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Officer Down, shots fired.
Yesterday my Sarge asked if we wanted to come into work early and work for Compensation, which is basically ‘time’ that we can take off. If I work 4 hours of Compensation I actually earn 6 hours, being that it’s done at an overtime type rate meaning its actually 1 1/2 of earned work for every actual hour of work.
We all agreed.
Arriving at work 10AM we started working in a box like we normally do, with today’s emphasis on catching Burglars in the act simply to show up the Burglary squad that has a huge ego but produces almost negligent results.
11AM roles around, nothing really going on.
BEEP!!! ATTENTION ALL UNITS, SHOTS FIRED AND SEVERAL OFFICERS DOWN!!! SUSPECT ARMED WITH AN AK47 AND HANDGUN. 5’8 BLACK MALE, SHORT BEARD WEARING A WHITE TOWEL ON HIS HEAD, WHITE SHIRT AND BLACK SHORTS WEARING A BULLET PROOF VEST.
Instantly the tactical channel started sparking.
Sarge : That’s at the other end of the county, that’ll take us an hour to get too.
The captain cut him off screaming as loud as he could :
Captain : Jumpout, I need you ALL geared up and over there immediately. I want you running a 4. I want that guy caught. Get it done.
The Captain was in a different district some years back when 2 Officers were killed on his watch, I can see why he was so hyped up about the right unit getting there quickly. He wanted us running a 4… our emergency code system only has 2 and 3 for priority items so this means our speed was an object of concern.
Sarge : No problem captain, we’re all over it.
We put on our raid gear and over vests, pulled out the big guns and got immediately onto the interstate toll road.
Medic was in the lead car with Muscle riding shotgun, I was in the second car, the New Guy was behind me and Sarge was last in the line.
We’d reached 135MPH, the fastest our cruisers would go.
Toll plaza one came and went, a total blur at these speeds.
We had no choice, an armed subject who just killed an Officer and seriously injured three more was on the loose. Our SRT team takes a while to get to a place so the Jumpout unit fills that gap usually being the best trained team outside of SRT when it comes to armed subjects.
Toll plaza number two was coming up, we got into the ‘express’ lane and just as Medic was about to go through it, a freshly installed fiberglass arm bar started lowering.
Now, we didn’t know these plaza’s even had arm bars that raised and lowered so not only was this a shock, but at 135MPH there really wasn’t much you could do to avoid hitting it.
So as Medic hit the arm at more then 115MPH over the posted limit for that lane, it shattered into a million pieces, hitting my car, the car behind me, behind him and well into the roadway.
Shit, we’ll hear about that for sure.
We continued on to the south end location, arriving only 20 minutes after setting off in that direction.
It just so happened that we arrived in time to have the bail out of the subject being called out over the county wide patched channel we were all now on.
The units that were chasing the subjects white Honda actually lost sight of him, which immediately baffled me because how could you lose sight of a car that should have been in a ditch or slammed into a wall? They actually chased him like a normal chase…
We arrived on the bail out scene seconds later, finding that he’d ditched his rifle underneath the car and we started running in the last direction he was seen in, finding a level 3 raid jacket. Those jackets can withstand a rifle round…
He was also armed with a pistol so he was still armed and dangerous.
We setup our perimeters and started doing our block by block searches in a stack. Through houses, into fields.. no luck.
After 30 minutes K9 arrived and we started to assist them until the SRT (Special Response Team AKA SWAT) showed up to take over.
We had SRT/SWAT teams and K9 units from two counties and 5 municipalities show up.
Good deal, our squad sat on a very close perimeter and kept an eye open for the remainder.
Our SRT raided the Subject house, finding that it had been recently visited and that the subject had shaved off his beard and hair, the trimmings were by the front door.
The dispatcher started getting calls in the county north of us about a brother of the Subject and how they had perimeters of their own going on.
Apparently they’d found his brother who ratted our Subject out.
Our subject somehow got out of the initial perimeter and made it up to the next County at some point. Our SRT / SWAT teams responded up there and the end result was one very dead subject.
So now to review with hindsight’s look at how it unfolded :
Initially the Subject was stopped reference him driving like a manic towards some part of town. He lead the four Officers on a small chase and then stopped in front of his house. He then ran into the house and the Officers mostly being rookie and not knowing what to do started talking to each other on how they were going to get into the house while standing in front of the windows. The subject put on his bullet proof vest, armed himself with an AK and a handgun and proceeded to open fire on the Officers from the safety of an open window in his house. Needless to say, the four Officers were hit. The subject then got back into his car and fled the scene being chased by several more units. The units followed him until he bailed out and they lost him in the foot chase. That’s when we got there.
The Officer that was killed was shot in the face and died immediately. He left behind a wife and two children. Another one of the Officers was shot four times and she’ll be okay. The third Officer was hit in the leg and had to have major surgery done and will have severe permanent damage but is lucky to be alive. I’m not quite sure on the details of the last Officer but I’ll find out tomorrow.
It’s been an extremely rough day and a nation of law enforcement mourns the loss of our fallen brother.
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