A Policeman's Journal

Chain Reaction Part Two

2010-04-10T19:23:00.000-07:00

As soon as I bailed out of the unmarked in pursuit of the fleeing Latino, I was immediately almost killed by a car speeding down Ellis Street like the driver was dyslexic and had inverted the numbers on the urban speed limit. I had already begun to key my radio microphone to broadcast: a. that we had an emergency; and, b. that we were in a foot chase of a man who we believed was armed with a .40 caliber Glock pistol. So the radio transmission I wound up making was similar to, “…CKING SLOW DOWN, COCKSUCKER! Code thirty-three! Ellis and Polk, foot pursuit Latin male blue shirt! Possible two-twenty-one (gun)!”

I ran after the suspect to the south sidewalk of Ellis and then east towards Larkin, about a third of a block back due to my brush with vehicular manslaughter. I heard Scott flip on our unmarked’s siren, and then watched him drive past me the wrong way on Ellis Street to catch up to our man. Scott and the rest of the crew followed the guy as he ran around the corner to southbound Larkin. I rounded the same corner just in time to see Scott coming to a fast stop in an alley that ran parallel to Ellis Street. I looked ahead and saw the suspect making quick entrance to the rear door of a Chinese restaurant’s kitchen.

Police work is full of surreal moments, but I must say one of the most cinematically absurd experiences of my career really began to come to fruition as I called out, “STOP! POLICE!” to the suspect and did my best not to slip and fall on the greasy kitchen floor while dodging a huge staff of cooks with giant cleavers and flaming woks. The chase spilled into the dining room area, prompting panicked confusion as three plainclothes and one uniformed policeman sprinted after a criminal between tables, past the hostess and out the front door back onto Larkin Street.

The suspect traced his own previous path and ran once more north on Larkin to westbound Ellis Street, again on the south sidewalk. Scott, a gifted runner and athlete, passed me to take the lead in the chase and was therefore granted the honor of being the first policeman to follow the supposed-Aguilar into a Vietnamese eatery, through that dining room – causing a similar commotion to the one in the Chinese place – and halfway into the women’s restroom before having a door slammed directly on his shoulder and face by the suspect… who proceeded to attempt to barricade himself therein.

Seeing Scott’s head bounce off the door and the suspect repeatedly trying to ram my supervisor violently out of the ladies room, I grew understandably upset. I shoulder checked the door at just shy of an all out run, which caused the doorknob to implant in the drywall, the suspect to reel back and Scott and I to spill into the bathroom, directly into the bad guy’s swinging fists.

Both Scott and I ate a couple of punches before we managed to get in grappling range with the guy, killing the momentum of his fists. As the bad guy thrashed and screamed, I dove down for his legs as Scott elbowed him in the sternum. Mary and Rick attempted to get into the bathroom as well, but it was a one-seater and they were pretty much stuck behind us as we attempted to force the suspect to the ground.

After far too much effort, we got the guy down on the gross bathroom tile and began the laborious task of trying to dig his arms out from underneath him to put handcuffs on. The refusal of the suspect to relinquish his hands from his front waistband was especially concerning. Scott vocalized his worry, “I think he’s got a gun in his waistband! He’s holding something!”

Scott, Rick, Mary and I eventually pulled, tugged, commanded, yelled, punched, elbow dropped, and hammer fisted the suspect into handcuffs. The five of us now all sweaty and covered in Tenderloin bathroom grossness. Scott panted out, “Help us search him,” to the uniformed officers who had responded as backup and arrived at the bathroom door.”

We pulled the guy off the floor and handed him to the patrolmen. “I think he might have a gun,” Scott warned.

Right then, I heard something buzzing at my feet. I looked down to where the suspect had just been laying, to the place where his hands were so insistent on staying. There, on the ground, clattering away on the dingy tile, was a pink vibrator.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard before, nor will I again, an “EWWWWWWWWW” the likes of which came out of Mary’s mouth after I brought the jittery sex toy to her attention. And as I laughed a deep, horrified belly-laugh, I heard Rick say that he found the custody’s identification. He was not Juan Aguilar. He was actually a convicted rapist of another name, and in violation of a stay-away order for selling drugs at Polk and Ellis. I think we all shuddered to think of the reason why a convicted rapist would be walking around with a vibrator stuffed down his pants.

After Dildoman was underway in the paddy wagon to Tenderloin Station. Scott, sweaty and gross as the rest of us, made a command decision: “Now, let’s go see if Juan’s home. Why kill the momentum?”

We piled back in the car, and drove down the block to Aguilar’s supposed apartment. We followed a resident in through the front gate and located unit 210. Scott put his ear to the door, and heard voices inside. He was about to knock, when the door suddenly opened from inside revealing the man we knew to be Aguilar. Aguilar’s eyes went wide as he started to close the door, but we were already barging in by that point and obviously breaking up the social gathering of fellow meth-addicts. There were about four other speeder types in the place, a mix of males and females. Rick and I arrested Aguilar for his warrant without incident. His only comment, “Who ratted me out? Was it that white boy?”

“It could be nobody. You could just suck at hiding,” I answered.

An ensuing search of the apartment revealed no items of significance, no gun or mentionable amount of dope. They’d clearly smoked whatever meth they had, or the girls had it stashed in areas they knew we didn’t have a right to search without a warrant. Perhaps Aguilar never had the gun and the info was embellished by Crankster to sweeten it up for us. Or just as plausible, Aguilar sold the pistol for dope. Maybe he just had a really great hiding place. Who knows?

So rarely in police work do you ever get to know what you missed. I know cops who have been in for thirty-plus years and wish that upon retirement they could get a rundown on all the guns, suspects and dope they almost found over the years.

But, gun or no, when Scott, Mary, Rick and I got back to TTF after booking Aguilar for his warrant at Northern Station, we were all smiling. It’s not every day you get to sprint down the rabbit hole and return with three handcuffed bunnies. And that vibrator thing was really damn funny.

Chain Reaction

2010-02-25T23:17:00.000-08:00

Scott, Mary and I decide to go roll around the Tenderloin for a while and try to make a quick arrest. The TL is a duck pond, a place where on any slow day in any other police district a cop can usually drum up some action. We are in street clothes, in an unmarked car, and decide to first look for Sureno gang members to target the more violent criminal elements in the TL. We are, of course, part of a unit tasked with controlling and investigating street violence, so it seems to be as good a mission as any.

At Hyde and O’Farrell, I see a Sureno sporting his blue belt and L.A. Dodgers cap standing on the corner. I tell Scott to stop the car and let me out. I say I’m going to follow the gangster. I express my interest in seeing if the guy makes a drug deal.

Scott stops the car and I jump out as planned. The Sureno walks west on O’Farrell towards Larkin. I stay about half a block back, watching and waiting, looking sufficiently inconspicuous.

The Sureno stops for the red light, waiting to cross the street as I close the distance behind him a bit. Two black guys in their late fifties, guys who look ten years older than that even – obvious crack user types – are between the Sureno and me. The light turns green, the Sureno begins to cross, and as I step between the two men, who are standing respectively with a back to the building and a back to the street, the guy at the building line hands a rock of crack to the other guy in exchange for a ten dollar bill. It’s a crack deal in front of me like I’m Red Rover and they called me on over. I announce, “Police. Thank you,” and snatch the rock and the money from the hands before me. The two “OGs” are both clearly surprised as I grab their arms and push them to positions facing the wall. One of them musters up a, “Man, what’s this about?” but seems himself to not really sell the line with any dramatic gravitas.

I key my radio and say, “Hey guys, meet me at O’Farrell and Larkin. I’ve got something.” I’m confident that Scott and Mary will recognize my voice among all the normal chatter on the dispatch channel. Mere seconds later, they pull around the corner. Out of the corner of my eye as I’m taking down the names and birthdays of my two custodies, I see Scott break off from my direction to cut off the path of travel of the absolute poster boy for “meth-addicted Caucasian parolee,” who just so happens to have crossed the street to the same corner that we are all on. Scott starts talking to that guy; he figures out he’s on parole, which any street cop could have told you by the look of the guy – but, hey, you still have to ask – and begins to search him.

As Scott searches the parolee, who must be fresh out of the penitentiary because he still moves into the search position without being told to do so and calls Scott, “Sir,” I examine the rock that the two men exchanged. Mary takes my notebook from me and runs the names of the two guys I got, checking them for warrants.

The rock is truly pathetic, much like the two men before me. I look at the two old crackheads and realize that at least one of them is going to be a hospital run if I book them. I pull one dude aside by a few feet and ask, “What do you know, that I want to know, that’s better than you?”

The old man answers, without any clarification by me of the confusing sentence I just asked, “There’s a Mexican guy with a ponytail named Pedro; I don’t know if that’s his real name, feel me? But dude lives right at the building to my right, the one with the silver gate, in room 302. Dude moves at least an ounce a day. He is fat around the first and the fifteenth like every other motherfucker slingin’ out a house.”

“Solid or powder?” I ask.

“Solid,” he tells me, indicating crack and not powder cocaine.

I walk the guy back to the company of his cohort and put my hand on the second old man’s arm to try to get some more info from him in exchange for their freedom. Scott, my supervisor, however, beats me to the punch and says, “Unless you got something stellar on those two senior citizens, cut them loose because we have a new project.”

I look over and Scott’s got a few gram baggies of meth in his hand. It’s not huge, but it’s a good arrest, the guy being on parole with some dope. As a cop, you book a white parolee crankster, get him sent back to prison on a good case, and prevent about 3000 auto thefts, auto break-ins, commercial burglaries, residential burglaries, bicycle thefts, garage burglaries, identity thefts, retail thefts, street robberies and god-knows-whatever-else that population does to finance their meth habits. Conversely, you book two old crack addicts, and maybe you stop a few theft crimes, keep one less lookout or “hook” from participating in a drug conspiracy, but there’s a good chance their primarily using their SSI payments and panhandling to finance their addictions. If given the choice, it makes sense to me and like-minded officers to go for those acting at a higher level of criminality. Quality over quantity, if you will.

In response to Scott’s orders, I toss the little crack rock in the gutter, give the ten bucks back to its original owner and tell both of them to get lost. Scott, Mary, Crankster and me then all pile in our unmarked and drive to Tenderloin Station. At Tenderloin Station, or TTF as it’s known among SFPD cops in the know, we sit Crankster down and hear what he has to say. Scott tells him, “Look, the difference between a simple possession and a possession for sales is in your hands. Tell us something good.” Scott’s bluffing right now, but Crankster doesn’t know that. Truth is, we’d book the guy on simple possession no matter what. But, hey, he’s on parole, and that’s the difference between a quick parole violation and getting a new case with a new possible multi-year prison sentence.

The Crankster goes on to tell us about a guy who he knows by the name of Juan Aguilar that’s staying in the only publically subsidized apartment building on Ellis Street between Polk and Van Ness. Crankster identifies the guy by an old booking photo that I print out. Aguilar is a parolee at large, one who has fallen off of the grid from his parole officer and has a warrant for his arrest. Aguilar’s warrant hit in the computer reads: Caution. Armed and dangerous.

Crankster says, “He’s got a .40 caliber Glock, man; I seen the thing yesterday. He’s all waving it around in his apartment while we are getting high and shit acting like he’s Tony-Fucking-Montana.”

“Montoya,” Mary corrects, but Crankster doesn’t seem to process the information.

“What room is he in?” Scott asks, “And will he be home now?”

“He’s in 210, and he probably is. He don’t work or nothing,” Crankster answers.

“Okay. We’ll go check it out. Sit tight,” Scott says.

“So, what’s the deal, bro? I gotta go to jail?”

“Yeah, man. Relax. You’re just gonna do a violation anyhow. You’ll be out and fucking up again before you can say methamphetamine.”

Scott, Mary and I recruit Rick, a uniformed officer from TTF, to jump in the car with us and go knock on Aguilar’s door. Rick is, per his norm, happy to involve himself in anything that seems like it could be exciting. Rick is on the Patrol Rifle Team and jumps at the opportunity to deploy his AR-15 with its flashlight, and tactical sling, and collapsible bipod, and taped-together magazines, and oil slick, and smoke screen and yadda-yadda-yadda. Rick throws his rifle case in the back of our unmarked and takes one of the rear passenger seats with me. Scott drives. Mary rides shotgun.

“What’s this guy look like?” Rick asks. I produce Aguilar’s mugshot and show it to Rick. “Latin guy. Chubby. Shaved head. Big bushy mustache,” he says out loud while studying the photo. “Got it.”

Scott drives us up to Ellis Street and then heads west towards the apartment building. Scott slows the car after we pass Larkin. I glance both sides of the street. No sign of Aguilar. Well, not until we get to the end of the block. Then it goes like this:

Me – “Hey, that dude looks like him.”

Everybody – “Where?”

Me – “Northeast corner. Hotel parking lot. Blue shirt.”

Everybody – “Oh, shit. That might be him.”

Scott (pulling our unmarked into the parking lot, approaching the possible Juan Aguilar) – “Bingo! We got a runner!”

End Part One...

Grateful

2010-01-22T09:53:00.000-08:00

I was hanging out with Chet the other day, my old partner when I was out working patrol and plainclothes. He told me that he read my "Hum Drum" posting, and warned me to be careful with the words I chose. He spoke specifically about my stated desire for revenge. He worried that such a statement could be misunderstood, or worse, manipulated in the wrong hands - taken as something other than the outpouring of outrage and resistance in the face of perceived futility that I meant it to be.

He's right to be worried on my behalf. From a standpoint of career longevity, it's not a wise move to speak out of turn in my profession. But this journal, in my head, has nothing to do with the uniform, and everything to do with the man who wears it (rare though that may be in my current assignment). I write for the same reasons that others paint. It's my little attempt to leave a bit of beauty behind before the proverbial sun sets, whenever that may be.

I think that writers want the movie deal because it means that people will read the book. They know that the money won't help them be anything other than the moody, sullen sons-of-bitches that they were before they were famous.

Chet spoke of another thing that day: how good I had it in my current gig - seemingly suggesting that such a posting should somewhat preclude me from being a moody, sullen son-of-a-bitch. I know that his concerns didn't come from anywhere but a place of love, and if I've insinuated otherwise, please disregard. He simply got me thinking. That's a good thing. Inspiration comes from the damnedest places.

Just to be clear, I know things at work could be worse. I've in many ways had a blessed career, and I've been given opportunities in my work that most of my coworkers have not. I'm in a choice assignment, to be sure. I get to take part in the kinds of investigations that people write television shows and movies dramatizing. In my head, I get to play McNulty in my own private season of The Wire. I've been to the ER only a few times. I've only had one surgery.

I could follow this rabbit hole of self-awareness and humility much farther. Right now, I'm alive and well in a very cool city while Haiti burns. I'm near my loved ones and family while our soldiers operate overseas, far away from home. I have a motorcycle, and an in-law apartment. I've got Halo ODST on the XBOX. I've got comics. Makers Mark. A Kindle. Clothing. Shelter. Food. Water.

