I thought I would try something different. Here is a dose of fiction.
Law enforcement falls into a rhythm; time, day of the week, temperature and season, urban, rural, city police, sheriff, highway patrol, all of these factors and many more dictate the pace and direction of any given shift. For example, a sunny 65 degree April day in a college town will bring out sunbathers, and frisbees. That same day in September, will chase the beach bunnies inside. City cops are responsive to the radio, it doesn’t matter what you would rather be doing, when dispatch puts out the call, you go. The highway patrol, on the other hand, is beholden to nobody. They cover the county and as long as drivers “keep it between the bar ditches” you almost never hear them. While they claim there is no quota, ask them about milage, tickets and ratios. then watch them shuffle their feet.
I had about 18 months with the city, which made me a crusty veteran. My buddy Johnny had twice my time in the Highway Patrol. That made him a rookie in Highway Patrol terms and another hard charger veteran in city terms. Time in service accomplished two things, first it exposed each of us to a wide variety of situations, from which we could learn essential lessons. As my sea daddy Dibble would say, “experience is a motherfucker, first you get the test, then you get the lesson.” Secondly it allowed our respective Sergeants to take a wood rasp to our asses and rip off enough tender flesh to get our attention, while at the same time leaving enough behind so that we weren’t seriously disfigured. The theory is that, repeated sessions with the wood rasp will cause the offender to cease the offending behavior. There was an alternative that the old school didn’t consider, continue the behavior, don’t get caught, and avoid the wood rasp.
The wood rasp was used to punish bad behavior. Bad behavior is defined as anything that causes the sergeant to vary his invariable routine. Intentional murder and failure to check the proper box causing records to kick back a report, are equally egregious. Not writing enough tickets is bad, writing to many tickets is bad. On sight arrests are good, on sight arrest of the mayor’s brother, not so good. Being the first guy consistently on the spot when the shit hits the fan can earn one the title “shit magnet”.
I was working evening shift, which ran from 3pm to 11pm, except we showed up at 2:45pm and worked until 10:45pm. During a typical evening shift late calls and accumulated paperwork would cause me to stay over an extra half hour. Since the bars closed at midnight and stopped serving at 11:45pm, drinking and chasing hide was pretty much off the table.
The Highway Patrol ran two shifts 6 am to 2pm and 6pm to 2 am. Troopers would be partnered up during the week end, but would ride one man cars during the week, day and night. Can’t dance, Johnny is working a single until 2 am, two shit magnets, one car, no adult supervision and an entire county to police, what could possibly go wrong?
One night for no good reason, we found ourselves driving around the “civic center”. In other places this might conjure up the image of an auditorium and function rooms, located conveniently downtown. In this instance, it meant an isolated enclosed rodeo arena with 200 acres of packed dirt for parking and surrounded by several hundred acres of ranch land. As we drove around the deserted arena we flushed what seemed to be hundreds of jack rabbits.
The second pass produced the same result with a different outcome. Satisfied that we were alone, I started blazing away at the first jack rabbit that appeared on my side of the patrol car. I hit him with my third shot. I considered this pretty good shooting since the rabbit was ducking and dodging almost as radically as the patrol car, after the first shot. I didn’t bother to tell Johnny before hand that I was gonna shoot. I figured he would catch on pretty quick.
There’s an old story about a game warden who got information that a fisherman was using dynamite to catch fish. The game warden met up with the guy and wrangled an invitation to go fishing . They got out in the middle of the lake and the fisherman reached into a tackle box, produced a stick of dynamite, lit the fuse and threw it. The game warden was amazed that the fisherman would be so brazen and began to protest. The fisherman reached into the tackle box, produced another stick of dynamite, lit the fuse and handed it to the game warden, saying,” did you come to fish or talk?”
Johnny decided he was there to hunt not talk. Hunting jack rabbits with a .357 Magnum is loud, expensive and overkill. Fortunately, the highway patrol provided a partial solution. The highway patrol provided .38 wadcutters as practice ammunition. The highway patrol did not prohibit troopers from firing from a moving patrol car, but they did not provide any training. We decided that shooting at a 14” jack rabbit zigzagging across a field was good practice for shooting at an 18′ long car on the highway. We’d practically be remiss in our duties if we didn’t go jack rabbit hunting. We became very good at shooting from a moving vehicle. All good things must come to an end, we used the entire yearly allotment of practice ammunition it two months, the jack rabbit population was considerably diminished and Johnny got a new partner, fresh from the highway patrol academy.
