I’ve finally released my third novel, Safe From the War, as an ebook on Amazon. Print and audio versions to follow (hopefully soon). This book is the prequel to Line in the Valley, and explains what my protagonist Jerry Nunez experienced in Houston before he was sent to fight on the Texas border.

In one day it’s received a few five-star reviews. Not a bad start.

Short excerpt:

“Nunez approached the door, watching the window closely for shadows against the glass, eyes peering through blinds, anything. He saw and heard nothing. The door had no windows, and dirt was streaked across it at waist level.

Everything else was clean. Dirt on the door didn’t fit. Nunez pulled the flashlight from his belt and strobed the door with it.

Explaining the Unexplainable; The Tamir Rice Shooting

Please let me know what you think. Thanks guys.

Chris Hernandez is a 20 year police officer, former Marine and currently serving National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com and has published two military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve and Line in the Valley, through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at [email protected] or on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve).

Again, I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS ESSAY. Furthermore, I have no way of verifying that the author is who he says he is, or that these incidents truly occurred. But his feelings and experiences certainly ring true.

I’ve written several posts about my experiences as a street cop. They can be found at https://chrishernandezauthor.com/category/what-police-work-is-really-like/. There’s one I haven’t written, about having to leave a screaming three year old boy with his worthless mother and her piece of crap ex-con boyfriend. The boyfriend hadn’t broken the law, but he hated the boy and constantly scared the hell out of him because the boy’s father belonged to a rival gang. The mother refused to let her sister take the boy out of the apartment. And I had to drive away and leave that little boy there. It’s not something I like to think about.

One of the stories this author tells reminded me a lot about driving away from that apartment while that little boy cried in fear. I understand why the author feels so guilty about it.

If you have any feedback I will pass it along to the author. Thanks,

Chris

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One of the reasons that police officers tend to be so passionate in police-related discussion threads is because they have personalized their jobs. Police work is not some YouTube video they watch, theorize about, and then go on about their regular life. For them, it’s not theory. Many police officers tend to define themselves by their jobs and their experiences in policing. Many counselors and LE trainers will tell you that it’s wrong and misguided to do so (“you” being cops in general). They’re right about that too. But such warnings rarely work in the real world. When a cop hears people earnestly criticizing police without knowing all the facts, it stings for some very personal reasons. When we hear others second guessing us, we are prone to simply saying that our critics don’t know what they are talking about. We get angry about it even though we probably shouldn’t. Please let me try to explain why.

This a very small sample of some real-world situations I have personally had to handle while serving as a police officer. Nothing is exaggerated. My experiences are neither unique nor special.

We received a call from a concerned citizen who stated that her friend may have done “something bad” to her family. Her friend had left her a rambling voicemail about “ending it all” and sending her family to Heaven. We responded to the house and made entry with our pistols drawn. We performed a slow search of the house and began to find bodies inside. Our search and the subsequent investigation revealed that the woman had taken a .38 revolver and murdered her husband by shooting him in the head as he slept. There was a perfect hole in his left ear where she missed his skull and put a bullet through his ear and into the bed. The other bullet had landed dead center in his skull and killed him while he was taking a nap. Her daughter in the next room had obviously heard the shots and had piled her clothes and bedding on top of her bed and then attempted to hide under the pile. The women then went into her daughter’s room, pulled the clothing out of the way, and shot her daughter two times in the face. The girl did not die immediately. She lingered for hours. The mound of pink foam that collected on her face and throat was evidence of her labored breathing that lasted for some time before she finally died. After shooting her daughter, the woman went into her bedroom and sat on the bed. She reloaded the revolver from a small box of ammunition. She fired a single “test round” into the ceiling (this is common in suicides). She then fired a single round into the side of her own head and died on the bed. So there we are searching a house and finding a scene with three dead people…a whole family dead. And we’re supposed to act like everything is routine and fine, especially because there’s so much media there with their high-quality cameras and super long lenses. We secure the scene, call CID, call the ME, and do our reports. We help load bodies into the Meat Wagon…yeah that’s what we call it….and then we go home. The man died quick but I try to forget what that girl’s face looked like.

We receive a call of a single car accident near the High School. The call notes state that a car struck a pedestrian. By pure luck (either good or bad) I am literally around the corner when the call comes out. My response time is about 10 seconds. When I arrive on the scene, I observe a small 4-door import vehicle at an intersection. There is a 15-year-old female laying in the street. The amount of blood coming out of her head is the same size as the flow of water that comes out of my water hose when I turn it on. Except this is bright, red blood flowing out of her head in a stream that is about ¾” of an inch in diameter. I can smell the blood. The odor is thick in the air and it flows in a thick, viscous stream on the pavement. She looks me in the eye and says, “It hurts,” and then she dies right in front of me. I maintain my composure and then I find out who the driver is. It’s a 16-year-old girl who just got her license. She mistook the gas pedal for the brake pedal when the victim stepped out into the roadway and she panicked when the car accelerated instead of slowing down. I look at the windshield on the car and see a large tuft of hair and scalp lodged in the spiderwebbed glass. I realize that it’s from the dead 15-year-old girl. The boy who had been walking with the dead girl just before she got hit has speckled blood all over his face and he doesn’t even know it. He was just a young man trying to hold her hand and maybe sneak a kiss. He asks me, “Is she going to die?” I tell him the truth because I owe him that much. Later, as I direct traffic and watch that girl’s blood literally run down the gutter and into the street drain, a crowd of citizens gathers nearby. One loud-mouthed man in the crowd says, “This kind of stuff wouldn’t happen if these cops would do their jobs.” My first instinct is to leave my post, walk over to him, and cave his ignorant face in. But I don’t. I show no emotion. I hold my anger inside because I also want to cry for the girl and her family. I am the last person she ever saw on this earth and there was nothing I could do for her.

We respond to a call at a Section 8 apartment where a baby is not breathing. It turns out that while the mother was earning minimum wage at Wendy’s, her Mexican Mafia boyfriend got tired of the crying baby. He pulled the 3 month old baby out of the crib, raised her over his head, and threw her on the floor as hard as he could. The fall fractured her skull, shattered her pelvis, broke her pliable ribs, and killed her. As we investigate further, we find there’s another bedroom with a hasp lock on the outside. Entering the bedroom, we find two more girls in there. They look like they are 2 and 4 years old. We later learn they are actually 4 and 6 years old but they are malnourished and under-stimulated. They are wearing filthy, stained panties and nothing else. The room is void of toys or decorations of any kind. There are two little beds on either side of the room and the whole filthy room stinks of urine. There are screws in the window so that it cannot be opened. A search of the room reveals that there is another hasp lock on the closet door. I look into the closet and a chill comes over me when I realize that Mexican Mafia boyfriend was keeping these little girls prisoner inside that closet for God knows how long. There are scratch marks all around the doorknob inside the closet where they tried to get out. The closest reeks of human waste and the carpet is matted. As I help them get dressed so they can go with Child Protective Services, the younger girl clings to my arm. She squeezes my right arm as hard as she can and will not let go. The other girl lets me tie the three little bows on the back of her blue dress and then she starts jumping up and down in pure excitement while she asks me over and over and over again, “Are we going for a ride? Are we going for a ride?” It’s all I can do to maintain my composure. This 6-year-old girl is the same size as my own 4-year-old daughter. No matter how much I drink, and no matter how far I ride my motorcycle, I cannot shake the effect this girl has had on me. I was powerless to stop it. I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t solve it. I used to weep, shake, and cry as I thought about how happy those girls were to be taken out of there. I am later ashamed that I did not try to adopt them. I curse myself for not trying harder to take them both into my own home even though I know that I could not afford to take on two more children in addition to my own. Even as I type these words, I feel intense guilt for not taking those girls home with me….as if that would ever be allowed. Every time I drink too much, I think about those two little girls imprisoned in that room and their dead sister in the room next door. But I’m a tough cop who’s not supposed to admit to those emotions. I later learned that the mother gave up all parental rights to the two girls and they were put in the foster care system.

I’m working as a Sergeant on evening-shift Patrol. A citizen calls in and says that he lives across the street from a house where we just responded to a disturbance. He says that he watched as the officers confronted his neighbor who is normally a nice guy. He explains the horror that he experienced as he watched the police use a Taser on his neighbor and he angrily describes the screams that he heard from his neighbor as he was Tasered and then arrested. He uses words and phrases like, “torture,” “excessive use of force,” and “Nazis,” to describe his perspective of the arrest. He says that one of the officers used profanity while wrestling in the mud with his neighbor and that he is offended that his wife heard this profanity from a member of what used to be a professional police department. He explains that he wants to file a formal complaint on the officer who used the profanity and every officer who was party to using the Taser on his neighbor. He states that he is concerned with the quality of officers that we are hiring these days. There’s no way the citizen can possibly know that his normally nice neighbor beat his wife’s face in with an angel figurine and that she will require major reconstructive surgery to ever look normal again. All he knows is that he saw some unpleasantness in the front yard of his neighbor’s property and it didn’t look right to him.

