question is being asked and if the answer dictates how great of a tragedy this is. I decide to listen to my better angels and conclude that it’s simply an awkward way of trying to determine if the exploded body in the road could possibly be one of their friends or loved ones. Still, this is a phenomenon I’ve never experienced before.
Our best eye-witnesses are a homeless couple who appeared to be living out of their car and had the unfortunate experience of traveling behind the bus at the time of the accident. They’re trapped inside the crime scene and everyone realizes they’re going to be there for a while. My supervisor asks me to walk over to the closed Domino’s Pizza across the highway to see if they have any throwaway food we can hook these guys up with as they fill out statements and wait until released. I return with three pizzas and find twisted humor in watching the man chow down on a slice nonchalantly just a few yards from the carnage. Gallows humor—what else can you do?
It turned out that the victim had bolted across the six-lane highway and begun banging on the back driver-side window of the double-long accordion bus to get it to stop for him. Somehow, the man fell forward under its massive rear wheel and the rest was, well, you know. I can’t imagine he felt any pain going out the way he did. When I lay eyes on the bus driver, he’s on shaky legs. Doubled-over in disbelief over his twist of fate, I try to console him. It’s quite obvious that there was nothing he could have done to prevent it so I tell him he’s feeling the way he’s feeling because he’s a good person, though it probably falls on deaf ears.
After wearing out my usefulness on this scene, I make myself available for calls while some units hang back for the next four hours to go through the motions before the roadway can be reopened. It’s the second worst pedestrian fatality I’ve seen in my seven years on the job, but I realize how desensitized I’ve become as I go grab a bite to eat not long after.
The next four hours go by uneventful until about 4:30 a.m., when a call involving a fight comes up at another one of our seedy motels. A strung-out prostitute is bloody and beaten by a drunk man who claims her friend ran off with $1,300 in cash and his cell phone. The motel room smells like body odor and sex with blood dripped on the floor and sheets. It’s good old-fashioned debauchery, and I feel relieved when a day-watch early car calls into service and saves me from having to stay over for a few hours to work the case. It’s time to drive home and I decide that this “hump day” won’t be just a blank page in a book…to turn toward the next.
