As dark as it was, the darkness made the jeweled glory of the sky that much more intense. I was off to the side of the scene, shielding my eyes from the floodlights. The helicopter was somewhere off to the left. I couldn’t see it as dark as it was. There was no moon. I let my eyes drift to the southwest, towards what I think was the dark cloud in Sagittarius...toward the part of the sky I thought looked toward the center of the galaxy. In my normal urban environment, I never see that many stars. It was glorious. I let my eyes wander. After all...there was really nothing else I could do there. The pilot stood off to my left, speaking with a deputy. The deputy’s words pulled me back from the cloudy band of the Milky Way.

"I sure don’t want to stay here tonight. Wouldn’t be surprised if this place was haunted now. People that die like that...sometimes they don’t realize they’re dead," His words were eerie. Especially in the dark, under the timeless beauty of the night sky, with the lights from the last pickup truck still there shining harsh light on the carnage in the ditch below. I suppose carnage, though, is a misleading word. There was very little left that could even be recognized as human. It had become a funeral pyre if anything. Grisly still, in it’s way...sure...but it wasn’t bloody. It was peaceful in a way. The words struck me as odd. It was a sharp contrast to the ‘shop talk’ that had dominated all conversation on scene till then. Next to him, the pilot nodded solemnly but said nothing for a while.

They called our pilot ‘Hollywood’...the deputies and SAR personnel in this area. He was famous for his unflappable nature. A captain from a neighboring agency told me an old story about how the pilot ferried bodies out of a scene and with blood-soaked back seats in the helicopter asked for a cheeseburger. I had known the man as a grizzled military veteran who flew mountain peaks fifty feet off the deck with a Coke in one hand. He was a man who would pull the helicopter in gut-churning turns just to get a better look at the rack on an elk. He was a man of biting humor and a gentle nature for all that.

Earlier that night...watching the smoke and flames die down as the firefighters attempted almost in vain to douse them...the pilot and I sat on the bumper of a Jeep. His arms were folded across his chest, a little stubble on his chin as he shook his head. He told me without taking his eyes off the scene that it never used to bother him...things like this. The sun was setting behind him, silhouetting his profile. He said he used to be invincible. He said scenes like the one we landed near were slowly taking their toll, though. I nodded but said nothing. I just turned back to the steam and smoke, watching the flames angrily flare back under the charred fuselage when the water in the ATV ran out. The pilot watched quietly, lost in his own contemplation.

The words of the deputy and the admission from the pilot I had always considered unbreakable and invincible were really what affected me the most. I was fine until the pilot said that. It was horrendous, to be sure, but I was fine till then. Maybe my mind just blocked it all out on the off chance that there was something meaningful I could actually contribute. Maybe I blocked it out because I didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility that these people didn’t die outright...that maybe they crawled in desperation to escape the flames. I don’t think about that. Not much. I tell myself that I’m not an airplane crash investigator and that they probably just ended up that way after impact. I have to believe that...at least if I want to be able to sleep at night. I don’t see HOW anyone could have survived that impact, and that thought makes it better: At least it was quick.

The pilot and I were on the other end of the state supporting the local sheriff on an incident completely unrelated when all this happened. We hadn’t done a lot of flying and it was pretty uneventful. I was lounging in the command center checking my e-mail for work when the pilot caught my eye. He waved me over as he was putting on his cap. "They’ve got a possible plane crash," He told me as we jogged out to the helicopter. One search and rescue member I knew came up to the helicopter as well as a local detective. I helped them get situated as the pilot did the pre-flight checks and got in place. As I was buckling into the front seat and powering up the FLIR, the others filled us in.

They had gotten a report of a brush fire about two miles outside the airport. One witness stated it was a possible plane crash because there were gouge marks in the ground and it was fairly close to the airport. Emergency personnel were taking the possibility seriously because there isn’t really anything out in that area of desert that could burn. It was essentially bare. No brush...no trees...no houses. Just bare earth and dust.

En route, the SAR member and the pilot were debating the location that was given to us. They were pointing in various directions when I saw the smoke. "Smoke, 12:30," I told the pilot, pointing. The pilot acknowledged it and we changed course slightly. At first, it didn’t seem like much. Not from that distance. There was definitely a fire...but that’s all we could see.

Closer, though...our hearts dropped. Over the whine of the turbine and the thump of the rotor blades, I heard the old SAR member’s voice in the intercom. "Ohhh," he nearly whispered, "That’s not good...not good at all..." The tail fin was black, but clear as day. We could see the outline of the wings...the mangled and twisted propellers. In the center of the wreckage was a bright fire. It belched rolling smoke into the sky. The FLIR picture showed nothing but a bright, indistinguishable blob of white. No details. It was far too hot to see details in the infrared.

The SAR member we took with us was another grizzled veteran. He had seen the world long before he settled here. Even he seemed shaken. The pilot and the SAR member murmured quietly about the slim possibility of survivors. We circled once and saw the grim reality of what we were looking at. The wreckage was on the far side of a gentle rise. The airport was two miles beyond. The crest of the rise was marred by a long black scar. On the side of the hill nearest the airport, we could clearly see the impact point and saw the short track from where the left landing gear first touched. The initial impact must have immediately ruptured the fuel tanks which then quickly ignited. There was a black trail about two hundred feet long before the plane’s final resting spot. We touched down and the two passengers exited to begin the almost futile search for survivors. Maybe it was naive to even think it possible. I don’t think any of us really did believe anyone could have survived that. And in the end, we were of course right. No one in that plane survived.

We had nothing in the helicopter except a tiny fire extinguisher. Firefighters had trouble getting to the scene. We could do nothing except stand and watch it burn. We weren’t far from the roads, but the rolling hills and gullies made it impossible to get an engine to the scene. The firefighters had to make do with hoses on a rhino ATV or large fire extinguishers. They had no other option. While waiting for fire personnel to arrive, we reluctantly circled the scene, looking for any identifiable numbers or tags that would tell us what the plane used to be and who the victims might be. There was nothing. The fire obliterated all of it. The tail’s shape was intact, but that was all there was. The fire had destroyed any paint or numbers. We had trouble even finding part numbers that hadn’t been burned away. While looking for numbers, I only saw three bodies. Morbidly, I was actually glad I could only see three. The plane was a large, twin-engine turbo-prop and could have held much more. In the end, it turned out I was wrong and there were ten people there. I just didn’t look too close. I had no reason or desire to. There were ten. Gone. Instantly. And for several hours, we had no idea who they were or who to tell. In the area where we were, I began to desperately hope that it wasn’t a tour plane. I don’t suppose in the grand scheme that it makes any difference. Ten victims is ten victims. But that was my fear.

The pilot and I stayed on scene to offer what help we could. The pilot shuttled personnel back and forth by air since ground travel was difficult at best. As for me...all I could do was step back and try to stay out of the way. We got there far too late to help anyone and we had no equipment to fight the fire. I felt extraneous, and that left me with nothing but time to contemplate.

I had seen death before, but the last few weeks have been brutal. The images of the plane crash will be burned forever in my memory, but it had been a bad few weeks.

Toward the end of July, the beginning of August, I went on another search and rescue for a missing hiker. I flew with one of our other pilots that night and he wasn’t optimistic about our chances of finding the victim. He’d spent most of the day doing visual searches with the SAR personnel. We spent an hour or so circling the small mountain range where the victim had gone missing. During the search, the pilot revealed that there were indications that the victim was suicidal. If that were true, a search was pointless. We found nothing that night.

We went out the next morning for another visual search. We didn’t find much. The victim’s family and church all came out to help. Between the volunteers and SAR personnel, there were over 100 people combing the small mountain range. But we didn’t find much that morning. The pilot and I had to fly back to the hangar to re-fuel before we went back out that afternoon. We were chatting at Subway when we got the call. They’d found the victim. He was dead.

We flew back over the scene to see if we could figure a way to extract the body. He was a good distance up one of the peaks. They were desert mountains, though, and not very wooded. The pilot dropped me off with a cargo net and then went towards the incident command to ferry detectives and other personnel to the site.

The body was guarded by two SAR members. Also scattered near the scene were family members and friends. His father...his brother...a few members of his church. It was family who’d found him. They retained their composure better than I ever would have.

The detectives eventually reached the conclusion that it was a terrible accident, and not suicide. The cliff it appeared he had fallen from was not high. It would have been a poor choice for suicide as death would be in no way guaranteed. We loaded the body into the chopper and transported the remains for burial.

After that, our job consisted mainly of ferrying volunteers off the mountain who were getting themselves in trouble. A father-son team had gotten separated. The son was near the peak and the father was hobbling with dehydration and a twisted ankle towards our landing zone, about halfway up the mountain. We found the son first. But since there were no good LZ’s anywhere near him, we did a skid load. The pilot touched one skid to the rock and hovered. I hopped out and got the son, gave him some very perfunctory instructions, shoved him in the helicopter and followed quickly as the helicopter rocked from the weight shift. Dad stumbled into the LZ a little while later and I half carried him to the helicopter. We dropped him off and left.

And in between the disappointing missions in the helicopter and all the bad news...a brother fell on a traffic stop. I never really knew him that well but he was an iconic figure from our department who had recently retired. He had taken up arms with the local sheriff’s office and was working again as a cop. He was in excellent shape and in no way looked like his 46 years. He had stopped a car for speeding. He approached the vehicle and asked the female driver for her license and registration. She leaned over to obtain the documents, and turned back to find the deputy now lying on the ground. He never got up again. The third-hand information I got was that a massive heart attack dropped him right there.

I went to his funeral, and it was really the first funeral for another police officer I’ve been able to attend. It was a wonderful service. But the thing that struck me most was the solidarity. There were at least two hundred other cops in full dress uniform present along with the family and friends. From our department, from his current department and from every neighboring agency they came. He was given full honors. Our honor guard presented the colors, performed the 21 gun salute and folded the flag over his coffin before conferring it on the bereaved widow. I was lucky enough to be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with my brothers and sisters and salute the fallen. All that was a great experience. I made it through all that. The drive from the church to the grave site was breathtaking. Over a hundred emergency vehicles followed the horse-drawn hearse with lights flashing. Police cars of every make and agency. Fire trucks. Ambulances. The local PD shut down the roads for us and saluted as we went by. People came out of their houses to watch and some had their hands over their hearts.

Then after the 21 gun salute, and taps...the loudspeakers crackled to life and the voice of a dispatcher came out. At first, I thought one of the officers present had failed to silence their radio and I was offended. Then I realized what it was. Last call for the fallen. They broadcast his name, his affiliation with both departments, and then called him ‘10-42'. The code for the end of a tour of duty. That was what finally got me. The radio.