My mind begins to wander as the citizen continues speaking and repeating himself for the fifth time. I wonder if he and his family are healthy. I can’t help it but I think about whether or not he’s ever had someone else’s blood on him. I think about how my rifle has felt in my hands on critical calls and I wonder if he has ever been fired upon or had to return fire. I think about the meth freak who shot at us with a 12 gauge shotgun a few weeks ago. I listen to the citizen rant and rave and rage against the Department and I think about how just last week, I tried to talk to an 8-year old boy while the brains and blood of that boy’s father dripped from the ceiling and onto my uniform. His father put his brains on the ceiling with a .357 Magnum which he fired into his mouth as the boy watched. The boy asked me if his Daddy was going to be OK even as his father’s blood was spreading across the floor behind me. I can still smell the dead man’s brains and blood and I can still see the face of that boy as I tried to tell him that his Daddy was gone. I try as hard as I can to take the citizen’s complaint seriously but there is a part of me that wants to reach through the phone and strangle him with all the strength I have in my hands. I listen patiently and speak in a monotone, emotionless voice. I take his name, and promise him that I will address his complaint with the officer, which I later do. There are times when I wish with all my heart that the biggest problem I had to deal with was watching some cop use a Taser on a non-compliant suspect. I would subject myself to a thousand Taser shots if I never had to see that little girl’s face again. I would plead guilty to almost any offense and throw myself on the mercy of any court if I could just get that little girl’s voice out of my head with her little child-sing-songy voice saying, “Are we going for a ride? Are we going for a ride?”

Have I personalized some things? Yes, I have. It’s impossible not to. Am I normal? Hell no, I am not normal. I’m pretty far from normal. Shortly after taking that last complaint, I spent the next three years overseeing investigations of aggravated sexual assaults against children, burnings, cuttings, electrical cord whippings, child pornography, beatings of almost unbelievable magnitude, and mothers whoring out their 10 year old daughters, among other wonderful things. At the end of the day, I would go home and just sit quietly for a while and look at my normal, healthy kids as they ate or played.

These days, I occupy a slightly higher position in the Department and I’m almost done with my Master’s degree. I pore over peer-reviewed, scholarly articles and I write formal papers for school. I deal in facts and figures and spreadsheets nowadays while also overseeing the Training Unit. I am asked for my opinions on policy issues. I attend meetings with upper-level administrators in aseptic rooms where everything is under control and there is no hint of danger. Still, the faces of the dead and the smell of their blood are always with me. Even so, it’s not the dead I fixate on, it’s the living. I think about the hand that others have been dealt and how there’s nothing I can do to change it. I think about how those children will turn out in 20 years and how so many cops out there are just trying their best to hold everything together in a sea of entropy.

I carry my own weight. Whether you want to believe it or not, I also carry your weight sometimes. All cops carry the weight of others because that’s one of the things we are paid to do, even if it’s not listed on a civil service job description anywhere. I consider myself a servant. Ultimately…that’s what police officers are. They’re servants.

I have nightmares sometimes but my experience is not unique. It’s commonplace among police officers. That’s why some cops get irritated when citizens suggest that we are overpaid or that we don’t deserve the pension that was promised to us after 25 years of service, or criticize things that are only theory for them. It’s not theory for us. It’s not theory for me. I have the scars on my knuckles and my soul to prove it.

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Thanks very much to the anonymous author for that insight. I hope everyone who read it learned something worthwhile.

Chris Hernandez is a 20 year police officer, former Marine and currently serving National Guard soldier with over 25 years of military service. He is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and also served 18 months as a United Nations police officer in Kosovo. He writes for BreachBangClear.com, Iron Mike magazine and has published two military fiction novels, Proof of Our Resolve and Line in the Valley, through Tactical16 Publishing. He can be reached at [email protected] or on his Facebook author page at https://www.facebook.com/ProofofOurResolve?ref=bookmarks.

http://www.amazon.com/Line-Valley-Chris-Hernandez-ebook/dp/B00HW1MA2G/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
http://www.amazon.com/Proof-Our-Resolve-Chris-Hernandez-ebook/dp/B0099XMR1E/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=07TX4R097J3VKCTVCN2C

So there I was, minding my own business, on night shift patrol in a deserted, half-industrial half-residential area. This was around 2 a.m. on a boring weeknight. The area I was patrolling was full of illegal aliens, drunks, drug addicts, prostitutes (both voluntary and trafficked), gangsters and stolen cars. But this was a quiet night.

Because it was so quiet and had been for hours, I decided to check a reported trouble spot. Some residents said a group of rowdy gangster types were hanging out at a particular house, drinking, partying and making noise all hours of the night. I had checked that spot several times and seen nothing, but since I really had nothing else to do I headed that way again.

I turned my patrol car’s headlights off before I reached the street. When I turned the corner, I saw several young men in the street on the next block. Even from a distance I could see that they wore baggy t-shirts with sagging pants, the standard gangster uniform. They weren’t doing anything obviously wrong, but my gut reaction was that they were up to no good.

As I got closer I saw more of them in the problem house’s front yard. They weren’t doing anything either, just watching me. Beer cans and bottles were scattered around the yard, but nobody was making noise. In fact, everyone got real quiet, real fast.

Ahead of me several guys quietly slipped out of the street into the front yard. One man, however, didn’t move. He had his back to me, hands out of view in front of his torso, standing almost directly in the middle of the street. I watched the other men scoot away as I crept closer to their friend. Everybody but him was watching me intently.

The saggy-pants man in the street was almost but not quite in the way. I’d have to swerve just slightly so I wouldn’t hit him with my mirror. I kept coasting down the street, and figured he’d see me and move. But he kept standing with his back to me, hands in front, not budging. The bumper of my car slowly passed the man, but he still didn’t move. He was only about a foot away from my fender. When my side mirror was just about even with him, he suddenly realized I was there.

He spun violently toward me. Liquid splashed on my window. I recoiled and jammed on the brakes in surprise. A shocked look crossed his face as he realized I was a cop. And that he had just peed on a police car.

He spun back the way he had been facing, and kept peeing. I put the car in park. He shot quick sideways glances at me as I waited for him to finish. He had drunk a lot of beer, so it took some time. Or maybe having a cop car parked beside him gave him stage fright. Whatever the reason, it seemed like he peed for five minutes. At one point he casually gave a manly nod, as if we were two strangers passing on the sidewalk. Eventually he ran dry, fumbled around trying to put everything away and zipped his pants.

You might not believe this, but I actually thought this was funny. I didn’t think the guy meant to pee on my car, it was an honest accident. Sure, he shouldn’t have been peeing in the street, but no little old ladies were around to get offended. Fortunately my window had been almost all the way up, so I didn’t get sprinkled. I expected the guy to apologize like crazy, then we’d laugh it off and I’d leave him with a warning. No harm, no party foul, no jail.

I popped my door, made sure I wasn’t about to step in a yellow puddle, got out of my car and asked the guy, “Man, are you finally done?”

The guy glared at me like I had just fondled his mother. “What the f**k, man? Why you f**king with me?”

No harm. Major party foul. He went to jail.

And I still think the whole thing was funny as hell.

Available in print and as an ebook from Amazon.com and Tactical16.com. Available electronically from iTunes/iBooks and Barnesandnoble.com.

https://chrishernandezauthor.com/2013/06/17/another-excerpt-from-a-future-novel/

https://chrishernandezauthor.com/2013/07/01/safe-from-the-war-chapter-2/

https://chrishernandezauthor.com/2013/07/29/safe-from-the-war-chapter-3/

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“204 dispatch, I’m arriving.” Sergeant Tillis, one of the few patrol sergeants Nunez thought was worth a damn, pulled off Hanley into the parking lot. He drove low and slow, only in a hurry when an officer was screaming for help. Tillis rolled to a stop behind Nunez’s car, popped his door and gracefully swung all his six foot, five inches and 290 pounds out of the driver’s seat.

Nunez took his eyes off the bottom floor of the apartment only long enough to recognize Tillis walking toward him, then turned his head back into the doorway and said “Hi, Mel.” Mel was not his real name, of course, but there was no other name for an old, tall, fat white guy named Tillis.

“Whatcha got, Jerry?”

“Well, it’s a combination stabbing, slashing, attempted decapitation, triple nut cutting and aggravated jaywalking all rolled into one.” Nunez kept his eyes inside the apartment as he talked, paying particular attention to the stairwell entrance. “All my years of police experience lead me to believe that something illegal happened inside the apartment. I’m not good enough to be a detective or anything though, so that’s probably wrong.”

Tillis laughed quietly at the last statement, knowing how pissed off Nunez had been at not being selected when he had applied for Homicide Division two years earlier. “Spare me the whining, tell me facts, Jerry.”