Johnny overcame the ammunition shortage by first downsizing from .357 to .22. He produced a matched pair of High Standard .22 semi-automatic pistols. The sound and the fury wasn’t the same but rabbit hunting continued on those nights he was without a partner. Johnny’s new partner was a country boy. He had been a police officer prior to going to the highway patrol academy. When Johnny judged his partner Mike was ready, he brought him out to the civic center and like the fisherman rooted around under the seat and produced both of the High Standard .22 pistols. Johnny then set off after a jack rabbit and promptly dispatched it to rabbit heaven.
Johnny assumed a country boy who was a police officer could handle any gun that came to hand. The reality is that Mike had never held a pistol prior to becoming a cop. While he was proficient with a revolver, the semi-automatic pistol he now held was the first he had ever handled. Mike added to the legion of famous last words such as : hey, hold my beer, watch this”, with his contribution, “How’s this thing work?” as he pulled the trigger and sent a round through the windshield. Mike had just showed Johnny that his faith that a police officer could handle any gun that came to hand, was misplaced.
Johnny and Mike are a study in contrasts. Mike is paralytic in the front seat. In his mind’s eye he is watching the sergeant stripping his uniform and accouterments away while he stand’s at attention, like some TV court-martial. Johnny on the other hand is giggling.
Johnny’s response to stress is to giggle. He doesn’t holler oh shit and oh dear, in fact he stops talking. Mike is a probationary trooper, that means if his sergeant has three bad days in a row, he can fire Mike. A bullet hole in the windshield of a patrol car while chasing jack rabbits certainly rises to a firing offense. Johnny’s giggling doesn’t strike Mike as being overly sympathetic. Those that know Johnny, know that the creative juices are flowing, he is confronted with a problem that requires a solution. The best solution is where everybody; Johnny, Mike, the Sergeant and the Highway Patrol are all happy. A lesser man would collapse under pressure, Johnny giggles.
Johnny calls me on the radio and arranges to meet with me at a local wrecker service. When I arrive, Johnny explains the problem. Mike is curled up in a fetal position in the front seat, whimpering, and incapable of explaining anything.
I suggest,” How about a stone bruise?” A second look causes me to reject that suggestion. When rocks hit windshields they do it from the outside. This hole obviously came from the inside out.
“Is there anything going on in the city, big parties, maybe it could be vandals,” Johnny asked.
“ It’s all quiet, and even if there were, how many people are gonna walk past a black and white with a bullet hole and not notice?” I replied. “Maybe we could get another windshield?” A whimper from the front seat, would seem to indicate Mike didn’t think much of that suggestion. Ultimately, Johnny decides he’ll have to handle this on his own and we part company.
As Johnny explained it later, they drove around keeping to the back roads until 5:30 am. Their shift ended at 2:00 am but Johnny pointed out their problem wasn’t going to be solved in bed. Mike wanted to go home and suggested he would just pin his badge to the seat and wait for the ax to fall. Johnny continued to drive and soon found himself driving east on a back road. As the false dawn lit up the landscape Johnny discovered the solution to all their problems, one that would make everybody happy.
He stopped the patrol car and reached behind the front seat. Highway patrol cars did not have cages. They were equipped with two horizontal gun racks mounted to the back of the front seats horizontally, one for a Remington 870 shotgun, the other for a Ruger Mini-14. Mike raised his head up to see what was going on, only to get hit in the back of the head by the barrel of the 870. Johnny standing beside the driver’s door racked the action and fired at a turkey vulture that was feasting on roadkill.
Mike began yelling,”haven’t you had enough, this what got us here in the first place.”
Johnny threw the shotgun in the car, giggled, and walked over to the dead turkey vulture. A turkey vulture is a sizable bird that can weigh close to ten pounds. They are ugly and nasty. They shit on themselves to cool off and when angry or scared can vomit up some really putrid stuff. They eat roadkill and it seems the longer it has been dead the better they like it. He grabbed it by the legs walked over to the passenger side of the patrol car. In his best Babe Ruth swing Johnny hit the windshield with that turkey vulture, right on the bullet hole. The windshield gave way before the bird did. Mike received the brunt of turkey vulture puke, guts, blood and feathers. Johnny threw the carcass into the bar ditch. Climbed into the patrol car next to his offal covered partner and giggled as he picked up the radio mike.
“6265 dispatch would you contact 6206 (sergeant) and tell him we’ve been involved in a 10-50 fleet, with a buzzard and we’ll meet him at the office”