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Easter rabbits just aren't fast enough.
Pouring rain.
Absolutely drenching pouring rain was the forecast for the shift.
Today was the last day of the work week for my unit and because it was raining hard, nothing was going to get done. I wasn’t about to get wet and I sure wasn’t going to go looking for anything to do. My partner and I were sitting at the mini-station catching up on a weeks worth of paperwork with some other people in our unit. The SGT and LT happened to have been doing the same thing.
Hours of paperwork, dozens of arrests and other items that needed to be accounted for were the planned activities for the day.
Several hours into the shift and many typed words later, the new crew units started checking in on the radio and heading to roll-call for their usual ‘beginning of the shift’ get together with their respective SGTs so they could get the ‘up to date’ orders and whatnot.
Now, normally a road Officers primary function is to handle calls for service, but being that we’re in such a busy district, even the 4 full squads can’t clear the calls fast enough to have ‘no’ calls holding.
The Dispatcher started trying to get units to clear their calls to handle a Drug call that came in, but as expected, none of them cleared.
I heard the LT saying out loud, “One of you guys, just take that call”, through his partially opened door.
These rookies were looking around at each other like the LT had just asked them to walk into a Lions den with no weapons or armor.
Gah, I piped up, “I got it LT, I’ll be right back”.
So my partner and I went out to the car and lucky for us, the rain had just stopped. I got on the air and requested the call be given to me. The dispatcher sent the call over the computer and voice dispatched the ‘remarks’ of the call to us over the air, “It’ll be a black male wearing a white shirt, dark blue jean shorts standing at building #5, UK on the location of the narcotics”.
I responded with a sour, “Oh boy, en route”.
Typical drug call. Addict goes to buy their fix, doesn’t have enough cash, dealer sends the addict away, addict calls us to get back at the dealer. These sort of calls usually end up with squat. Nota. Nothing but wasted time and here we were, driving to the call.
This location happened to be newer project housing that was built in a 3×3 formation after the old project housing was shut down and fenced off directly across the street due to code violations. There were a total of 6 buildings in this housing area and upon arriving a block away, my partner and I saw a group of guys standing outside right where the dealer was supposed to be. Sure enough, one of the guys matched the description.
Hmm.
My partner got excited, “Roll up on them! They’re gonna run!”, pointing and bracing.
I was iffy on the whole ordeal but drove my car as far up to them as I could.
They saw us and immediately scattered, which was great cause now we had ‘no’ dealers hanging out. I put the car in reverse and then I noticed I was missing my passenger.
You have to be kidding me….
Yes, he was chasing the guy that was supposed to be selling. I threw the car in parked and started running. Keep in mind, it’d been raining all day and now I was running in grass after my partner and this knucklehead. I wasn’t in such a happy mood.
As a note, I run three times a week for forty minutes and am in good shape. These sorts of things don’t make me break a sweat anymore so I was thinking about changing my now soaked socks more then I was about chasing this fella.
My parter got on the Tac channel yelling all kinds of stuff, direction of travel, description, you name it. Problem is, he isn’t in the best shape, he smokes, kinda chubby… He was getting walked.
The subject ran straight south through the apartment complex and came up to the tall white spiked gate, jumping it and then running west along the side walk.
Instead of jumping the gate, I just ran west, since I knew the complex gate had an opening. Work smarter, not harder.
As I reached the opened gate I saw the subject cross over the avenue and start running north towards me. Awesome.
I ran straight at him but he decided it’d be more fun to jump another fence, so he did just that.
Now, he had jumped into the abandoned project housing which was completely fenced in, all the houses were closed shut with cement in all of the windows and door ways. He had no place to go.
The only exit was the one on the north side of the complex, which of course he was now running too.
Thing is, he ran us in a ‘box’ and I ended up only feet from my running vehicle. Obviously, I got back in my car as my partner was advising direction of travel and maintaining a visual on the subject, who was now huffing and puffing.
I drove around to the north side of the complex and parked my cruiser right at the ‘break’ in the fence that the subject was running too.
I got out and saw the subject walking only 30 yards away from me. He was looking back at my partner, who was still on the south fence border and the subject removed a large bag with a bunch of smaller bags of ‘white powder’ from his shorts pocket and hurled it onto a roof of one of the one story buildings.
Surprisingly, he didn’t see me until I grabbed his shirt and pointed my gun at him. He looked at me, right in the eyes. I saw he was to tired to run anymore, let alone fight me.
I told him to lay down.
He complied and one of the SGTs in my unit saw me through the fence and said on the air, “Dash has him at gun point, he’s waiting for backup to cuff him”… I heard that and did what any normal person would do. I holstered my gun, grabbed the guys left arm and threw a cuff on it. Knelled down on his back, grabbed his right arm, threw the other cuff on it. I stood him up and told him, “Stop drinking so much soda and start drinking water. Next time you run from me, you better have more then two blocks in you. Look at me, I didn’t even break a sweat and you look like you’re about to drop dead. Anyway, I got my socks wet, so you’re gonna have to goto jail today.”
My partner walked around to me and I went to retrieve the bomb. +/- 10 grams of cocaine. The guy had $110.00 on him and I charged him with everything from “Possession of Cocaine with intent to sell within 1000 ft of a HUD/Park/School, too Loitering and Prowling”. He had a total of 8 charges, 5 of which were felonies. He wasn’t a happy camper and he wouldn’t be getting any Easter Bunny in the morning.
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