Between Law and Grace

Unknown Problem

2012-04-23T16:59:00.000-04:00

One Saturday morning, when I had about a year under my belt, I was driving the cruiser, minding my own business, not doing much of anything, when the dispatcher called over the radio and told me to meet a distressed woman at the corner of North and Liberty St. The call was "unknown trouble", which could mean just about anything.

I had not even reached the intersection yet when I saw a middle aged black woman on the sidewalk flagging me down. She told me she had just run from her house about 5 blocks away and had to get away from “them”. She didn't know what to do so she called the police. I said, who are you trying to get away from, she said, "Not who, what". She said, "They hides in the wall and they comes out and skittles all around the floor. They is kinda like cockroaches and they’s got a stinger on they behind like scorpions. One of 'em got me in the leg before I got away. She pulled up her dress and showed me a red swelling on her leg that looked like it could be a bite or something.

As a young policeman, I didn’t want to pass this call over to the exterminator or pest control. We young cops think we can handle any situation, animal, vegetable, mineral, or otherwise (until we learn some common sense). It turned out that this “unknown problem” was not animal, vegetable, or mineral….it was otherwise. I drove her back to her home where “they” were troubling her. She lived on a back alley in the upstairs of a poorly kept house. I asked her to show me where her “troubles” were coming from. In my mind on the way to the house I tried to picture what type of insects she had described.

The indeed could be cockroaches by the looks of the place, but they don’t normally attack people or sting people. They could be bees, but bees don’t skittle around the floor. They might be spiders, I know they aren’t scorpions. I am a college graduate and am not afraid of bugs, but once inside the house I get the creeps. The lady is afraid to go up the stairway to her house so I go first. She hollers, “wait a minute, you gonna need this”, and she reached behind the door and pulled out a double-bladed axe and handed it to me. Now, I’ve really got the creeps, but curiosity leads me upward to her apartment.

When we get to the kitchen she points toward the chimney and says, “that’s where they come from sometimes” but I can hears ‘em in that room now.” I went over to the room and looked inside. It was a spare bedroom with all kinds of clothes folded and piled upon the bed. I enter with my nightstick in one hand and the axe in the other hand.

She says “Oh Lordy they’s in the clothes and in the mattress.” I reached over with my nightstick and flipped a pair of pants off the bed. The lady was hiding around the corner and only her face was visible around the doorway. Each time I flicked a piece of clothing off the bed with my nightstick she would holler “OoooH”. It wasn’t long before I was down to the mattress and I hadn’t seen anything even resembling a dead fly. Then it hit me….I had a moment of insight. There really were no bugs or stinging critters except in her mind. She must be going through the DT’s (delirium tremens) or something. What a relief I felt when I realized that there was really no new species of vermin to deal with. As soon as this lucid moment hit me I knew what I had to do next. I yelled to the woman, “get back”, as I raised the axe and I closed the door. I then beat the mattress with the side of the axe for a few minutes while grunting and hollering, then I burst out the door with the mattress and threw it down the stairway. I turned to the lady and said, “your troubles are over, I don’t think there’s a one of them still alive.” I went down the steps and took the mattress out to the curb. The lady thanked me so much and thanked me again. I felt good, and I’m glad I didn’t call the exterminator.

More Nuts: 405's and 302's

2012-04-10T10:47:00.002-04:00

When dispatched to a call to handle a mentally unstable person, the code over the radio was "405" or "302." Those numbers didn't mean anything special, and you won't find them in the lists of police call signals or radio code. They were the numbers of the forms that had to be filled out whenever someone had to be involuntarily committed to inpatient mental health. (405 became extinct when the law changed, and the 302 form came out. 405 later became 45 and it meant bring me a coffee.)

When you were dispatched to a location and the call was a 302 you really didn't know what to expect. Sometimes you didn't realize it was a 302 call until you arrived and found out for yourself.

My sergeant and I were sent to the hospital one morning to assist a mental health nurse in admitting a 302 that didn't want to be 302'd. When we got there, I recognized D, who was the reluctant and violent 302. I recognized him because I went to high school with him. He was just a skinny happy-go-lucky kid in high school, but since then he had morphed into the hulking, bizarre sounding psychotic man that stood before us threatening to kill us if we tried to put him in mental health.

Police don't have much of a choice at times like this. We can't call a time out or suggest a more reasonable course of action (like just letting him go free). We don't use pepper spray or billy clubs or blackjacks to subdue 302's because it wouldn't look good to the nurses or hospital staff, who in their human compassion frequently take the side of the 302.

A fight was brewing and it was just a question of who was going to throw the first punch. As it turned out, I caught the first punch in my left eye. D stood up and made the mistake of trying to tear his t-shirt off before the fight (apparently in homage to Hulk Hogan). At this time the sergeant and I quickly closed on him to wrap him up and get him on the ground. The punch came toward the sergeant, who saw it coming and ducked. I was right behind the sergeant and never saw it coming. It opened up a cut above my left eye which bled profusely. We were able to finally pin D to the ground and get restraints on him.

D was lifted onto a gurney and tied down, and transported in the elevator to inpatient mental health. He was screaming about police brutality and spitting up at all of us, and someone threw a towel over his head. I was still bleeding all over the sheets, the floor and my uniform. When we got to our destination and wheeled D into his room, he looked at me and said, "Hey Dave, I'm sorry for punching you, but I'm crazy." An apparent moment of clarity.

I was taken down to the ER and cleaned up and several stitches closed the gap above my eye, leaving me with a permanent reminder of D and 302's in general. The sergeant and I went out for a 45 afterward.

NUTS: We All Know Some

2012-04-09T21:45:00.000-04:00

One of the biggest challenges in law enforcement is dealing with mentally unstable people. They are the source of some of the most tragic incidents, but they provide some of life’s most humorous memories.

The humorous ones are the easiest to write about so let me begin with B. I had a real history with B. I rode the school bus with him for several years, but we never went to the same school. B went to the special school in Meadville we called the Blue Barn, and he went there with a lot of other special kids. We used to make fun of B on the bus and teach him words that our mother’s would not let us use at home or anywhere else. He had a speech problem however that rendered even the coarsest words almost unintelligible. B grew up like the rest of us and settled into adult life, (sort of). I worked on the police department and B worked at Baloney-ya. (Vallonia Industries which provides employment for the simple of wit). He lived in a group home with other special adults and co-workers.

One day he took a dislike to one of the counselors at the group home and would call her some of the words we taught him on the school bus, and on occasion kick her. One of the advantages of being under-funded in the intelligence department was that you were also morally un-responsible, that is, you couldn’t hang a crime on somebody like B. But they did haul him up to the courthouse before the judge one day when his behavior could no longer be tolerated.

The judge had the sheriff’s deputy bring him before the bench in order to scare him, which sometimes works.
The judge said “B, if you keep kicking your counselor I will have to put you in jail.”

B wasn’t scared. He said “I don’ cayoh.”

The judge said, “You don’t care if I put you in jail?”

What B said next became my nickname for years to come. He said, “If you put me in jail, Daby Acka jes get da key an’ let me back out."

Because the judge was unable to continue his scare tactics for laughing, the deputy deposited B outside the courthouse and commenced to spread the word about what "Daby Acka" would do if B got locked up.

I am still known by in some police circles as Daby Acka. (If you only know me as “Chief,” my real name, that B knows is David Acker).

The Pride Incident (part 2)

2012-03-06T13:41:00.000-05:00

We sent for the key, and it was in my hands in a few minutes. I asked Jack to get Pride' attention at the window. Jack is good at getting people’s attention. He began to taunt him back and called him a coward and punk etc. Pride held the baby up to the window with the hunting knife pressed against his throat, threatening to cut the baby's throat. While Jack was engaged in keeping Pride focused on him in the window, Tom took the key and put it in the door, and quietly unlocked it. We had planned to distract Pride and then blow through the front door and take hold of him before he could react. Tom was the muscle of the three of us, he was a former college basketball player and was 6’4” of solid 230lb muscle. Jack was old, stringy rawhide with an attitude, and I was just 180 lbs of scared supervisor and hoping nothing bad happened.

We counted 1…2….3…GO. and Tom pushed his 230 lbs against the door that flew open striking Pride hard and knocking him backward. Jack went for the knife that was in his right hand, Tom grabbed his left hand and we pushed/drug him backward onto the couch to the left of the front door. I tried to get the baby out of his left arm and he was choking the baby in a fierce headlock while fighting to get his knife hand loose from Jack. Finally I was able to pry his arm loose and get the baby away from him. I stood back as the reinforcements arrived through the back door. We didn’t have a key for the back door, so it was quickly disconnected from the frame by 4 excited adrenaline filled cops when they saw that the front door had been breached.

As I stepped back with the baby in my arms I watched as 5 cops took Pride to the floor and it looked like a "dogpile on the rabbit". Pride was screaming at this time, “I give up, I give up” and Tom later told me that I said ‘It’s too late now.” I don’t remember saying anything.

As Pride was being handcuffed (a little roughly I might add) I took the baby outside and gave him to his mother, who of course was crying and still hysterical. Eric checked the baby over for injuries and found a slice in his abdomen that took about 14 stitches to close. I don’t know when that happened, I never did see any blood.

The baby was taken to the hospital with his mother, the bad guy was taken to the police station and then later to jail. He would get in trouble again in jail for trying to hire someone to kill his wife. The baby turned out to be OK. Jack received Christmas cards from the baby’s mother for a few years afterward. Everyone who was there still remembers the Pride incident. We are glad no one had to die, but wouldn’t have felt guilty if someone in particular did.

