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Lady Luck was with me tonight.
I was driving around aimlessly trying to learn the my new district last night. It was about midnight and I was riding solo since Batman took the night off.
The windows were down and the and air was cool. No cars on the road in all directions. Houses to my left and warehouses to my right.
My personal Ipod radio which is rigged up in the car was playing the Bob Marley – Legend CD.
You’d almost think I wasn’t at work.
That awesome feeling was interrupted by gunfire.
I heard several shots to my left about 2-3 blocks over.
My car made a hard left and I cut off all my lights, driving very slowly.
The car radio broke the silence:
BEEP! ATTENTION ALL UNITS, SHOTS FIRED GANG FIGHT IN PROGRESS [ADDRESS] CAN ANY UNITS CLEAR?!
The address dispatch gave was one block north of where I was.
I turned the corner and saw two guys at the end of the block, maybe 40 yards away.
One was wearing a white shirt with black pants and holding a rifle, pointing it downward and it looked like he was trying to clear a malfunction. The other guy was wearing all black with a handgun.
Both saw me and started running east bound.
I got on the air and in a very calm tone I stated, “Dispatch, I’m arrival on that call, two black males running east bound armed. Hold the air.”
All sorts of things go through your mind in high stress situations.
The thing going through mine was the guy with the rifle wasn’t able to use it, he couldn’t clear the malfunction and the guy with the handgun was the only viable threat.
I took chase on foot.
Ditching my car and running east bound after these guys I saw the guy with the handgun toss it into a yard while the guy with the rifle tried hiding it under his shirt.
I keyed my mic, “Dispatch, still running east bound, could I get a unit or three here please?”
Just as I was finishing my transmission the guys both ran behind a house. I read the house number as I ran into the back yard, “Dispatch, we’re going behind [ADDRESS] to the backyard”.
The backyard looked like it was a junkyard. There were things piled upon things. Metal slabs and broken chairs.
The guy with the rifle now took it out from under his shirt and both of them standing only a few feet from me turned around.
Holy fuck.
Since I was already in full run, I hit this guy so hard in the chest with my elbow it knocked him backwards to the ground on his back as he tripped over one of the many junk items, the rifle went flying out of his hands during the fall landing about 4 feet from him into the pile of broken chairs. I caught my balance and then I extended the same arm I hit the first guy with to point at the second guy. This happened to be my gun hand and I told the second guy very calmly but in an adrenaline fueled way to drop down to the floor immediately, firearm level with his chest about 3 feet away.
To my surprise he laid right down next to his partner with a look on his face that was a mix of shock and disbelief. After some instruction both were face down on the ground with their legs crossed and hands interlaced behind their heads.
That’s when the first backup unit arrived.
I handcuffed them both and retrieved the rifle. A Savage Arms .22L. It was still jammed with a failure to feed. There were 14 rounds of .22L in it and it was rusted beyond repair. I was surprised the thing even fired let alone attempted to cycle a round.
Picking my stomach back up on the way to my cruiser I went over in my head several times how stupid that was of me. Armed people.. Streets with no lights.. No backup.. I was lucky. Simple as that.
Being that my district is so rookie, I was back at my car when the rest of the 8 units showed up to help. I’m not sure if they got lost or were on calls, but when I was new and heard someone asking for backup on that sorta thing I left people standing at calls and booked it over to the Officer in need. You can always go back to take the report, you can’t undo time however and lives get lost in that little item. Once my new SGT got there he was furious. He started cursing left and right. Only one person from my squad showed up. One person out of 7 possible people that could have came. He walked up to me, “Dash, I’m going to have a roll-call training when we get back on Wednesday. This isn’t going to happen again. These fucking rookies need to learn what Emergency backup means. Sorry man.” I told him it really wasn’t a problem but he wasn’t hearing it. I’m guess I’m so used to having immediate backup due to my background with jumpout units that I wasn’t even thinking of a time delay of road units clearing calls and getting to me. My partner had the night off due to family reasons so I was on my own, which isn’t a good feeling.
My heart is still pounding and once I finished all of the paper work I started kicking myself again. Its a hard feeling to describe, when certain things happen, I am only able to react one way. Engage the threat. Bottom line. One day someone will best me, but that day wasn’t today and that person wasn’t there. I’m filing this mentally under, “Shit not to do again.” but I know myself and if it happens again, I’ll go with my instincts which haven’t lead me wrong yet.
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