Semper Fi

Mark’s recent article brings to mind a number of incidents I had the occasion to observe in the course of 25 years in the Police Service.  Police get called to incidents called “Person Cared For”; meaning an unknown situation generally requiring some level of medical attention.  Sometimes these calls are as simple as “So and so lay down to take a nap, and now they won’t wake up !”; up to “We haven’t seen so-and-so for a while, and, gee, there’s a really bad smell in the hall outside their apartment !”  The Officer responds and determines what the situation is; changing it to “Unattended Death” or “Attended Death”. The simple difference is whether there is a Doctor of Record who can sign off the death certificate.  Officer investigation or referral to the Coroner office determines the level of investigation.  Most of the time we get it right, but every now and again we get it wrong.

I was working as dispatcher one fine morning when I receive a call from a downtown businessman.  He reports someone broke into a storage area in his store, made a mess of the place, broke a window, spilled rust-colored paint on the floor (it was an art supply place) and may or may not have stolen some stuff.  I start the Complaint as “Burglary / Criminal Mischief” and send the Beat Officer to the call.  He clears shortly afterwards; no big deal, right ?  Wrongo, dear children. Big time !   A day or two later a corpse is found in an adjoining town rolled up in a carpet, as I remember.  Turns out he had been beaten and murdered  in the back of that business, with the body removed and dumped in another town !!  The spilled paint turns out to be blood, and the mess was from the killers trying to clean up the mess !!   Big investigation !!  I was interrogated by Internal Affairs about this and it was no fun, let me tell you !!  Fortunately, I had done everything by the book so I was all set. 

Then there was the time I was sent to a funeral home for a report of Disturbance – Noise, a report of a woman screaming.   I roll up and park out front.  I go up to the front door and find it unlocked. Entering, it’s all dark and spooky inside just like a typical monster movie.  I hear the woman screaming upstairs; howling like a banshee.  “Aaaaaa !” , as loud as she could, over and over and over !  Of course now I’m scared; I mean, WTF !!

I pull my pistol (we had revolvers back then, K-frame .357’s) and doing my best movement to contact I sneak-and-creep to the stairs up.  Along the way I get frightened by a corpse laid out on a processing table & only by the greatest force of will hold back from putting two or three rounds into it.  I’m worried about zombies & such.  The banshee chorus is still howling upstairs.  I make my way to the stairs & move up carefully and quietly.  First room at the top of the stair, the door is open.  I’m going to have to use my room-clearing skills here, very carefully.  I sneak up and carefully peek around the door frame.  And what do I see?

Just damn.  There’s a naked guy laying on the floor.  No weapon in hand, but he’s got a small hole in his head and there is blood running out of it in slow pulses.  I look around, locate and retrieve a .45 cal pistol.   Aw, crap !  This guy’s shot himself !  I call it in to Despatch, and the Sergeant & Lieutenant respond out since the shooter is known to them from other prior criminal involvements.

Turns out it’s mom down the hallway; and it’s her son on the floor.  Turns out too, that the guy was a druggie, and had contracted an STD one gets from sex with corpses. He had passed this on to his live human girlfriend who was less than pleased by this.  In this event he was wired on cocaine, and running around the house in his underwear yelling for Jesus to save him.  He then went into his room and shot himself. 

I remember being fascinated by how much blood drained out of him from the small entry and exit wounds.  You don’t bleed when you’re dead, although you can drain out if the drain point is low enough for gravity to come into play.  This was my first suicide call, although I had been to dead body calls before this.  In the time we were there the body faded from normal pinkish color to a blanched-white color. The blood separated into two distinct constituent parts.  Fascinating stuff !  Almost to distension to the eyes or face, just a simple entry-exit head wound.  No medical chance for him at all.

One time I got sent to Blake Street for a report of “Shots Fired”. Well, that’s an active gun call, so a bunch of us responded. It was night time so we spread out through the area and tried to track down the shooter.  I come around the corner of a building and I find a guy sitting on the ground leaning against an apartment building. On the ground by his hand I see a rifle or shotgun . Well, I point my pistol at him and yell “Don’t you fucking move !” in my best Policeman voice.  He complies with alacrity.  Turns out he’s a deader, shot himself with a shotgun.  Fascinating how you could look at him from the left side and see a normal silhouette; but when you looked from the front you could see he was missing the entire right side of his face / head.  Much of it was dispersed up the side of the 3 story apartment building as a fairly fine mist.  It was like looking at something on Discovery TV; you know, “Human Brain Exposed”, that sort of thing.