The Pride Incident (part 1)

2012-02-29T15:59:00.000-05:00

The city of Meadville is known for it’s Halloween Parade, which is the largest nighttime parade in Pennsylvania. It is not the parade that is the story, but what happened after the parade, and had nothing at all to do with the parade (other than I happened to be on parade duty at the time). Normally I would have been at home with my family watching TV or something.

I was assistant Chief at the time, which means that I did the things that the Chief didn’t want to do, namely plan and help execute the security for the parade. I am happy to say that the parade went without incident.

I was at the police station after the parade and preparing to go home for the night when an emergency call came to the desk. It was from a hysterical woman who said that she just escaped from her husband who has a weapon and has locked himself in her apartment with their 6 month old son. He had threatened to kill her and was holding their son hostage at the moment. I thought that this might not turn out too good, and instead of going home I went to the scene of the drama, which was in the project called Gill Village on the north end of town. Luckily, there were a few good men on the shift that evening who responded to the call, but the fact that I had responded put me in charge of a very volatile situation with some tough decisions to make.

When I got there I talked to the wife. She said that her ex had just gotten out of jail and had talked his way into her apartment so he could see their son. Once he was in the house he became abusive and threatening; and as it turned out, violent. She said that she begged him to leave and not to hurt the baby. He refused and began to mock her and throw her around the apartment. She took an opportunity to run out of the apartment to a neighbor’s house from where she called the police.

I went to the front door, where officers Jack Young and Tom Benge were standing looking through the diamond shaped glass panel in the front door of the apartment. They made room for me to look in and I saw the bad guy, named ------ Pride, about 26 years old holding a 6 month old baby with a hunting knife at the baby’s throat. He was demanding to talk to his wife, and threatening to kill the baby if we didn’t get her to him right away.

My first thought was that I should have taken vacation this week. Then, I looked at our options. Pride was in no mood to be reasoned with, possibly due to drugs or alcohol, and a bad attitude toward law enforcement. He was screaming and threatening and taunting the police through the window on the other side of the door. He had all the other entrances of the apartment locked, which included the back door and windows. The thought came to me that the easiest, quickest way to diffuse the situation was to shoot him in the head through the window with my duty gun, a .40cal S&W auto. He was close enough to the window taunting and yelling that it didn’t seem too risky a plan. I quickly thought of the consequences: I might not disable him with the shot and he could harm or kill the baby. I would have to live with killing a man; the news media and the lawyers and the courts would have all the time in the world to pick apart my decision and come up with 10 other courses of action that I didn’t have time to think of at the moment. So I put that idea on the back burner for the time being, but I was not afraid to use deadly force because I felt it was justified in this case. I also knew that I would have to pull the trigger myself, and not make someone else be responsible. I felt that I could do it with no remorse or regrets due to the situation and the irrational, uncontrolled way Pride was acting.

I sent Eric, a fit and agile detective to see if he could find a way up to the upstairs window and get into the apartment. Pride heard him at the window and again threatened to kill the baby if anyone tried to get in the apartment. The state police came as a backup and I explained the situation to them had them go to the back door of the apartment along with one of our officers.

Tom asked me if we should call the snipers in, but I felt we had a clear head shot anyway from two feet away so I said “No”. Just at the point where I was taking the pot off the back burner to consider shooting him again, Don Erdely reminded me of something that I already knew. We have master keys to all the projects hanging in a box at the police station. If we could get the front door unlocked without him seeing us we might be able to rush Pride and rescue the baby before he has time to hurt him.

(end of part 1, look for the conclusion in a few days)

My First Church

2012-02-13T21:05:00.001-05:00

My First Church: Norrisville United Methodist Church

In 1996 I was given my first church appointment. It was at a little 4 corners called Norrisville. I suppose you could call it a village, since there about 20 houses scattered along the roads within a half of a mile of the corner. But there is no reason to stop in Norrisville unless you come to the stop sign, or unless you are going to church. My first Sunday there were 8 people who came to church. I don’t think any of them were under 75 years old. They were the same 8 who had been going there for a long time. They were taking turns paying the electric bill. There was a fuel oil furnace to heat the church, but it didn’t cost as much as you would think to heat,. There was no running water at the church so you only had to run the furnace on Sunday morning. Since there was no running water inside, there was an outhouse out at the northeast corner of the church. The church had been built in the 1850’s, but I think the outhouse was a little bit newer than that.

The building consisted of one room, with a stairway up to an open balcony (for over flow crowds I guess). The stairway and steps were so narrow that it reflects the actual size of people who built them before the Civil War. There was no basement and the church sat on a fieldstone foundation that was crumbling in a couple places.

The windows had little panes of colored glass around the outside of them, but not what you would call “stained glass windows”. The inside was 1970’s paneling, varnished wood plank floors, and semi-modern pews. They at least had cushions on them for comfort.

The sign out front was very old, but functional. Later on, the church people thought that they should put “Rev. Dave Acker” on the sign below the worship time. Somebody put a couple bullet holes in the sign shortly after that. I don’t think it was me, it probably was just a couple stray shots from the neighbors. The front door was painted red and didn’t have a working knob on it, there was a padlock up on the right side to secure it Monday through Friday. Once inside the front door, there was a small entry way and a set of swinging saloon doors to go through to enter the sanctuary.
My first Sunday there, I stood behind the saloon doors and said a prayer. Then I pushed them open and walked through them like John Wayne entering the Long Branch. I could hear my dress shoes clicking and echoing on the wood floor as I walked up front and stood behind the pulpit. I saw 9 faces looking up at me expectantly (one was my wife’s). I smiled at them and got down to the business of having church. I wondered why God would put a cop in charge of 8 old innocent looking people, but I found out that these people were going to teach me how to be a real preacher.

How I Became a Preacher

2012-01-27T16:52:00.001-05:00

It was in 1996. I was assistant chief at the police department at the time. I was teaching Jr. High Sunday School at church, which was just as challenging as being assistant chief. I began to feel a little restless in my spiritual life. I was beginning to wonder if this was all there is to Christianity. (A feeling that would continue to spur me forward in the years ahead.)

One day, I was sitting in the pew beside my wife half asleep and half listening to the sermon at church and a thought came into my mind, “I bet I could preach a better sermon that that.” I didn’t say it out loud, but God must have heard it. It wasn’t two weeks later that the District Superintendent of the Erie-Meadville district called me on the phone. I had never had a conversation with him before. He told me that my name had come up at a meeting, and he asked me if I might be interested in preaching at a small church on Sundays. He gave me a choice of two churches, one at Teepleville and one at Norrisville. After praying about this with my wife, and going to see both churches, I told the D.S. that if I had a choice it would be Norrisville. The only reason was because it was closer to home, only about 10 miles away. Little did I know that about 12 year later I would be preaching at Teepleville anyway.

I never wanted to be a preacher. I never expected that I would be a preacher. My friends never thought that I would become a preacher. I never even cared that much for preachers in general, but I was about to become one and it confused me.

Most Christians believe that a person is called into the ministry by God. I think this is true. I don’t think I would have paid attention to anyone else calling me. God has a way of being politely insistent. I could have said no, I don’t want to, I could have ran away from this call, but instead I answered it, (although I answered it reluctantly.) I just figured you couldn’t say “no” to God and get away with it for very long. I think it was a foregone conclusion, or my fate. Objectively, I could look back at my life and see that the many things I had done, places I had gone, circumstances I had faced, training I took, and people that had influenced me had brought me to the point to where I could hear God say; “So, you think you can preach better than that huh? We’ll see.”

Next: a little about my first church.

I am Back

2012-01-21T20:04:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone,
I have been offline for a while and haven't posted anything for a long time, Sorry if you were reading it and expecting something new every once in a while. My daughter taught me how to post my own blogs now and it is easier than I expected. So I will try to finish what I got started a few years ago. Watch for the next post within a week.
Chief

Cop: The Attitude

2009-06-15T10:57:00.000-04:00

Did you ever wonder why cops seem to have that “Attitude”?   You know……. the skeptical, cynical, impatient, cocky, arrogant, swaggering, standoffish, don’t bother me, I’ve heard it all before kind of attitude that most cops are accused of having.

The impression that civilians have that cops are rude, crass, gross, unfeeling, unmerciful pricks that would arrest their own grandmother for spitting on the sidewalk. How did we get such a reputation as this?   Why aren’t we seen as kind, caring, patient, jolly, good natured, fun loving, and gentle? That is the way we start out our careers, but something happens to us along the way that changes our nature. It makes pessimists and cynics out of innocent normal human beings.

I have pondered the change that comes over us after a few years of police work. It is like a having a fun loving mischievous puppy that matures into a mean snarling, growling dog that should be kept on a short leash lest he hurt someone. What happens to this pup that turns him into a sullen, fearful growling old dog?   It comes from having to defend himself everyday against the unexpected, the profane, the confusing, unsightly, and ungodly things that he has to deal with on patrol.

I believe that every human being is created with a certain amount of compassion that will last him years into his life, maybe even all the way to the end. A cop’s storehouse of compassion is quickly used up and after a couple of years, the cupboard is bare, and so like Mother Hubbard’s poor dog he had “None”.

     When compassion for other humans in their misery and need dries up and is gone, then the cop attitude begins to assert itself as a matter of psychological self defense.