So it’s been a rough month. The quote I used as the title of this post helps really sum up my feelings at the moment. Marcus Aurelius echoed that sentiment several times in his ‘Meditations’...the idea that in the memories of those we hold dear...we don’t really die. Through all I’ve seen in the last month, I’m slightly afraid at what I’m slowly becoming because the death and grisly images of it didn’t really bother me. They didn’t, and that worries me in some sense. The thing that bothered me, about ALL of those scenes, was the reactions of those who cared about the deceased or took something different from it. It’s been the same for me on death notifications. I’ve been able to see the light and good that the dead brought to the world simply by watching how painful their loss is to others. An entire city mourned the loss of the ten on that plane. Over 100 volunteers scoured a mountain looking for another. And the life and example of another brought hundreds of colleagues and an entire town together in grief.

In the movie ‘Contact’, the alien hallucination of Jodie Foster’s dad said something I liked: "The only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable...is each other." In the deaths of all these people, I’ve seen the pain and grief that their passing brings. But more importantly, I’ve seen the fondness with which the lost are remembered. I’ve seen the good that their lives brought. And in the end, I suppose that’s good enough for me. I’ve recently re-read Plato’s ‘Phaedo’ and several religious treatises and come to the conclusion that I’m no closer to knowing what happens when one dies than I ever was. The overarching theme in everything I’ve read–Form Socrates, to Christian scripture to even George Carlin–is that death is nothing to be feared. As Carlin was fond of saying before death caught up with him, it’s the next big adventure! Plato argued eloquently that the soul is immortal. Marcus Aurelius taught that even if the universe is nothing but aimless chaos, at least WE need not be aimless also. Most of the people who read this will be very familiar with the Christian take on the matter. I’ve seen a lot of death lately, and I’ve spoken at length with many people recently about what they believe in. I can’t claim to even tell MYSELF that I have any satisfactory answers. All I can say is that through the grief and sorrow I’ve seen, there is a very silver lining to those dark clouds. Even if the dead are simply gone, it wasn’t in vain. There are twelve lives recently that I never knew in life. However, in death they have changed me subtly through absolutely no action on their part. Wherever they are now, it seems that the world is a little brighter for having known them. And I suppose in the end that’s the most I could ask for.

Well...I’m bored at the moment and the real-time strategy version of the pinnacle of nerd entertainment-Warhammer 40,000-is getting old. I’ve beaten it three times, so I thought I’d update. I would go back to the leather-clad lesbians of Clive Barker’s ‘Jericho’ but that’s not as awesome as it sounds when one factors in the skinless zombies and thoroughly gratuitous and unnecessary squishy noises. It’s a very moist game... So here I am.

It’s been an interesting week. While we haven’t had as many stabbings as Mike’s agency (read: none), we’ve had our share of blood. In our the neck of the woods, the last couple of months have seen roughly a dozen motorcycle riders either die or become severely injured. We’ve had some good fatal car crashes (‘good’ as in ‘interesting’...) too, but the theme for the last couple of months has been motorcycles. The sad part is that we’ve had some decent riders die in addition to the monumentally stupid bullet-bike riders as well. Ordinarily, when the rider of a bullet-bike/crotch-rocket dies, I use the term ‘good’ in it’s more traditional, celebratory sense. I try not to generalize (partially because it’s not fair but mostly in this case because I don’t HAVE to...), but the riders of bullet bikes tend to belong in one of two categories. 1) Greased-up, toned frat guys who need something to do in between keg stands and giving herpes to the local blondes. Or 2) pot-heads or crackheads who need some excitement and can’t afford a luxury car. Almost without exception, these riders tend to be young men under the age of 30. Those who care to keep count also know this demographic as the same one responsible for most car crashes and nearly all the violent crime. They also tend to have egos to rival the size of the sores on their balls. More often than not, one can find at least one barbed-wire or henna tattoo somewhere on their bodies. A pierced lip or gauged ear would not be uncommon. Because, of course, one cannot possibly be a bad-ass unless one advertises that fact to the world through mutilation of their own bodies... At this point, regular readers should be coming to the conclusion that this is not a group of people I hold in high esteem. Indeed, it wouldn’t be far from the mark to say that I would consider almost ANYONE who regularly rides a bullet-bike as the pinnacle of douchbaggery. These are people who need a healthy dose of reality. Sometimes it is I or one of my colleagues who administers that dose of reality. Sweet. I love moments like that. Sometimes...it’s Mother Nature and her ‘zero tolerance’ laws of physics that deliver the-sometimes permanent-dose of reality. For instance, every once in a while we will use the prodigious resources at our disposal to track down the owner of a bullet bike who ran from us and drag him kicking and screaming out of his own bed at 1 in the morning. Those moments are nearly orgasmic. Less orgasmic but NO less pleasing are the times one of these scrotum-stains eats a wall at over 100 mph, efficiently transforming themselves into a substance best described as ‘meat pudding’. If the afore-mentioned scrotum-stain t-bones a minivan full of kids, it’s less satisfying, obviously, but still I feel that their debt is paid when the medical examiner is scooping bits of their skull out of a Honda Odyssey. I’m a big fan of the Darwin Awards and anyone who dies this way is contributing to the health of our species, as far as I’m concerned.

To any possible riders of bullet-bikes who read this: at LEAST wear your gear. Invariably, I add about 30 IQ points to my estimation of anyone I see who is wearing a leather jacket and full helmet. The blonde guys in tank-top, shorts and flip-flops...I secretly will pot-holes and deer to enter your path. You are worthless and should die with half your skin several hundred yards behind you. And yes...if you’re wearing all the gear and eat a wall at 100+ you will still die instantly. The only thing the helmet and jacket will do, really, is keep bystanders from getting splattered. They’ll keep you in a nice, juicy and pre-tenderized ‘package’. As Jerry Seinfeld says of wearing helmets while skydiving: ‘At that point the helmet is really wearing YOU for protection.’ But still...it seems like you take it more seriously and value your life a little more than those other fucks if you wear the gear.

I investigated a motorcycle crash a couple days ago where it looks like a major mechanical malfunction caused the rider to dump the bike. This was a Honda Shadow road cruiser, and the guy was a 58 year old man. He was wearing a 3/4 helmet (everything except a face shield and chin-guard) and that probably saved his life. As it was, he still ended up with a broken arm and leg and really good road rash. And that was after a pregnant lady in a Hyundai Sonata drove in front of a Chevy pickup to keep the pickup from running over him. He was a lucky, lucky guy. It seems we’ve been getting a serious motorcycle crash at least once a week. It’s getting ridiculous. The above-mentioned bullet-bike douche-nozzles had a couple of their ilk racing down a residential road and then they crashed into a family party. No one died, but several went to the hospital. Thankfully, the two riders also went to the hospital, which makes tracking them down and using the criminal justice system to absolutely rape them much, much easier. The poor lady who stopped to help and ended up using her Hyundai as a physical shield was freaking out. Damn hormones. I felt bad for her. She probably saved that guy’s life, but ruined her own night in the process. That fiasco got my ass on the news because my sergeant is out of town and all the OTHER sergeants were off by that point. I’m pissed off at the fact that appearing on camera is starting to feel more comfortable. You see, that means it happens WAY too often.

After all that, I had the FUN one. I was avoiding finishing up the report from the motorcycle crash and just running speed. It was about 0430 on a deserted highway. One vehicle was in sight. It was going 91 mph. Cool. I stopped the car and immediately got a little suspicious. It was a brand-new Honda Civic with a temporary tag. (Too new to have license plates yet.) That’s not a big deal. The occupants of the car and the time of night, though, made me perk up a little. The driver was a white dude. In a t-shirt, shorts and slippers. The front passenger looked like a young woman in similar clothes. Casual. The rear passenger was a fairly attractive female in a little black dress. Evening wear. The guy was a little nervous and that sixth sense that we slowly develop over time was starting to perk up. My initial thought was: "Whore and her customers," The girl in the back just seemed out of place. Ordinarily, though, straight-up hookers aren’t that hot. Escorts are, and their sluttiness is usually far more subtle and ably negotiated than the walking bio-weapon that is your average street-worker. But...you usually don’t have a normal girl in casual clothes sitting with the guy who hired the escort. So I wasn’t sure what was up yet. The short version? Dealer and customers. But we’ll get to that.

I asked the driver why he was speeding and he told me he was taking the car back to the owner. He was VERY insistent about the fact that the car wasn’t his. I asked for his license. He smiled and said he didn’t have one and that the only reason he was driving was because he was stranded. He gave me an ID card. He was clean except for the suspended license which expired four years ago. No warrants though. I gave him his ticket and asked the girls if either had a license.

The girl initially thought to be a whore told me she did. I asked for it. She explained she didn’t have it with her. (Spidey sense tingling a little more. Let’s say about a 4 out of 10 on the bullshit meter.) I asked for name and date of birth. She gave it to me with no problem. I went back and ran it. Valid license. Photo looked similar. (Spidey sense down to 3 out of 10). I went back to the car with a printout of the license. The picture didn’t really match up perfectly. (4/10) I asked her for her middle name. She gave it. I asked for the address listed on the license. She couldn’t. (6/10) I asked for her social security number. She couldn’t remember it (7/10) and then hastily told me that she was in the process of changing it (9/10) because someone had been using her name. I asked her to get out and watched her reactions. I got a closer look at her and the picture was looking less and less like her. The physical description on the license showed 5' 4". She wasn’t that tall. I wasn’t quite to 10/10 yet. Let’s say about 9.8/10. "Have a seat," I told her. She traded places with the driver which means she had control of the vehicle.

I went back to the car and ran local warrants for the last name. There were a couple warrants listed with people of the same last name whose DOB’s would be similar to how old I thought this girl was. I ran those. I got a couple of driver’s license numbers and ran those. Bingo! 10/10. Found a photo that was the spot-on match. I yanked her out of the car and hooked her. "Is that your sister?" I asked of the name and DOB she originally gave. She told me it was. "You guys look a lot alike." I said. She nodded and told me she knew. She had a couple of minor warrants for DUI and possession of drug paraphernalia (hmmm...).

I went back to the car AGAIN and asked the other female passenger if she had a license. She shook her head and told me hers was suspended, too. I got her info just to verify that and saw that it was suspended for drugs. Hmmm... I asked her what drugs she was caught with. She paused and then said, "Cocaine," Hmmm... Because I had no one there with a valid license to drive the car and no registered owner on scene anyway, I impounded it for possible theft. That gave me the right to search it. Just to cover my bases, I asked for consent to search anyway. "Is there anything in this car I should be worried about? Anything I wouldn’t like if I find it?" I asked. They both said no. The other guy AGAIN told me it wasn’t his car and he didn’t know what was in it. Hmmm... I asked if it would be ok if I took a look. The guy smiled and said it wasn’t his car again. Even so, I explained, would it be ok if I looked around. "I would prefer you didn’t," Hmmm... "Well, then I’ll just impound it anyway." I said. I had them both step out. I sat them down and called for a back. When the other officer got there, I searched the car. I immediately found a metal tube with a metal screen in one end (i.e.–‘crack pipe’). In the center console I found a sandwich baggie filled with needles and a plastic spoon. I assumed the plastic spoon was NOT used to scoop up insulin. Well, now I had exigent circumstances and probable cause, which means now I owned both those guys. I found a couple more in the driver’s door and took note of all that. I then asked the other girl if there was anything in her purse I wouldn’t like. She sighed and said there was a pipe. I found another, broken crack pipe in her purse, but no drugs yet. Dammit. I asked the guy if there was anything in his bag that he’d taken from the car I wouldn’t like. He shook his head. Aside from the nasty porno magazine, he was right. I then stood him up.