“The complainant’s in the kitchen, slashed and stabbed and head almost cut off,” Nunez said. “Little girl, looks like a teenager. I barely got a look at the suspect through the window, I’m pretty sure he’s upstairs. Take a look at the blood, there’s the pool in the center of the room here and trails leading to the kitchen and upstairs. The only way he could have gotten out is through the upstairs window, but the screen’s still on it and there’s no blood around it. He could have gotten into the attic and crossed to another apartment that way too.”

Tillis waited a few seconds before saying, “Hmmm…it’s been a long time since we had this kind of thing around here, maybe we’ll get ourselves a serial murderer or something interesting like that.” Meaning, Well this is different. All we usually see in this district are gangster homiecides and the occasional, run-of-the-mill domestic murder.

“Wait til you see her, sarge,” Nunez said. “She’s shredded.”

“Sounds like it. Hopefully the dog will get in there and eat his ass before we hook him up. Hang on, I’m going to try to call him out.”

Nunez waited while Tillis bellowed Houston Police, come outside now into the apartment. Nobody on the scene expected the suspect to come out, but they always had to make the show. Just in case it turned into a shooting and some lawyer wound up asking them, Are you sure you did everything you could to avoid a violent confrontation with the suspect?

Calhoun waited until they were all sure nobody was coming outside and said “I hope he fucking offs himself when we find him. Maybe with a 12 gauge. I want to see his head explode. I can take some of his brains home afterward.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Nunez said. “Usual deal sarge, dog goes in first and we hold what he clears?”

“Sure, unless Jonesy wants something different. He might be worried about his dog getting stabbed,” Tillis said.

Calhoun muttered, “Oh yeah, we don’t want the dog to get stabbed. I guess we should go in first then, the dog’s training and insurance costs more than ours. I’ll just take my vest and gun belt off and go in blindfolded too.”

“Eddie, I hope you don’t whine that much when we actually go inside,” Tillis said. “In fact, you can wait outside and cover the window. We wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

Calhoun’s face tensed but he didn’t reply. Just like every other officer on night shift in North Houston, Tillis knew thought Calhoun was a loudmouth prick. Nunez was probably the only officer on the shift who would have ever chosen Calhoun to be his backup on a scene, but other officers thought he was such an asshole they couldn’t have cared less about Calhoun’s tactical proficiency.

Jones pulled into the complex parking lot. Grey haired and black, he got out with his short leash in his hand and opened the back door, hooking the leash onto his big Belgian Malinois before letting him out of the back seat. Nunez and Tillis waved him over, and Nunez explained the situation to Jones while Tillis stood quietly to the side and Calhoun sulked in silence. Jones asked who was going inside the apartment with him for the search of the first floor.

“Calhoun, go tell Mata to come here so he can cover K9’s back,” Tillis ordered, “then you take a position at the corner, and keep one eye on the front door after we make entry.”

Calhoun holstered his pistol in disgust, gave Tillis a hateful look and walked toward Hanley. Nunez took a quick look at him as he was leaving, and for the first time noticed that Calhoun had tailored his uniform sleeves, making them tighter in order to show off his upper arms. A few seconds later Mata walked quickly to the doorway, smiling and holding his shotgun. “Boy, you sure pissed Calhoun off, sarge.”

“Aww, darn,” Tillis said. “Johnny, you’re cover for Jones, stay on him and watch his back. We’ll be in as soon as he says so.”

“Got it, sarge.”

“Okay, here we go,” Jones said. “HOUSTON POLICE K9, COME OUTSIDE NOW! HOUSTON POLICE K9, COME OUTSIDE NOW OR MY DOG WILL BITE YOU!”

Jones waited a few seconds, then let his dog bound forward to the end of his leash and followed him inside. Mata entered right on his ass, while Tillis and Nunez covered from the doorway. The dog sniffed the pool of blood on the floor, followed the trail of blood a short distance toward the kitchen, turned and followed the trail the other way toward the stairs, then started growling and pulling on his leash, trying to get to the stairwell. Jones yanked him back toward the kitchen and led him gingerly through the doorway. Mata went in at their backs, and Nunez knew Jones would be very carefully maneuvering his dog around the body to clear the kitchen, balancing the need to search every possible hiding place in the room with the need to keep the crime scene from being contaminated. There was a very real possibility that in the near future, some asshole defense lawyer would tell a jury something like You all heard the officer himself admit that he contaminated the crime scene by putting his dog into that room. Don’t you think that a dog, a big police dog, drooling all over a crime scene ruins it? Don’t you think that dog could have wiped off the real killer’s DNA with those big paws? If you agree with me on this, and I know you all do, you have no choice but to acquit my client. For god’s sake, let this innocent man get back to his family! Hasn’t he suffered enough at the hands of the police already? And some fucktard on the jury would buy it. Man, that’s true! I think I saw it on CSI once, an animal got into a crime scene and it like made a false DNA match or something.

After two minutes Jones and Mata walked back out of the kitchen. Jones looked at Tillis and Nunez, raised an eyebrow and shook his head in disbelief before carrying on the search. Mata was pale and looked like he was about to puke. Despite their best efforts, both officers had stepped in blood in the kitchen and along with the dog left bloody footprints in their wake as they walked into the living room. The dog pulled toward the stairwell again, and Jones directed him toward the deep corner of the room, where the doors to the closet and bathroom were. Both were clear.

After Nunez and Tillis entered the apartment, Jones looked at them and said, “Jesus Christ. I hope this sorry fuck is in here, and I hope he has a weapon and refuses to drop it.” Nunez and Tillis both nodded in agreement. Mata, still looking like he was holding back a gallon of vomit, kept his mouth shut and his eyes and shotgun on the stairwell.

“Well, let’s do this,” Jones said to Mata. “Sarge, you two should stay down here until we get to the top of the stairs. No point in having all four of us jammed up in the stairwell if it turns into a shooting.”

“Sure thing, Jonesy.”

Jones said to Mata, “If he pops up at the top of the stairs with a gun you better not accidentally shoot my dog,” and then moved around the corner into the stairwell. Mata stuck to his right side. They moved up the stairs slowly, with the dog straining on the leash, leading the way. Mata had his shotgun in his shoulder, muzzle pointed to the top of the stairwell, thumb on the safety and finger alongside the trigger guard, tensed and ready to fire. Bloody footprints marked every step, and blood was streaked along the wall for a few feet on the right side of the stairwell.

About five steps from the top, the dog started growling and pulling toward the second floor. At the top of the stairs they could only see a blank wall; because of the window that faced Hanley, Nunez knew there had to be a room to the right. The dog pulled to the left when they reached the last step, and Nunez lost sight of him as he moved, growling and ready to attack, around the left corner. Jones stopped Mata at the top of the stairs and motioned for Nunez and Tillis to come up.

“He’s in the room across the hallway,” Jones whispered as they arrived at the landing. “I need Mata with me and one of you to cover our backs when we go in.”

“I got your backs.” Tillis said. He shifted to the right and eased in to the spot Mata had been holding.

Most of the blood had been rubbed from the suspect’s shoes as he walked up the stairs, but faint bloody footprints were still visible leading to the room across the hallway. The door was closed, like all the others in the upstairs hallway, and there was blood smeared all around the door handle. Jones crept across the hallway and took a position left of the doorway. He had to strain hard to keep his dog from jumping on the door, but to the dog’s credit it never barked, just growled and choked itself on its collar.

Mata quickly moved to the right side of the doorway and shifted his shotgun to a high ready position, right hand on the pistol grip and left hand on the pump, the muzzle even with his eyes. Nunez crept to the left and took up a position beside Jones, watching the left side of the hallway. Tillis stayed at the stairwell, watching the officers as they prepared to enter the room.

Jones whispered to Mata. Mata reached slowly across the door and tried the door handle. It was unlocked. Mata looked up expectantly at Jones, and Jones nodded to him through narrowed eyes. Mata turned the door handle all the way and pushed it just enough to make sure it would open, then hesitated again, making sure he wasn’t going to move before everyone was ready.

In a flash Mata shoved the door open as hard as he could. Before the door could bounce back off the wall Jones’ dog was in the doorway, barking like a raving beast and spraying saliva through the air. An accented voice shrieked “Dog out my house! Dog out my house!” while Mata screamed “DROP THE FUCKING KNIFE, MOTHERFUCKER! DROP THE FUCKING KNIFE!”, and Jones screamed unintelligibly in Dutch at his dog to keep him from breaking free and charging the suspect. Nunez added to the chaos by screaming “YOU NEED ME IN THERE?” over his shoulder while Tillis calmly waited for the screaming to stop or the firing to start. One or the other would happen soon.

Nunez saw that neither Jones nor Mata had entered the room, but were yelling commands from the doorway. Nunez bounced sideways two steps to look into the room.