There's no but in all of this.

A military commander, one likely of considerable renowned, once said that he only need worry about the soldiers when they stopped bitching. In the annals of military history, long ago, some like-minded commander figured out that a member of the unit, someone in a fairly high up position of command, but not the guy at the top, had to play the asshole who made the men reasonably annoyed and (occasionally) slightly miserable so that they would concentrate on the very real hardship and (occasional) mortal terror that was the more important issue. On submarines, they call this guy: the XO.

It's unfortunate that I know I'm supposed to hate the XO, because his power is summarily lost on me. Indeed, often, I love my job. The passion that I have for it exists in no small part because there is no more frontier but the exploration of humanity - at least one I have access to. We live our lives in the horrible lull between discoveries, left few places in which to find unpredictable adventure but in the things we elect to do to one another. And we are stuck that way until we download our minds into the Internet or sail between solar systems on the wings of the solar winds. I am at least reasonably content to continue exploring humanity in the capacity that I can. I am grateful for that opportunity. But I am not the android, Data, on the Enterprise. And the emotional toll of my explorations is something I don't care to hide.

So thank you for letting me vent.

I Haven't Forgotten You

2009-12-27T21:29:00.000-08:00

Nor will I ever. Rest well, my friend.

www.odmp.org/reflections.php?oid=18642

http://www.bryantuvera.com/

http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/under-the-dome/Officer-killed-on-duty-to-be-remembered-79877757.html

Hum Drum

2009-11-30T02:26:00.000-08:00

"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
-Confucius

This morning over coffee I had a realization that I've been kind of bored at work lately. I'd even go as far to say that I was tired of it in many respects. Though I'd hardly been chained to a desk, the hum drum of long term investigations and go-nowhere cases were taking their toll on my enthusiasm for coming to work. I'd recently missed out on some great opportunities to go on vacations due to supposedly upcoming, yet endlessly continued, court cases. Plus, the department had been in such a state of flux and so many frustrating rumors and repeated jabs to rank and file morale from the department's management (rumors regarding the disbanding of my unit like so many other units in the Investigations Bureau; huge slashes in overtime availability before the holidays; threats of layoffs; etc.) had been filtering through my day to day existence at work... I just kind of felt over the whole thing. My fire had dimmed.

That was me at about 1000 hours, sipping coffee and overflowing with general malaise.

At 1100 I decided to read the news. And if you read the headlines today, you probably know why my eyes just welled up when I wrote that: four cops murdered in Washington, in a small town outside of Tacoma by some lone gunman. Four people - four parents, three husbands and a one wife - slaughtered for no other apparent reason than that they chose to wear a uniform that basically says, "I am endowed by the state with the power to tell you 'no' when I deem it necessary."

As my career has progressed over the years and cops I've known have met violent ends, my empathy and emotion towards my brothers and sisters in blue across the nation who have been struck down in the line of duty has spread like one of those animated maps of the allied invasion of Europe from WWII - slowly outward. In 2008 there were 138 cops who died on the job. This year so far, 111 have been killed, but more by gunfire this year than last. It seems like the number is always between 100 and 150, meaning about a thousand cops have made the "ultimate" sacrifice since I was sworn in.

I read that article today and I felt saddened and horrified... and in no small part lucky. I felt fortunate to be alive to have the opportunity to keep fighting, to keep carrying the torch - because somebody has to - I have to. It's my duty. It's what I signed up for knowing full well that this job, one way or another, sooner or later, would probably kill me. My fire, frankly, was fed.

I started this career with lofty aspirations about bettering the plight of my fellow man. I wanted to see and do things most people couldn't. I wanted to experience visceral moments, and I sought adventure. To a great extent, I still have such goals. But there's now another motivator, and it sounds ugly and sinister to admit it, but it's there.

I want revenge.

And, to be clear, I don't necessarily need to go shoot dead four bad guys. I mean it in a more karmic sense than a literal one. I'm just angry. I want to see those that deserve it get their comeuppance. I want to help bring it about. My grief begat passion for my sworn duty.

I suppose it could be worse. I could just turn into a self-righteous fire-breather like Jack Nicholson as Col. Jessup spitting out, "We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post."

There's some truth in that speech that speaks to me - some. The phrasing is not me, though. I just want to lock dudes up, to run them down and laugh at their ridiculous denials. I want to enjoy my cup of coffee when off-duty and smile knowing that I won't see the thug I helped put in jail the previous night walking around. It makes me happy to know he's calling his girlfriend or "baby momma" from the pod and lying through his teeth about how the big bad police framed him and did him wrong or some other nonsense. I find delicious satisfaction in parents insisting their precious babies would never-ever-ever-ever-ever commit such an act.

I do my best to turn my sadness into inspiration, and to steel myself with resolve to carry on. Duty. Honor. Loyalty. A little vengeance too. These are the things that keep me going, the things that stay the boredom and push away the hum-drums.

Except sometimes, when I'm on the treadmill or in the shower and I think of those heroes we've lost, my friends who died at the hands of broken members of our broken culture, I just can't help but cry.

And in those moments, this whole ridiculous game seems fucking pointless. Because, honestly, I know this job will get me sooner or later. It'll get most of us, in fact. And even though we continue to try to maintain that thin blue line, I'm pretty sure we are on the losing team.

That Confucius guy was pretty smart.

Halloween

2009-11-01T04:31:00.000-08:00

The 911 caller was frantic, reporting that he heard a shot about fifteen minutes prior, went outside his house, and saw a body laying motionless on the ground in the housing projects on Hunter's Point. The caller thought the prone teenager was dead. The first officers to arrive on the scene didn't take long to reach the same conclusion, likely via stillness, abnormal pallor of dark brown skin, and the glassy stare into nothingness.

Sergeant White and I had already been rolling around the streets of the Mission and Bayview for a few hours, taking in the typical San Francisco Halloween sights of street thugs using the revelry as an excuse to wear masks and girls using the same excuse to not wear much of anything at all. From the police perspective, both of these phenomena are concerning. One is, however, much more entertaining to look at than the other. I'll let you guess which one that is.

The homicide scene was our first encounter with violence for the night. From the way the body was positioned, the look on his face, and the utter lack of emotion from the many onlookers ranging in age from young children to their parents - none of whom identified themselves as witnesses mind you - I could tell that the victim spent his last living moments on this earth in mortal terror. I could tell that he died awfully.

I also couldn't help but think of the cruel, wicked irony of dying afraid and alone on such a ridiculous holiday, in such a backwards town, in such a callous world.

What ensued throughout the night was a constant stream of radio chatter concerning gunfire, car crashes, robberies and drunken brawls. My team and I wound up working a non-fatal shooting that took place not more than a mile and a half from the earlier homicide, but was unrelated. We left the office at 0400 crispy and well done.

When I crawled into bed at about 0445 after having a beer and watching Jon Stewart rip on Fox News for a while, I resisted the temptation to drink a giant glass of whiskey or two. I resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to be able to shake the sight of that murdered teen from my mind for quite a while. I knew I wasn't going to forget his bulging left eyeball, so positioned because the bullet clearly tried but failed to exit through the left orbit. I knew the visage of the kid's sagging pants having fallen down around his motionless ankles in such an undignified manner would make my head shake for several days. So I made a mental note to write about it in the morning, and settled in for a fitful, nightmare-filled effort to sleep - an experience no doubt thematically appropriate for the holiday.

The cops I know HATE Halloween. I'm no different. And it's not because it's simply a pain in the ass. It's not because it's always so busy and filled with drama and drunks. It's not just the urine, the vomit, or the repeated slurred comments of, "Nice costume, officer!" For me, it's much more than that. It's because cops and other public servants know things about nights like Halloween that others often don't, or at least want to remain blissfully - and rather understandably - ignorant of.

It's this: the ghouls, the goblins, the ghosts, the demons, the witches, the zombies, the wounded, the dead, the raped, the tortured, the mutilated and the suffering... they're all real. They're out there every night, if you know where to look. And on nights like Halloween, they are in plain sight, not even bothering to hide. Evil and mayhem is in full swing, mingling in with intoxicated party-goers and looking for opportunities to hurt, destroy or take. More than one person always learns this the hard way on All Hallows Eve. Usually, it's lots of people.

But, then again, I guess it happens every other day of the year too: the murders, robberies, shootings, stabbings, abductions and sexual assaults. So maybe October 31st is just a pain in the ass, because the ghouls, ghosts and goblins never are far away.

Burn

2009-09-24T21:36:00.000-07:00

The residential fire scene on the south slope of Diamond Heights, on Arlington Street, was at first glance pretty normal. Smoke billowing from an orange glow into the sky? Check. Panicked residents fleeing the burning and adjacent buildings? Check. Neighbors in various states of casual dress trying to get as close as possible without being in the way of the heroic SFFD? Check. Firemen? Check. Ambulance? Check. Cop whose beat the fire was in?

Since my arrival: check.

As soon as I pulled up, I briefed my sergeant over the air as to how serious the fire was and directed other responding officers to places where they could help with traffic control. Being mid block on a residential thoroughfare, I parked my car across both lanes of traffic on the west side of the street and left it there while I went to check in with the FD and see the extent of the damage.

The upstairs of a yellow house, mid-block, was burning rather furiously. It was clear even to my untrained eye that said house was the origin of the blaze. It was also fairly clear that the homes immediately adjacent to the yellow house were going to be heavily damaged as well, as both were displaying flames on their adjoining walls. I frowned knowing that at least three - and probably far more - families were going to be displaced indefinitely. It's not an easy thing to lose one's nest. It's especially awful when all one has to wear is pajama bottoms and a robe, as is common with middle of the night fire refugees.

In the midst of my empathetic thoughts, an angry commotion brought my attention to a feuding group of people on the sidewalk in front of the burning yellow house. As firemen pushed past them, dragging hoses up to the building's facade, I realized it was my job to get these people to a safe location.

I approached the loud group, and immediately surmised they were all family due to their strong resemblance to one another and the fact that they all seemed to have come from the burning yellow house. It didn't take long to figure out that this group of Latinos and Latinas in age ranges from very young to pretty-darn old were uniformly upset with the apparent black sheep of their family, who was standing with his back to me facing the enraged mob. I came to this conclusion because of the following:

1- Three identical-looking sisters were holding back their identical-looking teenage brother from attacking an older, rough-looking, prison-tattooed uncle.
2- Said uncle was clearly spun out of his mind on crank and stark-freaking-naked.

Now, in police work, we call meth-addled, naked lunatics at fire scenes "suspicious." One could even refer to the presence of such a person as a "clue." I'll gladly elaborate: methamphetamine is usually smoked in glass tubes. Fire is a perquisite ingredient for smoking anything. Fire burns things. Meth addicts/tweakers are not known for their physical or mental stability when heavily under the influence. Tweaker + Flames - Supervision = Bad.

Multiply these facts by the number of family members who were soon yelling, "YOU SON OF A BITCH! YOU DID THIS!" at the naked uncle, and Officer Deck had some investigating to do.

As the angry teenage brother broke free of his sisters' half-hearted grasps and began a charge towards the naked man, I took a few steps forward extended my pointer finger and arm, put on my sternest look, and commanded, "Get back!" before Junior did something I'd be forced to arrest him for. Surprisingly, it worked. The young brother stopped, allowing his sisters time to capture him once more and allowing me time to deal with the raving nudist who had just spun to face me yelling out, "I ain't got shit to say to you, motherfucker! You want to arrest me? Arrest me! Come on!"

This, as you have probably already guessed, would not do.

Approximately five seconds later I had the naked guy in a headlock, and was standing behind his squirming, screaming form. He reeked of singed hair and an unwashed body. During the very brief struggle, we spun to face the street, allowing me to see the significant audience that had formed and who seemed to be simply riveted with concern by the public service drama unfolding in front of them. The firemen on the other hand, who weren't dealing with the inferno, saw me attached to a naked guy's backside yelling at him to "cool it" and simply smirked at me as if to ask, "Bet you're glad you didn't take that fire department test instead, eh, kid?"

I transmitted over my radio with my free hand that I had a resister by stating, "Got a one-forty-eight on Arlington." My traffic was mostly covered by a unit from another district, one no doubt going on about something far less interesting than what I was trying to say. Luckily the dispatcher heard a bit of what I had said and asked, "Henry-Two-David, did you say you had a one-forty-eight?"

To which I replied, "Well, I've got the guy in a headlock right now, but you can call it what you want."

I'm not sure if it was the radio traffic that followed, the other officers saying that they were responding to my aid, or if it was the futility of the whole thing, but the naked uncle momentarily pacified and said in a somewhat reasonable tone of voice, "Okay, you got me. I want to talk to an old cop though. You're too young. He's gotta be old."

"Then put your hands behind your back and I'll see what I can do." I answered.

The naked uncle - though reluctant - did as instructed and I secured him in handcuffs. I sat my custody down on the curb with some small degree of pushing, put a hand on his shoulder to keep him there and turned to face the family. The oldest sister walked up to me and in a barely contained borderline-tirade explained to me the following: the naked uncle lived in the upstairs flat. The bulk of the family lived in the downstairs unit. The two flats used to share a common stairway. However, the door was locked up tight after the naked uncle became hopelessly addicted to methamphetamine and delved deeper and deeper into insanity and aberrant behavior over the years. The family shut the guy out of the rest of the house so he would stop stealing things of value from them. She expressed to me that the family was totally convinced he set the fire.

I asked, "Why?"

The elder sister replied, "Because he always threatens to burn the house down. And he's got that blowtorch that he uses on the wooden deck out back."

Again: clues.

I mustered up the commanding vocal tone necessary to move the displaced family members away from the fire scene, across the street, as I held the barely coherent nudist down on the curb out front, waiting on another officer to help me transport the custody to the back of a patrol car. Looking over my shoulder, I could see the fire had continued to worsen. As firefighters from the engine company began to douse the flames, I heard the truck company guys starting up chainsaws to vent the roof.

What should have immediately struck me at that point was the logical train of thought that roof ventilation is always performed in tandem with window ventilation. The process of ventilating windows is not to gently open them as they are often designed to do; it is rather to smash them out from the inside with large, metal tools. These are firemen we are talking about here. These are not micro surgeons. Such men and women tend to take great pleasure in breaking things into little pieces and being summarily thanked for it by the owners of said destroyed properties.

So, when I first heard the glass breaking from the old, pre-safety regulation-era windows a story above me, I should NOT have looked up. That was stupid. But I did, and thankfully looked away as soon as I saw an entire section of a window and various shards of related broken glass tumbling out towards my face with considerable velocity. Spreading my jacket out like a cape, I smothered the naked uncle with my own body to shield him, and waited for what I assumed would be a catastrophic injury to befall me. I took some degree of solace in knowing that the worst case scenario of me being instantly decapitated was probably painless.