"Is there anything on your person I’m not going to like if I find it?" He smiled then and nodded. "Yeah," He said. "What? Not more needles right? Cuz I promise, if I get stuck by a needle searching you it’s going to be a very bad day for you." I explained very carefully, fully intent on his face meeting the concrete at a high rate of speed if I got stuck with a filthy needle. He shook his head, "No. I’ve got cocaine in my left pocket." Well, "I’ve got cocaine..." turned out to be something of an understatement. I expect user amounts of coke and crack to be tiny. Usually, a user amount of coke will fit in a little balloon or bag about the size of the fingernail on your index finger. A user amount of crack is significantly smaller since it’s more potent. He had five separate bindles which included both crack (remember the pipes?) and cocaine. When I got it all weighed after booking everyone, he had 11 grams of crack and 3.3 grams of coke. For those who aren’t familiar, that’s a shitload of both. He was dealing. He only had $300 in his pocket, which kinda surprised me. But then again, Slutzilla in the back of my patrol car who initially lied to me WAS dressed to the rafters with her tits on a tray. Maybe he was getting paid in OTHER ways. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge...) After all, my initial reaction WAS that she was either a whore or an escort.

They both got booked, but the deputies found a little surprise in Slutzilla’s purse. She had a tear in the lining of her purse and I thought I’d seen everything. I guess I hadn’t. She had a little metal container with some white residue and some broken glass shards from yet another crack pipe. Since this was at the jail and I had asked if there was anything else I needed to know about, it’s considered felony smuggling. Poor Slutzilla... Since the glass shards were tiny and within the torn part of her purse I couldn’t see, I didn’t feel TOO bad about missing it on the street.

Ah, I tell ya...this job rules sometimes. Pulling all that crack out of that guy’s pocket was like Christmas morning as a kid... Only instead of hours of imagination and play-time, I get to send some guy to prison. It’s wonderfully fulfilling...

I’m out! Here’s your horoscope:

Your water will break while watching a performance of The Marriage Of Figaro, causing you great surprise, as you are not pregnant, female, or interested in opera.  (www.theonion.com)

Fine! I have given in to pressure once again to update. But be warned. This one is LONG. Ordinarily, I don’t find it difficult to update. For some reason, though, I just haven’t felt the motivation to get it done. And the longer I don’t update, the more there is to cover. And with more to cover, the more daunting the task becomes and the less likely I am to sit down and get it done. There is some sort of weird, inverse proportion of laziness at work there, but I’ll be damned if -I’m- going to sit down and do the math.

In the intervening two months since the last update, a LOT has happened, but very little of it is really worth writing about. I am training to transfer into our alcohol tech division, which means I’ll be responsible for maintaining the instruments the public erroneously and ignorantly refer to as ‘breathalyzers’. In point of nit-picking fact, there was only ever one ‘breathalyzer’ and most places haven’t really used that for going on thirty years now. The breath testing instruments we currently use here are called ‘Intoxilyzers’ which is a brand name of the company CMI, Inc, out of Owensboro, KY. How do I know? Because I spent two weeks there learning ALL about them. Two unrelenting weeks in Kentucky. The class, people and instructors were awesome, but Kentucky can lick my sack. I didn’t enjoy it. But yeah, they aren’t breathalyzers, people. And that should serve as an ample demonstration of my new-found dickitude. It was also pounded ad nauseum into my head during both the class in Kentucky and the class in Bloomington, IN that they are NOT ‘machines’. As the emotionless chant went: ‘Machines DO things, instruments measure things’. They are ‘instruments’. Personally, I believe the Semantics Police have stumbled into a heretofore undiscovered realm of ridiculous, but there it is. The instructors INSIST that magistrates and juries will take you more seriously if you call them ‘instruments’. Based on my experience with the intelligence of the average American juror (and even some magistrates) I really feel that’s dubious at best. The point being...I’ve been busy.

It would be difficult to rummage through the dusty drawers of my mental card catalog to pull out EVERY single instance worth noting in the last two months, so I’ll stick to a few more recent ones and hope that serves the purpose.

Last week our K-9 officer (who is single-handedly becoming the bane of pot-growing cartels everywhere) stopped a car carrying a load of fresh, newly-harvested Oregon weed from some hippie commune. The driver (let’s call him ‘Rainbow’ for the sake of brevity) had graduated from the MLK, Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi school of semi-passive resistance. He wouldn’t grant consent to search (which is fine...that’s what the dog is for anyway) and started to just walk down the road in the middle of nowhere when they started searching anyway. I headed over there because the K-9 officer came on the radio out of breath and called for another unit. And when you hear your associates call for help while out of breath...you move your ASS. He was fine and just had to wrestle with Rainbow to get him in cuffs and detain him. No big deal. The humor of the situation came from the cookie-cutter cliche’s Rainbow started spouting once in handcuffs. I honestly didn’t think stereotypes like him existed anywhere outside the Natural Resource Dept. of any community college you care to mention.

I got on scene and the first thing that Rainbow said to the other officers now on scene was: "Is there any way you guys can just take the stuff and let me go?" If you laughed out loud while reading that, you’re a lot like me, which should scare you. I lol’d. (And ordinarily, I abhor ‘lete-speak’ with a fiery passion. The former ‘lol’ is used in an ironic or sarcastic sense, in case anyone missed it. I am a big fan of maintaining the sanctity of the language. Yes, I know... More dickitude. ) But yes, I laughed out loud at Rainbow’s plea. Turns out he had about 20 lbs of prime Oregon weed with cute little Woodstock names on the plastic bags like ‘Purple Gorilla’ complete with smileys next to the name. Awww......

"I can’t believe this is happening...I don’t believe in jail! It’s not right to just take someone’s freedom like this. I don’t believe in jail!" Yeah...as if jail is some mythical place like Shangri La. I leaned in and said, "Believe it or not, it IS a real place and you’ll see it tonight."

Some more gems culled from the resiny chasm of what’s left of Rainbow’s brain: "This isn’t right! You guys are like Nazi’s. I didn’t do anything wrong." When it was pointed out that he was smuggling 20 lbs of an illegal substance in his car he then fired back with: "The only reason it’s illegal is because of a government conspiracy! It’s not a drug! It’s all natural! It comes from Mother Earth. It’s a spiritual thing and the government doesn’t like that. You guys need to reconnect, man! Get in touch with Gaia..." The rest of the tirade drifted off into muffled obscurity as he was unceremoniously shoved into a patrol car and the door slammed shut. The sheer humor of the situation was sorta undercut by how sadly stereotypical the guy really was. I was left with wanting to sit the guy down and carefully explain that he would be better served by wearing pink polo shirts with popped collars and having carefully sculpted and deliberately messy hair underneath his baseball cap spun slightly to one side. You know...if he went with more MODERN fads and symbols of douchebaggery than being 45 fucking years behind the times. Oh well. I was poignantly reminded of Eric Cartman’s nightmare on ‘South Park’: "Hippies! Hiiiipieees! They wanna change the world but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad!"

Last night Mikey’s colleagues were handling the scene of a fatal car crash when a dark green Lincoln Continental drove through very obvious traffic cones, across a road closure and then side-swiped a marked patrol car with all lights activated. The Lincoln then continued on until it was frantically flagged down while driving right through and over the evidence of the fatal crash scene. The driver was then yanked out of the car and placed in handcuffs by officers who were, shall we say, slightly annoyed by his behavior. Ok! Time for Police Academy 101:

Did the cock-knob drive through the road closure and side-swipe the car because:

A) The fucking pigs have no authority to close a public road. I pay my taxes! I’ll drive where I want! They’re MY roads!

B) The closure was set up improperly and road flares should have been used rather than traffic cones.

C) The green Lincoln experienced a mechanical failure and was unable to stop.

D) The afore-mentioned cock-knob is a drunk asshole.

If you answered with anything other than D, please report to your local humane society to have yourself spayed and/or neutered. And if you have to go with the ‘and’ when reporting to the humane society, that’s fascinating...but please keep it to yourself. Luckily, no one was in the patrol car when it was hit. I responded to handle the crash and DUI.

I got the guy out and prepared to do tests on him. Had Rainbow been there, the worthless hippie smuggler (think of Han Solo’s pasty, hairy and inbred cousin whimpering "Not in the face!") would have been awed by the golden majesty of this guy’s beery aura. There was a sour, ethanol haze wafting from his very pores. "What happened?" I asked him. "I was driving north (he was driving west) and missed my exit (he wasn’t on a freeway) and I didn’t see the barricades (there were no barricades, only cones) and I hit the cop car. I stopped even though people were waving for me to get out of there (they were frantically waving for him to stop)." "How much have you had to drink tonight?" I asked. There was a pause. Blink. Pause. Swaying. Inhale. Pause. "Nothing." he said finally. Well shockingly, the field sobriety tests showed he had been LYING about the ‘nothing’. Can you believe that? Before the handcuffs went on AGAIN, I asked if he wanted to revise his ‘nothing’ answer. Feigning shame and remorse he then mumbled, "I had one beer," He meant one KEG, but he forgot to clarify...

He tested at twice the per se limit of .08 and I think when he saw the results, he was a little upset with himself for taking the test. He was POSITIVE he was going to blow under. Positive! He asked me no less than five times what I would do when he blew under the limit. He saw the formidable security at the jail and then became agitated. "A huge fence and bars! I’m not gonna run! This is fucking stupid! I didn’t hurt anyone! This doesn’t need to happen this way!" And on and on for a minute. He expressed outrage at the fact that he was going to spend a night in jail because ALL he did was drink and drive. The two of us then had a heart-felt discussion about the fact that he was SO drunk that he blew an obvious road closure with flashing lights everywhere and could have killed not only my boys in blue but the tow driver and civilian witnesses still on scene. That pissed me off. It’s one thing to complain about going to jail for DUI when I stop a car for a broken taillight or something. I’ll still smile all the way to the jail to book your drunk ass, but I won’t scream at you for being a fucking asshole. It’s quite another thing to be shocked and horrified about ending up in jail when you side-swipe a marked patrol car while twice the per se limit. I mean, if you don’t go to jail for hitting a cop while DUI, what DO you go to jail for? But, he was just a good guy who made a simple and understandable mistake. Why couldn’t I see that? Well, I suppose it’s because my blind spot for humanity’s innate goodness tends to grow exponentially when my fellow officers are put in jeopardy because you think you’re ‘ok to drive’. I explained in more diplomatic terms than I’m writing here that I thought he was an utterly worthless human being and then explained my hope that he rot in the drunk tank with the rest of society’s detritus. Amen and peace be with you.

