Taking Off, Part 2

Mark could drive, if I didn’t mention it before, and reveled in the roar created by multiple explosions per second under the hood of any vehicle. In the early mornings, when traffic was light, Mark would practice hitting the apex of turns, darting into the oncoming lanes of traffic to perfect his cornering skills. Occasionally, we would drive out to the nearby pier where the SFPD’s emergency vehicle course was located and take a few runs around the course, which was delineated by orange cones chancing certain destruction under the squealing tires of our patrol car.

“Seatbelt,” I said to Mark, who took one hand off the wheel to pull the shoulder strap across his body and hand it to me. I leaned across the center console and clicked Mark’s belt in place, then turned back to face the windshield, and fastened in my own. Ahead of me, as Mark followed the Honda around the roads of the housing project leading towards the front gate, the few early rising pedestrians danced, cheered and hollered “GO!” as the suspect accelerated away.

Life in urban public housing is, if nothing else, rarely dull.

The Civic sailed towards Double Rock’s front gate, the exit lane of which was closed for some reason. The fleeing driver veered into the oncoming lane, bouncing over the harsh rubber speed bumps out onto Fitzgerald. As Mark pursued the car, I transmitted pertinent, required information over my radio.

“Okay, we’re out onto Fitz heading west. Traffic is light. Speed is up to fifty,” I transmitted.

“Westbound Fitzgerald at fifty, copy,” the dispatcher parroted.

“Charlie-one-oh-seven, I’m monitoring,” our sergeant said over the air, establishing himself as the pursuit’s supervisor.

The Honda continued to pick up speed as it traveled down Fitzgerald, blowing the stop sign at Ingalls, continuing west. Ahead, I saw a patrol car coming towards us, east. I thought it was likely Lamar James, a jokester black officer who had worked at Bayview Station for the bulk of his twenty-plus year career. When Bayview got a new transfer of rookie officers in, Lamar used to like to dress up in the orange sweater and pants of an arrestee, and then go running through the station to see who would chase him. Because of this practice, he’d nearly been maimed a number of times at the hands of hard-charging new guys, but continued to risk bodily harm for the sake of comedy none the less. I figured it was Lamar because, for some near-supernatural reason, he always seemed to be just where he needed to be, and at the right time, despite having a billion private errands to take care of in the course of a work day. On duty, the man was able to run a private security business, negotiate significant business deals, handle his car sector with proficiency and still wind up as the secondary unit in any pursuit and/or donnybrook Mark and I ever started.

“Charlie-three-david,” Lamar notified, “I’m secondary.”

As the Honda jetted forward, Lamar moved his car towards the center of the roadway, as if daring the suspect to stop via a game of chicken. The fleeing driver didn’t stop, and as Mark and I yelled out “OH SHIT!” simultaneously, both Lamar and the suspect veered in thankfully opposite directions. The Civic continued forward as Mark and I blew past Lamar, who eventually fish-tailed a U-turn behind us to take up the secondary position in the chase, a few hundred feet back.

“Charlie-three-david, we’ve got a 245 on an officer. Suspect tried to run me off the road,” Lamar broadcast.

The Honda slowed and cut sharply from Fitz to northbound Jennings, coming dangerously close to careening into an oncoming driver. Mark executed a textbook turn in the same direction, closing the gap a bit. The suspect mashed his accelerator, as indicated by the increasingly dark smoke bellowing out of the Civic’s tailpipe, and flew forward through at least ten stop signs and intersections at freeway speeds. It was pretty clear where the bad guy was headed: to one of the housing projects on Hunter’s Point, where he no doubt would bail out of the car on foot in familiar territory and try to lose us that way.

“Charlie-fifteen-adam, we are northbound Jennings now at sixty. He’s blowing every stop sign in sight, headed towards Hunters Point. Traffic is still light.”

“Ten four, northbound Jennings at sixty,” the dispatcher repeated.

After miraculously not hitting anybody - or anything - while closing in on the foot of Hunter’s Point, the Honda began to slow, turning from northbound Jennings to eastbound Palou. Mark followed close behind by about one car length, reflexively disconnecting his seatbelt. I did as well.