The word loud does not do justice the sound of a large piece of old glass smashing over one's head into many smaller pieces. So I won't try to describe the volume of the sound the experience generated. Instead, I'll simply note that I was rather surprised when the initial onslaught ceased, and I was running across the street with the nude loony cradled in my arms free of any arterial spurting of blood from my body. I only sustained a smallish laceration to the back of my head and an inconsequential puncture wound to the bottom of my right hand.

When a safe distance away I set the custody down. A concerned-looking paramedic walked up to me. He'd apparently seen what had just happened and eyed the cut to the back of my head with a look of mild concern. The kind EMT extended his right hand and said, "I thought you might need this, officer."

I accepted the folded blanket from him, covered the naked guy with it, and said, "You read my mind, man."

Alone.

2009-06-17T02:04:00.000-07:00

I don’t want to die alone...

The two men were worried because their father hadn’t been seen or heard from in several days. This wasn’t entirely unusual for the elderly father, because he wasn’t huge on talking on the phone. But the two men went over to the father’s house, over off of Monterey Avenue in the nice but far more affordable part of SF between City College and Mt. Davidson, to check on him none the less. Dad wasn’t getting any younger. They knew that the day would come when they had to deal with his passing.

They rang the doorbell.
No answer.
They rapped on the door.
No answer.
They peered through little slits in closed curtains.
No answer.

So, though they weren’t convinced it was an actual emergency, as productive members of society are prone to thinking – unlike those unproductive members of society who call for an ambulance when they have a cold – they called 911 hoping there was some government agency that could help.

The 911 call-taker took the initial information from the caller, furiously typing in blank spaces in the Computer Assisted Dispatch terminal, CAD for short. And every time the call-taker hit the ‘enter’ key on her computer, the updated information popped up on the computer screen of the dispatcher for police channel A8, the service channel for the Ingleside, Taraval and Richmond police districts, the largest geographical area of radio service in the SFPD.

After receiving the call for service or ‘run’, the dispatcher used a foot pedal to activate her radio microphone, affixed next to her ear by a thin plastic tube, part of a dispatcher’s headset.

“Three-henry-four-david,” the dispatcher’s voice called out over my radio. “Can you take a B-priority well being check on an elderly male at 544 Flood?”

As it was my car sector and I wasn’t doing anything else of great importance but looking for the meth-heads - that always seemed to be trolling around the area - to jam up for a bit, I answered, “Ten-four. Send it over.” The tweakers weren’t going anywhere.

My marked patrol car’s mobile data terminal indicated that I had a new message waiting. I hit the ‘next message’ key on the MDT and saw the specifics of the call pop up on my screen: the location, nature of the run, time of entry, priority (B of A, B or C), etc.

In about three minutes I pulled up in front of the house. The two men were there, displaying facial expressions indicating slight embarrassment and simultaneous anxiety – fear even. I got out of the car after pressing the ‘arrived on scene’ button on my MDT. One of the men, the older son who was in his late forties, told me the story. He said that their dad’s door was locked from the inside. They didn’t have keys to the house and felt stupid for not having them. There wasn’t any answer at the door, though. He didn’t answer the phone despite repeated attempts and messages. Dad wasn’t in perfect health.

And as the older son spoke, I’m sure the expression on my face of doubt and concern telegraphed my thoughts on the matter. I’d been in this situation many times before. They had to know this, and they could tell I didn’t have much hope for their father’s well being.

So I told them what I always told people in their situation, something I’d practiced many times before.

“I’m going to go in there. If your dad is home, I’ll find him. I hope he’s okay. If he’s not, I want you guys to know that it isn’t your fault. You guys love him, so you are here now. That’s the important thing. And if there’s a god above, there’s a good chance that he and your dad are smiling together, because our parents are supposed to bring us into this world. And, as thanks for that, we the children handle the equally difficult job of taking care of things when they finally leave.”

I let that sink in for a second, and then made my way to the back yard of the house via the neighbor letting me in back through their upstairs. I jumped the rickety fence, luckily without breaking it in the process, and approached the wood-rotted back door of the old man’s residence.

I tried the handle.
No luck.
I rapped on the door’s center window pane a few times.
No answer.
I drove my shoulder into the frail door, popping door open without too much damage, drew my flashlight, put my hand on the butt of my gun, and entered.

“Hello, police!” I called out, scanning the dark garage from side to side. Satisfied that no psycho-axe-murderers were hiding therein, I ascended the interior stairwell into the kitchen, the stairs creaking loudly with every step. At the top of the stairs, I called out again to the still darkness. Again, I received no answer.

I took a step forward into the hall, the narrow corridor between small, sub-sectioned rooms common in Roaring Twenties-style San Francisco row-houses. The upstairs reeked of recent death, the putrid smell of urine and must. The awful smell of decomposition had not yet set in. I drew my gun, because, well, you never know. I could hear a nearby TV still on, set to very low volume. Some man was fishing for bass for twenty-three minutes on the Outdoor Life network, before a different man shot at elk, or so it sounded like.

I scanned the formal dining room, consisting of a table that had likely been set by a long-deceased wife many years prior and not touched since… no dad and no murderer.

I peered into the living room, a collection of China and porcelain dolls; plastic on the furniture; no man’s touch… no dad and no assailant.

I looked into the den, and saw a dead man on the floor, laying slightly on his side, an overturned chair and broken glass of water indicating he fell from standing, probably on his way to the kitchen to get something to satiate what he thought was heartburn or a bad headache.

Though blood was already pooling under the old man’s skin causing it to discolor at the lowest points, I reflexively checked for a pulse beneath the cold skin of his neck. It was absent, as expected.

The deceased’s glassy doll-like eyes and the pained expression of surprise on his face told the tale of his death: sudden and unexpected. The lack of trauma to his body and locked doors throughout the residence indicated the colder hand of Mother Nature had been at work. The old man died alone, and no matter how I tried to spin that, at some point the sons and other loved ones would have to come to terms with that fact.

In my years of public service seeing the faces of the dead, I’ve come to this conclusion: I don’t want to die alone.

I holstered my gun and told my patrol sergeant over the air that I had a death case, and that it appeared natural. Dispatch called the Medical Examiner, and I cleared the rest of the house for good measure.

After a silent prayer and a few deep breaths, I walked to the front door hoping not to see two grown men, my elders both, break down in tears when they read the news from my face. Because I think the human body has only a finite amount of stoic moments, of strength when duty necessitates such, hidden inside of it. At some point I know some parent of a SIDS baby, or the husband of some poor raped and mutilated murder victim is going to let out that god-awful scream, that wail of torment and grief, the worst sound a human can make, the unmistakable call of ‘I hate you, God.’ And it will shatter my emotional armor like safety glass.

I don’t know if a person can put so many small pieces together again.

Gun! Gun!

2009-05-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

Two Visitacion Valley area gangsters were walking west on the 1000 block of Mission Street, the block between 6th and 7th Streets, in the area of downtown SF that can only be described as the phallus of the notorious Tenderloin area. I was with Kyle and Mary, riding around in Kyle’s unmarked, him at the wheel where he always insisted on being, though he never said as much. Kyle: the Type-A of Type-As. He kept the keys in his desk. The message was clear.

We were all in plainclothes, but it didn’t matter. We knew those two miscreants well from contact after contact in their gang’s turf, down by the Cow Palace in the Sunnydale housing projects, The City’s biggest public housing development.

The presence of these two men wasn’t, at face value and from a police perspective, surprising. They were downtown to sell drugs. Though we didn’t say it out loud, all three of us in the car were thinking as much.

Two young ‘gangsta’-type men don’t have any other business walking around 6th Street. It’s Skid Row. There aren’t any businesses to patronize (there are liquor stores, an adult movie store and a decent pizza place; that’s it) that one couldn’t find in other areas of the city, most of which are far easier to park in. And we aren’t talking about tourists walking to or from unfortunately-located, affordable hotel accommodations. We are talking about hardened thugs, members of a notoriously violent, housing project-based, African-American, criminal street gang. Modern day black gangs are the genesis of groups of drug dealers feuding over turf to sell their illegal product in. Though that isn’t necessarily the primary focus of urban black gangs anymore, dope dealing is still a very common activity that gang members engage in to finance themselves and to finance the gang.

After seeing the two gangsters on the north sidewalk, Kyle slowed the car instinctively. Each of us saw the gangsters glance over at our vehicle; their eyes went wide and they looked ahead quickly, obviously pretending that they didn’t see us. Their respective gaits quickened in pace. It was clear that they weren’t happy about being spotted by three cops who knew them, and wouldn’t buy their inevitable lines of bullshit about just coming down to 6th Street to “meet girls” or “go to the store.”

Upon seeing this, Mary said out loud what we all were thinking, “Hey, there’s Swally and Kaykay.” She then added, after we were spotted, “Oh, they’re probably dirty.”

Kyle, stalled for a few moments by heavy downtown traffic, was finally able to swing our car around in a U-turn. Swally, the shorter of the two thugs, looked over his left shoulder, saw us and then muttered something unknown to Kaykay. Both men stopped walking, obviously aware we were going to, at the minimum, talk to them for a bit.

Mary rolled her passenger side window down as Kyle pulled along side the two Gs. Both immediately crowded her door, what seemed to be a clear tactic to keep her from getting out of the car. They stuck their heads almost in the passenger compartment, and began to run they’re mouths nervously at Kyle.

“What you doin’ down here, man? Shit, you get down here? I ain’t expect to see ya’ll downtown and shit,” Swally said, followed by a nervous laugh.

Unsolicited to do so, Kaykay produced a small jewelry box from his pocket, displayed it, smiled and stated, “We were fittin’ to get some new grillz. We headed back to Sunnydale now.”

Kyle entertained their conversation for a bit before instructing them to back away from Mary’s door. “Deck, get out,” Kyle whispered back to me out of the corner of his mouth.

We all knew that Swally was on probation, and had previously waived his Fourth Amendment rights in court. Thus, he was subject to a search of his “person, residence or vehicle at any time of the day or night, by any peace or probation officer, with or without a warrant, and with or without reasonable or probable cause.” That was the language of his previous plea agreement.

I hated Swally. His presence on this earth made me seethe with anger. He was a murderer who gunned down in cold blood a fifteen year old boy who owed him a few dollars from a prior weed deal. This was a few years prior to this incident. Everybody on the street knew he was the killer, and he was believed to have committed other shootings as well. Homicide could never make the murder case against him, though. And I couldn’t wait until some other gangster took him out in a drive-by or the like. Despite my rancor, I always greeted him with a smile and friendly words. It was a crocodile’s smile though, designed to hide significant disgust and outrage.

I hopped out of the car, as Mary cracked her door and exited as well. “Hey, Swal, you got anything?” Mary asked as she approached him.

“Nah. Nah, I’m cool,” he replied.

“Spin around for me real quick, then,” Mary instructed. “I’m gonna check you for weapons.”

Swally shot a sideways glance to Kaykay. By this time, I’d made it around the car and was slowly walking towards the two men, veering towards Kaykay.

“What’s going on, man?” I asked, as I approached him.

Kaykay didn’t respond. Not verbally. As Mary made physical contact with Swally and began to pat him down, and Kyle put his second foot down on the pavement after stopping the car, Kaykay grimaced at me, spun on his heels, and began to sprint away from me, burying his right hand in the front right pocket of his puffy coat.

My upper body fell forward as I crouched down, beginning my sprint, giving chase. “Stop!” I ordered, bringing my hand up to my radio’s microphone on my chest. Keying the mic, I announced over our dispatch channel, “Emergency! Foot pursuit on Mission towards 7th!”

And just after those words left my mouth, Kaykay pulled out a semi-automatic pistol, a German-looking nine millimeter with a long barrel. My next words over the air and to announce it’s presence to those around me, “GUN! GUN!”

Yell something like that over a police radio, and even the laziest cop on the street fires up the reds and blues.

Within the first twenty feet of the chase I had already produced my forty caliber pistol from its home on my hip, keeping it ready in my hand if Kaykay decided to give me even the slightest indication that he planned on shooting me. For some reason, and god knows why, simply whipping the gun out didn’t at the time inspire me to lay waste to the armed gangster in front of me. I can only attribute this hesitation to countless previous foot pursuits in similar circumstances, wherein the suspect whips the gun out of his waistband or pocket, only to summarily discard it somewhere wherein it’ll be difficult to retrieve. This is what I figured Kaykay would do: toss the gun within the first hundred feet.

But he didn’t.

The more disturbing reason for my hesitation was the fact that I didn’t want to shoot Kaykay in the back. Now, tactically, it shouldn’t have made a difference. He was gangster armed with a gun. He wasn’t discarding it. There’s only one reason to keep a firearm in such a situation, and I was the most likely target. What should have been going through my mind was: SHOOT, DECK, SHOOT! Don’t worry about knee-jerkers quarterbacking on Monday morning! Save your ass!

But I didn’t.

As I sprinted forward behind him, Kaykay first juked right a few steps then quickly spun halfway to the left, running diagonally across the sidewalk, the gun pumping in front of his body. Kaykay looked over his shoulder back at me, and I was all but certain that he was deciding whether or not to take a shot.

In response, I slowed my gait to a trot, bringing my own gun up to a two-handed firing position. I yelled out, “DROP IT! DON’T DO IT!” My finger found the trigger as I superimposed the front site of my weapon on the center of Kaykay’s torso. Yet in the background, in my distant field of fire, a landscape of occupied vehicles and pedestrians on the sidewalk made me again reluctant to pull the trigger.

Kaykay, seeing my gun come up, spun back away from me and continued to run. I continued to chase.

In the left side of my vision’s periphery, I saw Kyle’s car paralleling Kaykay in the street. I knew Kyle’s plan: to let the fleeing gangster tire himself out enough until Kyle could cut him off with the car and run him down. We always did it this way. But I had no idea if Kyle knew Kaykay still had the gun.

I yelled out into my radio, “Kyle! Gun! Gun!” for good measure, if he hadn’t heard the first broadcast.

The echoing sound of sirens hit my ears as Kaykay rounded the corner to northbound 7th Street, the eastern sidewalk. I rounded the corner as well, about thirty feet behind, trying to make up lost yardage from the previous near-shooting I’d just been in.

Halfway down the block, Kyle made his move, jumping the big Crown Vic’s front tires onto the sidewalk, throwing the thing into park and then alighting from the car on foot. Kyle, a talented athlete, sprang forward a few steps and then shoved Kaykay towards the building line, sending him off his feet. The gangster flew through the air, down onto the pavement. The gun bounced from his hand upon impact, clacking against the marble outside of the stately government building which took up most of the block. In moments, I crashed my knee down onto Kaykay’s downed form as he scattered to get back up.

To say that I was angry or even really, very, severely pissed at this point would have been an understatement. Frustration knows no peer to having a righteous, maybe life-saving shot and not being able to take it due to a poor field of fire. A dangerous criminal had pulled a gun on me, and obviously thought about using it. He had to be forced to a stop, and was still trying to get back up, maybe even get back to his gun.

Socking Kaykay in his face, and feeling his body momentarily slack, stunned by the blow, did much to enhance my calm.