Friday night/Saturday morning, I got called for the first time in a couple months for a search and rescue in the helicopter. It was a pretty standard flight. The FLIR was actually inoperable, but they already knew where the guy was. He was reported to us as a 24 year old male on a mountainside, possibly hypothermic. They had cell communication with him, and his answers were delayed and slow. He had a flashlight or headlamp, which is how we found him once we got the approximate GPS coordinates. Our job was to ferry a couple of SAR teams up the mountain to go get him since there were no suitable landing zones ANYWHERE near the guy. Our job was then to try and guide the teams in by providing a hovering point of reference. We believed the guy was at least still conscious at that point because it looked like he kept flashing the light at the helicopter. All was going smoothly.

We touched back down at the command center when it seemed like the intrepid guys on foot were well on their way. Idle chatter at the incident command ensued while we waited. "What’s this guy’s name?" someone asked. "John Doe," another replied (Not his real name...for those of you wondering...and if you are...see my comment above about the Humane Society.). "You’re shitting me?" a third demanded. The second guy blinked and looked at #3. "No," he replied, with a look on his face that seemed to say, "Why? Does that seem like something I’d joke about? If it were a joke I would’ve said his name was Holden McGroin."

#3 shook his head as the fires of rage began to simmer. "John Doe?" Another head shake, "This is the third time we’ve rescued this kid in the last two weeks!" Now...I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, "Oh, now #3 is just taking a big ol’ tug on everyone’s collective fleshy cranks. There’s no way that’s true." And I would’ve thought the same thing were it not for the very genuine rage in his face. This was the THIRD time in two weeks that Search and Rescue had been called to help John Doe off a mountainside. The burning question then became how that was even possible. Turns out that John is mildly autistic and probably a little mentally handicapped in addition to that. That’s bad enough. Ok. We can deal with that. But how does he keep ending up in the boonies? How does he end up with his ass on a mountain, stranded, three times in two weeks? Most mentally handicapped people are given a helmet and left to their own devices and they don’t just wander into the fucking woods. If they HAVE that propensity, most of them have care-givers (either blood or hired) that would prevent that from happening. Right? Well, not John. Turns out John’s dad is only too happy to indulge Johnny’s wanderlust. Dad keeps driving his autistic and occasionally suicidal son out to the mountains to hike. Alone. With no supplies. And no cold-weather gear. Just a cell phone with the Search and Rescue on speed-dial, I guess.

Well, the incident commanders were LIVID. The SAR team up there consisted of the team from the local city PD, the team from the local Sheriff’s office, the captain over both those teams and the fire chief from the local city. It was then decided to bring ol’ Dad up to the incident command to have a look-see at all the resources his dumb ass was wasting. The pilot and I just sat over to the side smiling at the cluster-fuck this situation had suddenly become while dad stood, gape-jawed and wide-eyed while four VERY important guys (two ranking incident commanders with extensive experience, the captain over both of them and the fire chief for the city) quietly vented their frustration with this guy. He had one guy on all four sides. They threatened to charge him with the entire cost of the operation. They came to the pilot to get some fiscal figures on how much the bird was costing them. It was not cheap. I’ll just say that. Dad got what some in military circles refer to as a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting. A ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting is an earnest discussion wherein a critical problem is addressed and the subject of said discussion hopefully begs the Almighty Lord for guidance and strength in finding the remedy for their own Earth-shattering retardation.

The end result was that they didn’t charge Dad for anything, but sure as hell guaranteed him they WOULD if this EVER happened again. Because they could argue that Johnny was a danger to himself and definitely a danger to the poor SAR guys trudging along the mountain, they forcibly admitted him to a mental wing of a local hospital for observation. Hopefully that’ll pound some sense into him. Oh, and he wasn’t hypothermic when the guys got to him. Just autistic. Hence the slow reactions and difficulty understanding questions or instructions. Moral of the story: Don’t drive your mentally handicapped relatives to the wilderness and leave them there. Many might think that self-explanatory. But apparently it DOES need to be explicitly spelled out for some people. I will leave you and this painfully long post with a final comment from #3: "That light he’s flashing at you is probably the same fucking head lamp I gave him LAST week!"

Here’s your horoscope:

The nation is stunned by Amelia Earhart's miraculous return, especially when she knees you in the groin and shouts, "Thanks for nothing." (www.theonion.com)

In the intervening time between the last post and this one I have been ‘fired’ (by Jen), pestered, threatened and peppered with questions as to when the blog will be updated again.–Not ALL by Jen, mind you. She was just the only one who flat-out fired me for being a lazy bastage. And as such, I would like to echo Dr. Cox on ‘Scrubs’, speaking to his ex-wife: "As much as it may SEEM like it to me personally, I feel desperately compelled to remind you that we are NOT, in fact, in prison...and I am just SO not your bitch!" And now that I’m sitting down to write...I have a great number of subjects on which I could lucubrate. Given the events of the past week, though, I think this one will be a little more somber. I will try to write an amusing series of anecdotes shortly. There’s nothing funny about what happened this week.

Sunday night/early Monday morning, dispatch put out an ATL (attempt to locate) on a missing girl. It was frustratingly vague simply because the investigating police agency had no details to go off of. All we had was her description: 7 year old Asian female, last seen wearing a pink dress, 3' 8" and 45 lbs. We made note of it and filed it away. The next day, the investigation and search was in full swing. But nothing happened and no one was found. There were still no suspects. There was still no indication on whether or not the little 7-year-old girl was simply lost or hurt, or had been abducted. According to the information we had, it was like this beautiful little thing just VANISHED. I spent Monday grumbling about the damn snow and the hundreds of crashes it caused. In between grumblings, I was winning a trial on a speeding ticket and making sure a felonious drunk driver never gets his license back. That night I went to work and did my job.

The next ‘morning’ (it was actually just after 2:00 pm but that’s morning for me) sarge called and woke me up. He said the lieutenants were looking for volunteers to go help with the search at this local agency. Of course I said yes. Operations like that are part of why I do the job in the first place. It’s why I love the helicopter (aside from the sheer thrill). Of course I said yes.

We were briefed by a team of FBI agents familiar with searches for missing children and then we went to the command post to get our assigned search areas. There were hundreds of civilian volunteers canvassing the neighborhoods and passing out flyers, searching dumpsters and culverts...that sort of thing. There were also well over a hundred sworn officers from various departments around the area. Our task was to request entry to citizens’ houses and search for the girl. We had a similar case in our area not long ago and the victim turned out to be in a neighbor’s house less than a block away. So this time...house-to-house searches were a priority. That was our job. To search houses. Sarge had the map and we split into two teams of two. I went with our K-9 officer, sans the dog.

I think the thing that struck me most about the searches was the overwhelming willingness, for the most part, of the citizens to allow us entry. Perhaps some of it was fear at the uniform, or ignorance that they were allowed to say ‘no’ and deny entry. Perhaps some of it was simply the thought that allowing us in would get their house checked off a very important list.–Instant exoneration in a way. But I can’t help but think that the vast majority of the cooperation we experienced was due to a genuine desire to help in some small way. It was unusual for the community to galvanize the way it did during that investigation. The place where this little girl was lost is not known as a ‘good’ part of town. It is a hodge-podge of race and income that seems to cross most of the spectrum. However, it also boasts the highest percentage of probationers and parolees in the state. It is not a ‘nice’ town. And it’s not often thought to be a ‘safe’ town. And yet this little girl had brought them all together in a way that is extremely rare to see. That day, I searched one block with my fellow officer. In the space of that one block I saw white, black, asian, polynesian...young, old, couples (including a lesbian couple). I saw income ranges from penniless pensioners to a wealthy elderly woman living in a fortress of a mansion. I saw fastidious and immaculate abodes and I saw some of the worst hovels I could imagine. I saw pack-rats with basements crammed with 40 years of nick-knacks. I saw renovated houses with post-modern minimalist design and furnishings. Roughly 30 houses and apartments in one city block and I saw nearly the entirety of the human spectrum.

And the one common denominator? The one overarching attribute? Their nearly unanimous answer to the question: "We are assisting in the house-to-house search for this missing girl. May we come in and look around your home for a few minutes?" The answer common to 98% of these highly diverse people? "Absolutely! Please, come on in!" We were welcomed almost ubiquitously. Even when we opened their freezer doors (the ONLY possible purpose being to find dismembered or hidden body parts of a murdered little girl) there was no protest and there was no offense. We had one gentleman express distaste at the idea that the police wanted to come into his home, but he let us in. We had one young, single girl who seemed nervous that we might be imposters and asked for identification beyond the badge. One could argue that the full uniforms complete with taser and mobile radio should be enough, but like I said, this was not a ‘good’ part of town and she was a young, single woman. We furnished the ID and then she smiled and welcomed us in. There was one girl who was terrified of letting us in and getting busted for weed use. She was shaking and nervous and initially asked us to come back in ten minutes. We persisted and even SHE let us in. My associate and I silently noted the pervasive odor of burnt marijuana, found no seven year old girl, and left in peace. I wish we could have told her that her misdemeanor possession is as FAR from our attention as, say, busting one of the civilian volunteers for jay-walking while handing out flyers. It just simply wasn’t a priority that night. Roughly 30 dwellings...and nearly unanimous consent and concern for a girl they’d never met. Regardless of the reasons behind their acquiescence, it diluted a little of the bitterness I’m slowly gaining for my fellow humans.

Unfortunately, my crew was needed for regular patrol duty at 8 pm that night. We spent about 2 ½ hours helping with the search, and then we got ready to leave. Sarge and my other colleague were pursuing a possible lead and the K-9 officer and I were preparing to leave and check on for normal patrol.

Another officer assisting in the search drove up to us then. He asked if we were helping out with the search. We said yes. He told us that one of the teams had found her. Dead. And while I FELT it, the K-9 officer’s expression and reaction conveyed it far better than my own brain. It was like a punch to the gut. "Dead?" he shouted, eyes going wide with incredulity. Deep down, I think even we, as cynical police, still held hope that we’d find her alive and safe. The three of us sat in our idling patrol cars and shook our heads. "Found her in an apartment not far from where she lived," the third officer continued, "Four people in the apartment. They arrested all of them."

I shook my head again. "Fuck due process!" I growled, "Put a bullet in each of their fucking brain pans!" It was a guttural reaction to the news, half-sincere anger, half-frustration, all jest. And in the interim, I’ve grown to actually be a little ashamed of myself for that reaction. But that explanation will have to come later.

She was dead, and I-even now-know absolutely no more than the general public on the particulars of what happened. All I know is that I was glad Spencer did a ride along during the normal portion of my shift so I didn’t have to think about it. It felt futile...going to all those houses. I know that’s incorrect because SOMEONE had to find her, alive or otherwise, and it COULD have been one of the houses on that block I searched. I contributed and it wasn’t futile.

The next night, while wading through what felt like mountains of reports from the snow day and the rest of the week, I tried to imagine what it must have been like to find her. For me...by the 30^th house...it felt routine. Open garbage cans, open freezer doors...check closets and shine the flashlight into the dank corners of crawl-spaces. What if it had been ME who found her? What if opening that ONE shower curtain revealed the broken and lifeless body of a beautiful little girl? Would the sight of the body override my training and experience? Just HEARING about it made me angry enough to blurt the first thought that came to my head. When I drew the weapon to take the occupants into custody, would I have the stamina and discipline not to pull the trigger? I like to think so. And I think if I were honest with myself, I would be able to do it right. It’s both haunting and a little frightening, though, to know that the thought would be rattling around my brain, though. Do it! Says the angry and impulsive part of me, screaming for ‘justice’. Do it! She’s dead! And THEY did it! ‘Fuck due process...’ And how many, hearing the story or reading what I’ve written, would have the same reaction?

Judging from the message boards on the media websites, the vast majority of my fellow humans would have the same reaction. And that’s a weird feeling...to feel validated that I wasn’t the only one who had that gut reaction and to (in the same BREATH) feel revulsion at being lumped in with these ignorant fools on the message boards who I mock on a daily basis. The local internet was replete with calls for public hangings...disembowelings and some even suggested crucifixion or drawing and quartering. ‘Shoot first, ask questions later.’ ‘Kill them all and let God sort it out.’ ‘The Lord may grant you forgiveness, but you’ll find none here.’ The outrage and anger were rarely equaled among the public here. I suppose on some level that’s a testament to just how much the community rallied around the girl. Citizens who on any other day would mock her race or economic stature were suddenly crying out for the execution of her murderers.

Having a few days’ perspective and re-reading my own writing, I suppose there were several lessons from the whole ordeal. First and foremost, that justice is elusive and must be EARNED. As it turned out, the four initial arrestees were simply innocent roommates of the likely-guilty party. When the officers knocked on the door and asked permission to enter and search, the four occupants granted it (most likely because they truly had no idea what lurked in their basement). The other person who lived there was found and arrested later and at least confessed to PART of the crime. In light of those facts comes my shame at my gut reaction. After all, it’s my damn JOB to be professional and thorough. It is my job to protect the rights of even the worst. It is my job to leave judgment to the courts and juries. It is my DUTY to gather the facts and act on reason and not emotion. The facts coming to light eventually gave me new perspective on my role and on the necessity of corralling emotion. It also gave me new respect for the oft-maligned distance and objectivity that the justice system gives us. In the end, it was a VERY good demonstration of why vigilante justice is so highly frowned upon. It didn’t make me appreciate my fellow ignorant citizens any more, but it made me like my own snap-judgment even less. Had the public (or I) had our initial way, four innocent people would now be dead.–Most likely killed in absolutely horrific ways.

But more importantly, this girl’s tragic ordeal has a very silver lining. I saw it with every resident who let us into their homes. Before we even started asking, a young man who lived in the house where we parked came up and asked if we were assisting in the search. We told him yes and then he asked if there was anything he could do to help. We asked to come in and search his house. He gladly granted it. His wife was carrying a two-week-old infant as we looked around. The girl is dead...but maybe that town will be a little brighter for a little while because of it.

As for me...All I can say is that I learned a lot from it and am still dreading the day I have to see a lifeless child. Either from violence or from an accident, I dread it. I also know that as much as I enjoy my job, I wouldn’t want to trade places with the officers who found her. Not for an instant.

I’m off, and I don’t feel like posting a horoscope. I’ll try and write something amusing tomorrow.

I have on several occasions paid homage to Sgt. D and spoken well of his character. Superlatives tend to fail me at that point. I tend to fall short in truly describing him. And some may insist that such a tendency leans towards painting myself as a sycophant. I believe the coarser vernacular terms in popular usage these days are either ‘ass-kissing’ or ‘slobbing the knob’. And while I would gladly and enthusiastically slob Big D’s knob I can safely disarm those accusations by simply pointing out that 1) The blog is anonymous and there is little to no chance of Big D seeing my schoolgirl-esque infatuation and 2) He rammed his patrol car into a scumbag tonight in order to end a chase...thereby rescinding anyone’s right to doubt his status as life-long bad-ass. My shameless bootlicking is well and truly justified. I’ve never seen the man’s balls...but they’ve got to be elephantine in proportion...the sort of genitalia that make grown men weep and grown women smile coyly and toss panties.

Here’s how it went down. Another officer in a neighboring county stopped a car. He smelled alcohol on the driver and then asked the driver to exit the vehicle to perform field sobriety tests. The driver then stated, "I love you man, but I’ve got to go." And then he left. The chase was on. Thankfully, this idiot was a member of a particularly inept breed...a jewel of stupidity wafting on the sea of mediocrity. In a world of morons...this man was king. He hopped on the freeway and decided to doggedly STAY on the freeway. It made setting up spikes and Wiley Coyote traps exceptionally easy as he barreled his way into our county. Big D was set up first and tossed his spikes. He got one of the tires. Three other guys were set up a little ahead and decided to forego the element of chance and just strung three spike strips across the whole road. It completely destroyed all four tires. Big D had since abandoned his spikes on the side of the road and gone to join the chase (now slowing down, obviously). In a voice as calm, cool and collected as if he were simply reviewing reports he said on the radio, "You wanna try and box him in?" The initiating officer replied that yes, that was a most splendid idea. Three units attempted to close in on our deflated quarry. He was smiling, waving and giving the thumbs up to the pursuing officers. Big D initially took the front position. The idea was to create an impenetrable wall of patrol cars and forcibly slow the vehicle and pin the suspect. Unfortunately, the officer who was responsible for the side of the box didn’t get there in time and the target ducked through an opening.

They were setting up again to box him in but the officers (since we’ve never been formally trained on the technique) were having difficulty coordinating it. It failed again. At that point, Big D got tired of it. He came up alongside the suspect vehicle and then rammed it. He pinned it against the barrier wall and they rode like that for about 1/4 mile. Eventually...the fuck-nut stopped. Sarge’s car was completely messed up, but the idiot was stopped. Sarge let him go and he shot back out and lost control as if someone had given him the old PIT treatment. The fifty or so officers trailing behind then pulled the struggling suspect out of the vehicle and eventually gave him five seconds on the taser when he failed to understand the phrases ‘stop resisting’ and ‘show us your hands’. A hardened veteran of the fugitive unit and gang squads told us he almost wrecked his own car watching Big D pull that move. He said it was absolutely one of the coolest things he’d ever seen.

The best part about the whole thing was sarge’s reaction to why he’d done what he’d done. He’s told us...the boys under his command...to end pursuits as quickly as possible in order to avoid hurting any innocent bystanders. After exiting his vehicle through the driver’s window since the door was now ruined, he said, very plainly, in that same calm, reviewing reports kind of way that the chase had been going for almost 30 miles. It had to end. He said he was tired of people running from us and every minute it went on was another minute someone could get hurt. He ended it. I think the highest praise I could ever give sarge is saying that he leads by example. Instead of being the kind of supervisor who stays in the back and gives the orders, Big D was the first one to step right the hell up and practice what he preaches. Boxing in (the safer alternative) had failed twice. Spikes hadn’t worked. Sarge ended it the only way he knew how.

So...in the end...you can talk smack about my sergeant any time you want. If you aren’t driving, I promise you won’t see my fist until it’s WAY too late. You WILL, however, have no difficulty seeing the other fist or the many sharp and repeated after-strikes sure to follow in what can only be described as a heinous and barbaric ass-kicking. If you ARE driving...I won’t have to do anything at all. Sarge will just knock your Hyundai into a bridge abutment and completely ruin your shit.

Besides the indirect proof for the enormous size of sarge’s balls, it was a REALLY busy week. We assisted another neighboring agency with another chase. We were on containment while a local bloodhound sniffed out the shit-bag. The bloodhounds, by the way, are absolutely unbelievable. They can track almost anything. Even in a crowded, scent-filled urban environment, this dog was only deterred once. He reacquired the guy’s stench and promptly hunted him down. Incidentally, this bloodhound is no vicious attack dog. True to the breed, they are really quite gentle. This particular pooch, according to Mike, does not want treats and does not want belly rubs. All he wants is the opportunity to lick the bad guys once he’s found them. As I understand it, the handler is usually quick to oblige him once the worthless excuse for a human is securely in cuffs and can’t escape the merciless tongue. The dog found this particular sack of monkey spunk hiding in a garbage can. It ended well.

It was definitely a week of chases. There was the one where sarge just completely dominated, and then there was another one where the officer lost him. Then there was a third chase involving Shoe where they ended up getting their guys.--Both the 13 year olds (one of whom was driving) and the 18 year old too stupid to realize he’s cruising the hood with the evil Latino version of the Hardy Boys. Seriously...you’d think the white guy would at SOME point notice that he’s hanging out with his kid brother’s junior high classmates. And THEN one would hope that he would realize that somehow...the 13 year old was driving. Not him. But no...he’s got weed to smoke. Shoe was the second unit on that one. When they finally crashed, deep in the ghetto, the 18 year old stepped out of the car and put his hands up. But, as the wise and venerable Chris Rock once said, "If the cops have to come and get you, they’re bringin’ an ass-kickin’ with ‘em!" Also, Shoe is not a small guy and Newton’s law of inertia makes it hard for the poor guy to stop once he’s got that mass moving. Needless to say, the 18 year old was ignominiously dropped-and not gently-to the sidewalk and ‘taken into custody’. I cannot even imagine the look of terror on someone’s face seeing someone Shoe’s size running at them full bore. For chrissake, his bicep and tricep look like two Volkswagens fighting over a parking spot. In any case, the adult was captured immediately. And since 13 year olds who go joy-riding in their grandma’s stolen Explorer are not known for having genius-level intellects, the other two were quickly tracked down and taken to detention as well. Not the, "Oh, man! I’m gonna miss Hannah Montana! Mr. Miller is SO mean!" type of detention. I mean the, "This is practice for when you grow up and get ass-raped in the shower," type of detention. The kind where they lock you in for the night and the big orderlies smell not-so-vaguely funky.