Cops are described as being cynical. I looked in Websters dictionary to see exactly what Cynic/cynical really mean. It was very interesting.   The word cynic comes from the Greek kynikos which literally means doglike.   Cynic: one who believes that human conduct is motivated by self-interest. Cynical: 1 Captious, Peevish 2: having the attitude or temper of a cynic; esp: contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives.

     I couldn’t have described it better myself. (Thanks Mr. Webster) Yes, that is it because cops continuously see human beings at their worst behavior, and hear their poorest excuses for it. Not only for speeding, but also for child abuse and murder.

Human beings need to rationalize their poor behavior to themselves so they can still believe that they are decent and normal.   No one likes to think of himself as a pervert, or a thief, or a cheat and a liar. But cops can see thru all the excuses and rationalizations, and a cop more than any other person knows what deception and evil lies behind the human heart, and we come to believe that there is no one who is decent and normal.

So when we get that “I’ve heard it all before look on our face, and lose our patience, and seem rude and uncaring, that’s because we have lost our trust and compassion for people. We have learned that we can only trust ourselves and our partners, because we have learned the secret of human behavior (it is always motivated by self-interest).

Bear Sh** On the Appalachian Trail

2009-06-02T11:14:00.000-04:00

I have barely been able to keep up with the blog, so I hope you will bear with me as I tell you this short bear story.

For the last 8 days I have been walking with two buddies on the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee and N. Carolina. This is a hobby of mine that started a few years ago when I ran into one of my high school classmates. Buzz talked me into going with him on a short hike on the AT in northeast Pa and since then I have been “hooked” on backpacking. Buzz has thru-hiked the AT in 2006 and is writing a book about his experience on the trail.

Dave Crowe, me, Buzz Wykoff

This past week, Buzz and Crowe and I hiked about 100 miles from I-40 in Tennessee to Erwin, Tn. The weather was good, the scenery was fantastic, and the mountains were never ending. We always tease people about the bears on the trail, but in reality they are very shy and seldom seen.

This trip however we did have a close encounter.

We had hiked all day to a shelter called the Walnut Mountain Shelter. It looked like it was home to squirrels, rats and mice, so we found a knoll to set our tents up on instead of staying in the shelter. Shortly afterward there were two brothers who showed up in the area and they set up hammocks to sleep in off to the east of us a few yards.

We had noticed bear sign in the trail all the way up to the shelter, (bear tracks and poop). The tracks looked like it was a big one, (so did the poop), and we heard that there was a troublesome bear in the area who had damaged a table and tore up an unoccupied tent at the previous shelter. There were cables near our tent site where we could run our food bags up out of reach of the bears, but one cable was snapped off as though some great force of weight (and possibly teeth) had been used on it.

Nevertheless at dusk we were resting comfortably in our tents when we heard shouts from the two brothers who were building a fire near the shelter. Curiosity brought Buzz and I our of our tents to see what the shouting was about. The “troublesome” bear had apparently showed up on Walnut Mountain and was attacking the empty hammock of one of the brothers, taking his sleeping bag out and covering it with teeth marks and bear slobber.

The shouting and hollering got his attention and he ambled off to circle around where he could see better, which was up on the knob where we had our tents pitched.   He didn’t get too close to us, which was good. He was the biggest black bear I had ever seen in the wild. His head looked the size of a bushel basket, and he kind of just wandered off till a more opportune time. He had that attitude that he was in charge of the situation.

     The opportune time came a few hours later as we heard the bear cables twanging about 50 feet away from our tent site. I got out and shined a light toward the noise, but saw nothing. He didn’t get our food, and he didn’t come back that we knew of. But it’s hard to sleep when your ears are tuned to hear noises of hungry bears.

     We left the next morning without incident. The brothers kept their fire going all night and stayed in the shelter.

We learned the truth of the riddle.

Q: Where do bears s_ _ t?

A: Anywhere they want to.

Suicides: PG-13 Read with Caution

2009-05-26T10:57:00.000-04:00

Every cop has to investigate suicides, and each one is different.

Different methods, different reasons. Some leave letters or notes, some do not. One suicide I investigated was a college kid who was dumped by his girlfriend. As a suicide note, he wrote a check out of his checkbook. It was payable to his girlfriend, the amount was written “all my love” and in the $ block was written $MY LIFE.00. and he signed his name at the bottom.

     There are as many ways to end your life as there are to live your life. Guns are the preferred method for men, women prefer to take poison or overdose on medication. Guns usually leave a big mess, which apparently men don’t care about making. Women are more fastidious and neat, even putting on nice clothes or makeup.

Hanging or strangulation seems not to be gender specific.   One victim tried to use a power drill on his head, but the holes were too neat to cause a quick death, so he tried a skill-saw to the abdomen.

Some suicides show a lack of planning, as though it was done on a quick impulse.   One 25 year old girl took a long orange extension chord and wrapped it quickly around a deck railing and around her neck and jumped off. She was still warm when we took her down. Another man had been drinking with his girlfriend and listening to music. He was preparing for work the next morning and set his alarm clock. After his girlfriend went to bed, he took a sheet wrapped one end around a door knob threw the sheet over the door and tied the other end around his neck and just slumped down until he suffocated. Senseless.   I did notice during the investigation that the record player was still turning with the arm bouncing at the end of the record, which was the AC/DC album “Highway to Hell”. I had read that a song on that album had been blamed for other suicides, maybe it was just a coincidence.

I try not to remember all the suicide investigations I’ve done,

but some I can’t forget.

One of the most memorable suicides I investigated was of a 40 year old homeless man who was living in a garage. He had lain down on a mattress on the garage floor and put a double barreled shotgun to his chin and pulled the trigger. We did not find him until about ten days later when the owner of the garage complained about a strong smell in the garage. The door was locked. I took a flashlight and climbed up over a partition from the adjoining garage and found what was left of him. His whole head looked like a bowl of wiggling rice. (maggots) I removed the shotgun from his hand, careful not to trip the trigger on the other barrel. Even the body removal team gagged their way to the morgue.

I really do hate to dwell on these things, but the images of death, once imprinted on the mind do not go away. I can still clearly see the scenes, smell the smells, feel the tense emptiness inside. I think it helps to talk about it, and the feelings become dull with time, but the images never go away.

*** I have been out on the Appalachian Trail this past week and have returned with some stories for you... including one about a bear.... check back soon! ***

Chariots of Fire: Chasing Cali Through Wal-Mart

2009-05-04T15:04:00.000-04:00

Here is a little break away from police stories of the past, to a more recent event ...

     A couple weeks ago my wife Rose and I went to Tennessee to visit our daughter Jess, her husband Dave, and our granddaughter Cali. We always like to go to Tennessee because the weather is usually a lot better than in Meadville. The sun actually shines there, sometimes all day.

Cali is just shy of two years old and runs everywhere she needs to go, just because she can. We went to Wal Mart in Franklin one evening and took Cali with us while her parents were having some time to themselves. She didn’t want to ride in the shopping cart, which really is kind of boring if you think about it, so I let her down on the floor.

As soon as her feet hit the tile, she was off on a dead run to explore everything in the store.

She first ran down the aisle beside the frozen meats past the produce. I thought I would be able to keep up with her because heck, she isn’t even 2 yet and she’s only covering about 8 inches per stride. I didn’t want to look like an old fool running after a baby, so I tried to walk fast and keep track of her, but I wasn’t fast enough. Luckily she was distracted and stopped briefly to check things out before tearing off in another direction, giving me a chance to make up some ground and anticipate where she might go next.

I know, I know, kids should be kept under control and not allowed to run around in a big store, but she looked like she was having so much fun and so free that I didn’t want to stop her.   As I watched her run, I thought of the movie, “Chariots of Fire” I could almost see her running and laughing in slow motion while the music played, and hear her saying, “When I run, I feel His pleasure.”

     She made it into the women’s clothing and was just short enough that she could run under the blouses and skirts without slowing down.

This is where I lost track of her.

I would have to make it to the end of the aisle, or crawl full speed on my hands and knees after her. Each time I tried to head her off in an aisle, she would see me and laugh like we were playing hide and seek and take off again. I had almost caught up when she darted out of the last rack of sweaters out into the main thruway of the store.

She ran in front of an obese woman on one of those battery powered shopping carts. The woman hit the brakes with a surprised look, and it’s a good thing she did or she would have run me down as I was in hot pursuit. Another mother pushing a shopping cart with two kids of her own in tow was in the southbound lane, and Cali weaved around them waving as she went by, looking around to see if I was catching up.   She finally stopped near the checkout lines to get her bearings and started to accelerate toward the produce section again, but I swooped down and picked her up while her little legs were in full motion and the race was over.

     I carried her over to where Rose was checking out and we soon exited to the parking lot. Rose gave Cali a little lecture (and me a dirty look) about how bad it is to be running around in the store, and that when she was in the store with mommy she should sit in the cart and be good. She looked serious for a second, then looked at me and her smiling face said….yeah, right.    We left a couple days later to come home and didn’t get to see if the lecture did any good.   My guess is, her mom and dad are chasing her around somewhere near the housewares.

"Now I've Seen It All" - Suicide

2009-04-29T10:47:00.000-04:00

     A policeman never says “now I’ve seen it all” because we’ve learned there is always something coming up that will make us want to say “now I’ve seen it all.”

Every cop who has worked a few years whether it is in a big city, or a small town comes across things and events that are so strange and unexpected that he just comes to expect strange and unexpected things as routine events.   Suicides and attempted suicides are examples of events that make little sense and cause cops to wonder what goes on in people’s minds. Sadly, depression and suicide are all too common among policemen themselves.   Maybe it’s more contagious that we realize.

     My partner JQ and I were on patrol one night and we received a call from dispatch that someone had called, given an address and the rest was pretty much intelligible except for the hysteria and pain in the voice.   We arrived at the address prepared for anything.

JQ got out of the car and was walking up the sidewalk toward the house with his nightstick in his hand. I exited the car from the drivers side and was coming up behind him when suddenly the front door opened and a woman came running out toward us screaming something we couldn’t understand.

As she got closer we could see her mouth was all black and foaming, JQ raised his stick out of fear as though he was ready to knock her down, and she was saying "Uh, wak wayne ohh.   Uh, wak wayne ohh."

We couldn’t make it out as she was in obvious agony and spitting foam and debris from her mouth. Suddenly JQ got it….She said she drank Drain-O.

We put her in the car and rushed her to the emergency room. When we got there, surprisingly there was no body there; it was an otherwise quiet night. We sat her on a gurney and I ran down the hallway to find a nurse or doctor. I ran into a nurse around the corner and told her what we had just brought in, and the ER came alive with nurses, aides and a doctor.

The Drain-o was doing what it was made to do. It was eating up the organic material that was clogging drains, however this drain, the woman’s esophagus, was made of organic material and it was eating her away from her mouth down to her stomach.   The ER staff was able to save her (although she died a few months later). The doctor told us afterward that she was in great pain now, but nothing like the pain in a few days when they would have to put a device down her throat and break all the scabs to re-open her esophagus.

JQ and I left the ER that morning thinking if we ever wanted to commit suicide, it sure wouldn’t be by drinking Drain-o.

Has The Church Fallen Asleep on Duty ?

2009-04-20T13:27:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I wonder if the church has also fallen asleep on duty.

The church is supposed to be alert and on guard against evil and corruption just like the police department. How then have strange and unorthodox practices and doctrines slipped past the gate and into the sheepfold?

     The church was supposed to be the watchman for our society, but it looks like he has gone to sleep, or is absent without leave.   American society has changed a lot since I started on the police department in 1974, but it was in the process of slipping backward long before that.

We have come to tolerate things that never would have been allowed in years gone by. In 1974 there were still criminal laws on the books regarding Adultery, Abortion, and Sodomy.    No hue and cry came from the church when the laws were changed, and these things became common practice for consenting adults. (And abortion sometimes without adult’s consent.)   How did homosexual practice become so accepted that churches are now conducting marriage ceremonies for them, and how are ordaining avowed, practicing gays and lesbians to be leaders in the church? How did so many priests get away with abusing altar boys, girls, and children in their parishes for so long without the watchman sounding the alarm?

Was the watchman asleep when soft-core pornography appeared on TV? Was he asleep when partial birth abortions were sneaking into acceptance? Where was he when the state of Pennsylvania and many other states legalized casino gambling? Oh, I guess he was roused a couple of times and put up some feeble protests, but the gate was wide open and it couldn’t be shut.

The church has truly become like a night watchman. We expect him to be awake and alert when in effect he is drowsy and powerless against the evil that has invaded our culture.   He is like a lion without teeth who can only roar weakly, hoping to scare evil away with noise and bluster. How can the church regain it’s respect and authority in a culture that has begun to ignore the commandments of God?

Jesus, come again and be our chief. Show us the way to stand firm for truth. Expose those within the church that have infiltrated and corrupted us. Lead us back out into the streets to reclaim territory lost to the gangs and mobsters of evil which have taken license by our inactivity and tolerance.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so preachy.

Sleeping on Duty

2009-04-14T10:09:00.000-04:00

Habitually sleeping on duty is something that is not condoned, not allowed, not ethical, not recommended, and not talked about, but at times many cops on night shift get to the point where they become more dangerous to themselves and their partners by trying to stay awake on patrol, than if they just stopped and rested their eyes for a while.

Many cruisers have been unintentionally wrecked by a driver who wouldn’t give in to the natural desire of the body and brain to go on “pause” for a while.    Most experienced cops recognize the attack of the “sand monkeys” as one officer called them. The only defense against them is to park the car in a dark, secluded spot, and shut the eyes to keep them out. After about twenty minutes or half an hour they start to slink away, and it’s safe again to drive over to the donut shop for breakfast.

     Officers usually respect other officers who are fighting the “sand monkeys” but sometimes the opportunity arises to practice another specialty that cops are noted for, the practical joke. Officers have awakened to find their cruisers stuffed with leaves, or objects like discarded toilets on the hood.    Officers who have fallen asleep in the “shotgun seat” have been awakened in the middle of the cemetery by a “ghoul” pounding on the passenger window.

I was driving one evening as my partner had fallen asleep after eating two Big Mac’s (they have a tendency to cause drowsiness if eaten in mass quantities). I received a radio call to proceed to a jewelry store alarm 5 or 6 blocks away. I turned on the red lights and siren, which woke my partner up, and he realized we must be going somewhere important. As I would come to an intersection he would check the traffic and say GO.   After about 3 intersections where he said GO, the next intersection I slowed and waited for his instruction but nothing came.   I looked over and he was sleeping again, in the middle of a code three with siren and lights flashing, he had fallen asleep.   To his credit, he was having serious personal problems at this time and was spending much of his daylight sleeping time trying to hold his life together.

      Falling asleep on duty is something that happens to almost every officer on night shift at one time or another, no matter how virtuous and zealous the officer is. One officer was “cured” of this bad habit by a knock on his window. When he opened his eyes, he saw that it was broad daylight and the manager of the bank asked him if he could sleep somewhere else as the customers would like to use the drive-thru window.

Night Shift

2009-04-09T16:03:00.000-04:00

     Usually when a rookie cop begins his career he is put on night shift.

His training period takes place on all three shifts, but night shift is where he lands.   Night shift is much different than working daylight shifts.   During the daylight shifts, there is traffic from people going and coming from work, deliveries being made,   people are shopping or going to the doctor.    Dayshift is busy with traffic control, traffic enforcement, traffic accidents, false bank alarms,   motorists in distress,   parking enforcement, and citizen complaints about all of the above.   Dayshift is a busy shift for cops, even if there are no calls for service.

     But night shift is quite different, sometimes exciting,   sometimes terrifying.   There are different people out at night. They usually aren’t going or coming from work, but going and coming from bars or parties. Alcohol is a substance that turns day people into night people.   It is the formula that turns Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde.   It is also the liquid that makes night shift more exciting than day shift.

I wouldn’t want to blame all of the night’s trouble on alcohol, but the majority of police work in the evening and through the night is caused by alcohol.    Rookie cops actually enjoy mixing it up at a bar-fight, or chasing down a drunk who has stolen a street sign, or taking a drunk driver off the road and putting him in jail.   They take a lot of drunks off the streets between bar and car, preventing the drunk from getting into more trouble.

Alcohol also causes friction in the home. Domestic violence, assaults, shootings, and stabbings make up much of the night shift itinerary.    Drugs of course are also responsible for some of the violence and stupidity at night, but alcohol, for the most part, is the king of stupid.

     Night shift gets to be hard on a cop.   Man was not created to be awake after dark. He does not have the nocturnal instincts, nor the yellow see in the dark eyes like cats. The human body was made to be asleep at night, and it has to be fought with to keep alert, and many times it’s a losing battle.   Coffee helps, but often just creates nervous, fitful snoozing.   Lack of sleep is bad, but the night shift diet is even worse.   It is hard for the body to get used to eating at strange times….10pm,    or 3am.   The stomach often isn’t up for a Sheetz chili dog at 3am,   or the three square meals of donuts and coffee.

In the early morning hours when the excitement has died down, after the bars are closed, and the drunks have gone home, it becomes an eternity of routine patrol. Businesses and schools need to be checked for break-ins, or intruders, or unlocked doors.    Illegally parked cars need to be ticketed.   Streets need to be posted (by order of Police) for the next day’s paving, or water dept. holes to be dug.   And Between 3am and 4:30am I have found that the brain goes on “screen saver” and then on to “hibernate”.

Quick and the Dead: part 3 :: Murder At the Donut Shop

2009-04-04T11:03:00.000-04:00

No other retail institution has served the police department as well as the local donut shop.

In our case it was Mr. Donut, right smack in the middle of town where it should be.    It was open 24/7 and made fresh donuts every day on site.   It was where cops meet with the public, with informants, (with their girlfriends), with each other, and it should be off limits to crime.

A donut shop should be a safe haven, a place where a weary centurion can trudge in, take off his armor, plop down on a stool at a counter and have a powdered jelly donut and some hot coffee to wash it down with.

The donut shop should be a place where a cop can relax and forget he’s a cop for a few minutes.   It should be off limits to citizens with whiny complaints about parking tickets, or the kids in their neighborhood. It should be a place of smiles, good will, and laughter and we cops try our best to keep it that way. The donut shop should be a place where a citizen can feel as safe if he were at the police station itself.   So you can imagine what an affront and embarrassment it is to the police department it is when somebody gets stabbed in the parking lot and then staggers inside to die.

     It was about 0300 (three o’clock in the morning)   and my partner and I had come to the police station to grab something to eat out of our sack lunch’s and read the newspaper, fresh off the press.   The desk sergeant took a paper back to the locker room to “study” it further.   While relieving him at the desk, I received a phone call from a gravelly voiced man who said “you cops had better get up to the donut shop cause it looks like something bad is going to happen.”

