Hey everyone. I'm actually writing this at work since I got 4.5 hours late last night. In policing your scheduled work hours are more of...."guidelines". I slept until it was literally time to wake up and get dressed for day 2 of my new 5 day/48 hour work week.
The day started off rather simple like all Sundays tend to be. I had an interesting burglary of an apartment on my beat where two female roommates lived together. The roommate who called 911 moved almost all of her stuff out at the end of the college semester and was attempting to move her stuff back in when she noticed her door was damaged and there was no way to open it. I climbed onto her patio and managed to open the door from the inside. All of her lights inside were on, her fridge doors were wide open and food was spoiling, the house was ransacked, it was clearly a burglary.
None of the caller's items were missing since she had moved the majority of her items out over the break but the big TV in the living room and her roommate's laptop were gone. Her roommate however had more important things to do than be at the apartment (she was eating dinner) and this royally pissed off the caller. The caller however was looking at this as an opportunity to break her lease and convince her parents to let her live downtown near her college campus.
The night was going smooth but I was unusually drained so I went with a squad mate to a gas station just outside of our jurisdiction which has some of the best coffee around and it turned out to be a very wise decision.
About an hour after the coffee break we got a call of shots fired at a residence. The caller stated his stepfather in the residence was drunk and got into a dispute. It ended in the stepfather grabbing a gun and firing off a shot. The stepson and a few family members got out of the house safely but the caller's mom was still asleep in the residence with the stepfather. The stepfather in addition was a military vet with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Due to the nature of the incident we quickly set up a perimeter and waited to see if we needed to call out the SWAT team. I ran to the trunk of my vehicle and a guy asked me " Hey officer, did you hear that gunshot?". I ignored the guy, grabbed my shotgun and racked it. For those of you who have never heard the noise of a shotgun being racked-it gets your attention. The guy goes "Oh sh-t! I'm going back inside my house".
I joined a partner on the watch after me (since we overlap for a few hours until we move to the 8 hour shifts on Thursday). It was about a wind chill of 29 degrees as we sat in the woodline watching the southwest corner of this house for any sort of movement. 4.5 hours and we didn't see a thing. Eventually our sergeant gave the call: Call SWAT.
SWAT, the Night Commander, and hostage negotiation came out and did their thing. (for obvious purposes, I'm not going to go into the tactics used by SWAT but it truly is impressive to watch that unit in action. My department has a full time SWAT team and they train around the clock.)
As we waited for SWAT to make entry, I made the worst possible decision to joke about conditions. I told my coworker that I was really glad it hadn't rained yet. Police officers are as superstitious as baseball players. Soon after I made that remark-it started raining. We were now wet and cold.
Eventually SWAT drove their armored vehicle up on the yard and called out the barricaded gunman. First the mother who had been sleeping exited and was extremely curious as to what was going on. Then eventually the gunman came out. He was wearing a "wife-beater" and basketball shorts. SWAT gave him numerous verbal commands to take his hands out of his pockets. The man became upset stating he had no weapons and would even show us. This man then proceeded to take off his shorts and moon everybody. You can't make this stuff up. SWAT ordered him to get on the ground and crawl to them. The man yelled "I ain't crawling on the ground, it's too cold!". SWAT answered in the best way possible: " You're about to be a lot colder if you don't get on the ground!"
Eventually the man bear crawled to SWAT and they secured him before clearing the house and giving the all clear.
It's always great to have those situations end without incident. Well, let me get back to work. Be safe everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment