“I flash back to the witnesses telling me that both suspects were together in the car before the stabbing incident occurred and all I can do is ponder for a moment how two men with guns managed to get into a knife fight instead.”
Being a police officer is hurry up and wait. Dispatch sends you a call that sounds urgent and you step on it to get there – only for them to send you an update moments later that it was nothing at all. What initially sounded like a burglary in progress at 3:00 am turns out to be a drunk neighbor pounding on the wrong front door to get inside after guzzling Bud and Cactus Jack all night.
Being a police officer is feast and famine. You can go a month without anything substantially adrenaline spiking to occur or you can be neck deep in the hair-raising, goose-bumping, and heart-pumping cop action moments that most people go a lifetime only seeing play out on their TV screens multiple times in a shift. On those days where you feel ready to deal with just about anything the mean streets have to throw at you, it’s as if sedative has been spewed onto the masses from above by one of those chem-trail jets people like to rave about. Yet, when you’re feeling like a battered dog in need of a vacation, the proverbial crap hits the fan and you’ve got to get yourself into the game with a quickness.
On this night, being a police officer has been waiting and famine – a welcome respite from the month of hurrying to the feast that I’ve been having. For the past several hours, the call volume has been low and the ones I got were routine as can be. I’m tired from a busy couple of weeks of humping calls and lots going on outside of the job – so I’m waiting for 6:30 am to come around so I can head home to crash. As for the famine – I’m enjoying having nothing to eat. I’m simply not hungry. “Units, start for 5050 Wherever Street for a possible stabbing,” cuts through the dead silence of the radio. I’m on my way.
Two units close by respond moments before me and advise over the radio that there is a male lying down on the corner with a large knife wound on his arm. Next, they’re advising a second male is sitting in a car still parked in the lot and witnesses have reported he’s holding a gun. I park my car on the street and run past the man who’s been stabbed to address the threat that’s still out there. It’s a blood bath.
I take cover behind a colleague’s patrol car that’s parked 20 yards or so behind the suspect vehicle and get on the vehicle’s PA system to give commands to the man sitting in the driver seat. “Driver, roll down the window and stick both hands out so we can see them,” I say. He does nothing. I repeat my order, to no avail. I advise the suspect that he’s surrounded and has no other option than to do what I say so that we can all walk away from the incident, but he won’t comply. Moments pass.
Two officers approach the vehicle on the passenger side. I take the driver’s side. Upon my approach, I can see an older male sitting with his head pressed back onto the headrest. His eyes are open and not blinking or responsive. It’s as if he’s staring a thousand miles off into the distance. Then I notice a large hole in his jawline and I can see a pistol resting in his lap in between his hands.
I begin to wonder if he shot himself but then I snap out of it and yell, “He’s got a gun on his lap!” in case the other officers haven’t seen it yet. We all begin to yell for him to put his hands up but he doesn’t move a muscle. I try to open the door only to discover that it is locked. Suddenly, I hear a loud bang that sounds like a gunshot, then another. The passenger side front window’s glass shatters. I jump back thinking I’m about to be shot by friendly crossfire from across the vehicle. “Please don’t let me go out like this,” I think.
A moment later I realize that the loud noise and glass breaking happened because one of the officers on the other side of the vehicle smashed the window with his baton. I wasn’t the only one startled. The suspect raised his arms up into the air and his eyes bulged – but then he put his arms back down on his lap. I’m closer to pulling the trigger than I ever have been in my career. I don’t want to, but I’m not trying to die here tonight.
“Don’t touch that gun!” I yell at the top of my lungs. I reach across my body and remove my own baton with my strong hand still holding my gun on the suspect in case he decides to go out shooting. Two more officers stack up behind me on the driver’s side. I smash the window out and drop the baton on the ground. The suspect flinches and I tell him to raise his arms up and look at me. He does nothing. “I’ve gotta end this,” I think to myself as I make my decision.
I reach in with my left hand and grab the gun out of his lap before dropping it to the ground and kicking it away from the car. I step back while the other officers pull the man out of the car and put him on the ground. “Close call,” I think to myself. There’s blood everywhere.
Officers are arriving from every direction and I’m looking around for something to do. I find a car full of witnesses who have never seen anything like this before in their lives. They’re more amped up than I am. I hand them witness statement forms and pens to write with. Then I watch their trembling hands scribble what they just saw on paper.
By the time I get back over to the car, the paramedics are on scene. They’re advising that the driver has been stabbed over ten times on his body, including the gash on his face that I initially thought might be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Next, the officers that were stacked on the passenger side are telling me there was a second gun on that side’s floorboard. I flash back to the witnesses telling me that both suspects were together in the car before the stabbing incident occurred and all I can do is ponder for a moment how two men with guns managed to get into a knife fight instead. Complete chaos rarely makes sense.
I’ve got blood all over my left hand from grabbing the gun out of the driver’s lap and my heart sinks. Then I feel a burning sensation on my left tricep and see that I’d cut myself on the broken glass window while reaching in. My heart sinks some more. There’s a feeling of dread in my belly as I wash my hands and think about all that blood in the car that could have gotten into my wound.
I walk back to the car and sure enough, there it is all over the broken window – and way too much of it for it to be mine. I spend the remainder of my shift at the hospital getting blood drawn and hoping for the best – a clean blood test for both the perps and for myself. I’m told the test results won’t be back for several hours.
The drive home isn’t fun to say the least. I take a long, hot shower and try to get myself the cleanest I’ve ever been. Then I’m lying down in bed thinking about HIV, Hepatitis-C, and other nasty cooties that I used to think girls had when I was a kid until I fall asleep. I’m awoken around 11:00 am to the news that my blood is clean – another close call.