And this week also serves as a prime example of 436's karma when it comes to chases. See if you can detect a pattern here: for the first chase where the bloodhound eventually found them, I was at a local hospital half a county away having break. For the second one where the officer lost him, I was half a county away. For the third one where Shoe played "Nacho Libre" with the spindly pot-head, I was half a state away in the helicopter on a search and rescue mission. For the last one where sarge turned our highway into a bad Michael Bay film, I was half-naked putting on the body armor, having just returned from the search and rescue mission. On the last chase before ALL of those, I had just arrested someone and couldn’t go play. Do you see it yet? 436 has absolutely horrendous luck when it comes to chases. I’m NEVER anywhere near them! NEVER! Oh well...

The search and rescue mission was a great chance to get back in the chopper. It had been a while. It was a pretty easy mission. We were looking for three lost snowmobilers. The ground guys found them first. Since we were fifteen miles from both incident command and the victims’ vehicle, the pilot and I ferried them back in the chopper. The problem was, one of the guys was 320 pounds. A second guy was 300 pounds. The last one was a relatively reasonable 180. Anyone want to place bets on who would’ve gotten eaten first if they’d turned to cannibalism? Wow. I’m sorry...that was in bad taste... At any rate, there was absolutely no way we could take all three at once. We had to make two trips. And then we headed home and I managed to miss two chases.

SIDENOTE:  The coolest thing about that mission was it was just as the lunar eclipse was ending.  We had fog in the valleys, too.  So imagine this:  You're in a helicopter slowly headed over the mountains.  The dark moon is slowly getting brighter as it emerges from Earth's shadow.  You look behind you and see the glow of the city lights filtering through the haze of the fog.  It was utterly surreal.  Beautiful.

And just for the record...if any of you out there are wondering if maybe it’s time to lose a little weight...there’s a couple of hints for you. When a Eurocopter that has been documented as the only helicopter to be able to fly to the top of Everest can’t manage to ferry your mass fifteen miles nor even get off the ground while your epic ass is wedged in the back seat...time to evaluate your caloric intake. When a 1000 lb snowmobile (or ‘sled’ if you speak redneck) can traverse the hardened snow with no problem but the addition of your corpulent buttocks is what causes the crust of snow to crack like an elderly woman’s hip...maybe order the salad next time instead of the tub of fucking lard. I didn’t really ask how their snowmobiles got stuck. I just know that my nimble 160 lbs was striding across the hardened snow like Jesus on that lake...and that the snowmobiles were stuck. I also couldn’t help but notice that none of the snowmobiles the SAR guys were riding had been stuck in the snow either. Hmmm...

I also got a dui that resulted in the discovery of an ounce of shrooms and led to a 35 year old woman and mother of a 16, 10 and 8 year old to go to jail in addition to the drunk. But that’s a long story and this one’s already long.

All hail Big D! Here’s your horoscope:

You’ll be attacked for your unflattering and blasphemous depiction of the prophet Mohammed following a rather disastrous makeover this week.  (www.theonion.com)

Allow me to paint a picture. First, imagine a blank canvas. Pure, crisp, white and full of possibility. All the potential and grandeur of a limitless imagination is bound up in that white canvas. Just waiting. From the sweeping vistas of the Himalayas to the single tear that rolls down a widow’s cheek...the canvas could be filled with anything! Now, fill that canvas with a fat white guy. Not the most promising beginning, I understand, but wait! It gets SO much better. Cover that fat white guy not with Wranglers, not with a wife-beater t-shirt and not with baggy jeans that somehow fail to cover his doughy buttocks. No. Cover him with threadbare black boxer shorts and a hospital gown. Now add some black socks. Open his mouth. Of the blackened, neglected chaos that therein lay, remove all but one of the top teeth. And from his nostrils down to his one good tooth on the top of his mouth, very carefully and lovingly paint a thick, yellow-green line of snot. Cover him with a mesh spit hood (like a baggy pair of pantyhose stretched over his head). Now give him a blood alcohol level of roughly .300 and give him violent mood swings from hysterically-almost maniacally-happy and laughing to growling with rage and anger while spewing racial slurs from his toothless maw. And finally, as the piece de resistance, handcuff him to a rail at the booking area at the jail, next to an African immigrant smiling ironically at the sad little man spewing the N-word as if it were the only word in his vocabulary. And there! A masterpiece that encompasses the whole of the disenfranchised, poor white society. An homage, if you will, to working-class America. Or...if you’re slightly more cynical, like 436, all you have is a worthless white fuck-stick who ruined break...a walking anus festooned with hemorrhoids that should have thrown himself in front of a bus many years prior to our meeting. And before anyone cares to mention it, I AM white, so spare me any hate-filled rhetoric. I am the epitome of the definition of ‘honky’ (which -I- personally see as a term of endearment...), and I just feel shame and remorse for the actions but more so the appearance of some certain other members of my race.

To understand how Walking Anus (which is how I shall now refer to him from now on, abbreviated as WA) ended up in his boxers, a hospital gown and a spit hood handcuffed to a rail at the booking area, I need to back up about an hour. I was sitting running speed and dispatch called Shoe to a fight in progress. Turns out I was only a couple blocks away so I responded. I got there within seconds and rolled up on two guys definitely struggling with each other. As I stopped the car, one of the guys threw a second guy into a hardened ice/snow bank at the side of the road. It was snowing pretty hard at the time, and Shoe was going to be a few minutes slogging through the white crap. I ran up, past the two girls in the Honda who had called in the fight, and saw three guys wrestling on the ground. One was just a buddy, one was-obviously-WA, and the third man was WA’s brother, holding him in a tight bear hug and trying to get him to calm down. WA had some cuts on his face from being tossed unceremoniously into the snow bank. Medical was already on their way. WA was vacillating quickly between sobbing (causing the aforementioned line of lovely, infected mucus to slide down his lip) and screaming incoherently about wanting to go home. Held in a bear hug, he looked up at me and just lost his shit. I learned later that his lack of tact was caused by the female witness threatening to call the cops. He screamed at me. He struggled against the arms of his brother and thrashed his legs. He swore at me. He called me a pig. (Ouch! ) Meanwhile, I carefully and surreptitiously unlatched the taser. Just in case, mind you. The guy was big and I’m just not. And I learned VERY quickly that the hand-to-hand combat they teach us in the academy is less than worthless. His brother saw that and then kept WA’s attention on him. I then made what is known as a ‘command decision’. Since being badge-heavy and taking complete control of the situation would obviously have thrown WA into further rage and resulted in a drag-out fight hopefully ended quickly with the taser, I decided to allow his brother to try and calm him down. No punches were being thrown, no one was right then getting tossed into snowbanks. I figured if WA was at least KINDA listening to his brother, I may as well let his brother do the talking for me. After a couple minutes, which gave Shoe a chance to get there, his brother managed to calm him down and get him seated back in the truck.

In the truck, WA would head-butt the window every once in a while, even though he wasn’t handcuffed and could just as easily have struck it with his fists or decided to exit the vehicle using that marvel of evolution...the opposable thumb. But he stayed put while I talked with the brother. His brother informed me that WA had been drinking. Well, Captain Obvious strikes again! (Public Intoxication since he was on the road when I found him.) He said that WA had been in the back seat of the truck while he (the brother) was trying to drive WA home. He said that WA had then placed him (the brother and driver) in a headlock and began to playfully punch him in the ribs. He then stated that he attempted to carefully pull over. I then told him that was probably a good idea. He said that the females (the witnesses behind us in the Honda) had stopped because they were afraid they had crashed and tried to check on WA’s medical status. One of the girls turned out to be a very feisty ER nurse. WA had promptly screamed at her, swung a fist and spit on her. (Assault, for those keeping score.) She then threatened to call the cops and told WA that she would kick his ass if he tried that again. And no disrespect for feisty ER nurses intended, but I had to doubt whether she was capable of such a feat. WA was not a small dude and probably wouldn’t have even noticed if his nose was broken or if he was bleeding profusely. However, on the flip side, I also quickly learned not to underestimate the deceptive strength or viciousness of a pissed-off female. Check the archives for the legacy of Fun Size for just one example.

Medical arrived and WA was totally cool with them. They got him strapped in and ready for transport with no problems. Shoe and I stayed in the background because we seemed to be causing more harm than good. Every time WA saw one of us, he would growl and stare us down, panting and breathing heavily. His nostrils would flare like an enraged bull that is too stupid to realize he isn’t in control. So we’d back away and he’d laugh and joke with the EMT’s. And off he went. I then made sure the brother wasn’t dui, hadn’t actually crashed and that his brother hadn’t actually assaulted either of these guys. Turns out the friend had grabbed WA and tossed him to keep him out of traffic. I was fine with that. I then got a witness statement from the ER nurse.

Incidentally, both sarge AND Shoe said that the nurse and I would make a cute couple. I thought that was odd because I saw no such thing. Not because she wasn’t cute. She was actually perfectly lovely. But because when I’ve just contemplated tasing and wrestling a fat white guy covered in blood and snot...running through the possible worst case scenarios in my mind...asking a cute ER nurse to ‘dress my wounds’ is about the last thing on my mind. Maybe if you’re a certain type of person, wrestling and tasing a fat, toothless white guy covered in blood and snot is undeniably erotic. However, such people will not be counted among MY friends. Not judging...just saying I’d prefer not to get a latte with you, ya know? Live and let live. Just don’t come over here.

So WA went to the hospital. Shoe and I both went because we fully expected him to fight vigorously when he was finally informed that he would be going to jail for public intox and for assaulting the ER nurse. We got to the hospital and it was obvious that WA’s behavior had not improved because there were five of the ER’s security personnel keeping watch outside his door. He seemed pleasant for the moment. He was laughing and joking with the orderly about how exactly he was supposed to provide his urine sample. In the time since we’d last seen him, WA had been changed from his requisite white-trash uniform into MOST of the canvas I entreated you to paint above. The only things missing were the handcuffs and spit hood. Oh, and the guy from Sierra Leone laughing at him. He was given a shot of something called Adavan which is apparently something to ‘calm him down’. But given his extreme level of intoxication, they didn’t give him a whole lot. We told WA he was under arrest and he was shockingly cool about it. He must’ve been in one of his manic phases at that point. Strange how alcohol turns some people bi-polar...

Shoe and I each grabbed an arm and led him out to the patrol car for transport to jail. He stiffened a couple of times, but Shoe is quickly becoming a professional body builder and even -I- can keep control of a drunk guy in handcuffs. We got him situated in the car and I don’t know if it was the cramped confines or the cage itself, but he flipped out again. He started spitting on my windows, head-butting the window and generally making an ass of himself. I got the spit hood and forcibly shoved it over his head. Just one piece of the puzzle missing now...