Saddest one I every went to was at a local motel.  Young lady, working as a waitress, living at a rent-by-the-week place. For some reason the property owner was concerned and called the Police. I was sent to the call. Using the property owner key we went into the room.  The woman had taken off her clothes and folded everything neatly on a chair.

She was tucked neatly under the blankets in bed.  No note found, but she had taken an overdose of prescribed meds.  Since the room was warm, the after-death process was operating and I could just barely catch the distinct scent of death.  What in her life had made it so empty, so hurtful, so painful, that this was her only choice ?  We never found out, family & friends were unable or unwilling to offer anything.  She just went to sleep, and didn’t bother to wake up.  I still think about that today; even though 25 years have passed. 

By Richie

I was reading the paper other day and had occasion to look at the Sunspots Column. Some moron had written in whining and crying about how Sunspots hadn’t answered their question. Knowing that the editor of the Sunspots column just sits around doing a whole lot of nothing, playing FreeCell, eating chocolates, and surfing the internet; I expected the errant item in question to be “Dear Sunspots, how do I bring about world peace” or “Dear Sunspots, how can I end world hunger.” You know, something important and earth shattering.

Well, I read on and I see that the syphilitic moron wanted the phone numbers for the various local TV stations. My sympathy went out to the Sunspots editor. I mean, these morons are soooo lazy they can’t even be bothered to pick up a phone book and look it up themselves. And when their question got the attention it deserved (none!) they berated Sunspots for that. That brought to mind some of the stupid stuff people call Police Despatchers for.

I had the opportunity serve as Radio-Telephone Operator for about 3 years. Way back in the ancient days we had a manually operated switchboard like what they used during WW-II. We had five lines; and each line had 5 settings, plus additional switches for other unknown mystery functions. You had to be careful with switches since moving even one of them to the wrong positions could cause you a lot of grief. One time I made the mistake of accidentally cutting off the Chief. He was from the old school and it took him about one second to teleport to a position just a few inches away from me. He invaded my personal space ! He commented at length on my parents, or lack of same! He commented about my IQ! He made a number of comments that I just can’t repeat! When he left, I had to stand and check myself & see if I had any butt left after a world-class ass chewing.

Most calls to the Police are relatively normal. Reports of a fire, or a car crash; a street disturbance, what ever. Sometimes they’re a bit unusual; like a person reporting criminal mischief to his business, and there’s all sorts of red paint all over the floor. It was later determined to have been the scene of a homicide. Fortunately I only disptached the call, but I still was interviewed by Detectives investigating the matter. But every now and again, there are calls or walk-in complainants for which there is little explanation. I remember one fellow who kept haunting the front window. He was complaining he could hear people talking on the phone in his head. He wanted the Police to make them stop. I told him how to make a tin-foil helmet to block the signals. Seems to have worked, he didn’t come back. Can’t do that now days; instead we’d be calling those people and tell them to stop bothering the complainant.

Then there were the calls in the winter asking if there was school today You wouldn’t mind if only one or two called, but by the time the 20th or so had called, I had had enough.

“Gee lady, I dunno; this is the Police Department. You might wanna call the School Department. Or, maybe you wanna listen to the radio or watch the TV. Thanks for calling.” Stupid people! Or, then there were the idiots asking “when does the parade start”, and foolishness like that. People might call asking where something was, in Lewiston. That was OK, there weren’t a lot of them, and they were polite. But then people would call asking how to get to someplace out of state. Now, this was before Google and MapQuest. I mean, WTF, are we AAA or something?

Then there was the woman calling to complain about teenagers. She wanted me to send an Officer right away; they were out there on the corner “hanging around”. Now, this is about 6 in the evening, on a warm summer night. Are they doing anything besides hanging around; I mean, like fighting or something? “No, they’re talking, and . . . hanging around.” (I can picture her peeking out between closed curtains) Well, I’m not sending anyone for that, I tell her. “Well, they’re playing their music too loud! Nope, still not gonna send a cop to harass them. (This is back before boom-boxes and (c)rap music) “Well . . . they’re doing drugs! Ya, they’re doing drugs out there!” Notice how she kept looking for the right button to push? Yup, this is an Idiot Call of quality! I finally send a car by there to check on things, just to get her off the phone; the Officer radios in that the teens were gone by the time he arrived. Stupid people.

