I was trying to upload a video of me being tasered the other day, but for some unknown reason, it would not work.  I figured that would be a good way for some of you who might be interested to see what I look like to be able to see me, and it would be a good way to see a cop getting tasered.  Anyway, when I first became a cop back in 1998, my department did not have tasers, but we did and still have pepper spray.  While attending the academy, we all got a direct blast of pepper spray to the face, and then instructors would charge at us with large pads and try to knock us down.  We were also wearing gun belts with fake guns, and other instructors would try and take the fake gun away.  The reason for this was to give us recruits a realistic scenario of what could happen on the street.  If some thug got some pepper spray, either mine, another officers or they bought it and they tried to use it me, I could know ahead of time how pepper spray affected me.  I’m just going to start off by saying, pepper spray and I are not friends, not at all.  When I was sprayed, it felt like someone had just thrown thousands of tiny glass shards in my eyes, so my eyes immediately closed, and I could not open them.  Then, it felt like someone peeled the skin off of my face and threw burning hot sand on my exposed nerve endings, and then they put my skin back in place.  So, right from the start I’m feeling some discomfort here.  Then I got some idiot instructors who start screaming at me and start nailing me with pads, and one idiot is grabbing onto my fake gun.  At this point, my asthma kicks in.  Little did I know at the time, but pepper spray can have a very adverse affect on asthma.  I can’t see, I can’t breathe and to top it off, I get knocked off my feet.  Now, I’m pissed!  I get back up and hold one of my eyelids open with my fingers, and I put my right hand over my fake gun, then I turn around, but these sadistic instructors insist on knocking me down again.  Now I’m going to say right here and now, I’m not much of a fighter.  I can honestly say that 99% of my hostile encounters in my 10 years of police work have ended with me talking the bad guy into handcuffs.  Even the one’s who were determined to fight, I could talk into cuffs.  Anyway, with that being said, I’m back on my feet, I find and target one of the instructors, and then I charge him and somehow manage to tackle him to the ground.  He is screaming “Get off me, get off me!”  I am screaming obscenities and punching and head butting as hard as I can, but I only manage to blow snot all over this instructor.  For those of you who know anything about tear gas, CS gas, mace or pepper spray, you know that one of the side effects is excessive snotting of the nose.  Well, the other instructors pull me off, and they actually told me good job for not giving up and putting up a good fight.  I won’t go into detail about how pepper spray can irritate the male genitals when showering.