I hollered back to the sergeant that we had to go and we headed up the street a couple blocks to Mr. Donut.   There was no one in the parking lot, no one in the shop, but Rosie the night waitress was at the front door frantically waving to us as we pulled in. She pointed to a body slumped in a booth next to the door and said,

“He just walked in, tried to tell me something, and fell down into the booth."

He was a white male, about 30 years old, and when we tried to ask him what happened, we heard that long, final gurgling breath-in-exhale.   Another patrol car with a junior officer pulled up just then, and instead of calling for an ambulance (this was before 911) we carried the victim outside and loaded him into the back seat of the junior officer’s car and said “get him to the hospital as quick as you can.”   Meanwhile we stayed at the donut shop and tried to figure out what had happened.   I didn’t think the victim was going to live long enough to make a statement, and he didn’t.   The ER staff tried everything they could to save him but he had lost too much blood, and most of it was on the floor of the donut shop. (but a significant amount also leaked out into the back seat of the junior officer’s patrol car, which he ended up having to clean up, being the junior officer.)

     The investigation eventually led to the killer, a black female with the all too lethal steak knife in her purse. She drew it out and struck the victim down behind the left collar bone, putting a serrated slice in the aorta which emptied his body of blood very efficiently.

     It turned out that the victim was drunk, a red-neck, and had said something of a redneck nature to the woman that pushed her beyond all reasonable civilized response and caused her to become a crazed killer.   The poor red-neck was never given the chance to say, “geez ma’am I’m sorry, I didn’t see you were packin’ and steak knife.” At any rate, it looked as if the red neck’s luck had just about run out: A couple weeks before he was killed, he was taken to the hospital after a battery blew up in his face while he was jumping his car.

    What is the meaning of life if it can end so quickly, and so stupidly? There certainly must be more to it than we see here on earth. Could there be a God, a creator? If there is no God, no final authority, no absolute truth, then of course the atheists are right. The whole universe is without purpose and meaningless.   There is no reason to do one thing over another. There is no need for law, or to obey the law, or policemen, or governments. Is it all a manmade sham,   Is there really no purpose or meaning to life?

I couldn’t go on living and believing that.   I needed to find the truth, I needed to find God.

And thus the foundation was laid for my coming to faith, which I explained in more detail in previous postings:

Rookie Christian: My Philosophy Based on a Beer Commercial

Rookie Christian: Does God Really Exist?

The Quick and the Dead 2: Fatal Accident

2009-03-25T20:05:00.000-04:00

The second deceased person who spoke to me was the victim of an auto accident.

(this is part 2 of The Quick and the Dead. To read the first post, click here.)

My partner JQ and I arrived on the scene minutes after it had happened. It was a hit and run where a pickup truck hit a car and flipped it over at an intersection and left the scene.

The driver was lying outside the car unresponsive and a nurse who had just drove up seconds after the accident had stopped and began to perform CPR. I ran over to her and she said quick, do the breathing........

I don't know how many of you folks have had the chance to do CPR, but it is not like doing recusi-anne. I opened his airway and began breaths.

Immediately his stomach contents emptied into my mouth. (I believe he had tuna casserole for supper).

A split second after that my stomach contents emptied into his mouth. I breathed and puked and breathed and puked and the nurse tired out and JQ began doing chest compressions.

Shortly JQ took me by the arm and said "Stop, he's dead. His chest feels like I'm pressing on a bag of pretzels."

I stood up and walked over toward the side of the highway and puked some more. I looked up at one of the firemen who had responded to the scene. He was holding a hose spraying the gas and oil and blood off the highway. Mercifully, without a word, he turned the hose on me.

Another opportunity to consider that great gulf that is only separated by seconds. One second a living, breathing, thinking, dreaming, happy human being. The next second, a bleeding, dying, dead body.

Was there something in that body seconds before? Was there a soul that was present and then suddenly gone? What does life mean if it can end so suddenly?

The Quick and the Dead: My First Homicide

2009-03-16T14:37:00.000-04:00

     People make impressions on other people. A lot can be learned by association and interaction with another person, especially in police work.   You learn by seeing someone else do something or by their making dumb mistakes.   Not only did my superior officers and veteran officers teach me a lot of things, but my unplanned and unwelcome associations with the formerly alive made a big impression on my young life.

There were three folks who did much to lead me to a quick grasp of the meaning of life and at the time I met them, they were taking their last earthly breath.

(the next two will be posted soon.)

My first homicide:
     In a small town, a murder is a big thing. They don’t happen very often and when they do there is a lot of pressure on the police department to solve it and make an arrest.

     I was out on patrol with Tom, a veteran officer and wounded Viet Nam Vet. It was about 10:30 at night and not much was happening when we got a call from dispatch to proceed to a certain address to investigate an S-28.   Being we didn’t get too many S-28’s we weren’t too sure what an S-28 was, so we checked the radio signal list in the glove compartment and saw that opposite S-28 was the word “murder.” We both looked at each other and said “Holy S**t !”

We were only a couple blocks from the house where it happened and we pulled up out front and got out of the car. We drew our guns and ran up on the front porch but the door was blocked with something and we couldn’t get in. A scared young black boy came around the corner of the house and said “come in the back door.”

We followed him in the back door and through the kitchen and saw a woman standing against the wall upset and crying. The boy and his younger brother were also in the kitchen, and in the next room, against the front door laid a man bleeding from a wound somewhere near his chest.

We asked what happened. The woman said “I stuck him.”

We both went to the man and turned him over and laid him flat on the floor. He made no sound except one long, gurgling, exhale that would be his final breath. We immediately began heart compressions and tried to bring him around to no avail. The autopsy report later showed that there was a knife hole in his heart and our attempts at reviving him only made his death more certain.

At any rate, we asked the woman what had happened. She said the family had been out at a picnic all day at a local lake and had been drinking. When they got home her husband (the recently deceased presence in the room) said he was hungry so she put some hotdogs on the stove to boil. As he was watching TV he was telling her to hurry up and began to call her names and be abusive. She took the hotdogs off the stove and threw the pan and all at her husband (the recently deceased presence in the room). He retaliated by throwing a TV tray at her in the kitchen. She then came out of the kitchen into the living room with a very common but deadly weapon….a steak knife. As she went toward him, he grabbed her knife hand and twisted it behind her back and was behind her. At this point, one of the boys, about 8 years old jumped up on his father’s back to help his mother and somehow this caused the man to lose his balance and fall onto the knife held in his wife’s hand behind her back. He then let go of her, stood up and staggered toward the front door spraying blood across the wall slumping down against the door.   Both boys were later interviewed and agreed that is what really happened.

     The house seemed very quiet and as Tom was talking to the mother, I wanted to say something comforting to the boys who were crying and shaken. I realized that I had been taught how to investigate, how to collect evidence and take statements, but they never taught us what to say to a couple of boys who had just witnessed their father die in front of their eyes.

     The coroner of course was called, the ambulance arrived to remove the body, and the media had showed up with their cameras and reporters. To a rookie cop this was pretty exciting. I thought maybe I’d get to be on TV.

So as they prepared to take the body out of the house and put it in the ambulance I bent down and grabbed the side of the stretcher to help carry it. As I bent down and started to lift I felt the rear seam in my police trousers give way, from belt in the back to zipper in the front I was wide open.

I did make it on TV that night, with an unmistakable white patch showing up on my rear end.

    After the initial excitement wore off and I had time to think about what had happened it occurred to me that the line between life and death is not very wide. One final breath and heartbeat separates us from the land of the living. Could there really be more to life or is this all there is?   I had not given eternity much thought before this.

The Police Academy

2009-03-09T22:38:00.000-04:00

     In 1974 the state of Pennsylvania passed a law requiring all municipal police officers to be trained.

Before that time, whether a city or small town hired a cop, they trained him as they saw fit. Needless to say there was a great disparity in the way the law was enforced from one place to another. But as I said in 1974 that all changed.

They put the Pennsylvania State Police in charge of training all the “lesser” police departments in PA. The Pennsylvania State Police were taught to believe they were God’s representatives on earth, so they tried to create us all in their image. Sometimes they didn’t have much to work with.   The police academy was located in Meadville, and police officers from all over western Pennsylvania were sent to Meadville to attend.   I was lucky I got to go home at night and sleep in my own bed. Some of the others stayed at the Days Inn for three months.

So after 9 months on the job, learning things the hard way, I was sent to the police academy, where I had to unlearn most of the things I already learned in order to learn the “proper way” to be a policeman.   The “Police Academy” was held in the second floor of an old school building that belonged to the Catholic diocese. The priests lived next door. On the first floor was a school for retarded and autistic children. On the opening day of the academy, it was hard to tell whether to direct the arriving students to the first floor or the second floor.

The instructors though were top-notch. They knew their business and it was a pleasure to sit in class and take instruction from them.   This is where I first heard the term “hooftie” which is a generic term for anyone who looks like they might be a criminal.   In court they are called perpetrators, or defendants, we called them hoofties.

This term was applied to anyone, male or female, young or old, rich or poor, who caused a cop to suspect him of anything from jaywalking to murder. In much the same way that in the Old Testament the human race was either Jew or Gentile, there are either cops or hoofties.