The suspect stood at the back wall of the room, almost completely covered in blood, holding his hands away from his body as if he didn’t want the blood on his hands to dirty the rest of him. He was young and thin, no more than 5’2” and maybe 110 pounds. His blood-drenched baby face was covered in scratches and topped with an unruly tangle of black, blood-soaked curls. He wore a grey sharwal kameez, the traditional Afghan men’s outfit that consisted of a long sleeved shirt that had a collar and buttons at the top and looked like a long night shirt at the bottom, and a large baggy pair of pants underneath. The boy’s clothes were soaked through with blood, and Nunez only knew they were grey because of a few spots here and there that weren’t smeared or spattered dark red. The teenage suspect held a large butcher knife in his right hand, keeping it blade-down at waist level. Nunez could see that his left hand had a large slash across the palm.

The suspect had a dark, thin face with thick eyebrows and nearly black eyes, eyes that Nunez immediately recognized as the same that had looked at him through the Venetian blinds. The suspect screamed, “You shoot me! You shoot me!” at Mata, who was all tension and anger, weapon off safe and finger on the trigger.

“You want me to shoot you, motherfucker?” Mata asked, almost in a rage. “COME AT ME, MOTHERFUCKER! WALK AT ME WITH THAT FUCKING KNIFE!”

“Get dog out my house!” the suspect screamed. “You shoot me! Make me for heaven now!”

“John, calm down. Talk the knife out of his hands,” Tillis said, calmly but loud enough to be heard over the suspect’s shrieks. Nunez announced “I’ll give the commands”, and began talking to the suspect, who had paused between screams for a second.

“You need to drop the knife,” Nunez said calmly. “If you don’t, the dog’s going to bite you. Just drop the knife.”

“You shoot me or I cut your head!” the boy yelled back.

“Fuck you,” Mata hissed, not loud enough for the suspect to hear. Jones adjusted his leash and let the dog spring forward another three feet toward the suspect. The suspect cringed, throwing himself backward a few inches into the back wall and lifting his right leg into a defensive position. He raised the knife above his head. Nunez saw Mata’s shotgun muzzle suddenly dip a couple of inches, and knew Mata had almost pulled the trigger, anticipating the recoil and throwing his shoulder slightly forward in the brief instant before firing.

Jones had his hands full with the dog and Mata had his hands full with the shotgun, so it would be Nunez’s responsibility to cuff this bloodbath of a suspect. He holstered his pistol and quietly announced “I’m gloving up,” then continued talking to the suspect while he pulled a pair of rubber surgical gloves from his back pocket and put them on.

“Listen kid, if you don’t drop that knife you’re going to get eaten by this dog. You can’t get away. Drop the knife and lay down, you won’t get hurt.”

“No. You liaring.” The suspect had stopped shrieking, but had a thick-as-shit accent that Nunez recognized. The kid kept the knife above his head and his leg up while he answered. “You just want kill me because I muss-lim. I let go knife, you shoot me.”

“If you don’t put down the knife, you get shot,” Nunez said. “If you put the knife down and lay down, you’ll be fine. I promise. Look, I’ll even make the dog move back for you.” He tapped Jones’ shoulder, and Jones yanked the dog back, hard, two feet toward the door. The suspect put his leg down, and slowly lowered the knife.

“Keep dog away me,” the boy said, a little calmer now.

“I’ll keep the dog away from you, I promise,” Nunez lied. If the kid did anything the least bit threatening, fangs would be sunk into his flesh to the gums within seconds. “Just drop the knife and lay down.”

The suspect hesitated, thinking it over. “I should not be taken to jailed. I have done nothing wrong. Leave my house.”

“Who said you did anything wrong?” Nunez asked. “I’m not asking you to go to jail, I’m just asking you to put the knife down. Don’t even worry about laying down yet, we’ll just talk about the knife right now. What’s your name, anyway?”

“You cannot say my name,” the boy said. “No American say my name rightly.”

“Try it, you might be surprised,” Nunez said.

“What? I do not understand.”

“Tell me your name. I think I can say it right. I’ve had practice.”

“My name is Mohibullah,” the boy said.

“Mo-heeb-oo-lah. Mohibullah. Okay Mohibullah, my name is Jerry. How about you drop that knife, so we can have a talk?”

“I CANNOT TRUST YOU!” the suspect yelled, agitated again. “You lie! You kill muss-lims!”

“Mohibullah, calm down,” Nunez said. “I haven’t killed anyone. I can promise you, if you drop that knife, you don’t get hurt. If we wanted to hurt you or kill you, we would have done it already.”

Tillis offered his opinion from the hallway, quietly, so the suspect couldn’t hear him in the room. “Well, Jerry, you’ve killed Muslims, and you’re lying to him. Sounds like he has you pretty well figured out.”

Mata mumbled, talking to the suspect but only loud enough for Nunez and Jones to hear, “The only one in here who’s killed a Muslim today is you, fuckhead.” Nunez almost laughed, but instead put his head down until the smile passed, raising it only when he had his serious face on again.

“Well Mohibullah, tell me what you want.”

“I want you to out my house.”

“We’re not going to,” Nunez said. “Be smart, Mohibullah. You know that we have to be here to figure out what happened to the girl. After that, we can leave. You help us, and we’ll be out of here faster.”

“You say girl? What girl?”

“The girl in the kitchen,” Nunez answered, annoyed.

“What girl kitchen?”

“The fuckin…the dead girl in the kitchen, Mohibullah.”

“You speak for the woman? For my sister?” the boy asked.

“I guess so,” Nunez said. “I didn’t know she was your sister.”

“My sister is a whore.”

Nunez paused for a second. Even though Mohibullah had destroyed his sister, he had still seemed like a little kid. A fucked up little kid, but still a kid. Until he called the sister he had just murdered, just stabbed and slashed and tried to dismember, a whore. That single comment made him seem like a real life, honest to god, cold-blooded murderer.

“Mohibullah, we’re not going to wait real long,” Nunez said. “Drop the knife and lay down, or the dog is going to bite you, and it’s going to hurt. A lot. You’ve got about ten seconds before the dog attacks you.”

Mohibullah looked at the dog, and thought about it. “You promise me. I put the, down the knife. Then you let me go and get out my house.”

Sure, whatever. “Okay, no problem. Put the knife down, then we’ll get out of your house. Just throw the knife in front of you.”

Mohibullah stood still and silent for a few seconds, looking at Nunez, at Mata’s eyes behind the shotgun muzzle, and the dog. He swung his hand forward as if to throw the knife, but held on to it and moved it back to his side.

“Mohibullah, come on. Throw the knife in front of you so nobody else gets hurt.”

Mohibullah took another long look at Nunez, and began mumbling something under his breath. Nunez didn’t understand what he was saying, except for inshallah. “It is god’s will”. Nunez knew from his dealings with the locals in Iraq and Afghanistan that Muslims said that whenever they made any significant decision. They meant it as “the outcome is in god’s hands, not man’s”, but Americans usually interpreted it as “I don’t give a fuck what happens.”

Mohibullah abruptly pitched the knife about five feet to his front. He was still standing against the back wall, separated from the officers and the doorway by about fifteen feet. Mata lowered the muzzle of his shotgun and took a step into the room, saying “I’ll cover”. Jones yanked his dog back and stepped through the doorway while Nunez took a step inside.

Mohibullah took a slow and deliberate step toward them.

“Stop, Mohibullah,” Nunez ordered. Mohibullah stopped. “Lay down right where you are, you’re okay right there. You made the right decision, Mohibullah.”

Mohibullah took another step forward.

“Stop, god damn it! Lay down right there.”

Mohibullah exploded forward, falling onto the knife and popping back up with it over his head, charging forward. Nunez and Jones backpedalled as Nunez went for his pistol and they both screamed at the murderer charging toward them.

“STOP!” Jones let go of the leash and the dog started to pounce.

“ALLAHU AKBA-!”

BOOM! Mata’s shotgun exploded a few feet to the right of Nunez’s head. The blast made him reflexively duck as pain jammed into his brain from his right ear. Jones yanked the leash back as hard as he could, thinking of his dog’s safety before his own. Nunez had his weapon out of the holster and onto his target before he took in what he was seeing, making the motions as Mata racked a fresh round into the chamber of his shotgun. He came out of the crouched combat stance he had taken, looking over his sights at the broken corpse in front of him through a haze of shotgun smoke.

Mohibullah lay on his back with his legs folded at the knees under him, his right arm still over his head with the knife held tightly in its hand. He had a very shocked look on his face, which was odd for a dead person. A large hole was in his chest, about two inches in diameter with three small holes just above it, all right in the middle of his sternum. His head twitched, jerking slightly to the left, but Nunez knew it was just nerves. As they looked at Mohibullah, his eyes and mouth slowly eased halfway closed. He was done. He was completely, unquestionably Dead Right There.

Nunez heard “Shots fired! Shots fired!” on his radio as the ring in his ear from the close range shotgun blast receded. He reached to his shoulder and keyed his radio. “1243, we’re okay, suspect is down, no officers hurt. Everything’s under control.” He was looking at Mata as he spoke, seeing his eyes still down on the sights, ready to pop another round at a dead guy. Mata’s left hand was shaking on the pump of the weapon. Nunez reached out and touched his shoulder, saying “Ease up, Mata, ease up, he’s down.”