“Get on your stomach!” I growled, while flipping the gangster over by his hip and arm. “Put your hands behind your back! Do it now!”

Kyle quickly seized the gun from the ground as I cuffed Kaykay’s wrists up.

Kyle looked down at our prisoner and said, superfluously but none the less sincerely, “You’re under arrest.”

During an ensuing search of Kaykay’s clothing, I located about forty ‘dime bags’ of weed and about $400.00. Mary had taken Swally into custody as Kyle and I chased Kaykay for also possessing a good amount of weed, obviously possessed for the purpose of street sales. Swally also had another few hundred bucks in cash.

The gun Kaykay had was used in a shooting in Stockton, wherein a man was shot during a weed deal. The victim was too afraid of retaliation to identify his shooter.

Months later, both gangsters pled guilty to felony charges. Swally’s probation was modified and extended. Kaykay took a felony conviction for credit for time served and three years probation. The public defender said that he was a young man without a criminal record who had just made a one-time mistake. They both got stay away orders for three years from the 1000 block of Market Street. Both were already out of custody when they took these sweet deals. The visiting judge from Los Angeles said that Kaykay’s case was “outrageous” and “a state prison case anywhere else in California,” if I recall correctly.

Within six months both were back in custody, on separate occasions, for being gang members in the possession of loaded firearms. (I was involved in Swally’s gun arrest; I might write about that one later.) Both those guns were found to have been used in gang-related shootings. Kaykay’s arrest was after a high-speed car chase. If that isn’t enough, between the two described gun arrests, Kaykay was pulled over and another gang member in his vehicle was arrested with a loaded gun stuffed in his waistband. I think it’s pretty unlikely that Kaykay was ignorant of this when he let the fellow gang member into his vehicle.

I know that I’ll see Kaykay again on the street one day, probably sooner than later. And I imagine that I’ll smile at him the same way I smile at Swally: artificially, like a crocodile.

So It Goes

2009-04-01T01:56:00.000-07:00

At 2330 we finished a buy-bust in the Tenderloin. Before that, for three hours, our undercover guy trudged all over the dirty streets looking for dealers to purchase illegal drugs from. It was an exceptionally slow night. The corners were all but barren. Users did abound, but dealers were in short supply. Another detail from the department had been out doing a buy-bust earlier, and reported a similar amount of difficulty. The block was "hot", rife with police or so the traffickers thought, and the dirty TL was well aware.

It took far too long, but we got our five buys in, eventually. I was on an arrest team. My partner and I handled the report and follow-up investigation for the third planned transaction.

After the report was finished, and after the re-booking packets were completed to provide to the District Attorney's Office, I rolled by the bar for a minute or two; I needed to quiet my mind. I tried to not think about our horribly mismanaged "war on drugs" and the futility of it all. Plus, my buddy was there, behind the bar working. And in this faltering economy I couldn't see a reason to not to go enjoy a beer when he was pouring them for free, not counting tips.

After a delicious pint of Hunter's Point Porter, at 0130, I headed out to my motorcycle and cast my gaze upon the downtown area. At 5th and Mission a tower of apartments flickered little hints of life through their windows, the blue glow of television shows winking to me through double-paned glass - most units obviously containing folks deep in slumber, or at least trying to obtain the same, but some still up. For a moment, I smiled at City life, just seconds earlier pledging to my bartender friend that one day soon I would leave the urban environment, perhaps even the entire Bay Area, for a sparsely-populated land where the rumored "Big Sky" did reside: Montana; Wyoming; Colorado... somewhere far away. But that apartment building nagged at me, and even grounded me when I looked at it. There was something so very poetic about the little living spaces broadcasting their goings-on in the night.

I jumped on my bike and weaved through streets home, passing through the Tenderloin for the first time that day, in the early morning. At Ellis and Jones, not three hours before, there weren't any dealers. Yet fast forward a few hours later, I roared by, carried by the big V-twin between my legs, and business did boom. Dealers were everywhere, surrounded by a sea of customers, a mob of dark skin and black hooded sweatshirts. Something in my head told me to ignore the predominate skin color. Intellectually, I knew that white people sucked just as badly as everybody else. But watching young black men and women sell poison to older black men and women just filled me with disgust - oh, the tragedy; and oh, the irony.

I shook my helmeted head and moved from westbound Ellis Street to northbound Larkin. In two blocks the parade of prostitutes started. Via rough estimate I counted at least fifteen in the span of a few hundred feet, some obviously men in heels, some obviously haggard users, and some downright tempting in their overt, youthful sexuality. But rather than stop, as no-doubt so many other men had done before, I just kept riding - outrage and disgust propelling me to the sanctity of my bed.

And, once home, as I laid my head down for the night; I couldn't help but think that all I had dedicated myself to, some of what I was willing to die for, was an exercise in futility.

I grabbed the laptop and searched for property in Montana, property that I would never own, because the work here won't ever be done.

Tough Guys

2009-03-14T02:12:00.000-07:00

Tough guys: they’re everywhere.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like anymore; the bullies of the modern world are out in full force. One can find them in any roadhouse in Tinyville, USA, or lining the sidewalks in the urban ghetto or barrio. Hell, even suburbia is filled with wannabe hard-asses emboldened by loud cars or the presence of like-minded bully companions.

Over the last decade it just seems every young man between sixteen and twenty-four wants to be the biggest, baddest motherfucker on the block. And this kind of general, widespread malice is glorified in music, in movies, by millionaire NBA or NFL stars and on TV. It’s apparently fine that a significant portion of our biggest stars engaged in - or continue to engage in - a criminal lifestyle, one that’s now viewed as a fundamental building block to credibility with the fan-base. I mean, there’s a new goddamn MTV show starring a man, a rapper named ‘T.I.’, who was arrested during an ATF undercover operation in which he was via proxy purchasing three MACHINEGUNS and two silencers. He’s a convicted felon already, by the way. Said show is a reality show in which T.I. talks to at-risk teens, preaching to them about the dangers of life on the streets. Certainly, this has nothing to do at all with him trying to stay out of jail by swaying popular opinion in his favor, right?

I get it, though. I have plenty of testosterone coursing through my veins. I understand the desire to be tough, because women are – though many deny it – turned on by acts of violence, and such violence is an intrinsic part of being male. Men are pre-programmed to pound their chests with their fists and scare away rival alpha males. Men often need a crucible, a coming of age, or dare I say a struggle against some common enemy.

There was a time when men who wanted to go learn to kick ass went into the military or policing and learned discipline - the judicious use of force. Now kids grow up in the culture of street gangs. The common enemy is the people who grew up on a different block. The feuding armies are comprised of schoolmates.

San Francisco is filled with tough guys. If you don’t believe me, take a walk in the downtown area in and around the Tenderloin District. Still not convinced, how about a nice jaunt down the T-Third line? Get out at Hudson and walk south until you hit Williams. If that doesn’t do it, go to the lion’s dens of San Francisco’s criminal street gangs: Alemany, Army Street, VGs, Knock Out Posse, Page Street, Hustle Boys, Eddy Rock, 800 block, Mac Block, 25th Street, Zoo Block, Garlington, Oakdale Mob, Westmob, Big Block, Kirkwood, Swiss Cheese, 2 Rock, Sunnydale DBG, Towerside, 52 Mob, 31st Street, 24th Street, 22B, 21ABL, LNS, SFM, Backstreets, Precita Mob, 26th Street, 19th Street, Mara Salvatrucha, 16th Street, Cambodian Crips, 11th Street, Parkside Mob, Randolph, Hilltop, Q Street, Hells Angels, Bay Riders, Kings of Cali, and the many others I forgot.

It’s become cool to be a bully. It’s positive slang to be ‘gangsta.’ Young men used to throw footballs around when they were bored. Now, they go out looking for purses to snatch, or meek boys and girls with IPods to rob. They look for people in ‘enemy’ territory to shoot at. Thugging for the sake of thugging. It makes me sick.

When I started ‘the job’, I used to truly sympathize with the social, psychological and/or economic conditions that made violent monsters out of people. Now, it just makes me happy when I get to bully the bullies. Call me jaded, but if you and your six thug life-living buddies savagely beat up a guy to steal a few dollars and a cell phone from him, and I catch you, I’m not pulling any punches that I get to throw. I’ll jump at the chance to throw them, in fact. And I’ll laugh the whole time while I do it. I know it’s not healthy; I just can’t stand to see weaker people get picked on anymore.

Yeah, I get the irony.

Hope

2009-01-09T02:54:00.001-08:00

Hope.

First off: I voted for Barak Obama in the primary and presidential elections. I believe in his vision for America. McCain was and is a good man and probably would be a fine president, but things aren't great right now in this country, and I believed (and still do) that we needed a radical direction change in our domestic and foreign policies. (I won't get into the Palin thing. Just... um, no.)

And I want to have hope.

Sometimes I have it in short supply. And, often, when I feel pangs of it creeping into my heart, some incident at work will send it scattering away. Hope is a rare commodity in my line of work. Take tonight, for example:

Danny and I are on patrol working specialized enforcement in the Fillmore, in the wake of a recent spate of violence there.

To summarize today's incident, a gang member is stabbed to death by his girlfriend. His funeral is today. At the funeral, rival gang members creep up and one of them fires an assault weapon, a machine pistol, at the funeral's attendees.

Coworkers of mine are right around the corner. They hear the shots and race in. In moments they are in the middle of a crowd of the home-team gang members and other mourners at the funeral chasing the suspects. Heroism on the part of my coworkers ensues, as they take several suspects into custody as angry crowd members attempt to lynch the prisoners away from the officers. The cops get the gun. They get the guys. They survive. Nobody gets seriously hurt. People get booked. Evidence gets inventoried. Words get typed. Charges will be leveled. Maybe somebody will write a news story saying that police officers in SF risked their lives to arrest people who were shooting at a crowd of strangers, most if not all of whom were African-American. I doubt it though.

At my office just before this all happened, I clicked on sfgate.com and there was a string of stories about the BART police officer who shot a guy, an African-American man, on NYE.

The rioting, rage and turmoil in the wake of this incident has turned into national news. It shows little sign of dying down anytime soon. A vocal portion of the population seems convinced that cops are mindless, murderous thugs.

While the funeral shooting caper unfolded, I was sitting in an unmarked car monitoring the residence of a prolific dope dealer, way across town. The surveillance wound up turning into a three hour mission that brought us to the other end of The City, blending in on several bus lines, on sidewalks and in traffic. At end result, we let the suspect walk for the night, and will work on the project tomorrow.

When I was sitting in my unmarked car near the dope dealer's house, I turned on my vehicle's radio to KMEL. One of our police commissioners was on the air with the afternoon DJ participating in a telephone forum regarding the goings-on in Oakland. Opinions vary, to be sure, but I can't help but feel the obvious disconnect that society seems to have with its policemen. I don't get it. We are right here. We are family members, friends and neighbors. We come from all ethnic groups and religious backgrounds. If everybody is six people away from Kevin Bacon, we can't all be that far away from a cop or two, can we?

At the end of the night, Danny and I are rolling around on a major east-to-west thoroughfare in the Fillmore area, working late because of the drama earlier. We come across a vehicle accident and stop to make sure everybody is okay. It appears that a black man in a Ford has rear-ended an Asian woman in a Honda. We recognize the at-fault party, the black guy, as a notorious cocaine and/or crack dealer from San Francisco who is on federal probation. The guy's arrest history goes back to 1980. He's been arrested in SF for robbery, discharging a firearm, carrying a loaded and concealed firearm, forgery, sale of crack cocaine, sale of cocaine, sale of marijuana, possession for sale of cocaine, possession for sale of crack, aggravated assault, resisting a peace officer by means of threat or violence, battery and many, many more charges.

One bit of probable cause leads to another (the dealer has clearly been drinking) and I pull out a bunch of bindles of cocaine from the dealer's vehicle. We arrest him.

During the whole thing I can't help but think about the Oakland riots, about how a white cop shot a black man. Here I am putting handcuffs on a black man who got way unlucky tonight: he crashed his car and two narc-savvy cops just happen to watch the whole thing go down. Meanwhile, the Asian lady isn't in handcuffs. But it isn't because she's an Asian lady; it's because she isn't a many times over convicted felon who has been drinking and transporting a cocaine for the purpose of sales. John or Jane Q. Public with the video camera doesn't know all this though. Yet, I suspect that they will formulate their opinions anyhow.

As I sit the suspect down in the car, I see he's wearing a garish Barak Obama shirt bearing the text, "HOPE."

Uh huh.

The Root of All Stupidity

2008-11-15T01:17:00.000-08:00

We’re on the second night in a row doing buy-busts, and it’s apparent that the dealers know the block is hot, they know the police are out in force looking to lock some folks up. I’m in an unmarked with Nathan and the undercover or “UC” hasn’t hit, bought dope, for forty-five minutes. It’s going to be a long night. To pass the time, Nathan and I have the FM radio on the jazz station playing softly in the background so we can here our police radios, and we are talking about our mutual lack of enthusiasm for strip clubs, as they really are a waste of money. I compare the experience to going to a restaurant at which one does not get to order. Nathan agrees.

“I’ve never even been to a strip club in SF,” I tell Nathan. “I usually only wind up in them when I’m with friends in Vegas or something… Well, except for that time when I went to a call at the Market Street Cinema. That was a strip club here.”

“Come to think of it, me neither.” Nathan adds.

I go on to tell Nathan the story of that infamous call.

Rewind several years…

An off-duty private armed security guard called 911 to report to the police that he was involved in a pay dispute with employees of the seediest strip club on Market Street. It was during my second phase of field training, and I was with my field training officer. I was still pretty green and didn’t expect to deal with what followed.

The guard met us just outside the lobby of the establishment, and through the glass I could see a gaggle of scantily clad and/or semi-nude women with stern looks on their faces. The doorman at the club didn’t seem amused either.

The security guard reportee told me that he received a lap dance from a stipper in the private “VIP” room of the club. During the lap dance, he negotiated receiving a blowjob for a set price; I think it was fifty dollars. The stripper reportedly agreed, accepted the money, but then failed to deliver on the blowjob. An argument ensued. The man was ejected from the club, and used his cellular phone to report the heinous injustice.

Being on field training, I knew I was to treat all persons with dignity and respect as stated in the General Orders, the big book of rules of the SFPD. However, as I knew my FTO pretty well by that point, I also knew that he wanted me to learn to talk to people in ways that they understand in order to effectively and efficiently communicate my wishes and decisions.

I believe I told the jilted John the following: “Are you fucking retarded? Get out of here, you goddamn moron! You should be ashamed of yourself! I should arrest you right here!”

My FTO, Tim, added, “Don’t worry. He’s not a real cop.”

I then attempted to severely admonish the stripper, as I thought it likely she had in fact gone along with the sexual solicitation and ripped the man off. But the whole thing was hysterical, and she was surrounded by topless women who looked at me like I was a melting ice cream cone on a hot day. My face was beet red. I mumbled something like, “Don’t do that again - ’Kay, buh-bye,” and ran out of the building.