So they still get calls like this today? I asked the current group of dispatchers.

Oh yes, they get it all, and more. There’s a Jay Leno video floating around demonstrating the sorts of stupid calls Dispatchers get.

So yes, I feel sorry for the Sunspots Editor. What I’d love to see her respond is: “No, fart breath, we didn’t get your stupid letter, and if we did we’d have thrown it out. Go learn how to use a phone book, you mental defective.”

Idiots, ya gotta love ‘em.

Richie is away for a while, but in his place one of his pals, Officer Friendly,takes a look into the reader mailbag.

Dear Officer Friendly,

I heard that you guys have to meet a certain quota of parking tickets and speeding tickets.Why is that? Do you guys need the money that badly or what?

Signed, Angry Driver

Dear Angry Driver,

Officers generally don’t write that many parking tickets any more, other than for specific and particular reasons; blocking a hydrant, or handicap access; that sort of thing. During the day we have Traffic Enforcement personnel who enforce the overtime parking statutes. Any fines collected go straight to the City of Lewiston and most assuredly NOT to the Police Department.

Speeding ticket are another matter. Although there are no quotas in either case, Officer can and will write traffic Infraction or Misdemeanor summonses when and where and as often as appropriate. I can only speak to my own experience; different Officers have different opinions. I would wish we only had a quota. Unfortunately, there are no lack of drivers who bring themselves to the attention of an Officer and end up getting a summons or two. No inspection or expired inspection sticker ? You might just as well wave a flag or shoot a flare to call attention to yourself ! Or, perhaps do any one of a number of things to draw an Officers attention; like, be real cool and squeal your tires, or, maybe run with a loud muffler (after all, you can’t be cool unless everyone sees you, right ?), or drive around with a “Free Abu Mumia Jamal” sticker on your car. Oh no; we never lack for people who want a summons ! The best part is that many of our clients are repeat customers; they just can’t stop themselves from doing the behavior that gets them in trouble. I mean, what’s that all about ?

Lastly, any and all fines assessed by the Courts goes straight to the State of Maine. The Police Department does not get one cent of it.

SignedOfficer Friendly

Dear Officer Friendly,

What should I do if I’ m stopped by an Officer ? I’m innocent! I didn’t do anything!

Signed Just Curious

Dear Curious,

Years ago Officers didn’t have to worry about personal safety quite as much as they do now. Now, we are considerably more cautious. Pull over when signaled. Don’t make any sudden moves like reaching under the seat for something. The Officer is going to ask for your license, car registration & insurance form. Have them ready ! Be polite. If he gives you a ticket; sign the form (it’s not an admission of guilt, it merely acknowledges you got the ticket) and move on. Court is the place where you can argue to your hearts content with an impartial Judge to hear you.

DON’T go on about why is the Officer stopping you. He’ll explain it to you. DON’T play the “I didn’t do anything !” game. It doesn’t work. If you didn’t do anything, he wouldn’t have stopped you !! If you deny the validity of the stop, in other words, denying his Probable Cause, then to safeguard himself he pretty much HAS to give you a ticket.

Always tell the truth. Nothing frosts an Officer more than to be lied-to. Lie to the Officer; you better expect a summons or two.

Back when I was in college in Massachusetts, I had to drive from Lawrence to Boston down 93 on a daily basis. Sometimes I was running late, and yes, I would exceed the posted speed limit. And yes, I would get stopped. I knew what I did. I knew I was wrong. I always had my paperwork ready for the Officer when he walked up to the car.

I always kept hands in sight on the steering wheel. No sudden moves or foolishness.

I always said something like “Ya, Officer, you got me; I was going a tad fast. I was in a rush to get to school.” I would further explain what ever I thought might garner sympathy. Well, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar; and I never got a ticket. Got a bunch of warnings; and thank God I never seemed to get the same cop twice !

I never had a problem determining who got a ticket and who got a warning. Sometimes merely effecting the vehicle stop was a sufficient enforcement action. Some people though, just had to have a ticket; they would make that extremely clear, and so I would be glad to oblige them.

Hope that helps.

Signed Officer Friendly