Mata relaxed a little, taking a long breath and lowering the muzzle again. He took his finger slowly off the trigger, waited a couple of seconds, and put the shotgun back on safe. Then he and Nunez jumped when Tillis suddenly spoke up behind them.

“Well, this looks pretty good,” he observed. “The knife is still in his hands. There shouldn’t be any problems, this shooting should turn out okay.” Then he added appreciatively, “That was a great shot, Mata.”

Nunez holstered his pistol as he breathed in a lungful of cordite-tinged air. The four officers stood just inside the room, looking at the tiny body on the floor in front of them, and a question popped into Nunez’s head.

Why did that kid scream Allahu akbar at us?

I arrived a few minutes later. Another officer, “John”, drove up at the same time. Several children were frantically running around the front yard, screaming that their mother needed help.

We went inside. Mom was in the front room, bleeding badly from a gash in her head. We called an ambulance for her while she and the children told us what happened.

Dad had been out all night drinking. He came home drunk and for some reason decided his 80 year old invalid mother, who lived with them, wasn’t being taken care of. He was going to move her to his sister’s house, right then. This was at around midnight on a weekday.

Mom, of course, got a little upset at Dad. But Dad wasn’t taking no crap from Mom that night. He hit her in the head with a glass ashtray, picked up Grandma, took her to his car and drove away.

I got on the radio to give a suspect and vehicle description. I also broadcast the sister’s address and let other units know he was heading that way. The dispatcher answered, “We just received a call for an ambulance at that address. Unknown medical problem.”

John and I jogged back to our cars and sped off to the sister’s house. It was less than two minutes away. As I pulled up I saw Dad and a teenage boy standing in the front yard. I screeched to a stop, jumped out of my car and yelled, “Stay right there!”

Dad immediately ran into the house. The other officer and I chased him inside, past invalid grandma who was laid out on a couch. Dad stopped in the living room and turned to face us. He was a pretty good-sized guy, obviously drunk, and pissed off.

John and I ordered, “Get your hands up!”

His answer was to shove his hands into his pockets and yell, “But I got these papers!”

We rushed him. John was a big, aggressive former Marine infantryman. He got to Dad first. Dad tried to run, but John held on. They crashed through the house, leaving upended furniture in their wake.

I pulled my pepper spray and waited for a clear shot. As Dad and John spun through the living room, they faced me for a moment. I sprayed. And in the grand tradition of all officers who use pepper spray, I managed to hit both Dad and my fellow officer.

They stood motionless for a moment. Then Dad dropped, totally out of the fight. I and John, who I fortunately hadn’t sprayed too badly, handcuffed him and walked him out to the car.

During the entire incident, the teenage boy from the front yard had followed us in silence. He had been silent, but had an anguished look on his face. After we put Dad in the back seat I walked to the teenage boy and asked him why an ambulance had been called to his house.

“That guy you just arrested is my uncle. He came over here with my grandma. When he brought her inside, my mom got mad. They had a real bad argument and my mom passed out, so I called an ambulance.”

“Okay,” I said. “The ambulance should be here soon then. Where’s your mom?”

“She’s over here.”

He led me to a room. I opened the door. His mother lay on a sofa, eyes and mouth half open, limbs hanging slack. She was dead.

Oh, shit. “John!” I screamed. “Get in here!”

John ran inside. He saw the dead woman, yelled “Shit!” and ran to the sofa. He grabbed the woman’s legs and said, “Let’s put her on the floor! We need to do CPR!”

I grabbed the woman’s shoulders and slid her off the sofa. Her limp head dropped between my forearms and bounced off the wood floor. We laid her down and John began chest compressions.

The teenage boy watched helplessly. The ambulance showed up a minute later, paramedics took over and rushed the woman to the hospital. I knew they wouldn’t revive her. They didn’t.

I walked to the patrol car we had put Dad into. He blew up at me as soon as I opened the door.

“Y’all didn’t have to spray that shit on me! That was wrong!”

“Yeah,” I said. “Was that your sister in there?”

“Yeah that’s my sister! So what?”

“She’s dead. You freaked her out and killed her.”

Dad’s expression softened for a moment. “Really? She’s dead? Aw man, that’s a shame.” Then he remembered what was really important. “But you didn’t have to spray that shit on me!”

Family members came to take care of teenage boy and grandma. We took Dad to jail for domestic violence assault. There were no charges filed for his sister’s death. She was only around 40, but had serious medical problems. The stress killed her, her brother didn’t intend to hurt her.

A few days later, I was notified that Dad had filed a complaint on me and the other officer. And what do you think he accused us of? You guessed it:

“Unnecessary roughness.”

When I arrived, the drunk’s van was smashed and smoking. The drunk was laying face-down on the shoulder in a small pool of blood, moaning and trying to roll over. The victims’ car, a nearly-unrecognizable mass of twisted steel and plastic, was sideways in the road. A dead man and three dead women were crushed inside. I saw only hair from the woman in the front passenger seat; the impact had pushed the dash almost completely over her head.

Dozens of Good Samaritans had stopped to help. Most of them ran to me screaming as I stepped out of my car. One pleaded with me to help the driver of another car the drunk had sideswiped. I ran to that car and saw the dazed driver bleeding from an arm injury.

I wasn’t sure what to do, or even where to start. The accident scene was almost overwhelming, and I had to fight the urge to freeze into inertia. I forced myself to talk on the radio. Other officers showed up, and we got the scene under control.

That wreck shook me up. I often traveled on that same stretch of highway with my family. And to that point, the violent deaths I had seen and heard of weren’t innocents. They were people who had done something stupid that dramatically increased their chances of death.

This story isn’t about that accident, though. It’s about something that happened eight days later.

I was on patrol in a small town, a couple of hours into a twelve hour shift. The evening was quiet. Nine p.m. or so, a few weeks before Christmas.

Then dispatch broadcast, “Accident, 300 Crockett. EMS is en route.”

I was on the other side of town. Crockett was a quiet residential street, so I figured the accident was probably a minor fender-bender. I acknowledged dispatch, turned around and headed that way. Another officer, a sergeant and I were on duty. Someone else would probably get there first.

A minute later the sergeant was on the radio announcing “I’ve arrived.” Ten seconds later he said, “Contact a Justice of the Peace.”

I glanced at the radio in surprise. A Justice of the Peace was required to pronounce someone dead; calling a JP meant the accident was a fatality.

I sped through town, rushed into the neighborhood and turned onto 300 Crockett. The street was full of emergency vehicles. As usually happens on accident calls, EMS had been dispatched before police. Several volunteer firefighters and an ambulance had arrived first. The ambulance, one police car and ten or so pickup trucks with emergency lights were scattered down the block. But I didn’t see any wrecked civilian vehicles.

I slowly began to weave my way through the emergency vehicles, looking for the wreck. Volunteer firefighters stood around doing nothing. That was strange. Most volunteer firefighters get way too excited, even on minor calls like grass fires. I used to joke that they didn’t need sirens on their pickups because they drove to every call with their heads out the window, screaming the entire way. But the firefighters on Crockett were just standing there, silent and slack.

I passed the ambulance. The back doors were open, paramedics stood quietly outside. A woman sat on the curb behind the ambulance, shuddering violently, shrieking and hugging a small child.

I crept down the street. On my right a civilian vehicle sat in a grassy field with its lights on. I took a close look at it. No damage, nobody around it. I kept going.

I weaved past a few more vehicles and reached the other end of the block. No wreck. I got out of my car and looked back down the block. What the hell is going on? Where’s the accident? I looked at the houses to see if a car had run into one. Nothing I could see.

Across the street from the houses was the empty field where the one civilian vehicle was parked. There was literally no other vehicle around that could have been involved. I decided, That has to be it. I strode to the car, raised my flashlight and turned it on.

When I turned on my flashlight, the beam fell on the back seat floorboard. In the circle of light lay a child’s head. I froze. For several seconds I just stood there looking at it.

I can’t be seeing what I know I’m seeing.

In blog posts and novels I’ve described situations where people watched some horrible tragedy unfold, but refused to believe it. This was one of those situations. I knew I was looking at a child’s head, but didn’t accept it. He has to be stuck between the seat and door, with just his head sticking into the back seat. Moments later, I realized my mental gymnastics weren’t working. No, that can’t be right. The head is turned the wrong way.

I leaned over and looked in the front seat. Under a thin yellow body blanket, the bloody outline of a headless little body was clearly visible. A deflated and bloody air bag hung from the dash.

The accident eight days earlier had readied me for this. I accepted what I was seeing. This is an air bag decapitation. I turned around, walked to my car to grab my clipboard and report forms, and got to work.

Eventually we found out what happened. A grandmother had been driving around looking at Christmas lights. She had been drinking a little and had taken over-the-counter cold medication. She wasn’t legally intoxicated, but the alcohol and medication had an effect. Her nephew and grandson were unsecured in the front seat.

The woman accidentally ran a stop sign. That wouldn’t have been a big deal, since no other cars were around. She later told me she thought she would just drive straight through and keep going.