On the ride to jail, we called them to make sure the deputies knew he was going to be fun. In the back, WA went from sobbing apologies to expressing utter indifference at his situation to screaming and head-butting the window again. During the tirades, he would lapse into strings of the most darkly scatological profanity ever heard. Like Ralph says in ‘A Christmas Story’, "He wove a tapestry of obscenity that as far as we know, is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan." Wow. I was impressed. And then we got to jail and he was cuffed to the rail. He began spouting racial slurs at the poor immigrant from Africa, and the canvas was now complete. Rather than hurting the poor man’s sensibilities, I got the distinct impression that the racial tirade was the highlight of the man’s night. Naturally, this only incensed WA’s bigotry to new heights of evil. And every word only widened the smile on the face of his intended victim. It was beautiful.

As the artist’s signature to the canvas I’ve painted, I TRIED to tell him to be cool when I was taking him up to be searched. "Be COOL with these guys, man!" I whispered to him, "These guys don’t take any shit. Just do what they say and you’ll be out of here in a few hours. Be COOL," He nodded with the spit hood. "I got it man, thanks for being nice...I’ll be cool..."

Deputy: "Face the wall,"

WA: "Fuck you, pig!"

Deputy: [WHAM! And WA gets dropped to the concrete floor. The deputy then knelt on his neck while his colleagues hog-tied him]

WA: "Aaaah! What the hell?! Fuck you! Fuck you! I’ll fuckin’ KILL you!" And the sounds continued, but they got progressively lighter as WA was dragged, hog-tied and screaming to a holding cell.

Guy From Sierra Leone:  [Chuckles]

I fuckin’ WARNED him! I warn ALL of them. Don’t fuck with the deputies...

I also got a middle-aged white drunk dude who FINALLY broke the .300 record for me! Four years on the job and I had never had a drunk who broke .300. This guy did. He had wrecked his mom’s car (who was probably almost 70). I gave him the courtesy of letting him talk to his mom before I booked him. She SCREAMED at him. I talked to her briefly to give her the tow company’s information. She then said, quote: "The only fuckin’ good thing that’s happened so far this year is the Giants won!" Seventy years old. I’m not normally a fan of old people, but she rules.

Last night we had a great crash where I’m guessing the guy just fell asleep and slammed into a semi at probably 90 mph. We flew him. It was weird. It was a great example of how quickly patients can go downhill. He was sitting in the car blinking and looking around when I got there and the firefighters were chopping away the car to extricate him. Not long after that, he was unconscious and unresponsive and they landed the bird for him. I went to the hospital and he was intubated (sp, Chris?) and the ER doc said they couldn’t find any really obvious signs of trauma that would have caused him to drop so fast. He was stable, though.

And I’m out! Here’s your horoscope:

You're always worried about where your next meal will come from. Sadly, this has less to do with your financial situation and more to do with you being a gluttonous fuck.  (www.theonion.com)

This will be a short post, because I'm tired and want to sleep.  However, I was getting crap (prematurely, I might add) for not updating promptly.

We received an ATL (attempt to locate [it replaces the old and tired 'all points bulletin' of yesteryear]) on a stolen vehicle tonight.  We were grabbing drinks at the local 7-11 and listening intently because the ATL got better and better with every damn detail.  The suspect was described as a white male wearing dark clothing with long hair (redneck...or...to be fair...possibly a Night Ranger enthusiast).  It was then claimed that he was probably drunk (redneck) and carrying a rifle (hillbilly/redneck).  They also told us that the suspect was most likely fleeing the scene of a domestic violence incident.  He had stolen the vehicle while it was sitting idling.  And the vehicle he had chosen to steal?  A milk delivery truck.  Billy Bob yanked the milkman's van!  It was initially reported as a possible carjacking.  And as serious as this crime was...I still couldn't help but watch that scene from 'Super Troopers' play across my brain.--The one from the very beginning when the fake bandit with the bandana and long hair steals the cop car and shouts to the pot-heads in the back, "You boys like Me-hee-co?  Woooooo!!"

Just to solidify the situation in your minds, let me say it again.  A drunk, redneck bastard carrying a rifle who had just gotten done beating up either his wife/sister (both the same person, mind you) or his brother or paw had seized control of a peacefully idling milk truck.  Huh.  I'm used to weird shit, but that's one of the better ones, I think.

Well, the great thing about rednecks stealing milk trucks is that the vehicle he had chosen was more than a little conspicuous.  It's not like the calls we get on the stolen black Honda Accord left warming up in the driveway or in the parking lot of 7-11 (btw...how can you idiots POSSIBLY be surprised when that happens?  You left it running with the keys in it unattended.  You mouth-breathers can lick my sack.).  We hear those and immediately give up hope.  Yeah!  Ok!  We'll run every damn black Honda we see.  All 50,000 of them.  Instead of wasting OUR time, how about you call your insurance company and let them know you're retarded.  Of course...anyone who's known you for more than a few moments will probably know that...so calling to let them know might be redundant.  Regardless, stop bothering US.  Your Honda is already being stripped in a chop shop.  Deal with it.  If you can't tell, I have very little sympathy for those whose problems are caused solely by their own ineptitude.  So...when we get an ATL on a stolen milk truck from a very small and specific local dairy company, the odds of finding it shoot significantly higher. 

It took about two minutes for one of the other agencies to find it.  And since I never got on scene, the short version is that the guy didn't run, he was taken into custody without incident and the gun and truck were recovered.  At about the time we were listening to them call it out, a friend of mine sent me a text message to ask if we'd had any good calls so far.  It was mildly amusing to be able to write back and tell her that we were listening to a possible chase for a hijacked milk truck. 

And I'm headed to bed.  But before I go and before your horoscope, here's another public service announcement from your neighborhood piggies to the public.  Phrases to avoid when dealing with the cops:

"Here's the thing..."

"I'm not gonna lie to you..."

"Let me be honest with you..."

"No, I didn't..."  (This one pertains to ANY conceivable usage of that phrase.  Just shaddup.)

"Those aren't my pants..."

"This isn't my car..."

"How old are you?"  (I actually get that one fairly frequently.  And the answer I give them out loud is, 'old enough' with a SILENT 'to beat your ass senseless' coming immediately after.)

"I don't have my insurance card with me, but I PROMISE I have insurance."

And my favorite...  "Two beers." 

Here's your horoscope (it's even unusually right for the date):

The stars tell that next week will be full of trials and tribulations at work. They also spell out a particularly lewd if not funny limerick, if you read Farsi.  (www.theonion.com)

So I'm being lazy today and don't feel like writing.  We've had two snow days in the past week, which always suck.  So...I'm posting mostly photos of the carnage.  Some of them are older photos.  Some are from last week.  So here ya go...

This is the guy who launched off the storm grate last week.  And below is a view from the front with a couple of our dedicated Fire/EMS personnel to the right.  No seat belt...and only a hairline fracture of one vertebra, I later learned.  'Lucky' does not even come close...

And this is his wheel.  It snapped off at the axle and you can KINDA see the Explorer WAY up in the background.

This is the car I knelt in and got a leg full of piss.

And this is why you don't drink and drive in a fucking blizzard:

Goddam drunks...and that's not a ghost in the photo.  That's my damn breath. 

Doh!  Nuff said for what lies below. 

And THIS...

Led right to this.  That, my friends, is a roughly $60,000 custom 2007 Ford Mustang.  427 cubic inch engine, dual superchargers, chrome custom wheels, after-market brakes, springs and shocks.  Racing roll bars...  Now it's scrap metal because the owner allowed his 16 year old son to drive it.  THAT one wasn't due to the ice or snow, although the son sure tried to claim it was.  He just took a ramp while pushing Dad's car a little too far past it's limits.  He took a ramp designed for 45 mph at a little over 85 mph.  That's my guess anyway.  He only fessed up to 70 mph. 

And here's one of the custom wheels, snapped at the axle with the custom spring and shock still attached.  It was absolutely tragic.  We felt bad for the owner.  If it were MY kid, I don't think I'd ever STOP beating him...

I had a chunk of Smokes a Lot Lady's hair, but I don't think I'm going to post that.  I'd feel kinda bad.  I don't mind posting mangled cars because as far as I'm concerned, that's sort of a public service announcement.  Wear your seatbelt, kids!  Don't drive like an asshat in the snow!  That kind of thing.  If anyone who has personal access to me wants to see that pic of the hair, just let me know. 

Here's your horoscope (for Jamie especially!):

While many people have coping mechanisms, yours is the only one made up of two hand pulleys and a crate of vodka.  (www.theonion.com)

I was cleaning my bathroom tonight (usually a once-every-six-months-if-I'm-lucky operation) and just generally cleaning out the apartment because I was tired of being a slovenly bastard.  The phone rang.  For whatever reason...I can't get my phone to change ring tones on the charger.  In my pocket it plays a standard ring.  It sounds like a goddam phone.  On the charger, it blasts Disturbed's "Voices" at a volume much too high for so small a machine.  Ordinarily it scares the bejeezus out of me.  It was the captain calling for a mission in the helicopter.

He said that the gang unit had staked out a guy who had run from us earlier in the day.  Turns out this guy was wanted in several heinous crimes.  Mike says that HIS department thinks this guy was the one taking random pot-shots at his fellow officers the last few months.  Some boys tried to chase him earlier that morning and got a good chase out of it.  80 mph down city streets, wrong way...blowing red lights.  Sounded like fun!  Then he tried to ram two deputies in the process.  And for those who might be unaware, THAT kind of behavior does NOT sit well with your friendly neighborhood piggies.    Oh...it was fucking ON.  They lost him that morning.

But NOW, the gang guys thought they had him.  They had informants in the area and they were about 95% sure of where he was.  They called us in case he ran.

The first hour or so was pretty damn boring and I was starting to think we were wasting our time.  It sounded like the gang guys had him holed up at a house.  If that's the case, SOP's dictate that you get a warrant and let SWAT storm the house and kick the shit out of the occupants.  In a case like that, the helicopter is an albeit impressive though useless resource.  We orbited south of the target area for about 40 minutes so we didn't spook the guy.  Then we started running out of gas.  I was having fun just looking at random pedestrians, following cars, watching the heat venting from the natural gas turbines in the local power plant...infrared rocks.  We landed back at the hangar because the operation was local and it wouldn't take us long to get back on target.  We went to the office and the captain checked his e-mail while I read a book on aviation for the private plane owner.  It was a laymen's guide to flying.  Fascinating stuff.  I read about pitot tubes...I learned that small aircraft stall characteristics are different depending on if you have a rail-thin pilot or a monstrous fat-ass.  I finally understood what flaps were for.  Dear GOD I was bored!  The captain showed me brand new photos of Mercury from the space probe that just made a fly-by (he's really into amateur astronomy).  I told him about an article I'd received recently about the possible sources of anti-matter in the center of the galaxy (which actually WAS pretty cool to a geek like me, but not so interesting when I was re-telling the contents...).  Someone kick me in the nuts to wake me up!  Argh!

And then they called.  "He's mobile."  Oh, NOW it's on!  We ran out to the bird and spooled up.  Off we went!