“Eastbound Palou, onto the 1100 block in a sec. Slowing down. He’s getting ready to bail.”

The Honda continued to slow to a speed of about fifteen miles per hour, and I saw the driver’s side door crack open after passing Ingalls onto the 1100 block of Palou, the first, southern-most block of housing projects of the Oakdale development.

“Lamar, get up to Oakdale!” I called out, as the driver suddenly slammed the brakes, threw the door open and jumped out of the driver’s seat, sprinting away north towards the projects. Mark threw our car into park, and we both alighted from our vehicle as well, chasing the tall and rather muscular looking suspect on foot.

“Foot pursuit, north through the cuts! Black male in a gray jacket; black pants!” I radioed while I still had my breath.

Mark was a consummate speed demon, and his love of driving fast was a good match to his natural ability to run like the wind. Though he was wearing over twenty-five pounds of clothes, boots and gear, as was I, Mark quickly gained on the fleeing man. I was still about twenty-five feet back, having the unfortunate disadvantage of having to get around the patrol car before I could start my kick.

The suspect fled through the spaces between buildings in the projects, onto a stairway leading out to Oakdale, bordered on each side by a hand railing and beyond that a dirt hill. Mark, in an impressive display of athleticism, paralleled the violator by scrambling up the dirt hill to the man’s left, overtaking him, and vaulting over the stairway’s handrail, cutting off the suspect’s route of escape. The suspect immediately stopped, and turned back around, just in time to run right into me.

Though he outweighed me by at least forty pounds, I was somehow able to use my forward momentum to tackle the suspect completely over the handrail Mark had just vaulted over, onto the dirt below. The suspect landed on all fours, with me to his left side, holding him around the trunk. As Mark once again jumped the rail to try to get control of the suspect’s right side, the panicked man pushed to his feet and dragged Mark and I about six steps before he fell back to the dirt in the same position, struggling to get back up.

“Stop resisting!” I ordered.

“You’re under arrest!” Mark called out before keying his radio and letting the responding units know we had a resister by yelling out, “One-forty-eight!”

“What’s your location?!” I heard an unknown voice transmit over the radio, excitedly.

“The 1100 block of Palou was the last one they gave,” the dispatcher answered for me.

The combative arrestee flailed his arms, bucked and writhed in an effort to shake Mark and me off him. Mark rained his elbow down on the suspect’s shoulder blades repeatedly trying to pacify him, but with little effect. I wrestled with the suspect’s powerful left arm, straining to get it behind his back. I couldn’t make it budge. Finally, growing tired, I released the man’s arm and moved my arm around his neck in the beginning stages of a sleeper hold. Then I straddled the suspect’s back with my legs.

“Mark, roll him onto me and I’ll choke him out!”

With a solid shove, Mark pushed me and the suspect over to one side. I wound up under the man’s back as planned, and started to squeeze.

The bad guy made a rattling noise in his throat and tried to cough. As I could feel him start to slip into unconsciousness, his blood failing to carry oxygen to his brain due to the pressure created by the submission hold, the desperate man mustered up a raspy, “I give up.” He brought his hands to my elbow, tapping it like a professional fighter throwing in the towel. For some reason, likely because of the muscle memory created by so many recreational grappling matches in the past, I eased up on the pressure before the guy passed out and yelled, “Roll over on your stomach now!”

The suspect complied with a little assistance from Mark, and I jumped off his back to the side, still grasping him around the neck in case the tap-out was feigned. Mark cuffed the man’s right wrist, and then the left. Just after the second cuff ratcheted closed, Lamar came running down the hill from Oakdale, and two other units pulled up with their sirens and lights on, a few seconds too late.


Epilogue:

The car wound up being stolen, and the suspect on parole. Back at the station, after Mark and I had changed out of our dirty, ripped-up uniforms, we went to the holding cell where the suspect was being booked in by a helpful coworker. The suspect, Mr. Johnson, saw me, put his hands together in front of him like he was praying and said, “Officers, I’m so sorry. I’ve got a new job building the train tracks on 3rd Street, and I’m gonna lose it if I don’t show up. Is there any way you can let me go?”

I believe my answer was, “Have you lost your fucking mind?”