We Are the Cops (10 page)

So we put this plan together. I’ll never forget it, the officer’s got the flannel shirt on, we’re driving this old sixties truck with carpet in the back, we threw a sniper with an M16 down under the carpet and I’m laying on the floor of the cab holding a little shotgun with an eleven-inch barrel.

I’ve got the door on the passenger side cracked open and I’m laying down with my feet against it and I said to the officer who was driving, ‘When you see the dude, when he gets right in front of the door, let me know and I’ll let him have it with both feet and just fucking try to knock his dick in the dirt. Then the guy in the back will pop up, cover him, we’ll jump out and we’ll fucking bulldog this guy.’

Dude, it worked like shit, but here’s the deal: we roll out
there and because of the weather there was this heavy fog – it was the most eerie thing you could imagine. And there’s this mound of earth and a dyke that’s around this house to keep the water from flowing out, or whatever.

It’s the middle of the night and I’ll never forget it because we’re riding out there and you see the headlights go up through the fog as we go over the earth and dyke and I’m like, ‘Oh fuck, this is great!’ It was so eerie.

So I’m laying down, I’ve got a shotgun in my hand, the handle of the doors slipped and it’s opened just about an inch so that he can’t tell it’s open, you know what I mean? Just waiting on him.

So the other officer gives the horn signal and he goes, ‘Somebody’s coming! Oh yeah, it’s him! It’s him! He’s coming! Alright, get ready, get ready… GET HIM! GET HIM!’

BOOM! I hit him – I knocked his fuckin’ dick in the dirt, dude! I jump out, the other officer runs around, the sniper pops up, we grab him, pummel him and cuff him. He’s got the gun he killed the three kids with in his waistband. Took him into custody and that was it. Who would have thought that shit would have happened? But I’ll never forget it, it was eerie dude, it was eerie. But you know how it is – it was just another mission. But it’s so much fun, though. It really is.

When I was on the SWAT team, we had a gorilla from the zoo – his name was Little Joe – and he escaped. Little Joe, he escaped from the zoo.

The call came in from a payphone, a 911 call, ‘The gorilla from the zoo just escaped. He’s out of his cage.’

But it came from a payphone, so they dispatched a patrol unit there. The sergeant said, ‘Yeah, have the unit respond but tell them not to kill themselves getting there.’ – meaning it was probably a phoney or prank call – ‘Still go but don’t hurt yourselves by rushing there too fast.’

So it went off my radar until about ten minutes later when the cop on the radio said, ‘It’s legit! It’s legit! He’s coming over the fence!’

This huge gorilla was out! So we all responded up there, and the patrol force all had 40 calibre handguns and I wasn’t sure – if God forbid, we had to stop him or take him down – I wasn’t sure that was going to be enough. So I grabbed my sniper rifle and went up there. I get there and I see him. He’s a gorilla! He’s out! He’s in the park! You can’t believe it. And he was dumping a trash barrel over his own head! And the last thing you want to have to do is shoot this poor gorilla because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

So he was just kind of walking around, then he’s coming towards us and he’s like banging his chest and everything. Then at one point he starts running after us. There had to be probably fifty cops there by now – you know, pistols, rifles, I’ve got the big rifle and all this stuff – and we all just stated running. Running away. We don’t want to shoot him, so we’re running and we’re kinda laughing too, because it is kinda funny. But it’s a gorilla and he’s out. He’s out on the street.

He was out of the zoo but luckily he stayed in the park and he hadn’t crossed the street to where houses and stuff were. And we knew that if he did go any further, we were going to have to stop him. I was going to have to shoot him if he crossed the street. So I’m hoping, ‘Please, don’t, just don’t cross the street,’ because the last thing I wanted to do was shoot this gorilla.