Back to the present...

Having done many undercover buys, I know the UC is no doubt frustrated and his anxiety is growing. He must be telling himself not to think about the fact that the arrest teams are antsy and just want to get the five arrests down so they can process the prisoners, write the reports, book the evidence and get the hell out of the policeman persona for the night. The UC, not even factoring in the serious physical danger he is in, has a stressful job. It’s up to him – or her, but not tonight – to play his role well enough to convict dealers and users alike that he is “cool” and a regular narcotic customer - despite being a stranger and a cop who has made hundreds of arrests and/or buys in the same area, often more than once from the same dealer. Dealers and addicts are always nervous and distrustful. If there’s an X-Games worthy form of acting, it’s working undercover.

The UC further has to remember the circumstances of each narcotic purchase; label the evidence and remember what rock, pill, bindle, tablet, sack of weed and/or piece of heroin was from which buy; and to stay in sight of his or her close-cover officer so he can remain safe(er) and also be able to effectively signal that the transaction is complete and the arrest teams should move in.

Finally, at minute fifty, a “hook” (generally a user who earns credit with drug dealers by finding prospective customers) leads the UC to a Honduran crack dealer at Larkin and Eddy. The cover officer says the magic words, “Move in,” over his radio when the buy is complete. Unfortunately, the UC makes the buy in a dark little corner of a building, so the close cover has to hustle over to the UC and quickly confirm who he’s supposed to describe to the arrest teams. The black guy, the hook, is a no-brainer and easy to spot as he has an orange sweatshirt on and is about 6’05”. The “hondo” however is standing next to two other Hondurans and could have easily passed the marked money off, so the close cover tells the arrest teams to detain all three.

As Nathan and I roll up, the hook is being arrested around the corner from the dealer(s?) on Larkin Street. I jump out to assist with that arrest and Nathan continues to the Hondurans’ location, as the cover officer relays that the guy who sold the rock to the UC is the one wearing the white hooded sweatshirt and the green baseball hat on backwards. This information, though pertinent, isn’t really important as the first arriving arrest team has already figured out who the dealer is: he’s the guy maniacally chewing on the marked money trying to eat it before the police officers charging towards him can recover it and use it in court as further evidence of the sale.

The first two officers grab the dealer and order him to spit out the money while jamming their knuckles into the mastoid process behind the crack-seller’s jaw, the site of a cluster of nerves that are extremely sensitive to pressure. However, the stimulation of the mastoid does nothing to affect the mechanical process of swallowing, so as Nathan runs up, one of the arresting coppers jabs the dealer in his stomach, hoping that he’ll forcefully exhale and be unable to swallow.

The dealer flails and screams for mercy in Spanish through gritted teeth while chewing the money like his very soul depends on it. Nathan grabs the dealer as he collapses on the ground, shielding his head from blows he no doubt expects are coming his way at any moment, still chewing away and swallowing with big, painful-looking gulps.

Nathan and the two cops who are already there all contemplate doing further violence to the man to get the money out of his mouth – i.e. choking him a bit. However, in a moment of clarity and logic, Sergeant White says, “Okay, forget it. It’s over,” and we let the dealer finish his twenty dollar meal. Sergeant White rightly figures the UC already has the rock of crack cocaine. That’s the real evidence of the crime. We only do the marked money thing as gravy. It’s not required. It’s just nice to have. Why deal in court with some random unemployed dude’s out of context video footage of a police struggle when you don’t really have to?

As he’s led to the waiting patrol car for transport to Tenderloin Station to be booked, the dealer has a look of smug satisfaction on his face, as if he got one over on us, a crucifix dangling from his neck. In the back of the car, I bet he says a silent prayer thanking Jesus for the strength to help conceal his felonious act, a pious thanks to Him for perhaps allowing him to poison his fellow man for financial gain. Nathan tells me the story of the arrest as I mean-mug the dealer, praying that smile gets wiped off his face when a deputy tells his naked, shivering form in a few hours to squat down and cough.

One down. Four to go.

Up Top

2008-10-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

The buy bust:

1- A police operation targeting street-level drug dealers, utilizing an undercover officer to purchase the drugs, and numerous arrest teams to apprehend the dealers.
2- A police operation condemned or celebrated by departmental brass and/or politicians depending on the prevailing political winds and shopping season.
3- An effective way to use federal anti-drug trafficking grant money.
4- A fun way to put the metal bracelets on some jerks in a team environment.
5- Productive overtime.
6- The source of a few good stories and a few good laughs with every operation.
7- A good way to get assaulted, stabbed and/or robbed if one is the undercover officer.
8- A good way to get in a solid donnybrook or a harried foot chase if one is on an arrest team.
9- A good way to grow completely overwhelmed by the enormity of scum, tragedy, poverty, greed, cruelty and avarice plaguing downtown San Francisco and certain areas of the Mission and 3rd Street in the Bayview.

The last words of any undercover narcotic purchase are always the same, at least the ones coming over the radio to the waiting arrest teams ordering them to effect the arrest of the violator. They are as follows, “Done deal. Move in.” Generally, before those words are uttered, the location of the violator and his/her/their description(s) have already been broadcast, excepting those occasional scenarios when a deal goes down in a matter of seconds, unexpectedly.

Usually, when the arrest takes place the undercover officer is already walking away from the dealer, evidence of the transaction in hand. The numerous plainclothes arrest teams roll up in unmarked cars, get out, and grab the dealer and coconspirators, if any. In a few minutes, said dealer is made ready for booking after being summarily identified by the undercover officer, and transported to a holding facility. When enough arrest teams become available, and all parties are ready to go, the proverbial ball of the next buy starts to roll.

A large percentage of buys and arrests go smoothly. Others, eh… not so much.

“Up Top”

The area in and around Hyde between Sutter and all the way down to Market is the area where the “Mexicans” - as they are known on the streets among consumers of base rock cocaine, crack - peddle their poison. These “Mexicans” are in reality Hondurans for the most part, but crackheads tend not to be overly geo-politically and sociologically plugged in, or so I’ve found. Cops who police this area often call the northern part of the described corridor, Hyde around O’Farrell and up to Sutter, “up top.” Conversely, the area more towards Market and around UN Plaza is “down low.”

To further confuse things, Hondurans deal almost exclusively from “up top,” meaning they store their additional product in their mouths, sealed in small pieces of clear plastic to prevent death by overdose. These dealers can often be seen carrying around water bottles, sodas or bottled juice, which they use to aid the rapid swallowing of many rocks. This is done if the police are closing in and getting ready to try to “recover the additional,” meaning get the rocks out of the dealers’ mouth by means generally most painful. The additional, far more revolting use for the liquid beverage is to aid in the regurgitation of the swallowed drugs, so that the dope can be re-inserted into the mouth and sold as good as new, like nothing horribly disgusting ever happened.

Dope is money, and dealers don’t like to waste it.

There’s a third police use of the phrase “up top,” which is to denote going up to the top of a building or other object to gain a birds-eye perspective of a situation, usually drug deals. If a dope-savy copper were to apply him or herself in the correct manner, he or she could go “up top” somewhere “up top” to watch Hondos sell dope from “up top.” This happens quite often, and only the greenest officers are terribly confused by the nomenclature.

The undercover for the operation, Manny, was out looking for play on Geary between Hyde and Larkin. It had been an okay night. A few fish had bitten already. He’d bought weed from a young black thug on Market Street, an eighty milligram oxycontin tablet from a white dude pretending to be wheelchair-bound on Jones near Golden Gate, and a piece of heroin from a black dude in his thirties in a blue velour suit and his similarly attired black teenage girlfriend at Leavenworth and Turk. He’d made it all the way up to Geary since then, hitting up a few suspected dealers, but hadn’t been able to make another buy.

Manny hooked up with a Hondo who walked outside of a bar on the south side of Geary. The Hondo was holding a pool cue, so we heard over our radio. Per the eyes on the ground, he looked like this: “Latin male, young, white hat, white track jacket and jeans. He’s holding a pool cue.”

The officer with the eyeball continued, “Okay, he spit one out. Manny is looking at the product. Looks good. Okay, done deal. Move in.”

Just around the corner on Hyde, DJ put our idling unmarked into drive and pulled into traffic.

“He’s going back in the bar. Watch for the money handoff,” the radioman advised.

DJ hit the gas a bit as we rounded the corner onto Geary, anxious to get there before the marked money disappeared into the hands of a coconspirator or the bar’s cash register. We pulled up and came to a rapid halt, just short of the bar’s façade. As I jumped out of the car and pulled my star out to identify myself as a cop, I saw a Latino guy in the window near a pool table look at me, then turn his head towards the interior of the bar and yell out what had to be a warning.

“Made!” I called out to DJ as I ran through the front door, letting him know that we’d been spotted already and had to step it up a bit.

As I entered through the front door, I saw four or five Hondo-looking characters around pool tables, a lone female bartender, and a Latin male in his early twenties wearing a white hat, a white track jacket and jeans walking quickly towards the bar’s rear. As I moved towards him, he turned and glanced over his right shoulder back at me. He slowed, and for some reason the hairs on the back of my neck went up.

When I got just within reaching distance, the Hondo whipped his right arm up getting ready to club me with the bottle he had kept hidden until that moment. Though I focused on the bottle, which he held around the neck with an inverted fist, I could see the suspect’s grimace telegraphing his obvious intent to shatter the bottle over my head. For obvious reasons, I had no desire for this to happen.

I shot both my hands forward and intercepted the Hondo’s arm before it completed the windup, ripping the bottle from his hand and dodging past him with one unpracticed though lucky move. When I arrived behind him, I reached my right arm around the suspect’s neck, and grabbed him in a headlock, the kind one can easily convert to a sleeper hold should it become necessary. The Hondo reached up with both his hands towards my arm in an attempt to free himself, and began to twist and struggle. To counter, I shifted my weight and took him to the ground backwards while ordering, “Stop resisting. You’re under arrest!” I released the headlock and jumped up to a kneeling position on the man’s back, reaching for his left arm to cuff.

Just then, directly behind me, I looked up and saw DJ crash his right fist into another Honduran’s face, sending him reeling back and the pool cue he was in the process of trying to use like a baton sailing through the air like a javelin. I soon found out that DJ had intercepted the main suspect’s buddy as he ran up behind me to beat me with the pool cue while his cohort used the bottle.

The bonus side effect of DJ’s quick thinking blow: numerous rocks crack falling to the ground from the javelin-thrower’s mouth, like a crack-dealer piñata. DJ ordered the other pool players back, and in the wake of the violence taking place before them, they wisely complied. I handcuffed my guy and found the marked money in a pant pocket. DJ and a few cops from the next-to-arrive arrest team handcuffed number two.

Fast forward ten minutes and we were back out, ready to go and parked around the corner from Manny while he searched for another rock. Two more dealers down. Thousands more to go.

Fair Winds

2008-09-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever; the goal is to create something that will.”

-Chuck Palahniuk

It’s an exceptional day today, the anniversary of a horrific morning in America that sent aftershocks around the world, rumblings of violence and echoes of grief that still persist seven years later. If there’s any day for the people of my generation to pause and give thanks for the people and things close to them that give them joy and make their respective experiences on this planet special, I think this is it.

On September 11th, 2001 my roommate woke me up and told me to turn on the TV. I watched in horror as mass murder was broadcast live for all to see. A year after that, I stood at attention in a police recruit uniform, baking in the Indian Summer heat at Union Square, steeled in my desire to protect the people in my home, my city, and my friends and family from those that would seek to harm them. In the following years, when on duty, I’d place a black mourning band around my SFPD star, trying to show respect not only to those brave men and women of the various public service agencies that perished on the 11th, but to everyone who died that day. Five years out, I showed up to work at Ingleside Station a bit early and used a bar of soap to write across the rear window of my patrol car, “WE HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN.” My partner for the day, Sean, and I nodded with approval, and set out on patrol for the next ten hours, paying our respects to the fallen by carrying on.

Today, I’m headed into work in a few minutes. Across the bay, in Martinez, a policeman who was shot to death preparing to make entry into a room where an armed assailant was holding six people captive is being buried. Before succumbing to his fatal wounds, Sergeant Paul Starzyk was able to return fire. In a few short minutes of gunfire, three people were dead: the heroic officer, the suspect and a female hostage.

While at work today, I’m going to try to remind myself if I feel fear, anxiety or overwhelmed by the enormity of crime in SF that I’m lucky to staff the thin blue line. I’m lucky to be alive. On this solemn anniversary, I’m going to use my grief to bolster my faith in my profession. And if I am to one day make the ultimate sacrifice, I will be lucky to die fighting for something that matters.

Fair winds Sergeant Starzyk. Fair winds to the men and women who died in the attacks seven years ago. You are all heroes.

We haven’t forgotten.

Taking Off, Part 2

2008-09-04T02:03:00.000-07:00

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?”

Taking Off, Part 1

2008-08-24T22:32:00.000-07:00

On a foggy, cold Sunday morning Mark and I sat in a marked patrol car on Hawes Street, just south of the intersection with Fitzgerald Avenue, monitoring the only vehicular entrance and exit to the Alice Griffith Housing Development, a name few residents of said project ever used. Colloquially, “Double Rock” was the development’s real name.

Double Rock was – and is still to this day – San Francisco’s cheapest housing development. Rent at that time was in the single digits for some residents, a stark contrast to the likely minimally used free wireless internet available therein, just another confounding, polarized quirk all too common in The City. Before I ever worked in the Bayview Police District, a fence was erected around Double Rock in an attempt to stem the drive-through drug trade. Somebody further decided to pay an armed guard to sit in a kiosk and monitor the persons going to and fro. However, the guard tower was empty that morning. And even when occupied, the guard was too isolated and understandably afraid to risk reporting any crime.

We were newly on probation, and consequently probably should have been working with senior officers. But the Bayview 0600 to 1600 hours watch, the “early day” watch, was thin. It often consisted of about four total patrolmen to cover the district’s five sectors and five violent, crime-plagued public housing developments until the 0800-1800 shift came on duty. The veterans were set in their morning routines, and obviously didn’t want eager, energetic, healthy, young policemen messing with them. Consequently, Mark and I were assigned to work together in the “five car,” covering the area in and around Candlestick Park, including Double Rock. It worked out well this way. Mark and I could keep and eye on one another and try to get into as much trouble as possible at the start of our shift, while the twenty-plus year guys could enjoy their breakfasts in peace… at least, until we started yelling over the radio for backup.

On the morning of my first shift at Bayview, Mark and I pulled a car over and found one of the drunken Samoan gangster occupants to be in possession of a stolen, loaded and concealed forty-caliber Glock semi-automatic pistol. Since then, we liked to hang out near the project to try and catch the bad guys on their ways home from long nights of mischief. To aid in our formation of probable cause to interact with such persons, a stop sign was conveniently placed at the intersection in front of us, at the eastbound approach to the projects on “Fitz.”