Unfortunately, it was a T-intersection. She ran into a curb, which was more like a small concrete slope. The car bounced up, then came back down and hit the grass. One of those impacts caused the air bags to blow. Her two year old grandson was decapitated.

There was no way to look at that lifeless body without thinking about my own child, who was also two years old. While I managed to do my job that night, I was deeply affected by that child’s death. Another officer on the scene, who had a one year old, later told me, “When we were on that scene the only thing I could think about was my damn daughter.”

A few days later, I had a rare, police work-inspired bad dream. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of dreams about my weapon not firing during a shootout. Every cop I’ve talked to about it has had similar dreams. Mine didn’t stop until I finally managed to shoot a suspect during one.

This dream was different, though. It wasn’t a nightmare, and wasn’t about me being unable to handle a dangerous situation. It was just bad, and unforgettable.

In this dream I was walking around carrying a dead little boy. I walked to different people with the little boy, but didn’t say anything to them. I don’t know why I was showing them the boy. Maybe I just wanted them to feel what I felt the night I worked that accident.

A truism in law enforcement is that cops hate anyone who hurts a child. We can stand around laughing on murder scenes if the victim is an adult. But the death of a child is completely different.

I know of a deputy who arrived on a trailer fire. Two women with eight kids between them had decided to go out clubbing, so they locked their kids inside and nailed the windows shut. One of the kids started a fire, and only the oldest child escaped. The deputy stood outside helplessly, listening to seven children scream in terror as they burned to death. He quit police work soon afterward.

I know of another incident where a man went to his estranged wife’s house and took their two young children outside at gunpoint. He killed one child just as officers arrived, and killed the second child in front of them. One of those officers quit and moved to another city. When one of his police friends contacted him, the former officer said he didn’t ever want to think about police work, and asked his friend never to contact him again.

So why am I telling these stories now? I just wanted to talk about something that’s been on my mind lately. I’m not trying to prove anything.

In the last few months, Americans have learned how evil humans can be. In Newtown, Connecticut last December and Boston two weeks ago, first responders and brave civilians saw things that will remain with them the rest of their lives. Seeing evil with your own eyes is different than reading about it or watching news reports. The sorrow, fury and frustration most Americans felt as they heard news of the massacre and bombing is really nothing compared to the feelings of those who were there.

I wrote this essay to ask the public for a little understanding. Not for pity, not money, just understanding. The police in Newtown and Boston, along with other first responders and private citizens, saw and experienced something every decent human hopes they’ll never have to. Those men and women will forever feel the scar left by that experience.

I just thought, in light of the tragedies we’ve experienced recently, this was a story worth telling and point worth making. And besides that, I wanted to get it off my chest.

http://lawenforcementtoday.com/2013/04/08/the-most-dangerous-force-%e2%80%93-ego/

Of all the destructive forces cops face, probably none is more dangerous than our own ego. When I think of the more egregious mistakes and lapses in judgment I’ve made, I can’t think of many that didn’t involve ego. Some of us, if we’re lucky, had good trainers who warned us about letting ego drive our actions. The rest of us, like me, had to learn through bad experience.

We easily recognize when a suspect or violator is letting his ego talk him into handcuffs. We’ve responded to minor disturbances at bars, problems that could be easily handled if the involved parties would just leave. Almost invariably, one of the antagonists declares, “I’m not going anywhere.” We warn them that they’ll be arrested if they refuse to leave. Their friends beg them to leave. They stand their ground, proclaim that they don’t care, that they’d rather go to jail than back down. When the cuffs come out they change their minds, but by then it’s often too late.

We marvel at those guys, sometimes laugh at them, and make snide comments about their stupidity. Then a car runs from us, or a suspect yells insults from his doorway. And we fall under the spell of ego without realizing it.

A few years back I was on a run-of-the-mill traffic stop in a wealthy area during night shift. We were in the parking lot of a drug store. My overheads were on, visible for hundreds of yards in the dark. As I was checking the driver’s record, I heard screeching tires. I looked up to see a nice, new, shiny red sports car flying down the street past the drug store at over 100 mph.

The minor traffic stop suddenly became a lot less interesting. I ran to the violator, tossed his license back, and sprinted to my patrol car. By the time I tore out of the parking lot, the sports car was blocks away. I hit the overheads seconds before the sports car blew a red light to make a turn.

I punched it. The time was about 4 a.m. and the roads were empty. I sped to the light, slid onto the side street, and searched for the car. The street ahead was clear and silent.

The intersecting roads were residential, full of multi-million dollar mansions. I did the stutter-step, speeding to each street but trying not to go so fast that I’d drive past the car if I saw it. On the third street I saw the car, rolling up a driveway several houses away. Behind it an automatic gate was swinging closed. I jammed on the brakes and, of course, slid past the street.

By the time I backed up and made the turn, the car had disappeared into a garage. I reached the automatic gate as it latched. Through the wrought-iron bars I saw the back end of the sports car, just before the garage door closed.

I ran from my car to the front door of the house. I was pissed. The mansion had a huge plate-glass window and lights were on inside. I furiously rang the doorbell and banged on the door as I looked into the house.

A middle-aged man walked across the back of the living room. I didn’t see his face. He paid no attention to the doorbell, frenzied pounding on the door or flashing red and blue strobes outside. He disappeared into another part of the house.

I stopped ringing and knocking. I was even more pissed now. This jerk, not just a regular jerk but a rich jerk, had intentionally raced past a cop on a traffic stop. He had driven over 100 mph with me behind him and blew through a red light. He ignored me at the door. He needed to go to jail for all that.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I stepped back from the door, started to walk to my car, walked back to the door, changed my mind and went to my car, turned the spotlight on, pointed it through the window, and sat there for a minute. A truth was staring me in the face, but I was so angry I didn’t want to see it.

I had nothing. Nothing. I didn’t have a plate. I couldn’t ID the man I saw inside the house, and couldn’t say he was the driver. How could I be sure he wasn’t a passenger, that the driver wasn’t still sitting in the car waiting for me to leave? And I couldn’t even be sure what the car’s make and model were. All I knew was that it was a red, new sports car, maybe a Camaro. Maybe.

I could have gotten on the radio and called for more units. I could have called a sergeant. I could have kept banging on the door, for hours if need be, until someone answered. I could have made a big deal about this guy who had disrespected me so badly. And I knew that would have accomplished nothing. I would be wasting everyone’s time.

More importantly, for one of the first times in my career, I recognized that ego was driving my actions. I wanted to see the man punished, but just for what he had done to me. The man hadn’t hurt anyone. There had been no wreck. There were literally no cars between the spot I first saw him and his house; he hadn’t run anyone off the road. And no calls had popped up about a red sports car being involved in a crime. Most likely it was just a rich guy showing off his new car.

I took a few breaths to get my anger under control, then grudgingly turned the spotlight and overhead strobes off. I slowly backed out, took a last look at the house, and wrote down the address. “123 Sycamore Street”.

I drove away, and didn’t tell anyone about the incident. It wouldn’t have mattered, and I wasn’t eager to share that experience with my coworkers anyway. I stayed angry about it for a day or so, then forced myself to let it go.

A few months later, another officer and I were patrolling a different part of town. This was in an area with a lot of clubs and bars. Right after the bars closed, we saw two cars racing each other down the street.

We picked one and took off. As soon as we got behind it and hit the overheads, the driver made a quick turn and pulled over. The other driver wisely kept going. As we got out of our car, a large vehicle full of rowdy club-goers passed, yelling insults, and flipping us off.

I yelled back at them to shut the hell up. They kept going. They didn’t make me mad, but they annoyed me. I carried that annoyance to the drag racer we had just stopped.

The drag racer was just a kid. He was completely polite and respectful, and apologized profusely for racing. He wasn’t doing anything really bad, just showing off his expensive luxury car. My partner got his license and ran him. Nothing serious, but he had a small problem with his license that meant he shouldn’t be driving. We could arrest him and tow the car, but that seemed way too severe.

My partner and I had to make a quick discussion. We decided to let the kid call a family member to get him. My partner handed me the kid’s license and went to talk to him. I took a quick look at the license, started to put it down. Then my eyes snapped back when I realized what was on it.

“123 Sycamore Street”. The same address the guy with the red sports car had driven to.

I walked to the kid. He was on the phone. As soon as he hung up and confirmed that someone was coming for him, I asked him, “You live at 123 Sycamore?”

“Yes sir.”

“Who do you live with?”

“My father.”

“No kidding. What kind of car does he drive?”

“He’s got a couple of cars sir. He has a big silver Chevy SUV, and recently bought a really nice red Camaro.”

I nodded, pursed my lips. “Uh huh. Is your father coming to get you?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good,” I said. “Good.”

I went back to our car and waited. My mind raced. Revenge was at hand.

Several minutes later a big silver Chevy SUV pulled up. A man got out, and I mentally compared him to the guy I had seen walked through the mansion. He fit the same general description.