So he ended up just staying in the woods and we ended up getting a couple of his trainers up there and they break out the tranquilliser guns. And at one point, one of his trainers – we were going to let them shoot him because we didn’t know anything about tranquilliser guns – so at one point one of the trainers has got the gun and she accidentally lets a round off. The thing went flying right through all of us. It didn’t hit nobody but we found out it would probably have killed one of us. So we took that stuff from her and we then started shooting him with the darts (I didn’t personally shoot him – I still had the lethal coverage, in case we had to use that) and he was ripping the darts out and throwing them back at us.

Finally, it got dark now, but the darts were taking effect, so he went a little more into the woods and we didn’t hear him anymore and now we don’t see him either, so we had to go into the woods and find him now and I remembered being so scared just thinking that he was going to jump out of a tree at me. One of the things is that he’s so unpredictable; this thing would rip you apart.

We ended up finally finding him, passed out and we put him in a net and took him out. I remember seeing his hands and just how big he was. But it was fun. It was one of those calls: when
you came on for duty you never thought that you’d be chasing a gorilla around today. You’ve got to laugh at some of the stuff we have to do – it’s the only way to stay sane when this stuff happens – so we joke around a lot.

Little Joe is back at the zoo now. They rebuilt his cage. He was gone for a while but they brought him back.

That was a fun day.

I
expected two things would happen when I decided to speak to officers specifically about shootings. First, that it would be a difficult subject for them to talk about and second, that they would all have been involved in several shootings during their careers. I was wrong on both points.

Despite the fact that hundreds of people are killed by police officers every year in America, in what is termed as ‘justifiable homicides’, I found very few officers – surprisingly few, I thought – who had ever fired their guns or been fired at. Perhaps it was my diet of American TV cop shows that had led me to believe that all police officers in America are involved in shoot-outs on a daily basis, but it simply isn’t like that.

For those officers who have fired their guns, whether at criminals, dogs or even innocent people, there was an unexpected indifference. Talking to me about these incidents was no big deal, it seemed. All officers told me that the last thing any cop wants to do is to actually shoot
somebody, but for those that had, I did not find the expected devastation or remorse. It’s not that they were cold to what they had done, rather that there certainly seemed to be a lack of sympathy. It was not the cop’s fault that they had had to open fire, after all, and surely it’s better that they fired a shot and survived than the other way around.

Although, thinking back to these interviews, the reaction of one officer in particular comes to mind. His face was somewhere between being vacant and being in shock as he told me about the incident he had been involved in and I suspected that the shooting had had a greater effect on him than he was ready to admit, especially as his fellow officers were listening in.

The truth is, most officers have never and will never fire their gun. When I suggested that perhaps there was an argument for some officers in some parts of America to not be armed, they looked at me like I was an idiot. Because even though most will never use their weapon, many officers know someone who has and I guess that’s the point: you just never know when you may be that officer.

I’ve been shot at before. I’ve had people attack me with knives and stuff. I’ve just never had the opportunity to shoot people before.

Here in the United States, most departments ask you a question – even before they hire you – ‘Are you willing to use deadly force? Are you willing to take a life?’

Of course, if you say ‘No’, then they say, ‘Thanks, but you’re not right for this job’. And so everybody – on our department at least – has said yes to that.

But until you’re really there, you don’t know. And you know, most people question themselves. We use a lot of force. I’ve got into fights – I’ve fought over a gun, I’ve fought with people with knives and stuff – which is not a problem until somebody’s actually trying to kill you and you’re trying to kill them.

Most people really don’t know how they’re going to react. So you hope that you’re going to react as best you can and you train and you mentally prepare for it and you do your best.

I’m going to do whatever it takes to do my job and protect others. Of course, you don’t want to shoot people and I don’t want to sound like a monster but shooting a person was not that emotional for me.

I had this case where I was out on patrol and I get a call from an officer who says that she’d just heard a gunshot. She was out on a call and there was a gunshot in the complex she was in and she says she’s going to investigate it. A bunch of officers are going there to make sure she’s okay. She gets on the radio again and says she’s found a dead body inside the complex. We don’t know if it’s from the gunshots or not but we’ve got gunshots and a dead body, so it’s possibly related.