The existence of such a controlled intersection in front of Double Rock’s entrance made a perfect “duck pond,” a location cops can hang out in to locate violators. While the term is usually related to traffic enforcement, duck ponds come in several forms: intersections with stop signs or lights that driver’s or pedestrians frequently ignore; places where dope is used and/or sold in the direct view of easy, concealed surveillance locations; and scenic overlooks that turn into drunken teenage, lover, gangster and/or teenage gangster hangouts come the disappearance of the sun behind the horizon. If an officer finds the right kind of hiding place at the right kind of duck pond, it becomes a matter of preference as to who one wants to stop.

We hadn’t been parked for more than three minutes or so when the first car of the morning blew the stop sign at Fitz and Hawes at about twenty miles per hour, heading into Double Rock. The car was an old, brown Honda Civic hatchback, a mid-eighties model. A lone, thuggish-looking black male driver was at the wheel, tilted way back in his seat, his head visible behind the door post delineating the front and rear seats in a classic gangster lean. Mark was driving and immediately put the idling car into drive, chirping onto the roadway to follow the Civic. As we jolted forward and pulled behind the Civic heading through the main gates of the housing project, I saw the driver grimace as he eyed us through his rearview mirror.

Mark flipped on our overhead lights and gave a short blast with the electronic air-horn, tailgating the Civic in an obvious effort to pull him over. Despite our efforts, the driver of the Civic continued forward, turning from Fitzgerald to northbound Nichols abruptly.

I picked up our onboard radio’s microphone and broke the early morning radio silence. “Three-Charlie-fifteen-Adam,” I called to the dispatcher.

“Go ahead, Charlie-fifteen-Adam,” the groggy female voice answered.

“Yeah,” I said as the driver double tapped his brakes in front of us, “uh, we’re trying to pull over a car and he doesn’t seem to be stopping as of yet. We are currently north on Nichols. Wait, now east on Cameron… okay, now he just stopped. We’ll see if this lasts.”

After again jerking the wheel from Nichols onto Cameron, the driver had suddenly stopped the car in the middle of the roadway, making no effort to pull to the side. The wheels on the Civic still faced forward, and the illuminated brake lights indicated that the car was most likely still in drive. Mark and I may have been rookies, but we were pretty confident that our violator was not necessarily planning on staying in our company very long. Ahead of us, the driver looked wide-eyed into his rearview mirror, both his hands now on the steering wheel.

Experience had already taught us that average, sober, law-abiding citizens don’t generally keep on driving for over a block when a marked police vehicle is riding their ass with the emergency lights on. If such drivers do continue forward, it’s either because they are too loaded to tell what’s going on; frantically trying to shove the cocaine into their undershorts, or the gun under the front seat; taking a driving lesson despite being in the country for a matter of hours; or searching for just the right place to bail out of the car and run, set up an ambush, or coordinate a ruse, such as what was soon to happen to us. The normal ruse: bad guy slowly pulls over, waits until the cops get out of their patrol car, and then speeds away at the point in which the cops are as far away from their vehicle as they are going to be.

Staying close to the patrol car may have provided a slow start for a foot chase, but we were much more concerned about being shot at while in the open, and/or being left running back to the police car as the Civic sped away.

“This guy is totally gonna take off,” I said to Mark, though I knew he was thinking the same thing.

“I’ll keep it in drive,” Mark said. “Just crack the door and get ready to jump back in when he bails.”

“Okay,” I answered Mark. “Ready?”

“Three, two, one… go.”

Still holding onto the radio mic, I cracked the passenger-side door of our Crown Vic and put one boot onto the pavement below. I slowly stood halfway out of the car, my left foot still planted on the car’s floorboard, concentrating on the driver’s actions. Half-way out, and half-way in, I looked at the driver’s face in the mirror, and smiled at him as big a grin as I could muster.

“Your move,” I said under my breath.

In as long as it took the electrical signal to make its way from his brain to his foot, the violator floored the Civic and sped away. I let gravity carry my body back into the passenger’s seat, throwing closed the door as I did so. My left hand put the microphone back in front of my lips.

“Yep, dispatch,” I said. “Code thirty-three. He’s taking off.” Such a statement was probably superfluous, as the roar of the Crown Vic’s engine and wail of our car’s siren in the background of my announcement probably conveyed the circumstances just as well.

To be continued…

Pause

2008-08-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

I had only been at Ingleside Station for a week and I was working the car sector covering the area in and around Bernal Heights on swing watch - the 1600 to 0200 hours shift. I was alone, despite the general tradition of two-officers per beat/car-sector in the department. This was because of staffing; at the time Ingleside Station was not the source of much of the department’s attention and therefore was not a priority to keep full of warm bodies. Yet for some reason swing watch at Company-H was remarkably understaffed. I had just transferred over from Bayview Station, where I completed my probationary year. During that year, I saw that Ingleside - Bayview Station’s neighbor to the southwest - more or less never had officers assigned to all of its six beats/sectors. This meant the unstaffed sectors, generally the quietest ones, had to be covered by the neighboring sector cars... meaning more work for everybody.

Though limiting in terms of what an officer can accomplish safely by his or herself, as opposed to with a partner, I was rather happy to be working alone as it meant I didn’t have to roll the proverbial personality-conflict dice at the start of my shift, and could stumble my way through the maze of streets that comprised the district. At district stations, easygoing and enjoyable partners generally “partner-up” with another similarly agreeable coworker, pretty much leaving only the non-partnered variety of coworkers up for grabs. These ronins can be very difficult to get along with, doubly so because they always have the oft frustrating task of working with the FNGs, like I was at the time.

Though I had resided in the southern portion of San Francisco for years, Ingleside was for the most part a tangled mess of unfamiliar streets. Luckily, by working the Bernal Heights car, I at least knew the roads that bordered my beat and some of the major cross streets, so I could find my way to any run with a bit of help from my on-board data terminal and my ticket book sized map of The City.

The run came out as an “A,” the highest priority call for service – the latter, lower two being Bs and Cs. It was a 217, a reported shooting on Franconia, in the “one-car,” my sector. The dispatcher hadn’t even said the second syllable of the street’s name before I knew that I had no idea where Franconia was. I grabbed the microphone to my on-board radio, keyed it with a chirp and told the dispatcher I was responding none the less. It was in my sector, and that meant I had better show up. To not do so, especially as an FNG at a new station, would be peer-relationship suicide.

Because it was a shooting and therefore a “hot” and/or potentially “good” call, a number of other units also broadcasted that they too were responding to back me up. I briefly wondered if they were doing so because I was the new guy and still untested in their eyes. A bit of testy bravado reared its head as I felt a mild urge to state over the air that I had come from Bayview, and was therefore theoretically just as prepared to deal with a shooting as anybody else on the watch.

I pushed aside such feelings and hit the next message key on my data terminal, bringing up information such as the call’s location, priority code, nature, time of dispatch, and a brief description of what the call was about. As I thumbed through my map to locate the listed cross-streets, the dispatcher relayed more information.

“Units responding to the 217 on Franconia, be advised that this is an upstairs neighbor calling stating that she thinks her downstairs neighbor shot himself in the back yard. She can see him through the window lying down. He isn’t moving and there’s a gun next to him on the grass.”

I picked up my mic once more and stated, “Henry-one-David copies.”

After tracing a quick route on my map with my finger and hopefully committing the necessary turns to memory, I tossed the map on the empty passenger’s seat of the patrol car and accelerated forward, anxious to get to the call first because it was in my sector, and because some needy part of me wanted to prove myself competent to my new coworkers.

I pulled up in front of the house, the eastern side of which bordered a parking lot. I turned off my patrol car’s headlights and put on the flashing amber overhead lights, a common courtesy to coworkers and/or allied agencies - SFFD, Animal Care and Control, etc. - to guide them in to one’s location, and a good general safety move at night. I exited my vehicle, removing my flashlight as I did so. With my free hand, I told the dispatcher, “Henry-one-David has arrived.”

I walked towards the front door of the house, trying not to take the 911 caller’s words for granted, trying to stay conscious of the possibility that the 911 caller could in fact be the shooter already establishing an alibi. Hell, for all I knew it was a booby-trap and the front stairs of the house were rigged to explode as soon as I set foot on them.

Stranger things have happened to San Francisco police officers.

As I approached the front stairs to the front door of the bi-level Victorian, the dispatcher stated, “Henry-one-David, the 911 caller says to access via the side door that leads to the adjacent parking lot.”

“Check,” I answered in the affirmative.

I walked into the lot, following the pale blue wooden fence to the side entrance to the back yard. I reached for the door’s handle, then remembered my training, remembered that I was alone. I pulled my hand back, took a few steps away from the door, and grasped the top of the fence’s planks with both hands. I pulled myself up, peering into the yard beyond.

“In here, Officer!” A female voice called out as she quickly pulled open the side door, cordless phone in her free hand. She was white, in her twenties, and seemed at first impression to me like a student at the Academy of Art. Two Valencia Street hipster-type roommates emerged into the parking lot behind her.

I dropped down from the fence, and approached the trio, not in any way getting any vibe that would lend to the belief that this group had shot-gunned their downstairs neighbor to death and then had the presence of mind to call 911 to cover the whole thing up. The two men remained silent, wide-eyed as if slapped by the cold hand of the reality of urban living.

“He’s right in here,” she said, gesturing through the gate into the yard with a bizarre, sheepish expression displayed on her face.

I walked through the gate, passing the caller and her comrades. I heard the latch shut behind me, but I paid it no mind, my attention diverted to what was before me: prone in the middle of the immaculately manicured grass and well-landscaped backyard the motionless body of a young man in his early twenties - around my age at the time - lay staring up vacantly at the full-moonlit clouds, arms and legs splayed out like an X, a twenty-gauge shotgun laying across his left thigh. The harsh contrast of violent death and idyllic urban garden an eerie, surreal and disturbing sight still frozen in my memory.

“We just heard a bang, and looked out the window and... there he was,” the girl said.

I approached the body, and knelt down beside him. His front teeth were chipped and his head was positioned in such a way that it seemed he’d likely had the barrel in his mouth, angled in such a manner that the blast went through the back of his head, which was hidden by the ground. I was relieved. Shotgun suicides can be horrific - I’d seen them before - and were the shotgun in this instance a larger gauge, the dead man’s head likely would have been mostly blown away. Though I could see bits of skull, brain and blood on the grass to the rear of his head when I swept my flashlight’s beam across it, I still felt compelled to check the pulse in his neck. It was absent, as I expected. In retrospect I think my urge to touch the dead man was an effort to make the scene more real, to focus my attention to the tasks at hand and to pay my respects to the departed.

I keyed my mic. “Henry-one-David,” I said quietly, for some reason, like I didn’t want to wake him. “Can you send me an ambulance, no hurry? I’ve got an approximately twenty-two year old male with a gunshot to the head. No pulse and he’s not breathing.”

“Ten-four,” the dispatcher answered.

“Deck, you got sufficient help?!” a fellow officer broadcasted, asking if I was okay, obviously worried that I was by myself at a homicide scene.

I looked up at the three silent bystanders, who stared transfixed at the still body before them. “Ten-four; I’m okay. Appears self-inflicted, initially.”

I interviewed the three upstairs neighbors as the SFFD wailed to the scene in the background, dramatically. They all said the same thing: they heard the shot, looked out the back window and saw the body. The two men didn’t know anything else. The female 911 caller had this to add:

The deceased had recently moved in after going through a bad breakup, about three months prior. A child custody dispute of some sort was involved. His recycling bin was mostly empty bottles of booze and mixers, more each week it seemed. He was nice, charming and quiet, with an air of sadness about him. He spoke of his daughter often, and his face brightened when he talked about seeing her, spending time with her. He played the guitar. He smoked pot now and then. He rode a skateboard to and from the corner store and grocery store. He loved the Beastie Boys. He was slowly building a play-space for his daughter in the living room with the left-over cash from rent, food, utilities and child-support. He didn’t have a car. He mostly rode MUNI.

More of my coworkers, the SFFD engine company and paramedic ambulance arrived. I told the fire personel to tread lightly at the crime scene. After my supervisor arrived, and after Homicide had been notified, we entered the deceased’s apartment and searched it. The closet door was slightly ajar. A Playstation game’s pause screen was displayed on the TV. I smelled incense that had recently been burned. It was like he paused his game just a short while prior to my arrival, picked up his shotgun out of the closet, walked into the back yard, stuck the barrel of the gun in his mouth, and that was it – the end result of thousands of days of growing up and being alive. I found a note on the table in the breakfast nook next to an empty pint of vodka. For some reason, I read it out loud to the other officers in the room around me. That was a mistake.

To My Dearest Daughter Angela,

You’re probably too young to understand this, but I just want you to know that your daddy loves you. I’m sorry I can’t be there for you as your life goes on. Your mommy and me weren’t perfect together, but we made you and you are perfect. It’s just better this way, with me out of the picture. You won’t have my flaws. You are my everything. I love you so much and I will always watch over you.

All my love,

Your Dad

At the end of my shift, when I’d finished the report, I drove home trying not to look at the night sky, the moon still setting aglow the wispy traces of clouds above. When I got home, I walked directly to my kitchen and poured myself a few fingers of whiskey. I drank it down quickly, trying unsuccessfully to get that poor dead dad’s face out of my head, wishing I hadn’t read that damn note.

To Cope...

2008-08-02T02:34:00.000-07:00

Some drink. Some smoke compulsively. Some chew tobacco. Some eat, eat... and eat. Some more or less check-out from the job completely and become empty uniforms, spending their entire days trying not to work. Some take-up second careers in "the trades," or in armed security... something Zen-like, thoughtless. Some teach children soccer, football and/or karate. Some compete in boxing, bowling, basketball, softball, golf or MMA tournaments. Some sleep every waking moment away if given the opportunity. Some drink coffee every two hours. Some stay up all night posting on message boards and/or playing online games. Some go to Las Vegas on their days off and spend all their money in strip clubs. Some go to night classes, or online colleges. Some are immersed in the World of Warcraft. Some go on disability at any excuse, via any pathetic but remotely plausible mechanism. Some take it out on the public. Some go to church. Some magically spend their entire careers bouncing around different cushy desk jobs in the Administration Bureau - answering phones, taking notes, and making coffee - and/or positions on the captain's staff at a district station, answering phones, taking notes and going to get coffee. Some use every single bit of paid time off they accrue and spend about a third of the year far, far away, dreading the remaining 66.33 percent their time in and around work necessary to finance the other part. Some immerse themselves in armchair quarterbacking of the union and/or the departmental administration. Some play musical instruments. Some take powerful medications to alter their serotonin and/or dopamine levels. Some paint. Some juggle multiple sexual partners. Some see shrinks. Some work tons of overtime and spend it all on material goods, toys like cars, motorcycles and/or wave runners. Some leave the job, then miss it and come back - or don't miss it and stay away but always find ways to mention to virtual strangers in casual conversation that they used to be cops. Some tattoo their bodies. Some fish. Some hunt. Some engage in "deviant" sexual practices. Some hide addictions to prescription pain medications. Some read. Some take gorgeous pictures. Some collect things: stamps, comic books, public service agency shoulder patches, guns, action figures, WWII memorabilia, etc. Some commit suicide. Some commit to the job fully, and just never leave work, keeping some irrational, distant hope that some way, some how, the war on crime will finally be won some day if they just give a little more, try a little harder, if they just hold on a little longer.

