Every cop has a laundry list of “holy sh*t” moments throughout a career. The first car wreck teaches you to slow down so you can make it to the call alive. The first foot chase teaches you all about tunnel vision.The first time I tased a suspect, I zapped the hell out of myself because I touched the wire while trying to put the cuffs on.
Cops all go through the same trials and tribulations for the most part, but we all learn different lessons that we take with us into the next shift. Sometimes fate deals the cards and you’re stuck with what you’ve got, unfortunately. You wonder if there was anything that could have been done differently to change it, but it’s futile. Sometimes there is no next shift. Seven years ago, on an unusually frigid Tuesday night in late January, I learned that lesson.
I was fresh out of the academy and being the typical rookie. I showed up way too early for roll-call, had an enthusiasm for the most mundane of police activities, and was probably driving my field training officer crazy with my neverending line of questioning from the beginning to the end of our watches together. Like most, I just couldn’t wait to get out on the road and police the streets of Atlanta.
We broke roll-call and walked out to the streets. That was the last time I ever saw Smiles.
I was assigned to my FTO on Zone 5 morning watch – 10:30pm to 6:30am – along with a buddy of mine who had his own assigned FTO, but he had to sick out that fateful night. It just so happened that my FTO was off as well, so I thought I’d be riding with my academy mate’s trainer, as it only made sense. We’ll call her Smiles because, well, you get it.
I didn’t get to know her very well in the short time I was over there, but Smiles had been around the block a few times. With nearly 20 years on, she had done it all from Honor Guard to RED DOG—APD’s notoriously aggressive crime-fighting unit. The acronym stood for Run Every Drug Dealer Out of Georgia, and perps feared them.
Smiles had a college-age daughter that she was very proud of, retirement was fast approaching, and here she was in the final stretch of a life of public service mentoring the new crop of officers who would carry the torch into the future. She had a lot to smile about.
When roll-call came, I was sure I’d be riding with Smiles, since my trainer and her trainee both had the night off. The watch sergeant had other plans, and I wound up being paired with a young officer who had less than a year on. This actually came as a relief to me to be riding with someone my own age for a change. We broke roll-call and walked out to the streets. That was the last time I ever saw Smiles.
My partner, Bam, was still just as eager as I was to go to work. He said something about not having much to teach me, but that we were going to have some fun. We both laughed and took the road ready to make something happen. It was a busy night, and calls were pending out of the gate. Our first was an alarm at a business downtown that turned out to be false. Bam let me know to pull the call in so we could be sent the next one, but I didn’t get the chance to.
The routine start to the night was suddenly turned upside down as our dispatcher came over the radio with a sense of urgency in her voice. “All units, signal 63. Civilian advising officer down on I-85.” We ran back to the car as the dispatcher tried to raise Smiles over the radio. No response.
Bam and I were way on the other side of the zone, but we were en route anyway. Everyone was. The radio silence was deafening as Smiles was repeatedly checked on to no avail. Veteran officers don’t just forget about their radios like that. As the first officers arrived on scene, the silence broke.
“Speed up the 4! She’s low!” one officer screamed in a higher pitch than I’d heard from him previously. “4” meant ambulance and “low” meant that Smiles had little or no pulse. You wished you could go back in time to the silence, but what was done was done.
Smiles died on scene that night. Her final call was to work a traffic accident on Atlanta’s main highway. A drunk driver on her way to a nightclub after a pre-game drinking session struck Smiles, pinned her in between two vehicles, and literally cut her in half. Shocked ain’t the word.
When a fellow officer dies in the line of duty, cops come face to face with our own mortality.
As the chaplaincy units, command staff, and a who’s who of the upper echelon of the Atlanta Police Department converged on the precinct, I watched the reactions of my fellow officers and took mental notes. Some of these men and women had known her for two decades. My FTO rolled out of bed and appeared in the first clothes he could find after someone awoke him from sleep and broke the news. Some cried, some stared at the ground, and there were hugs. Everyone dealt with it in their own way.
When a fellow officer dies in the line of duty, cops come face to face with our own mortality. We think about how it could have been us and we wonder how our family would get by if we got taken out instead. The deceased officer’s family becomes our family. We all take it hard.
I’ve driven home at the end of a watch thinking, “That could have been my ass” more times than I’d like.
I never really understood why I rode with Bam that night instead of Smiles. They told me they decided to give her a break from training for the evening, and I’ve since learned firsthand that training rookies can be exhausting, so I get it. I’ve spent quite a bit of time wondering how things would have played out if I rode with her that night anyway.
Part of me thought I could have saved her even if just by being there to keep her tied up someplace out of danger from the speeding car. Maybe I’d have been standing there next to her and we both would have been hit. Perhaps she would have cheated death if I was the one driving—taking just a single moment longer to get on scene might have allowed the time for the drunk to pass. The what-ifs are never ending.
Maybe it’s just superstition, but I’ve always felt like I had a guardian angel with me that night. I don’t know why I was protected and Smiles wasn’t.
Seven years have passed and I’m still wary of the interstate. I don’t like it out there, from the way the winds of passing cars shake your vehicle to the way people fail to get over a lane for emergency vehicles. I still think about Smiles’ daughter and what she’d be doing with herself in retirement.
Maybe it’s just superstition, but I’ve always felt like I had a guardian angel with me that night. I don’t know why I was protected and Smiles wasn’t. What I do know is that tomorrow is never promised, and I’ve driven home at the end of a watch thinking, “That could have been my ass” more times than I’d like. If there’s one thing Smiles taught me, though, it’s that sometimes the greatest danger is just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