I was on a swing shift at the time and my shift was just ending and as there was a bunch of graveyard units and homicide going I figured that they didn’t need me there. So I was just going to go back to the station and finish up my paperwork and go home for the night. I’m waiting to turn at a red light when all of a sudden this car comes the other way through a red light at about a
hundred miles an hour – flying through the intersection. I didn’t think of it being related to the previous call, I just thought it was some drunk or something. It was very reckless driving and I decided that I couldn’t just let it go, so I turned around and tried to catch up with it. By this time it was way down the street. It comes to the next intersection, goes through another red light and almost hits a pedestrian. So I get on the radio and tell them that I’m trying to catch up with this vehicle and giving the best description that I can – as I just saw it in a flash.

They’re asking me, ‘Are you in pursuit?’

I’m like, ‘Well, not really a pursuit yet as I can’t get close enough to go to pursuit; I’m just trying to catch up with him.’

I got to about a hundred and thirty miles an hour on the residential streets; kind of dangerous but I knew that if somebody didn’t stop him, he was going to end up killing somebody. Ended up finally getting close enough to where I am actually in pursuit and he turns down this street and then tries to take another turn but he’s going too fast, misses the intersection and hits the curb and almost goes through a wall. He then continues going down through some residential area with me following him.

Apparently a sergeant called up on the radio and advised that this vehicle may be involved in this earlier shooting. I was kind of involved in my pursuit and I didn’t hear it. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it might be involved because we’ve had this kind of thing before and it’s usually just some drunk or somebody in a stolen car.

Then all of a sudden he stops, kind of in the middle of the
street, kind of sideways in the street and he gets out, takes off running and falls down – trips over. And so I get out of my car and I think, ‘Here’s my chance to catch him’. So I’m running up towards him and then he starts coming up to one knee and pulls out a handgun and starts shooting at me. I’ve got bullets coming past me and I pull my gun out and start running back to my car, just shooting at him – BOOM, BOOM, BOOM – just kind of suppressive fire, to get back to my car. Hit him once and he goes down. I hit him a couple of times but I think that first one went in the abdomen area. It put him down and I got back behind my car door. Then he comes up and starts shooting again. So now I’m paying a little more attention and I shoot at him and that time I think I hit him in the chest. It goes in the chest but ricocheted off. It missed his heart but it put him down again. Then he gets up and he starts running towards one of the houses.

Now, I’ve done a lot of teaching with my Advance Officer Skills Training and I always say, handguns don’t kill people; they don’t even stop people. They may eventually kill people, because of the blood loss, the trauma. But if you don’t take out something major, they’re going to keep going and you must be aware of this.

Anyway, he goes running into a house. I go running up and I look at the front door and the front door is open. I’m calling it out on the radio and saying where it is and stuff. All of a sudden an older man comes out.

I order him, ‘GET ON THE GROUND! GET ON THE GROUND!’

He’s like, ‘My son’s just been shot!’

And I’m like, ‘I know. I just shot him! Get on the ground!’

He’s like, ‘What’s going on?’

I said, ‘Just get out here and get down on the ground.’

He says, ‘But my wife’s inside.’

I wasn’t going to go into the house but now I’m thinking, what’s his intention? He just tried to kill me and he’s acting this way, maybe he was trying to get back to their house to do them harm. I don’t know if she’s safe in there or not. So I decide I had to go in. I couldn’t wait for backup to arrive.

So I go in and she’s on the stairs crying and I ask, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’

She says, ‘He’s in our back bedroom.’

And so I’m like, ‘Okay, come out, come out.’

I get her out of the house and then I go back in and I’m looking around trying to find him and I see a gun sitting on the coffee table. I don’t know if it’s his or not but there’s a gun. Then I hear a noise in the back bedroom.

Again, I’m like, ‘COME OUT! COME OUT!’

And then he comes into view and I’m ordering him, ‘Get on the ground! Get on the ground!’