     In the police academy we were exposed to all sorts of training from First Aid to Rules of Criminal Procedure, from criminal investigation to criminal psychology.   We were trained in self defense how to prevent someone from disarming you and shooting you with your own weapon, how to handcuff, how to use the baton (nightstick), how to use nifty takedown holds and use pressure points to make the arrestee comply with the arrest. We later learned that these “nifty” holds and techniques broke down in the face of reality and resisted arrests usually ended up as “hog wrassling.”

   We were also introduced to tear gas, which has a tendency not only to make one’s eyes water like faucets, but to make the nose produce long strings of mucus. It is a very comical sight to see if you have a strong stomach. We were also introduced to the proper handling of firearms.   I mentioned before that our issued revolvers were antique colt .38 specials and were just about worn out. During the day of qualification on our firearms, I got off two rounds at the target when it broke down and couldn’t be fired any more. I finished qualifying with a fellow classmate’s pistol, which had about 10 feet of electrical tape around the grips to hold it together. Somehow my score was a 298 out of a possible 300.   I had not fired a handgun prior to my joining the police department, so I didn’t have any bad habits. I just did what they told me to do and became a pretty good shot.

     Of the officers which graduated in my academy class, one failed the academics. He was the chief of his department, and was soon relieved of command….and put out to pasture.   Another was so short he had to stand on tiptoe to peer into the drivers window of a stopped vehicle. One had his car searched for drugs the first week of classes, (they didn’t find any).   Some went on to become detectives and chiefs of police.   I assume most of my classmates went on to have successful police careers.   I was able to graduate with the top academic honors and the American Legion Award for the top cadet in the class.

I thought I was pretty smart until I went back out on the street and found out how dumb and naive I really was.

Police Equipment and The Armor Of God

2009-03-02T20:30:00.000-05:00

I can't help it, but every time I read Ephesians 6:10-18 I think of police equipment. Just as the city issues equipment to police officers so they can do their job, God gives us whatever we need to do our job as disciples of Christ. The equipment God issued to us is for the spiritual battle, because we are not fighting against flesh and blood. That is where we make a big mistake. Our enemies are not Al Qaeda, or Osama bin Ladin or Columbian drug dealers, or the Iranians or North Koreans or any other human being or nation. Our real enemy is spiritual powers of wickedness and evil which only use human beings and institutions to carry on their warfare against God. This is why you cannot defeat evil by killing people. Evil will just pick up and find other living people to do its work.

So let's see what God has issued us for the fight. Lets dress up from head to toe.

     First, on the head goes the helmet of salvation.
The most important piece of armor, goes on the most important part of the body. This is why football players, hockey players, and baseball players wear helmets this is why soldiers wear helmets. This is why boxers try to punch each other's head to a pulp.   The head is the part most vulnerable to a mortal wound; damage to the head renders the rest of the body useless.   Satan knows to strike at the head first. If he can control the eyes and the ears, he can influence our thoughts and ideas, and will soon control the will. We need to keep our helmet on our heads.

I don't know the correct theology about losing salvation. God gave us the helmet of salvation to wear all the time, He will not pull it off our heads. But I think that we as free creatures have the option of removing it. It seems that some of us only put our helmets on Sunday morning when we go to church, and hang them in our locker the rest of the week. If we keep it on, our enemy can beat and beat on us and no mortal blow will be struck, but I shudder to think what he might do if he catches us without it.


     The Shield of Faith
The next most vulnerable part of the body is the torso area which contains the heart, lungs, liver, etc. A police officer wears bulletproof vest to cover the vital organs of his chest. God gives us the shield of faith (verse 16) with which we can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Flaming arrows, firey darts, whatever translation your shield of faith is your bulletproof vest.

Satan aims at our heart with attacks on our faith. Guilt, doubts, fears, misfortune, and disaster all may strike us and hurt us terribly, but if we keep our shield of faith out front, no fatal penetration to our soul can be made. I can show a group of people a bulletproof vest and ask them how many believe that this will stop a bullet from penetrating. Most all will put up their hands or nod their heads. If I then ask who would like to volunteer to wear this vest while I shoot at it, hardly anyone will raise their hand. God doesn't want hand-raising, head-nodding faith, he wants faith that we are willing to put on and wear into battle.

The New American Standard Bible in verse 14 says "Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with the truth."

Let me use two applications and illustrations here. First, to gird our loins means to get ready for action. God has given us a Sam Brown belt full of gifts and tools to use in our work of making disciples. He has give some to be apostles, preachers, teachers, helpers. He has given us words of knowledge and words of wisdom and there is a whole list of spiritual gifts that he has given us to help us specialize to do the type of work we are best fitted for. God just didn't say hold on until I get back, He has given us tools to work with. What kind of police department would send its officers out on the street without the tools to work with? What kind of God would send his disciples out empty handed to change the world?

In another sense Gird your loins with the truth, means we need to guard our loins. In a fight, the loins are a sensitive area that need to be guarded. A shot to the groin usually means the end of the fight. It might not be fatal, but it makes us weak and ineffective.   I don't need to remind anyone that the devil fights dirty. We need to guard the truth. We can't live sloppy lives, and rationalize and compromise our faith. When we start relaxing our vigilance we are opening ourselves up for a kick in the truth.

There is nothing more painful to watch than a Christian caught in a lie, or in the act of adultery, or some other sin of integrity.   TV preachers are prone to getting kicked in the truth. We've see a lot of them writhing on the ground in pain. Neglecting to guard how we live leads us to a loss of effectiveness as a witness for Christ.

     Our feet are to be Shod with the Gospel of Peace, which means that wherever our feet take us, we should be taking the good news.
Psalms tells us "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of good things." Often, policemen or ministers have to bring sad tidings of bad news. Who is called to notify the next of kin that there has been an accident, or a death? If it isn't the police, it's the preacher.   This news is always heard to bear, and it is with great reluctance that it is delivered.

Other times, the footsteps of the police officer, or the preacher is not greeted with joy.   When a warrant needs to be served, or a party broken up footsteps in the hallway or knocking on the door always brings a panic on the other side of the door... "Quick, hide the beer, flush the dope, put those guns under the couch... Why hello officer, is anything wrong?" Is it any different when the preacher knocks on the door? ..... "Quick, hide the beer, dump that ashtray, put those magazines under the couch... Why hello reverend, what brings you here today?"

There aren't many people who are glad to see a policeman at their door, only those that need help and know that they can't get it anywhere else. The good news though can be shared by both the police officer, and the preacher. Sin, although it is present and must be dealt with, has been paid for.

Through Jesus Christ, the lawbreaker has been reconciled to the law. There is now no condemnation by the law to those who are in Christ Jesus. Both the police officer and the preacher have the ministry of reconciliation. They both are charged to reconcile the lawbreaker with the law, and having your crime exposed or your sins exposed is something that most people try to avoid. Its sometimes a thankless job but it has been entrusted to us.

     We are given the breastplate of righteousness. On a police officer this would be the badge.
The power and authority of the badge, or the breastplate of righteousness has been conferred to us by a higher authority. Its not that we are good and righteous on our own, but that it has been imputed to us by the fact that we are wearing it. When people look at police officers, they don't see the person, they see the badge and the authority behind it. This badge is either treated with respect or derision. In the same way, Christians are not born righteous, but righteousness and authority are given to us by God, who sees us not as sinful people but sees us through the righteousness of Christ.

     Now, lets look at authority.   When I first stepped off the curb into an intersection to direct traffic it was a scary experience.   I had a whistle, a uniform, and a badge but no experience and no knowledge of what to do.   Yet, when I blew the whistle and put my hand up, traffic stopped. When I blew it again and waved my hand traffic started again. Just think, with a move of the hand I was able to control thousands of pounds of metal and hundreds of people. This power that I had of course did not exist within me, but came by the badge and the respect of people for the authority that it gave me.

Are Christians also given authority by God? I think that Jesus has entrusted us with a lot of authority that we don't even know about. We have a great deal of spiritual authority over spirits, sickness, and evil, yet we never step off the curb to exercise the authority God gives us.

     One of the most essential pieces of equipment for the police officer is the radio.
It connects him with other officers and with headquarters. It is the main source of instant communication for the officer whether he is on the beat, or in the cruiser. Through it he gets dispatched to where he is needed. Through it he calls for backup. As long as there no dead spots where the antenna cannot send or receive, and the battery is charged, the radio is a lifeline to the source of all help. The only problem with the radio is that sometimes police officers do not use it when they should. Sometimes we think we can handle the situation without troubling our dispatcher, or fellow officers, and by the time we realize we need a backup, its too late to call.

About 2:00 am, I came upon a couple of young men staggering down the street coming from a party. I stopped the cruiser behind them and ordered them to stop. At this time I should have called for help, but seeing that they were pretty intoxicated I thought I could place them both under arrest and bring them in.   As I placed them under arrest, I found out that they really didn't want to be arrested and began that course of action known as resisting arrest. At this point it was too late to call for help because my hands were full and I couldn't get to the radio.

     Prayer is like having instant communication with God. Through prayer we are connected to the source of all help. Prayer gives us access to all the help and direction we will ever need and it is able to be called upon any time and any place.   As with a radio, you have to avoid the dead spots. A dead spot is a place where you find yourself unable to communicate with God because of sin, or unforgiveness.   Prayer is not used often enough or soon enough. Many times we think we can handle a situation ourselves only to find that we should have called for help first.   I am sure that most of the prayers that reach God's ears are desperate, last minute, last resort efforts to salvage a situation that we have fallen into by lack of prayer in the first place.