Some write poetry and/or stories. Some post the same on their blogs.

In my dreams, there are many dead men
Faces half-gone from gunshot or maggot
Blackened skin like banana peels left to cook in the midday sun
Hollow holes where eyes used to be
But still, if you stare long enough, you swear that they move

In my waking thoughts, there are many dead men
They come from different backgrounds, but share a common thread
Some died of violence
Others by nature
But some, if you think hard enough, cling to life in the mind’s dark places

Few that I’ve known get more than a moment
A shake of the head; a brief moment of silence
Many say prayers
They aren’t always audible
But I, for the most part, busy my waking moments with work

Few of the stories and lives are remembered
For some this is best
For others, unjust
As summer turns to fall, the trees turn to skeletons
But spring, and its fresh growth, does much to hide the past

In my dreams, there are many dead men
Some propped up in cars, brains on the headrests
Some smell of urine, alone and cold on the living room’s carpet
Whatever the causes, the diagnosis is always the same
But still, I tell myself: That won’t be me

In my waking thoughts, there are many dead men
And I can sleep soundly, but never alone
I’ve known them so long now
I can’t imagine their absence
But they, I do so wish, should let me rest one day

Shots Fired... Part Two

2008-07-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

Panicked voices erupted from the playground area, where the shots had now obviously come from. “Five-oh, nigga! Five-oh!” I heard a male voice call out, warning others to the forthcoming presence of my coworkers.

I lowered my weapon and began to run forward, towards the voices. As I bounded up a small staircase, towards the building hiding the playground from my sight, I saw two dark figures clad in black from head to toe emerge from the opposite corner of the same building, about one hundred feet down, moving south through the open spaces between the project buildings towards the unit block of Blythdale Avenue.

The two men moved quickly, not quite running but definitely not walking. They huddled close together and looked over their shoulders behind them as they moved, nervously. As I tried to sneak into a shadow to delay my detection before the inevitable foot pursuit - due to the significant lead they had on me and their lack of twenty-plus pounds of clothing, armor and gear - the shorter of the two subjects turned his head and looked at me. He tripped and halted, grabbing his taller comrade by the arm.

I felt my shoulders falling forward as my feet pounded against the ground at the start of a sprint. I managed to plant the balls of my left, right and then left foot before the short one cried out, “GO!” and they bolted away in tandem, the taller man in the lead, and the smaller, dreadlocked one a few feet behind.

“POLICE! STOP!” I called out, keying my radio microphone at the same time. “Henry-sixteen-Edward, code thirty-three!” I transmitted, telling the dispatcher I had an emergency. “Foot pursuit, south through the cuts towards Blythdale - black males in dark clothing!”

The air around me exploded with a cacophony of competing sirens, as my coworkers raced towards where they thought I was at, some closer than others.

I counted about four seconds until I rounded at near-full sprint the same corner that had shielded the two fleeing suspects. As I slightly slowed to jump down a small wall onto a concrete pathway along the rear doors to a row of residences strewn with trashcans, broken children’s toys, rusted bicycles and barbeques, my instincts told me to rapidly decelerate and scan the area for an ambush with my gun and flashlight. But the dump of epinephrine coursing through my brain made me roll the proverbial hard-six and I ran with abandon, hoping to hell that I wouldn’t fall… and wouldn’t wind up with a few ounces of lead through my skull.

Luckily, I immediately saw the two silhouetted suspects ahead, still running for dear freedom, with obvious purpose. I continued forward, and could see that I was closing the gap slightly. I knew that if I could just keep them in sight for long enough, responding officers would likely be able to intercept their path of escape, or I would overtake them.

Just then, my radio erupted with the sounds of officers chasing two other suspects in the opposite direction. This boded poorly for me, as the conflicting, excited directions given over the radio would no doubt create significant confusion among other officers mobile in the area.

One building now in our wake, the suspects hit the path behind the last building before the path terminated at Blythdale Avenue. At the end of the path, I could see a large bush covering the bulk of my view of what lay beyond. They ran forward, undeterred by a patrol car racing by, its overhead lights casting a surreal flash onto my surroundings. If that car just stopped, no doubt the suspects would be forced to change course, likely right back towards me. I knew I’d be able to grab one of them, at least.

“Unit on Blythdale,” I called into my radio, “stop!” They’re coming out towards you!”

My heart sank as that car continued forward, no doubt racing to the other chase. Due to the other officers in the competing pursuit broadcasting their directions, my transmission wasn’t heard. I knew the suspects would be out of sight for at least three seconds when they passed that foliage, and prayed I’d be able to visually pick them up once more before they disappeared into one of a hundred nearby buildings, many of them friendly safe-houses.

I felt alone as my legs began to burn.

About twenty feet before the shorter one rounded the corner, I saw him toss an object to his left, and knew it was a gun when it clacked onto the concrete. This instituted an immediate mental debate over getting the gun or chasing the guy. In the projects, evidence is fleeting among the criminal populace. A gun or dope dropped has a very strong chance of being taken away and hidden from the police by a sympathetic cohort if not immediately recovered. But I knew where the gun was, and doubted the two fleeing men would have the time or ability to make phone calls while running to direct such a sympathetic party to the weapon, which was hidden in a shadow. I just hoped there was nobody tailing behind me ready to accomplish such a task. I gambled again, and ran past it, rounding the bush out onto Blythdale.

They were gone.

I slowed and moved to the middle of the street, turning around 360 degrees, scanning my surrounding for any signs them. It didn’t make sense; there was no sign of them. I continued forward across the roadway, hoping they continued running south, towards Velasco Street, but when I rounded the building across the street, the suspects weren’t there either.

I listened for doors slamming and checked the browning, muddy grass for footprints… nothing. They were inexplicably gone, vanished from my sight, hiding in one of many possible safe-houses. The home team had won. I grunted audibly in frustration, digging the nails on my left hand into my palm, sure two murderers had escaped. The morbid suspicion was confirmed when Chet’s voice crackled out from my radio, “CPR in progress.” I moved back towards Blythdale in case they doubled back.

Sergeant Sullivan, a cop’s cop and one of the most respected supervisors in the department, ran out onto Blythdale and saw me scanning the area for two men.

“Deck, which way?” he asked.

“They had a good lead on me; lost them when they passed the last building.”

“Put out the last direction of travel and description, and come on,” he ordered. I followed him as he trotted to the other side of the street and examined the exteriors of obviously occupied units for signs of recent activity. I joined the effort, and broadcasted the information of the suspects and their last location.

Sergeant Sullivan knocked on the back door of an obviously occupied unit, one that appeared to be hosting a party of some sort. A teenage black girl opened it, only marginally surprised to see the police.

“What’chu want?” she asked, dripping with attitude.

“Anybody go running in here?” Sergeant Sullivan asked.

“Hell, nah,” she answered.

“Mind if we look around?” Sergeant Sullivan asked.

“Ain’t nobody come up in my house and you ain’t either.”

Sergeant Sullivan tried to argue our case for about twenty seconds until she angrily slammed the door.

Sergeant Sullivan and I looked at one another, knowing we had no legal basis to go in: no specific information that would enable us any reason to believe this residence, as opposed to any other, concealed the suspects. Were it Iraq, or some other urban warzone not protected by the 4th Amendment, and provided we had sufficient manpower to accomplish the task, hell yeah we would have barged in. We would have encircled the entire housing project and searched every nook and cranny, every home and hovel. But absent more probable cause, that’s not how we do things in the US, convenient though it may not be for crime prevention and the apprehension of wrongdoers. I knew the day was lost.

“Fucking F UCK!” I yelled out. Sergeant Sullivan gave me a ‘you do what you can’ type of look and keyed his radio, organizing officers to continue canvassing for leads. “I’m gonna go backtrack, Sarge.”

I ran back to where I saw the shorter guy ditch what I thought was a gun. It was, laying there under the yellowish glow of an overhead light on a person’s rear doorstep, a few doors in from Blythdale. The gun was a semiautomatic pistol - 9mm upon closer inspection… a match in caliber to the casings later discovered at the scene. And upon further testing over the next few days, the murder weapon, hopefully one covered in DNA.

I keyed my radio and informed my coworkers that I’d recovered a weapon.

“Don’t touch it,” an inspector from the Gang Task Force replied. “Homicide inspectors are on the way.” I stood by with it until an officer from CSI showed up and gingerly collected the weapon. Then I went to reunite with Chet, talk to Homicide and eventually author the initial incident report at the station.

The report’s title: “Homicide, With Gun.”

Epilogue:

Later that night I learned the victim’s name and saw his lifeless body, one Chet and a random, unrelated bystander had tried to breathe life back into to no avail. Over the next few days I had nightmares about the chase, and intense frustration over how close I got to catching the suspects. A year later, somebody cut that damn bush down and I smiled a bit inside.

A lot more has happened with this case including the identification of the shooter - the shorter of the two men I was chasing - from multiple sources, including me. From what I understand, this case is as solved as it can get. I still lose sleep over the fact said suspect, a gang member who I’ve since arrested for other various felonies, has not had to see the inside of a prison, a place I very much hope he rots in. So, I keep nagging about the case, advocating for that dead young man. I wish I could say it was entirely selfless, but it’s one of many reasons I still lose sleep. I just keep seeing his face when I close my eyes, and the outrage doesn’t let my mind rest.

Shots Fired... Part One

2008-07-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

"We shall not grow wiser until we learn that much we have done was very foolish." - Friedrich August Hayek

Chet and I were at the rally point, one block away from the target house of a search warrant authored by Inspector Singh of the Violent Crimes Task Force. The subject of the warrant was a Norteno gang member, a man an informant had confirmed was in possession of an AK-47 type assault rifle. The weapon was supposed to be somewhere on his house. Chet and I were part of the entry team, or so we had just been told at the pre-warrant service briefing, which took place about four blocks from the target.

Inspector Singh told the officers present, who had been invited to come along, that the informant had seen the rifle in the house a few hours prior. In other words: the assault rifle capable of ripping through our ballistic vests and just about anything in the urban environment except for an engine block or a swimming pool was definitely in the house. And we were going to knock on the door. Inspector Singh was going to yell out, "Police! Search warrant!" Then, if nobody answered in a fair amount of time, somebody would blast the damn thing off the hinges hoping that said gangster wasn't camped out with said gun, planning never to go back to prison.

The warrant was the kind that many agencies would have their tactical team serve. Tactical teams are almost always better armed, better equipped, more highly trained and generally perfectly suited to take on jobs such as this, a "high risk" warrant. But, in light of their level of training and specialization, tactical teams are often total pains in the ass to work with. So, in an effort to avoid such a pain, Inspector Singh rolled over to Ingleside Station with some folks from his unit and grabbed up some volunteer patrolmen.

And when it comes right down to it, it's the patrol officer who gets there first, and usually deals with the most chaotic opening events of a violent debacle.

Chet and I had worked as partners for over a year, and in that time had developed faith in each other's safety tactics. We felt we were very aware of potentially dangerous situations, and regularly discussed "what if?" contingency plans. We practiced at the shooting range fairly often, and had been in many serious high-stress situations. Chet was a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division, and had seen combat in the first Gulf War. But we both were aware of how bad this warrant could potentially go, and our respective endocrine systems were gearing up for a solid adrenaline dump when the ram hit the door.

It never did.

It was about 2315 hours - 11:15 PM - and Inspector Singh had just said, "Okay, let's go," when the gunshots rang out.

We immediately knew where they were coming from: the Sunnydale public housing development, the city's largest development, home to two separate and active criminal street gangs known as the "Down Below Gang" (DBG) and "Up the Hill" gang. At that time, the Up the Hill gang and DBG were in a violent feud, trading gunfire nearly every night. They were two groups of people who likely grew up less than the length of a football field from one another, and still felt driven to murder one another for little more than the sake of living the thug life.

Chet and I jumped back in our car, and grabbed the on-board radio microphone. "Three-Henry-sixteen-Edward, we are hearing shots being fired in the area of the 'Dale." As Chet accelerated away, I waved an apology to Inspector Singh.

The shots were at first rapid, but slowed to a spacing of about one second apart, methodical and calculating. I thought I heard about eighteen in all. As we sped up to the intersection of Sunnydale and Hahn, I was fairly certain that I had just heard someone getting murdered.

"Shots are still being fired," I updated over the air.

Our windows down and headlights off, Chet slowed as he entered the projects. My sidearm was already in my hand. I heard one last shot; it was coming somewhere from the area behind the buildings to the south, to our left.

"Hold up. Let me out here," I told Chet.

He nodded, "I'll head in at the lot ahead," Chet pointed about one hundred yards up, towards the small parking lot on the south side of the street.

He slowed the car and I jumped out, the vehicle still moving. I softly pushed the door closed behind me, drew my flashlight and keyed my radio. "Henry-sixteen-Edward, I'm solo on foot on the 1500 block of Sunnydale, headed into the cuts between the buildings."

"Ten four," the dispatcher acknowledged. "You want to wait for another unit?"

"Probably a good idea," I answered, "But no. Just keep 'em coming."

I trotted in, somewhat crouched staying close to the decrepit buildings, looking for cover (that which hides one from a threat) or concealment (that which protects one from bullets) as I moved. A ten-year-old Samoan kid peered out his back door. I made eye contact with him. He silently pointed towards the west, towards where Chet was going to deploy. I believed the kid's directions, and followed, moving as stealthily as I could across the brown, patchy grass. Nobody was outside, despite the near twenty-four hour activity normal in the projects. It was obvious that something went down, and I felt my heart start to race as I got closer to where I thought the shots came from. But I knew Chet might be getting out right on top of the scene, and my need to watch his back was as strong as the desire to be the first one there.

I mean, you don't want to miss out on the action, right?

"Deck, I'm out and I'm gonna work south towards the playground. I can hear voices over there," Chet's voice transmitted over my radio.

"Headed the same direction," I answered.

I was about one hundred and fifty feet away, and I too heard voices. It sounded like arguing: angry Ebonics; multiple people. I brought my gun up to the low-ready position and began to scan from left to right, back and forth as I moved. In a fast, crouched walk known as the "Groucho," a way of walking designed to minimize up and down movement to keep one's firearm steady, I hurried towards the voices. No doubt, Chet was doing the same.

"Chet, fifteen seconds and I'll be hitting the playground. Hold up," I said.

"Alright. Say when," he answered.

Then some rookie sounded his siren about a block away, a patrol car's scream signaled its forthcoming arrival, and the cat was out of the proverbial bag.