So, I am working the night shift.  9:00 PM – 7:00 AM.  It’s about 3:00 AM and I am at home on my lunch break.  In my department if you live close enough to your patrol beat you can go home for lunch.  Anyway, there wasn’t anything happening that night, but of course when I finally decide to eat, shit decides to happen.  An armed robbery kicks out at one of our local Texaco stations, which of course happened to be in my beat, but the only problem is, I’m far away.  So. I quick stuff my mouth full of food, grab my Mt. Dew (nectar of the gods) and I stroll out to my squad car.  I do not run because as usual dispatch is getting multiple calls with multiple descriptions and nobody is sure which way the bad guy has fled the scene.  One caller said east and one said north.  Typical crap information, but nothing can be done about it.  I happened to be way south and the description was a Hispanic male, wearing a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt and he was driving and older model blue Ford Bronco.  What kind of an idiot wears a Hawaiian shirt while committing a robbery?  Who the hell is not going to be able to spot that a mile away?  I get out of my neighborhood, and I’m not even a half-mile up the road when the suspect vehicle happens to drive right by me, and I even manage to get a glimpse of the shirt.  Immediately I go into adrenaline overload and I yell out loud to nobody in particular, “Holy Shit, that was him!”  Brilliant right?  Anyway, I turn around and follow.  I advise dispatch of the situation, and surprisingly I’m calm when I speak over the radio.  Every time I keyed the mike I would take a deep breath so I wouldn’t sound like I was holding my breath while I spoke and I didn’t want to talk to fast and scream into the radio.  I’m behind the dude and I turn on my overhead lights.  He blows through a red light.  I ask dispatch if it is a confirmed armed robbery and they acknowledge it is.  I advise I am in pursuit and the chase is on.  While I’m off the radio I’m yelling, pumping my fist and screaming at the thug, “You go boy!” “You keep running man!”  What the hell, this guy obviously cannot hear me, and obviously he doesn’t nee me to tell him to keep running.  Anyway, I’m a little bit excited.  So we fly down the road for about three miles, when the bad guy decides to stop, so I stop as well.  We are just sitting there doing nothing.  My lights and siren are on, but there is no way in hell I’m getting out without back up.  Let me tell you something, when you see a pursuit on Cops or Worlds most Amazing chases or whatever, and you see a cop or cops go barreling out of their cars that is a recipe for disaster.  You never, ever run up to the bad guy’s car with your gun out screaming get out of the car.  Too many things can go wrong.  The bad guy can run you over, he can shoot you, because you have no cover or if you have your weapon in one hand and grab the guy with the other, you can accidentally shoot him, with what is called a sympathy trigger pull.  Your grabbing with one hand and forget about your weapon in the other, and accidentally squeeze the trigger, because your brain does not register the weapon any longer.  It thinks your using your gun hand to grab the bad guy.  Trust me this has happened before.  Suddenly the guy puts his Bronco in reverse and comes right at me, I too put my vehicle in reverse, but do not move.  Damn neutral gear!!!  I finally get it in reverse and the guy swings the Bronco around and smashes me with his front end.  Now, this Bronco is raised up, so the front bumper hooks onto my push bar, and now we are stuck together.  We end up face to face.  I turn on my spot light and shine it in his face, because I don’t want him to pull out a gun and start shooting at me.  Instead of shooting, he starts to push me across the road towards a canal full of water.  Great that’s all I need.  So I start to push back, but my Crown Victoria is no match for a raised full sized Bronco.  Suddenly the guy puts it in reverse an pulls my car the other way, then he stops and starts banging on the steering wheel, and he also starts crying.  What the hell?  I bail out of my squad car, draw my duty weapon, and point I at him.  Now, my lights and siren are still on, but it is pretty obvious by the way I’m pointing my weapon at the thug and screaming at the top my lungs that he can guess I want him to get out of the Bronco and give up.  Well, he keeps dragging my car all over the road trying to dislodge it, and he stops occasionally to beat on the steering wheel, cry and at one point he reaches down and comes up with a can of beer.  What the hell is that all about?  I’m ready to open up on him because I think he is going for a gun, but instead he starts drinking beer.

Needless to say my back up finally arrives and one of them is a K-9 officer, one is my Sgt. and the other has an assault rifle.  An AR15 to be exact.  Once the assault rifle was deployed, our beer drinking hero decided to get out of the Bronco, with his beer in hand of course, lie face down on the roadway and he gave up without a fight.

After everything was said and done, I found out earlier that night before robbing the Texaco, our hero robbed a convenient store in a neighboring city, he beat up the clerk, stole the clerk’s vehicle (the Bronco), some beer, some carton’s of cigarettes and of course some money.  He then came into my town and robbed the Texaco, but only made off with some rolls of pennies and some gasoline.  It turned out he never actually had a gun, he only pretended too by sticking his hand in his pocket.  When I asked him why he robbed the Texaco after already hitting another place earlier, he told me that he needed some gas for the Bronco, but did not have the money to buy gas.  WTF!?  Didn’t have the money?  I also learned our hero was a serial armed robber and was wanted by other agencies for the same thing.  And, the kicker was he wore that stupid Hawaiian shirt in all of the robberies he committed, so he was very easy to identify.  About one year later I found out the thug got 20 years without parole.  The largest part of his sentence came from ramming my squad car.  The particular judge in that case took assaulting a police officer very seriously.

I’m sorry this was so long, but one final thought.  That was the first time in my career when I actually felt like a real cop.  Up until that point my shifts consisted of mostly taking reports and filing paper.  I mean I would catch burglars and car thieves, and even arrest drunks, but that was the first real “cops and robbers” experience I had, and I had already been on the job for three years.  In some departments, chasing dangerous criminals is almost a daily routine.  I am glad that it is rare in my department, but my city is growing and it is getting more violent out there.

Thanks for reading.