     God gives us the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God (Eph 6:17b) which is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of sound and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Heb 4:11).   This weapon sounds pretty awesome, and pretty dangerous if in the wrong hands.

The police officer carries his own sword, a nightstick. A nightstick itself is a strategic weapon to be used with discretion against weak points of our adversary (shins, wrists, collarbones) not just for hitting people over the head with. The Bible, is also a weapon of discretion, and not something you'd hit people over the head with. God's word is like a bullet being fired from a gun. The gun can be aimed carefully and strike its intended target, or it can be fired wildly and often in the hopes that it will hit something. Many people have been wounded by God's word when it has been used inappropriately or recklessly by some preacher or evangelist who sprays the crowd with careless, thoughtless words causing them to run away and seek cover.   Many people are still recovering from injuries they have received long ago at the hands of Reverend Gunslinger. God's word contains eternal power and should only be used in a prayerful, controlled, correct manner.

Police Equipement: Part 2

2009-02-11T12:57:00.001-05:00

... continued from Police Equipment: Part 1

The nightstick or billy club:
These instruments are what give police officers a bad rap by the media. People recall the civil rights marches in Selma or the Democratic convention in Chicago because the police department were swinging their nightsticks like Babe Ruth at a high fastball.

Contrary to popular opinion, nightsticks are used for much more that beating people over the heads. They can knock knives and razors out of the hands of people, they can bruise the shins of legs that won't retract into the back seat of a cruiser. They can un-stick frozen parking meters, they can move electric wires away from cars, they can club raccoons or dogs that seem like they might want to bite you.

I learned the hard way one Sunday afternoon that you should always carry your nightstick with you. JQ and I responded to a drunk man with a knife at one of the trailer courts. He was staggering around with his shirt off, holding a paring knife and cutting himself all over his chest. Luckily his paring knife was dull like all of mine and he was only making red marks. Nevertheless, a nightstick would have been handy to have. We made due with a lid off a garbage can as a shield while we knocked him down and dis-knifed him. I don't think he bled one bit in the back of the cruiser, which we were thankful for. After that, I always remembered to have my nightstick along.

We were issued blackjacks, which have come into disfavor. The blackjack was a piece of lead on the end of a spring sewn up in a tough leather pouch with a strap on it to keep around your wrist. I never used mine too much, but kept it handy for close combat. Often you only needed to use it once and it saved your fist from getting cut and bruised. Tender-hearted people believe that the blackjack is an unfair weapon for the police to have. As a cop I never really wanted to be in a fair fight.

Tear Gas/ Pepper Mace:
Tear gas was issued to us in a hand held spray gun that looked like a small bottle of hairspray.
Tear gas was to be used to subdue a violent suspect before you started using the more effective weapons on him. Tear Gas burns the eyes and the nostrils and is very aggravating. In fact most of the people were very aggravated after we had sprayed them necessitating the use of the more effective weapons.   Tear gas was a substance used in many practical jokes, a favorite being to spray some down the defrosters of the cruiser that your shift mates had just parked at the rear of the donut shop, beating you there for a break. This is why you should always lock the police car before you leave it.

Pepper spray has become the weapon of choice nowadays. It is much more effective that tear gas because it actually causes the tissues of the eyes to swell shut, blinding the suspect. It is a natural substance that you can use in your Chili if you dare. Most people who have been pepper maced beg to be arrested and taken to the police station where their face is flushed for about 10 minutes with a water hose out in the garage.   It is magic.

I went on a call with a Sergeant who was very fond of the stuff. We caught a large young man on the back steps of his girlfriend's apartment trying to break her door down. He was very upset and angry.   Sarge ordered him down the steps to where we were standing and he said "You're gonna have to kill me!" That was enough to unleash the pepper spray on him, which the sarge did in the blink of an eye. Caught him right between the eyes. The suspect said..... "Ha....that doesn't even hur.........aaaaaoooooooowwwww, my face is on fire!!!!!" I had been ready to do combat and suddenly the man had become putty in our hands. Actually I woudln't have been much help because I was slightly downwind of the pepper spray and I was coughing and sneezing and secreting long streams of snot myself. He whimpered and begged for relief all the way to the hose at the police station. He was first in line after me.

The bullet proof vest:
Bulletproof vests have come a long way since their inception. A long way in effectiveness, and a long way in comfort. We had flak jackets at the police station for emergency use: If you knew you were going to be shot at, you could come down and put one of these 50 pound pieces of armor on and hope for the best. The problem is, you never really know when you might get shot at.

Officers began to buy their own vests at first, then the city felt an obligation to protect us and now they issue them with the rest of the equipment. Vests are something that you really need to force yourself to wear, because they are hot, cumbersome, and if your back itches you need to find the corner of a brick building to scratch it. I guess the newer ones are lighter and more comfortable and easier to wear. I somehow got the feeling that with my vest on, I was bulletproof. Vests really protect some bullets from penetrating your body but they still leave broken ribs and huge welts and bruises from the impact of heavy bullets. There are now bullets in criminals hands the are able to penetrate bullet proof vests. Isn't progress wonderful. I remember what our school safety officer once said when he put his vest on to go to work in the elementary schools. He said "Please don't tell anyone that I'm wearing a bullet proof vest. They'll be aiming for my head."

The Two Way Radio:
The invention of the two way radio revolutionized police work. Radios were first put in cars, then they became small enough to be portable so that every officer could carry one.

Before radios came to Meadville, the police department had it's own communications system. It was just a little more effective than smoke signals. There was a red light that hung off a wire near the corner of Water St and Chestnut St. A beat officer was stationed at a corner where he could occasionally look to see if the red light was on. If it was on, the officer would go to a phone and call the police station to find out what was the trouble. Once he got that information, he called a taxi which took him to where the trouble was. Maybe smoke signals would have worked better!

When I started, the police department had radios in the cars and portable radios for the officers on the beat. These portable radios were not quite the newest equipment, but they were the cheapest.   First of all they were larger than bricks: picture a box of instant cake mix with an antenna on it. They were carried in a large pouch on the utility belt and hung down in the way whether you were walking or riding in the car. They had a range of about a half a mile and the batteries were good for about half an hour.   Luckily radio and communications equipment have made great advances since I began. I recently visited the police station and saw the brand new state of the art radio base console that I had written a $42,000 grant for prior to my retirement. I asked the chief how everyone liked it. He said that they aren't using it because they can't get it to work. Maybe smoke signals...........

Police Equipement: Part 1

2009-02-05T23:24:00.000-05:00

     Police officers are issued numerous pieces of equipment to get the job done, some of the equipment is sophisticated, like the radios some of it is rather blunt and practical, like the nightstick or blackjack. Much of the equipment I received when I first started has been replaced by more modern, technological instruments.

Lets go down the list of the original equipment and then migrate to the improvements thereof.

First, there is the uniform.

When I started the uniform was light grey with dark grey trousers. The year I started there was a movement to change colors from grey (dark and light) to navy blue, like LAPD, everyone's model police department.   I was chosen to model the navy blue uniform. We were only issued two shirts and trousers to begin with, and I was issued one grey uniform and one blue uniform. I admit that I get dirty very easily, in fact one of my nicknames was pigpen. So the light grey shirt was the background for a number of stains, food, blood, and grease. The navy blue hid a multitude of stains in it's dark fiber, however it did provide ample evidence of powdered donuts. Nevertheless, I gravitated toward the blue uniform and was able to wear it a week at a time between washings. Being the only blue uniform in a sea of gray made me feel like a captured union soldier. Other police departments and citizens really couldn't figure out where I belonged either.   By the end of the year the rest of the men had also decided that navy blue was the color of progress, and we were all in navy blue, just like LAPD.

     Now, the police cap, or hat is also considered part of the uniform. Whenever out in public or walking a beat, the cap was to be worn at all times. We were issued the standard Pershing cap, apparently made popular in 1916 by General Pershing when he was chasing Pancho Villa back across the border, and led the American Expeditionary Forces into France. Whether the hat was still in style or not, that is what we were issued. The hat had a 2 inch headband and visor that was attached to a larger round top.   You've seen them on cops on TV, some of them are star shaped, but ours were round. The large round part has a hoop of steel or plastic inside it that helps the cap keep its shape, and perhaps was fashioned to cushion a blow to the head by its natural springing action.

The funny thing about the cap was that whenever you got into the police car, the edge of the hoop would catch on the frame above the door and the spring would compress and launch the hat off your head before you could sit down.   We learned to take our hats off and throw them in the front seat before we got in. Another feature of these hats was that they were somewhat aerodynamic. Due to the design, and lack of a chin strap, the wind would easily catch the sail and blow it off your head with hardly any notice, and if it hit the ground, the wind would cause it to roll like a wheel down the street or sidewalk. I have chased my hat many times down the street when an unexpected gust of wind lifted the lid off my uniform. Needless to say, to the average person wearing a stocking cap or bandana this was quite hilarious.

Years later we were issued baseball caps with the dept. badge sewn on the front. This was an improvement in function, but not in looks. I had always had trouble wearing a baseball cap and keeping the bill centered in the front. On one occasion I was called to unlock a woman's car door after she had locked her keys inside (this was a service we performed several times a day). The bill of my baseball cap got in the way of seeing into the car to see where the lock handle was and I unconsciously turned it around backward until I got the car unlocked. I said good bye and got back into the cruiser and drove around probably for the next two hours with my hat on backward, looking like one of the boyz in the hood.