To be continued...

Jonesing

2008-06-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

The truth will set you free sometimes. More often then not, it's a far better strategy to be honest and hope for the best then try to lie, lie, lie your way out of some sort of police encounter...

I was rolling around in the Tenderloin with Jay; both of us were in street attire, "plainclothes" as it's known. We were in an unmarked Ford Taurus, complete with three out of four hubcaps and a detachable red light that plugged in under the passenger side visor.

Jay was and is an experienced, talented cop. He's likely going to be an SF legend one day, like Mac, the kind of copper that coworkers secretly are in awe of. Men who can flip any arrestee into an informant, who can smell crack like K9s and see guns in thugs' waistbands like TSA x-ray screeners reviewing the endless streams of carry-on.

I once drew a color-coded map of the TL for a coworker before he went out to buy drugs during a "buy bust" operation. The red areas were where one could commonly purchase crack. One could find heroin or prescription controlled substances, like "OCs" or "vikes" (oxycodone and vicodin) in the blue areas. The green areas were for weed. Without getting too specific, and with the caveat that drug dealers frequently walk circuits like anti-cops on a beat, the intersections Ellis and Jones and of Turk and Taylor - and stretching down for a few blocks on 6th Street - are open crack cocaine bazaars from predominately African-American dealers. Many are gang affiliated, members of both East Bay and SF gangs. One can also find crack from mostly Honduran dealers on Hyde Street between Post and Market Street, and from Cambodian-American dealers on Leavenworth between Eddy and Ellis.

Market Street between 5th and Jones, and up Jones to Golden Gate, is where weed is sold. Often, the same dealers that sell crack at Turk and Taylor also sell marijuana along Market, as it's part of their respective tracks. Some of San Francisco's most hardcore, murderous thugs are marijuana salesmen by trade, as the penalties for its sale are generally the lightest and demand is always high - people from all walks of life smoke pot. Basically, people don't go to prison in SF for selling weed. (I see both sides of the arguments for and against this, and I won't bother to discuss the politics of marijuana today. That's not what this story is about.)

Jay and I wanted to grab an arrest in the space after dinner and before we went home, as an aperitif of sorts - cause a little trouble... stir something up... bring in a body or two. Such aspirations led us to the TL for obvious reasons to any San Franciscan, or anyone who has ever spent any time in downtown SF: the TL is full of people who are up to no good. A cornucopia of criminality ripe for the raiding.

We traveled at a basic TL patrol speed, far under that of the flow of traffic. Such a speed, when driven in a marked patrol vehicle causes no ruckus. But, when driving an "unmarked" well below the speed limit, provokes limitless honking and obscene gestures from members of the public unfamiliar with the characteristics of plainclothes police officers.

The goal of patrol in an unmarked is to catch crimes just before, just after or during their commission. This is a learned skill, something good cops hone over the first few years of their careers. The elements of the skill are keeping the car moving slowly, keeping one's eyes scanning the blocks and streets, and keeping the windows down or at least cracked in order to hear the goings on of the outside world. Sometimes, stopping and investigating seemingly mundane circumstances to the untrained eye can yield a great arrest. This is why rookie officers are taught to look for things that seem odd or out of place.

We made a few passes around the one-way streets in and around Turk and Taylor, hoping to catch some young thug doing dirt - dealing dope, robbing a lost tourist, or waving a handgun around. On about the third or fourth pass, Jay and I were headed south on Jones Street, towards the triangular intersection with McAllister and Market where the Latino dudes buy stolen property from area thieves and/or dope-fiends. There, on the west sidewalk of Jones Street leaning against an iron railing in front of the old Hibernia Bank building, Jay and I saw a sight we thought strange: a dorky, young, touristy white guy in plaid shorts and a white T-shirt bearing the text, "ALCATRAZ PSYCHO WARD" on it; and a black dude in a waist-length leather coat and black doo-rag that looked like he'd been active in the Tenderloin lifestyle for roughly the last fifteen to twenty years of his life, discounting jail time. The two unlikely companions were huddled close together, engaging in a rather serious looking conversation.

Jay stopped our vehicle in the street, just next to the two men. Our brakes squealed, and both men turned to look. The white kid turned his head and looked at us quizzically, obviously unaware that we were police officers. The "OG" on the other hand looked at our car, widened his eyes with surprise for just a second, buried his hands in his pockets and took a step back from his comrade. He smiled a Jay and me, in a manner betraying both practised cool and uncontrollable discomfort. Clearly something wasn't right. Jay and I got out of our car and approached the two men.

The white kid still looked confused. I displayed my star, as did Jay, and said, "Police, son." The white kid gulped.

"You think I don't know that?" the OG asked.

"Clearly, that comment was not for your benefit, sir." I said. " And furthermore, you should know better than to shove your hands in your pockets when the cops are jumping out on you."

"Ma' bad, officer," the OG apologized.

"Your tourist-looking friend here probably isn't as experienced with this stuff as the rest of us," Jay announced. He added, incredulously, "So, how do you two know one another?"

There was a brief moment of silence.

The OG broke it by saying, "I was just... uh... giving this dude directions." He nodded and grinned.

"Really?" Jay clarified. "To where?"

"The theater; you know... the Warfield, down the street." The OG gestured in a generally eastward direction. Whitey just nodded and laughed nervously.

"There's no show tonight. The Warfield is closed," I bluffed. I had no idea.

"So... can we have the non-bullshit story now?" Jay asked. "We don't have all night."

"Okay, I'm sorry. It's my fault," the white kid stated, with a thick Irish brogue. My tourist suspicions were confirmed. "This gentleman here was just helping me out..." He continued to speak and explained the following:

Mick (I don't remember his real name. We will call him Mick because I am half Mick and can own the word a bit.) was on a Summer trip to the good old US, and staying at a hostel on Mason Street by the Hilton. A co-resident of the hostel had informed Mick that he could purchase marijuana in the aforementioned "green zone." Mick grabbed his best incognito urban camouflage T-shirt and headed out score. At the intersection of Taylor and Market Street, one block away, Mick ran into an African-American couple, a man and woman, who were slowly walking north on Turk.

Mick asked the couple, "You know where I might get some weed?"

The couple stopped, and turned to face Mick. The male stated, "How much?"

"I'll have twenty dollars worth," Mick replied and held out a single twenty-dollar bill.

"You ain't no po-lice, is you?" the man clarified.

"No, no. I'm not even from this country," Mick answered.

"Ain't no po-lice wear them ugly-ass shorts anyways," the man said, shaking his head. He nudged his female companion, "Baby, hook him up."

Silently, the young woman stuck her right hand into the crotch area of her pants and removed a plastic bag containing numerous off-white rocks. Mick thought the whole thing quite curious. The young woman then selected a small rock from the bag and handed it to Mick, who, confused, accepted it. The male snatched the bill out of Mick's hand, and the girl put the bag back of crack cocaine back into her panties. The couple began to walk away.

"Excuse me! This isn't what I wanted," Mick called out, staring at the small object in his palm.

The male dealer turned back around, "That's a twenty-shot for strangers like you, right there. You keep coming back and they might get bigger."

"I asked for weed..?"

"Nah, nigga. You asked for cream, and that shit is yours now. Now get yo' white-ass on!"

Mick didn't stay around to argue. He didn't know it until that point, but when he said "weed" it sounded kind of like "cream," common street terminology for crack.

After accidentally purchasing crack, Mick walked around and somehow came into contact with the ever-helpful OG. Mick told OG the story, and the OG agreed to assist Mick in trading his crack for weed, in exchange for a small fee to be negotiated after the crack-flipping was complete. Mick had just given OG the rock when we pulled up.

At about this point in Mick's story, Jay and I were nearly in tears. OG joined in the laughter as well, "I thought he said cream too with that crazy-ass accent of his."

When the guffaws died down, I patted Mick down to make sure he didn't have anything illegal on him. He didn't. I ran his name via my radio to make sure Mick hadn't been arrested in SF before and didn't have any warrants, a final check of the veracity of his tale. When all checked out, Mick's expression turned to one of relief. He smiled at me, but I hardened my gaze and said the following, "You know, man, that story is funny and I know we've been here laughing about it. But it really does piss me off that you came to my home and just became part of the problem. If I were you, I'd grow up a bit and really think about my actions tonight, and what could have happened to you were we not looking for bigger fish, or if you had run into the wrong local. Get me?"

"I do, sir. I'm sorry," Mick replied, sounding earnest.

"Fine," I said. "We're done. Go home."

"I really am sorry, sir. I didn't think it was th--"

"I said GET OUT OF HERE."

Mick walked away, out to Market Street. I turned towards OG, who Jay was dealing with. Jay was searching a backpack on the ground next to OG, because OG stated he had a warrantless search clause as a condition of probation. Jay told me OG had given him the rock that he had previously obtained from Mick. I saw that OG had a small black nylon bag in his hand.

"What's in that, man?" I asked OG.

"Nothing, sir. Just my personal stuff."

"Personal what? You got any more dope?"

"Nah, look." OG opened up the small pouch as Jay stood up and began going through his pockets. OG thumbed through the contents - some papers, his identification card, etc. - and I could clearly see he was doing a very poor job of trying to conceal an additional rock of crack therein.

"Dude, gimme that," I said.

"Give you what? Ain't nothing in here, officer."

I quickly pulled the bag from OG's hands and told Jay, "He's got some more dope in here. Not sure how much."

Jay told OG to sit on the curb. OG complied but kept asking, "Am I going to jail?"

"Depends on how much dope you have, man?" Jay answered.

The night wasn't that windy, so I removed the contents of OG's pouch slowly on the trunk of our car. Jay stood behind OG, in case he tried to stand and make a break for it, if I found something he wasn't happy about me finding. I pulled out the crack the OG had tried to hide: two small rocks. That made three total, and considering that he had a pipe in the pouch as well, all signs pointed to him being a user, just a relatively high-functioning and clean one.

I confronted the OG about the crack I'd discovered and he plead for us not to arrest him, saying it was simply for his personal use and he was sorry about lying... repeatedly... like some sort of Jedi "these aren't the droids you're looking for" mind-trick. Neither Jay nor I really wanted to book the guy. Simple possession cases weren't really the focus of our unit, nor did they - or do they - carry much weight in San Francisco Superior Courtrooms. However, as the guy stated he was on felony probation for drug sales, such a booking could in theory - but not always in practice - set in motion a revocation of said probation that could send the OG to state prison, a place he had many times before escaped the visitation of due to historically lenient drug laws in San Francisco.

Like weed sales, you don't go to prison for "simple" possession cases, barring some sort of exceptional circumstances (i.e. you did a hot-prowl burglary and had a rock on you when apprehended. The burglary charge was then dropped in a plea-agreement, and you were found guilty of simple possession of a controlled substance instead). In San Francisco and most of the US, combating the epidemic of hard drugs - cocaine in both crack and "salt" form and heroin being the "big two" - is primarily done by targeting dealers. This makes sense. Cut off the head of the dragon, and the body dies. Drug dealers are often violent thugs, and sometimes dope cases are the only ones that stick because they don't rely on the testimony of notoriously reluctant, intimidated civilian witnesses.

But via simple principles of supply and demand, users often have to be arrested to. Non "buy bust" dope sales cases need to have both the dealer and buyer charged with crimes related to both sides of the sale to demonstrate the elements of the crime in a court of law. And, honestly, users - though frequently the victims of tragic life choices and in need of help if they are ever going to shake their habits - often commit serious crimes to feed their addictions. This is one of the catch-22s of the idea of legalizing drugs: it doesn't mean that crackheads or junkies will suddenly stop breaking into cars, burglarizing retail stores or robbing people on the street and get legitimate sources of income.

Jay told OG to relax, and explained we weren't to keen on taking him in if that was all the crack he had.

"That's it, man. I swear on my mother's grave. That's it," he answered.

I handed the rocks to Jay, and realized we hadn't run OG yet for warrants.

"I don't imagine you have an ID card on you?" I asked.

"Nah, man. That shit got lost a long time ago. I'll tell you my name though, man. Fo' real."

"Okay, what is it?"

"Franklin Johnson. Born September twenty-second, nineteen sixty-seven."

I jotted Mr. Johnson's name and DOB down on my notepad, and then had the dispatcher run Mr. Johnson for warrants and related law enforcement records, as I had done with Mick.

"Standby units. Hold traffic. X-ray fifteen are you ten thirty-four?" The dispatcher asked, meaning were we out of earshot of the custody so he or she didn't hear the information that followed.

"Go ahead," I answered.

"Franklin Johnson, black male with a DOB match, showing no bail warrant out of San Francisco for a charge of 11352 of the Health and Safety Code." Mr. Johnson had a warrant for drug sales. It just wasn't his day.

"Copy." I looked at Jay. He heard the radio traffic too.

"Mr. Johnson, put your hands behind your back," Jay instructed.

"Fo' what?! You taking me in on those piddly-ass rocks? I'm a user man, a user!" He exclaimed.

"No. For your warrant. And if you stop whining you won't have to worry about the three rocks," Jay bargained.

The OG signed, sank his head down and said, "Alright. Fair enough."

We booked Mr. Johnson on his warrant after he watched Jay "accidentally" drop his crack into a storm drain. Problem solved.

Allow me to introduce myself...

2008-06-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

Hello, folks. I'm a San Francisco police officer, and this is my law enforcement-based journal.

I'd love to tell you my real name, but there's a chance that such a complete disclosure of my identity could be problematic with my career. San Francisco is a very political place, and the SFPD is often at the center of political controversy, justly so or otherwise. I'm not particularly interested in being a sacrificial lamb to the god of politicking. Also, I'm writing about actual incidents: real-life emergencies and/or crimes. I have a significant responsibility to ensure I don't corrupt any criminal cases or intrude on the rights of the citizenry I've dedicated my life to protecting. So in the interest of prolonging the life of this blog, you can just call me Deckard. I've chosen this name because it's easy for me to remember - I love the movie Blade Runner, a movie in which Harrison Ford is the grizzled, reluctant protagonist, Rick Deckard. (I don't think I'm anywhere near that cool, by the way. I'm just a sci-fi nerd.) I also plan on changing names, locations, dates and/or other identifying information as I deem prudent.

I've always written as a hobby/creative outlet: comedy, poetry and even dramatic fiction. Writing for me can be quite cathartic, and in this line of work - one filled with laughter, elation, boredom, monotony, horror, tragedy and excitement - such catharsis is helpful. I am not made of steel. The roller coaster of this job, over the past six years, has taken its toll on me. I'll elaborate on this further over the coming months.

Modern, urban police work is not accurately portrayed in the media, for the most part. But cops, though we often decry such inaccuracies, often are hesitant to share what exactly the job is like. My hope is that by publishing my experiences, observations and war-stories via this medium, I'll help build a window into the lives of San Francisco's men and women in blue. I don't have any agenda other than that.

Thank you in advance for your readership. And check back for updates.

-Deck