He turned towards me and he’s not armed, so I’m presuming that this was his gun on the coffee table.

But then he charges at me and he says, ‘You’re never going to take me alive!’

I’ve got my hands full with the gun, so I kick him in the chest and knock him down. I knelt down on him, put my gun away and handcuff him.

Well, in the mean time, you know, things are a little bit stressful I guess, and I got the numbers on the house wrong. Well, other officers are arriving and they’re kicking-in the door next-door. There’s this old couple inside their house and the police are beating the door down. It’s across the street from where I am but my vehicle is in the middle of the street and I got the numbers wrong. It all got straightened out I the end though.

The dad comes back into the house and I’m saying, ‘Get out of here!’

He’s like, ‘You didn’t have to kick my boy.’

I’m like, ‘Kick him? I should have shot him again!’

It turns out that this guy had just murdered his girlfriend – the mother of his two-year-old little girl. He had murdered her in that complex and that was what the original shooting was. They found the girlfriend’s body in the apartment complex. He then put the little girl in the car – she was in the car the whole time – down below the dashboard on the passenger side. I went past the car and didn’t see her in there, but she was in there and she wasn’t hurt.

He ended up getting two consecutive life sentences – one for murdering his girlfriend and one for the attempted murder on a police officer. He murdered his girlfriend because of a disagreement, a custody-type thing over the child. They weren’t getting along very good, obviously.

I can’t tell you what it’s like in a quiet place but I worked in a place where if everybody wasn’t looking out for everybody
else, people got hurt. People
would
get hurt. It was a fucking dangerous, dangerous place.

The first week I was there, it was July and we were on the 4pm to 12am shift. We had just turned out of roll call and we’re standing on the steps of the precinct when there was a drive-by shooting five hundred yards up the block. A guy drove by with a machine gun and just lit up the whole fucking corner. And the precinct was in the middle of the block! It was a dangerous, dangerous place.

A lot of it has to do with street rep, ‘Look what I did. You don’t got the balls to do that but I did it! You’re not going to fuck with me now.’

They didn’t care.

Detroit is generally a good city but the criminals are bad criminals. There are good people here and it’s not a bad city, there’s just a little more despair here, a little more joblessness and a little more poverty than the average city. The criminals here are worse than other criminals but the good people are good people. It’s just that the bad are really bad and they overshadow the good.

Let me tell you this, this will show you the recklessness of the criminal with regards to human life. This will also show you the level of respect they – the criminals – have for law enforcement.

It was my first day back from vacation – my partner and I both – our first day back. So we decided that we were just going to take it easy that day, get back in real slow, just patrol and answer some police runs and ease back into the grind slowly. So, we made
a traffic stop and gave the gentleman a break on the ticket – we didn’t write him a ticket. We said, ‘Here’s your licence sir, just slow down and you can get on your way.’

He thanked me and he said, ‘God is watching you today.’

I said, ‘Oh, thank you sir, that’s a really nice thing to say.’

He grabbed my arm and he stopped me and he said, ‘No, I mean it. God is watching you today.’

So I’m thinking, wow, that was heavy.

So, once we got back into our scout car and made a u-turn, a car speeds by us. I look at my partner, he looks at me and I said, ‘Go ahead and get him.’

So we tried to stop him, activated the lights and the car chase is on. I’m thinking, thank God this old man told me that God was looking out for me. So we chase him for a good ten minutes, in and out of the side streets, and we ended up getting on a major thoroughfare. Then the back passenger leans out from the car with a gun – a big gun – and he starts shooting my car up. I’m five feet from him, maybe ten feet and he’s unloading on me. He’s in the passenger seat, so he’s just firing and I’m ducking, trying to call the chase out whilst my partner’s driving. So, all the bullets are coming on my side; he was just tearing us up.

So now the other passenger leans out, so I’ve got two guns firing at me as I’m calling the chase out. This happened for another few miles, up and down the street, shooting. I’m not shooting anything because I can’t. I’m really under fire.