     The utility belt is what the rest of your equipment is attached to. They are called Sam Brown belts for some reason, perhaps after the inventor.   At any rate, Sam Brown belts came with a strap that went up over the shoulder to support the weight of the equipment. This caused a painful stress on one shoulder, while the other shoulder just laughed. When I started, belt keepers were beginning to be used instead. They are small 4 inch straps with snaps on them that snap your Sam Brown belt to your belt that holds your trousers up. Now, all the weight is around your waist, and the worst that can happen is that your trousers fall down with a clatter around your ankles.

     We were issued Colt revolvers with 6 inch barrels. This was the duty weapon of the 40's and they were still around, being handed down from retired officer to rookie. Mine had most of the bluing worn off, and the wood grips looked antique.   Firing this gun was an adventure because the cylinder had developed so much play in it and was so loose that the lead was being shaved off the sides of the bullet as it was fired and passed into the barrel. So with lead flying out the sides of the gun, it was hard to stand beside each other to qualify, and we complained that we really needed new weapons.

With the lead flying out in all directions, night firing was really a spectacular sight.   We were then issued Smith and Wesson .38 specials, (probably because that is what the LAPD carried) and then in the latter years of my career we began to carry Smith and Wesson .40 caliber automatics which finally put us on equal ground with most of the criminals.

     The first holsters we used to carry the revolvers were simply a leather pouch with a single strap to hold the gun in place.   Since I was left handed, I wore my gun on my left side nearest the drivers side door. Somehow or another the strap always caught on the arm rest or something and unsnapped. More than once I have exited the cruiser quickly and ran after someone only to hear a clatter on the asphalt which I knew was my service revolver hitting the ground. It became habitual then just grab the revolver and hold it in your hand as you ran so it wouldn't get hurt. The later holsters we were issued were made so that another person could not get your gun out of your holster during a fight or close encounter. Many of the cops had trouble getting them out too.

     Handcuffs are necessary tools of the trade. There are several makers of handcuffs and they are all pretty much the same. They click on, and have a locking device that prevents them from tightening up and becoming uncomfortable. We never bothered much with this locking device. The more a person fought and squirmed the tighter the cuffs got until the prisoner figured it out on his own.

There is a right and wrong way to get the cuffs on, there are small holes in the front of them that are used to unlock them with, so it is always good to keep those holes accessible to you can get them off when you need to. If someone doesn't want to be handcuffed, it is almost impossible for a single officer to handcuff a suspect, no matter what you see on TV or in the movies. Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 officers to get a set of handcuffs on, and if the person is big enough, the handcuffs won't fit over the wrists. On these people it is better to use a lot of discretion and try to negotiate the arrest rather than force it.

One of our Lieutanants happened to be walking past a bar one night when a guy came flying out the door with fists a flying. After a long and tiring fight in the street, He was able to get the handcuffs on and call for backup, which he didn't need any more. One arm was behind the back and the other arm was up over the shoulder meeting at about the point in the back that you can't reach to scratch. Both keyholes were inaccessible and while the prisoner screamed in pain, we hack-sawed the cuffs apart. I had never seen anyone handcuffed that way either before or since. Necessity is the mother of invention.

More Equipment continued in the next post...

Bible Dipping and the Night I Arrested My Friend

2009-01-28T16:54:00.000-05:00

     One of the most profound ways that God tested me happened one night on duty. One of my good friends on the police department had recently resigned over some dispute with the management of the city. He was experiencing personal problems, family problems, was drinking too much too often.

I was working 7pm to 3am one evening and got dispatched to a local convenience store/gas station for a disturbance and assault. As we were arriving I noticed that my friend’s car was in the parking lot.   I went inside to see what had happened and the clerk told me that this guy pointed to my friend had come in to buy some groceries and got into an argument with the about a can of soup.

She told me "He got so mad and ignorant that he took the can of soup and threw it at me and hit me in the head, and it bounced off my head and hit the other girl in the head, he’s drunk and we want to press charges.”

Two assaults for the price of one. I took him outside because he was still fuming mad and arguing and pointing, and he was drunk. I didn’t know what to do, so I told him just to get in his car and go home, figuring I would think of how to handle this situation later.   He got in his car and squealed out of the parking lot.

Not five minutes later we received a call that there was a disturbance at the Lawson’s store. As we got there I noticed my friend’s car leaving the parking lot. The clerk told us that a man (and he didn’t have to tell me who) had come in and had gotten into an argument with about 5 black teenagers who were hanging out in front of the store, and ended up in a shoving match and chased them across the parking lot.

While we were talking with them and taking their complaint we received another call of a fight in a yard a couple blocks down the street. We arrived and walked into the back yard from where we could hear yelling, grunting and cussing. I saw a guy swinging a floor lamp in a circle around his head and my friend, with his shirt ripped half off just outside the circling lamp waiting for an opening to rush in and continue the mutual combat. As we went over and stopped the fight, the “victim” claimed that he heard a lot of commotion and cussing and came outside to see what was going on and ended up in a fight with this guy who he didn’t know.

I listened to my friend’s story, which was about the same story: "This jerk came out of his house and told me to shut up, and I said 'come out and make me', and he came out with the floor lamp and started swinging it at my head.”

I did the only thing I could think of doing; I took my friend by the arm and said, “you are under arrest."

He looked at me as though he couldn’t believe it. He said, “you’re not really arresting me, you can’t arrest me, don’t arrest me.” I put him in the cruiser and took him to the police station and put him in a holding cell. I felt terrible about it especially when he said, "Dave, I thought we were friends, why are you doing this to me?”

We called the chief of police and explained to him what happened and he agreed that we did what we had to do, but it didn’t make me feel any better about it. In fact I was sick about it. I got off duty that morning about 3am and went home depressed, disturbed, needing some consolation or guidance or advice. I knew there must be something in the Bible that would help but I didn’t know how to find it, so I did what so many unlearned people do. I went "Bible dipping.” I didn’t know what it was called until a professor in a Bible class much later explained it, and it was exactly what I did. I took my Bible, closed my eyes, laid it on the table and it fell open, then with my eyes still closed I took my finger and put it down on the open page of the bible, then I opened my eyes and looked where my finger was.

Now, I do not recommend this method of getting guidance from God, or for gaining any kind of wisdom, comfort of advice but I believe in this case, as a new and ignorant Christian, God granted me a temporary dispensation of grace. My finger was on top of a verse in Proverbs, chapter 19 verse 9 in the NIV and I quote.

“ A hot-tempered man must pay the penalty; if you rescue him, you will have to do it again.”

I immediately had one of those “epiphany feelings” the hair on my neck stood up and I realized that God had spoken personally and directly to my need.

That morning God showed me that He was real, that He is watching, and He is ready to help any time we call on Him. Of course I tried this Bible dipping technique a few times after this with mixed results, and now I realize that it was for that time only. There is a better and more sure way to get advice and guidance from God, and that is to habitually read and study the Bible.

Rookie Christian: Does God Really Exist?

2009-01-21T08:46:00.000-05:00

God was still in control of the circumstances and a daughter was born to us in 1978. Trying to raise your own child when you yourself haven’t grown up yet was the final challenge that drove me to Jesus feet.   One night on my wife’s bowling night, I was left home alone and I got down on my knees and put my elbows on the coffee table and thought this would be a good time to see if God really exists. Against my reason and common sense, and education in science and Anthropology etc., I made the leap of faith. It truly felt like I was perched at the door of an airplane high above the earth hoping that God would catch me when I jumped. (Maybe I was hoping that he would try to talk me out of it, but I guess that would be the devil’s job.) At any rate, I jumped out of the plane where all my security and knowledge and trust had been invested.

And it was almost like I fell upward. I could feel faith kick in, I had a new trust and a new security that allowed me to see the bigger picture. I could look down and see the plane that I jumped out of.   At that moment my world view changed, my priorities became different, I felt like I had gotten myself off my own hands which was a great relief.   I sheepishly told Rose what I had done when she got home and she gave me a hug and a kiss that still had a skeptical flavor to it.   I guess she wouldn’t be convinced unless she began to see some fruit off the new tree.

     When a person becomes a new Christian, it is like being born again. You find out that you are a spiritual baby, almost helpless to feed yourself, helpless to defend yourself, you mess your pants, you can’t speak the language.....churcheese. You whine and cry because you are being weaned off the things that used to pacify you. You begin to take tentative, clumsy spiritual steps and fall down a lot, but the newness and freshness of life in the spirit keeps you going and makes you constantly hungry to learn God’s word and grow up to be mature.

Of course before I believed in God, was also before I believed in the devil. But now the devil became real too, a real personality of evil, bent on destruction, deception, confusion and clamor. No person’s conversion goes unnoticed to Satan. He hears the rejoicing of the angels in heaven when a sinner repents and immediately begins a campaign to regain lost territory.   If he had left me alone I might have been tempted not to believe in him, but almost immediately after I received Christ as savior, I recognized that I had a very dangerous spiritual enemy.

His first attack was against my body.

I had always been one to keep physically fit and was proud of my strength and agility.   He attacked my strength, which was my weakness....pride. I experienced a muscle spasm in my back that drove me to my knees and kept me incapacitated for about a week. This was the only time in my police career that I had to call off sick for more than a day. I was on my back unable to find any relief from the pain while my comrades were involved in a labor dispute at one of the local factories. Somehow I knew that God was allowing my new faith to be tested, and I felt that this was my cross to bear for now.   After a few days the devil left me to wait for a more opportune time.