The guys on the ground were trailing him and we caught up pretty quickly.  But...this guy was a seasoned criminal and no idiot.  It didn't take him long to realize he was being followed.  The guys on the ground told us that there were three people in the car.  A male driver (not the target), a female gang whore (MY words, not theirs...  ) and our boy.  The target was leaning down in the backseat, trying not to draw attention.  I locked onto our boy with the infrared camera and we tracked him.  He pulled into a gas station, faked parking and then shot up north on a side street.  Then he turned around and headed back south.  The undercover guys got held up at a couple of lights so it took a few minutes for them to catch up.  Once everyone was in place, they tried to stop him.

The driver (again, NOT our target) pulled over obediently and stopped.  He stepped out with his hands in the air.  As soon as he did, the target in the back hopped up front and BAM!  He was off.  And now, as they say on Sesame Street, it's time to play our game. 

The chase was fairly typical at first.  The ground units gave chase and called it out just like they were supposed to.  The guy, again, was blowing red lights, driving wrong way to avoid traffic and generally being a skanky ho.  He found an onramp to the freeways and it continued.  This was Friday night, though, and he was headed downtown into the heavy metro area.  He took an offramp to head downtown and the ground units called us to confirm we had visual.  I replied in the affirmative.

The ground units shut down as the scumbag took the ramp and the chase was ours.  Between the captain's eyes and my infrared, he wasn't going ANYWHERE.  He blew another red light, and made a left turn at probably 80 mph.  He cut it wide and clipped the median in the process.  At that speed, it destroyed his left rear tire.  He was on the rim for the rest of it.  He flew through downtown and we kept on him, keeping pace with ease.  We expected him to find a friendly house and hunker down.  And THEN we'd call SWAT and end his night with some unfriendly toys we like to call 'flash-bangs'.    But no...he just kept driving.  It would've been nice to have a Garmin or a Tom Tom up in the chopper with us because I couldn't see the exact streets very well.  We'd call out landmarks to help coordinate the ground units for another attempt but it was slow going.

After about ten minutes, he was halfway across the county and had not managed to shake us.  He was driving south and I glanced up VERY briefly from the FLIR screen to see if I could see landmarks.  I noticed a Carl's Jr. that looked extremely familiar.  Then I saw the grocery store I always shop at.  He was two blocks from my apartment...  I gave out the exact location and at that exact time, two deputies from the county sheriff's office found him and lit him up.  Chase two was on!

No left rear tire, and he still ran.  At one point, because he'd lost a tire, he took a curve too fast and almost ate it.  He bounced heavily over a median (the whole thing looked absolutely incredible on the FLIR...just like all those tv shows) and I thought that was it for the vehicle pursuit.  I thought he was going to eat it.  But he managed to keep going.  His car was not in good shape though.

Speeds slowed at that point as they flew through a residential area.  The deputy behind him got up and nudged his car in what is officially known as a PIT (Pursuit Intervention Technique).  Because of the guaranteed adrenaline in a situation like that, these maneuvers are often 'unofficially' known as a 'modified ram'.    To the deputy's credit, this one looked absolutely text-book.  The little Mercedes dutifully spun.  I zoomed in with the FLIR.  My brain was all sorts of excited.  "Here we go!  He's gonna run!  And the FLIR will make sure he doesn't get far!"  I'd guess that about 7 times out of 10 in my experience when a vehicle pursuit ends, the foot pursuit begins.  I was ready to go!  I was mentally DARING him to get his fat ass out and try to run on foot.  He would've glowed like daylight in the cold winter air on my screen.  DO it, fat-ass!  I thought.  DO it!

The pursuing officers exited their vehicles to go kick some well-deserved ass.  They were yelling for a K-9 unit which had not gotten on scene yet.  Thirty cops were converging on the spot as we watched it unfold.  RUN, fat-ass!  I watched the gray shapes in the FLIR with anticipation.  The driver's door opened.  Here we go!  The gray shape exited the vehicle.  Sweet!  And then he put his hands in the air and stood there until he was promptly tackled by the ground units.  Well, goddamit!    I wanted a foot pursuit!  Oh well.  It was a damn good job done by everybody present.

And within thirty seconds of the PIT, that street was just a veritable sea of red and blue flashing lights.  It was a BEAUTIFUL sight from the air!  I've said it before with regard to different incidents.  In our neck of the woods, '10-33' is the code for 'I'm getting killed, get here yesterday.'  If a 10-33 goes out, every cop in the county will come running to your side, and that's a GREAT feeling.  Likewise, we knew damn well who this evil motherfucker was.  He'd tried to run down two of my brothers earlier that day.  To look down from my seat up there in the chopper and see an overwhelming show of force to take this guy down...it was wonderful. 

And I watched very carefully from the FLIR.  It was done RIGHT.  There were no beatings...there was no overt use of force.  He surrendered and we cuffed him.  And it makes me happy to know that even with our justice system that (rightfully) gives the benefit of the doubt to the citizen and not the cop (innocent till proven guilty, ya know), this worthless excuse for a human being will probably spend the rest of his life in prison.  A true predator off the streets tonight. 

And it felt REALLY good to know that because of the captain's eyes and my xbox thumb, we were able to let the ground units stop chasing while we followed from the safety of the air.  That means fewer citizens were in danger of an accident caused by this fuck-nut and fewer cops in danger for the exact same reason.  It was a beautiful example of what can happen when we work together.  It was a night well spent. 

I went out early for a swing shift today because we have training the next two days.  It managed to snow for about four hours and the motoring public somehow lost even more of their collective minds than usual.  When I checked on we had forty crashes holding and waiting for officers.  I didn't get it.  It was VERY light snow.  Maybe it was deceptively light and the mass of irradiated monkeys we ordinarily call the public were just in fine form today.  Whatever the case...it was busy for the first half.

One of the crashes was a semi roll-over on a cloverleaf ramp.  For those that know this area, yes...it was the exact same ramp it's ALWAYS on.  Nothing much there.  No one was hurt.  It was a refer (refrigerator...not full of weed...) filled with 40,000 lbs of frozen chicken pot pies.  Yum!  It was a pretty typical semi crash and I was only there for traffic control.  After a while, the police presence left since the wrecker crews were off-loading the pot pies and it was going to take a while.  Plus, they were completely out of traffic.

The funny thing about that one was the fact that two hours after we left, dispatch got a call from a frantic citizen.  We all knew that the crews were still off-loading frozen pot pies.  They would be there a while.  Dispatch called out ANOTHER semi roll-over in the same location.  It took about five seconds to verify that it was the exact same crash. 

You see?  THIS is the kind of endemic stupidity that is one day going to be the downfall of our species.  It takes a special kind of idiot to round a curve, see three giant tow trucks, a crane and a crew from DOT swarming around a rolled semi and then frantically think, "Someone should notify the police!"  At SOME point between the origination of that particular thought, the process of dialing 911 and letting the sheer stupidity of their words waft across the air...one might think a reasonable person would assume that someone had ALREADY notified the cops.  I mean, a crane is not that easy to set up and unless it's a Japanese ninja crane, it's not very subtle.  And yes...on the optimistic side...it's still nice that the guy cared enough to make SURE we knew, but goddam...it's a rolled 18-wheeler!  We're not always the most observant bunch in the world but Jeezus tap-dancing Christ!  We'll notice a flipped semi!  Promise!  And chances are, hundreds of other well-meaning citizens will have warned us LONG before your dumbass shows up.  Hence, of course, the three wreckers, crane and DOT crew.    Wow.  You wanna know the dirty little secret?  WE called the cranes.    That's why they're there.

Once again...I feel strangely compelled to offer a public service announcement to help educate the public on how interactions with law enforcement SHOULD go.  If you're driving along and you see a rolled car with fresh smoke and/or visible flames...bloody bodies strewn about...screaming children and mass chaos...feel free to call.  We'd love to hear from you.  In fact, we might get slightly perturbed if you DON'T call in that case.  It'd be like we didn't get invited to the party.  And we don't like that...  However...If you're driving along and you see a rolled car with three other vehicles on scene, people on their cell phones, tow trucks and/or fire engines/ambulances on scene...STOP!  Take a deep breath and TRY for all you're worth to pull your head OUT of your ass before you dial that phone to let the police know.  You've got a better than average chance that we already know.    Calling us at that point is like attending a party and in the middle of said party inviting the host to his own shin-dig.  "Hey Bob!" you shout over the blaring music and drunken antics, "Did you know Bob is having a kickass party tonight at this same spot?"  If you can imagine the look on Bob's face (one of horror, confusion and disbelief) as he receives this information, imagine that same look on every cop's face who hears the dispatch transmission--only add a fair amount of rancor and hatred for humanity in general.  That's EXACTLY what it's like when you call our dispatchers to report stupid redundant shit.  Shut your blathering pie-holes.

So to boil it down in very simple, idiot-proof terms (well, sadly 'idiot-proof' is a mere pipe dream.  The truly ingenious morons will always find a way...):  if you don't see flashing lights (hazard lights don't count), call us.  We'd love to hear from you.  If you DO see flashing lights of ANY kind (again, not hazard lights, idiots.  I mean police, fire, amber tow-truck lights, etc...), it's a safe bet that someone's already told us.  Save the minutes on your cell phone and definitely save what little faith in humanity we have left.

To summarize the summary (a la Douglas Adams...):  No lights, call us.  Lights?  Shut the fuck up. 

A corrolary to this scenario was the time one of my less-than-intelligent comrades called dispatch over the main channel to ask if the fire department was aware of the forest fire.  The entire mountainside was on fire and bathing the city with an eerie light as he offered this report.  Thankfully that particular officer decided this line of work was not for him, and the rest of us breathed a heavy collective sigh of relief...

I also had a little domestic scuffle that turned out to be nothing.  However, while it was happening another well-meaning citizen decided to intervene.  This citizen had a concealed carry permit and was armed.  He decided to John Wayne the situation and hold the aggressor at gunpoint until we arrived.  Now as stated above, kudos and admiration for the heart being in the right place.  But dammit...guns are a very lethal element that we don't always need exacerbating (it's not a dirty word...look it the fuck up...) the situation.  My colleagues and I were somewhat amped up when we got there.  No shots were fired and all's well that ends well, but who's to say a more jittery citizen wouldn't have emptied a magazine into a relatively inoccuous person?  In the end...I have to grudgingly give the guy props for ending the situation and keeping things under control.  But it could've been MUCH worse, and concealed carry permits make me nervous.  I don't care WHAT the NRA says.  Anyway...there was no real assault and it turned out fine and nobody even went to jail.  Ah well...

I'm out!

You always hate it when shows end with a big musical number, so you'll probably be pretty disappointed with what happens to the universe on Wednesday.  (www.theonion.com) (That one is me all over the place...fucking musicals...)