He was very polite. My partner explained the situation with his son. He thanked us for not arresting him. I then asked the man, “Do you drive a new red Camaro?”

The man seemed puzzled at the question. He answered hesitantly, “Yes sir, I do.”

“Do you remember a couple months back, you blew past a police officer on a traffic stop at First and Center, then ran a red light and took off to your house?”

The man froze. His eyes widened, mouth dropped open a bit. And he surprised me by saying, “Yes sir, I do.”

“Yeah. That was me. You saw me behind you, didn’t you?”

He looked away for a moment. Then he looked back and answered quietly, “Yes, I saw you.”

“And now we’ve got your son,” I said. “And you want us to give him a break instead of arresting him. How about that.”

I gave him a hard stare for a moment, then turned away. Behind me, my partner told the man, “Hey, at least you were honest.” I walked back to our car, sat down and thought it out.

My ego was creeping up again. If I arrested the kid, it would be strictly as a punishment to his father. And even though the kid had done something wrong, he didn’t need to go to jail for it. I had given plenty of people a break for the same thing. Any official action I took wouldn’t be driven by morals or justice or even law. It would just be from spite, borne of ego.

I walked back to the kid and gave him his license. His father sheepishly shook our hands and thanked us. We went to our car and left. I was still pissed at the father, but I felt like I had done the right thing.

I’m human. I’ve made stupid mistakes, for stupid reasons. My badge hasn’t infused me with perfect judgment or the wisdom of a Tibetan monk. At my worst I’ve had to learn through bad experience, at my best I listened to others and didn’t repeat the same mistakes they had.

No matter how many laws and policies exist to guide our actions, at the end of the day we’re just regular people, subject to all the failings regular people have. If we’d control our egos, I don’t think we’d make half our mistakes. And we’d probably get twice the support from the public.

Controlling ego is easier said than done. It takes years for anyone, not just cops, to learn how to do it. It can’t be taught as a formula in the academy. It has to be a product of real-life highs and lows, of forcing yourself to think straight and do the right thing even when you want to lash out. None of us can claim we’ve never fallen prey to ego. Nobody can expect new officers to hit the street on day one and not have an egotistical chip on their shoulder.

But we can talk about it. And that’s a start.

I headed that way. The truck stop was on a major highway, and a lot of destitute travelers stopped there. It wasn’t uncommon for people to beg customers for gas money. The truck stop manager probably wanted me to run someone off, no big deal.

I made the turn into the truck stop parking lot. A tall, thin, homeless-looking guy stood by the front door, yelling at someone. Then he saw me, and sprinted along the front window toward my car. He pointed angrily at me and screamed “You! You!”

I had no idea who the guy was, or why he was so pissed at me. I stopped the car, he stopped running. As I stepped out he stood on the raised sidewalk, eyes wide, huffing in anger.

“Hey man,” I said in a calm voice. “What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know!” he screamed back “You tell me!”

“I’m just asking a question. Is everything alright?”

“No it’s not alright! Why are you f**king with me?”

Well, crap, I thought. As I’ve said before, I’m a little guy. At that time, I weighed all of about 115 pounds. I wasn’t then and am not now physically intimidating. Another officer who was even smaller than me had given me good advice one night: “I’d rather spend thirty minutes talking someone down than thirty seconds getting my ass kicked.” Unfortunately, some people you just can’t talk to. This guy didn’t seem real receptive to conversation.

I tried again. “Hey dude, everything’s cool. I’m just talking to you, alright? What’s going on?”

This time the man didn’t answer. He pulled his fists up and took a bladed stance, ready to fight. I sighed, took my glasses off and dropped them on the hood, and thought, Here we go. I’m going to have to fight this guy.

I had been in a few fights as a cop. Most people who fight are trying to get away, not trying to beat you senseless. This guy didn’t look like he wanted to get away. He was wiry, way taller than me, with arms that looked about a foot longer than mine. He was furious, and I still didn’t know why. His head was tilted down, eyes glaring at me over his knuckles. He wanted a fight.

I tried one more time, even though I knew it wouldn’t work. “You don’t want to do that. Just talk to me.”

He didn’t answer. I tried to think of something else to say. Just then, another officer drove up and got out of his car.

Apparently, they were acquainted. The man instantly relaxed. He dropped his fists, smiled and exclaimed, “Hey, my buddy’s here!”

The other officer, “Rick”, walked toward the man with his hand out. “Hey man, how you doing?”

The man instantly switched back to a fighting stance and screamed, “Don’t you touch me!”

Rick was surprised. He told me later that he had dealt with the man once before, and the guy had been friendly. Rick walked toward the guy’s left side. I went toward his right. The man kicked Rick in the leg and backed against the window, fists up. This was before Tasers, and I didn’t have pepper spray. Rick did. I told Rick, “Spray him.”

Rick sprayed. The guy ducked, twisted, blocked with his fists, and eventually got a shot in the face. He tried to rub the spray from his eyes. Rick and I took that as a signal to grab the guy.

The man threw a blindingly fast, powerful punch. As chance would have it, the man was left handed, and I was on his right. The punch hit Rick square on the temple.

Rick staggered away with his hands on his head, wailing something that sounded like, “Uuunnngh!” The man spun to face me. I yanked my baton off my belt and extended it. Rick stopped wailing and looked at me with wide, seemingly angry eyes.

I took Rick’s expression to mean, “Let’s get this guy”. What it actually meant was, “I’m in outer space at the moment”. I cocked back the baton, just as the man launched himself off the raised sidewalk at me.

I swung hard and connected with the man’s ankle. He stumbled and kept coming. Of all the baton strikes I landed in the next couple of minutes, that was the only one that had any visible effect.

I backpedaled as fast as I could. The man threw haymakers that barely missed my face. I cut the air with my baton, swinging back and forth with all my might. I could have sworn Rick was on the other side of the guy, trying to tackle him. But Rick was in a daze, stumbling through the parking lot.

Still running backward, I turned right to avoid a punch and kept hitting with the baton. Then I turned left. Then I cut left again. Then I ran into a car parked at the gas pumps.

The man punched me on the right temple, hitting mostly bone. I remember looking at the man as he swung, then my view suddenly changed as his fist knocked my head sideways. I tasted blood.

I turned back to him. He looked surprised, and reared back to punch me again. I spun off the car and cocked the baton for another hit. The owner of the car I had just run into was standing by his door. With a voice full of concern, he yelled at me, “Hey, don’t scratch my car!” Then he got in and sped away.

For just a moment, I was more pissed at that guy and his stupid car than I was at the homeless man trying to take my head off. That anger disappeared as the homeless man charged me again. We swung at each other. My baton hit, his punch missed. Then Rick woke up and tackled the man.

The man went down onto his face. I dropped my baton, yanked one of the man’s arms behind his back and dropped as much weight as I could onto it. Rick did the same thing. I was light, but Rick weighed about 200 pounds. Rick huffed, “Just hold him like this until backup gets here!”

With almost no effort, the man yanked both his hands free. I was shocked. I tried to grab an arm, and he reached out and snatched the baton I had dropped.

Rick yelled “Oh shit!” and jumped off the man. I rose to my knees. The man sat up, held the baton by the wrong end and cocked back to hit me. Behind me, I heard leather break as Rick drew his weapon.

I had to make a decision, quick. If I tried to wrestle the baton away, I would likely take a hell of a hit to the head. It probably wouldn’t kill me, but it could knock me out and give the guy an opportunity to take my weapon. So I could risk getting beaten and disarmed, or jump out of the way and let Rick shoot. I had less than a second to decide. The man was about to swing.

I dove in low, under the baton, and knocked the man back down onto his face. Rick holstered and threw himself onto the man’s back. I tore the baton from the man’s grasp. He pushed himself off the pavement and I hit him again. He went down, but kept flailing and trying to get up. We pinned his arms just as I heard the screech of an approaching siren. The man yelled, “Okay, I give up! I give up!”

We handcuffed him. He didn’t resist. A patrol sergeant tore into the parking lot. For a reason I didn’t understand at the time, a woman drove out of the parking lot yelling, “I didn’t see anything!”

We lifted the man to his feet and searched him. He went into the back seat of the sergeant’s car without a murmur of protest. I checked myself. Ripped and dirtied uniform, a big red mark on my head from the punch. Nothing serious. We asked the truck stop manager why he had called us. He said the guy just walked in the door and started screaming at people. Nobody knew what his problem was.

We took the man to jail. He happily went into a cell. At the time I didn’t get it, but now I know the man had been high when I showed up but had come down off the drugs by the time we got him to jail. That was one of many lessons I learned that night.

When Rick and I talked about it later, I was frustrated at how much I had missed during the fight. At one point, the man had grabbed Rick’s big, heavy metal flashlight. I never saw that. He also grabbed Rick’s pepper spray. I didn’t see that either. When someone asked me why I didn’t call for backup, I realized it had never even occurred to me. Rick had screamed for help on the radio, but I never heard it.

