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Verbal Judo.
There are certain kinds of calls that we receive so often that they become ‘routine’. Things like traffic stops, Alarms and ‘shots fired’ type call.
Last night a squad mate and I were dispatched to an audible alarm from a storage facility. To paint this picture right, I’ve got to get into some detail here about just how often we get these types of calls.
Every single time it rains, almost 20-40 alarms will go off in the district and we have to respond even though we know its probably just the weather tripping the motion alarm. It happens all the time and on a daily basis. Sometimes however we’ll get to the call and it’ll actually be a valid burglary and the subject even on those occasions is usually gone before we arrive.
My partner and I arrived at the massive self storage facility, which is a fairly large complex with a security coded gate as its only means of drivable entry. We put in the gate code and drove on in, expecting this to be a false alarm.
No more then 20 feet into the complex did we get before seeing a Uhaul truck parked with its cargo door wide open and its driver side door ajar. Normally this isn’t out of the ordinary, but it was almost 2AM…
We entered the building to find several lockers were forced open and their contents had spilled out into the hallway. This now became a very real burglary with a possible subject in the facility.
I got on the air:
Dispatch, have Aviation start this way and get me some units around the building for a perimeter.
As that process started painfully slow getting units to clear and respond for perimeter points we drew our weapons and started a leap frog pattern for clearing the facility. With 2 levels and almost 500 separate lockers this place was huge. Every unlocked door we came to potentially had a subject behind it and every hallway was a long narrow stretch of pure horror film type quality.
After 15 minutes of searching this building we concluded the individual was no longer there. Finding where he was able to get in, also let us know how he got out without being detected. There was a small 5 foot access fence next to the facility that had barbed wire around it and served no real purpose for it being there. That fence was cut open and pulled aside.
The burglar was gone before we even got there.
As I was leaving the complex a truck blew across all lanes of traffic in front of me almost hitting me as he pulled out from a side street. I nailed my lights and pulled him over.
The trucks tag didn’t come back to the vehicle, the vehicle didn’t have a vin, the driver had a suspended license more times than my age and he had been arrested for everything under the sun.
He went to jail.
After getting out of the jail and back on the road I started to cruise the streets near one of the drug holes in the district. As I was making a U turn on a side street a car came screaming around the corner towards me. My patrol vehicle was positioned facing West/East on a North/South avenue so my car was blocking the entire roadway. I hit my lights immediately and exited my vehicle, drawing my firearm at the approaching car driving recklessly.
He stopped a foot away from me.
“Get your hands up, now!”
The driver and passenger complied and then I ordered the driver to turn the car off.
Now the car was off so the situation was deescalated and I went into diplomacy mode.
Walking up to the driver side door, I said, “Gentlemen, I know it’s the weekend so we’re not going to have any problems unless you’ve got a backpack nuke in your car.”
Great way to get their attention away from the fact that their about to goto jail because I see the narcotics sitting in the console.
“Now, here’s how this works. I really don’t care what you have in the vehicle, guns, drugs, whatever. As long as you’re honest with me and there isn’t something you’re hiding from me, we will both be going out separate ways. Knowing that, is there anything I should know about?”
The driver said, “You for real about that or are you just lying to me?”
There are many tactics to take when talking to a subject you know is about to goto jail. Lying, although not as honest as can be, is an extremely effective tool to have a subject give information and willfully give evidence that you would otherwise not obtain. I do not tolerate drug dealers/users in any light and its my goal to take them all to jail because they cause most of the dangerous crime normally.
I told him, “Yeap, as long as there isn’t anything else you’re hiding aside from what you’re about to tell me, we wont have any problems”.
He said to me, “Okay, I’ve got a little powder in my pocket and the console.”
I replied, “No problem, we’re talking about grams here and not Kilo’s right?”
He looked sheepishly at me, “Yea, let me show you”.
Music to my ears.
He pulled out a gram of powder cocaine from his right pocket and gave me that and what was on the console.
I looked at the passenger, “Partner, anything you want to get off your chest?”
He looked at me like I was crazy for a second.
He said, “Naw… well.. damn dawg you’re gonna search me anyway.”
He went into his pocket and retrieved a ziplock bag with approximately 5 grams of Marijuana and 1 gram of power cocaine.
Backup arrived and I got them both out of the car.
I said to them, “Gentlemen, have a seat on the floor, cross your legs”.
Then I broke the news to then, “Both of you lean forward, hands behind your back”.
Here is where the advantage of having them sit on the floor with their legs crossed comes into play. If they were going to run, it would be a mission to get up and if they were going to comply, they’re already on the floor and can be maneuvered easily. I dropped cuffs on them both and tossed them in the back of my car.
My sergeant showed up along with several squad members and we all took pieces of the report and scratched it out quickly and then I was off to the jail with 2 more bodies for the night.
So I didn’t handle many calls but I got 1 traffic arrest and 2 felonies. All in all, a good active night and I got some narcotic off the street.
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