Then the dispatcher dropped another bomb on me. While we were fighting the guy, after he almost knocked Rick out, around the time the guy tried to hit me with my own baton, someone had called 911 from the truck stop. Not on the suspect attacking us. He called the police, on us. The person had told dispatch, “I can’t believe how those officers are treating that poor man!”

So during the worst fight of my new career, not only had a citizen been more concerned about his car than he was about me, not only had a witness fled rather than talk to us, but someone actually called the police on us for defending ourselves. That was a shock. During the relatively short time I worked in that town, I had the police called on me two more times.

I went to my family’s Christmas celebration that year with a black eye and three red lines, impressions of the spaces between the man’s fingers, temporarily imprinted on the side of my head. I received a few good-natured jabs about it. Worse than that, I had left my damn glasses on the hood when I drove out of the parking lot. I found them later, but they were so scratched up I just decided not to wear glasses anymore.

Later on I got some bad news. This incident happened shortly after the Texas Legislature had made a little oopsy and removed the “aggravated assault on a peace officer” statute from the books. The man was charged with two misdemeanors instead of two felonies. He had a long criminal history, and was known in his hometown as a raging crack addict. I don’t think he was on crack that night though. That seemed more like PCP. That drug wasn’t common in that area, but based on later experiences I’m pretty sure he had just taken some. I was told he pled out for probation, and I never saw him again.

A couple of years later, an officer asked me if I remembered the man I had fought that night. I responded, “Of course I do, I’ll never forget that guy. What about him?”

“He just got sentenced to eight years for rape.”

I was quiet for a few moments. During that fight I made a conscious decision to avoid deadly force, and had walked away with nothing worse than a black eye. For the homeless man, the result of that decision was no jail time, another slap on the wrist, and the freedom to rape someone later.

Some decisions you make as a cop have immediate and obvious consequences. Some decisions are plainly right, some are plainly wrong. Some, like the one I made that night, look right at the time and wrong in hindsight.

The dispatcher bumped me. “Suicide in progress” at an apartment complex. I didn’t get too excited. Those calls can be anything from a real suicide to a panicked parent calling because their son was passed out drunk. They rarely turn out to be an actual suicide attempt. I turned around and headed toward the apartment complex.

Just before I turned the corner toward the complex I heard two officers announce they had arrived. I sped up, hoping to catch them before they found the apartment. Apartment complexes are usually huge and confusing, with numbered buildings laid out in no particular order. Unless you know the complex, it takes a while to figure out where you are.

I reached the apartment complex entrance and started to turn. A car was speeding toward me in the opposing lane. I jammed on the brakes and waited for the car to pass. Then the driver started flashing the high beams and waving frantically. She stopped beside me, pointed toward a fast food restaurant a couple hundred yards ahead and yelled, “They’re robbing the hamburger place!”

Okay, now I was excited. If memory serves me correctly, stats show that more officers are killed on robberies in progress than any other type of call. The likelihood was that I would be in a gunfight within seconds of arrival. I got a quick description: black guy, about thirty, real muscular, no shirt. She didn’t know if he had a weapon.

I called it out on the radio and stomped on the gas pedal. Seconds later I pulled into the parking lot. I saw a cluster of scared restaurant employees huddled around one corner. They pointed behind the restaurant. A shirtless, muscular black man was walking away.

I sped toward the man, stopped about twenty feet behind him, kept one foot on the brake and the other on the gas, and grabbed the PA microphone. I could see the man’s hands and didn’t see a gun. But if he turned around, pulled a gun from his waistband and started shooting, my car would be a better weapon than my pistol.

I keyed the PA and ordered the man to stop. He spun around to face me. No gun visible anywhere. The man started screaming something I couldn’t understand. I threw the car in park, drew my weapon and jumped out of the car. From behind the door, I ordered the man to lie on his stomach. He stayed on his feet and kept screaming maniacally.

At this point, I noticed a few things about the man. He was sweating profusely on a cool night. He was shaking. His eyes were bugged out and face taut with fury. He had something white smeared on his head and face. I’m no expert, but by golly, I was starting to suspect the man was under the influence of an illegal drug!

I ordered the man to lie down again. He yelled back an answer I’ll never forget: “Berk grang huffsa furdis!”

Okay, maybe that’s not exactly what he said. The point is, he was screaming unintelligibly. I didn’t know what the hell he was yelling at me, but I’m fairly certain it wasn’t friendly.

I ordered him down again. He took a step toward me. I thought, Oh, crap. Only a short distance separated us. If he started running, he’d be on me in a couple seconds. I still couldn’t see a weapon, but he was bigger and looked way stronger than me. Plus he was stoned out of his mind. I didn’t have a Taser, and in my experience pepper spray and batons don’t work well on strong guys who are super high.

I ordered him to stop. He kept coming. I yelled more orders. He screamed something that sounded like the Aramaic version of “I hate you and everything you stand for.”

He reached my front bumper. I had to decide what to do. Jump in the car and back away? Holster my pistol and pull pepper spray, in the probably vain hope that it would stop the guy from beating me to death? Shoot an unarmed man? Whatever I decided to do, the end result probably wouldn’t be good.

I heard roaring engines and squealing tires. To my relief, two patrol cars raced through the parking lot and slid to a stop beside me. Officers jumped out with Tasers in their hands. As soon as the suspect saw red laser dots on his chest, he IMMEDIATELY dropped to his stomach with his hands behind his back. He hadn’t been too scared of getting shot, but apparently he’d ridden the lightning before and wanted no part of that.

We rushed up and handcuffed him. He was still shaking and speaking in tongues. When I cuffed him I got white, oily stuff on my hands. I stuck the guy in the back seat and grabbed some napkins and hand sanitizer from my car. As I cleaned my hands, I wondered, What the hell is this crap? I was afraid to smell it, and my mind went to dark places as I considered the possibilities.

We took the man back to the restaurant. The employees were terrified. Before I could interview them, a frantic young man drove into the parking lot, jumped out and said he had just been robbed.

We got everyone calmed down, and eventually figured out what had happened.

The stoned guy in my back seat was my “suicide in progress” subject from the apartment complex. It turned out he wasn’t trying to kill himself, he was just high and tearing up his girlfriend’s apartment. When she called the police, he jetted out the door.

In the parking lot he ran across a random guy getting into his car, and of course decided to carjack him. Random guy had just sat in the driver’s seat and started to close the door. Stoned guy grabbed the handle and tried to pull it open while screaming something about car keys. Random guy, understandably startled, got into a tug of war with stoned guy. Stoned guy pulled so hard on the door that the inner door panel tore off. Random guy grabbed a crowbar and jumped out. Stoned guy gave up on the carjacking, but broke the car’s side view mirror off just to make a point. Then he ran across the street, probably seconds after the first two officers arrived at the complex.

At the burger joint across the street, a young female employee was standing outside smoking a cigarette. The burger joint’s lobby doors were locked, but its drive-thru was open all night. The employee watched stoned guy run to a tree in front of the restaurant. He was ranting about something she couldn’t understand. Then he started chewing on the tree.

The young woman noticed right away that this was unusual. She called to her manager through the drive-thru window, “Hey, come check out this crazy dude chewing on a tree outside”. The manager looked outside, just as the stoned guy gave up on the tree and ran to the locked doors.

Stoned guy yanked on the doors and screamed at the employees. Leaves were falling out of his mouth. For some odd reason, nobody let him in. He ran to the other side of the restaurant, and yanked on those locked door. The lock broke. He ran inside and jumped the counter. Employees fled in mortal terror. Stoned guy ran around knocking crap off the counters. Then he scooped a handful of mayonnaise from a container, smeared it in his hair, and walked out the back door. Shortly after that, I showed up.

So the most important question was answered. The white stuff I got on my hands when I cuffed the guy was mayonnaise. I wouldn’t have to burn my outer layer of skin off after all.

I went back to my car to ID my robber. When I ran him I was shocked – shocked! – to discover he had a long history of drug-related arrests. He was speaking English now, and demanded to know why I arrested him.

“You tore up your girlfriend’s apartment, tried to rob someone in the parking lot, then broke into the burger place and wiped mayonnaise all over your head.”

“You’re lying! You set me up! I didn’t do that!”

He kept ranting about his innocence and corrupt police who were arresting him just for nuthin’. I ignored him as I completed his arrest paperwork. About ten minutes later, he had come down from the drugs enough to change his attitude a little.

“I really did all that? Damn. Serious, you’re not messing with me? Man, I gotta quit doin’ PCP.”

In the end, he wound up going to jail for trying to rob the random guy and for damaging the burger joint. His girlfriend and the tree refused to press charges. We actually had a nice conversation on the way downtown, and he wasn’t too mad at me when I handed him to the jailers.

Moral of the story? I dunno, how about, “Don’t get high on PCP, tear up your girlfriend’s apartment, fail at being a carjacker, chew on a defenseless tree, break into a burger joint and slather your head with condiments?” Or maybe a better way to say it is, “Don’t be a dumbass.”