Christmas Eve in a Cruiser

This evening and tomorrow morning over 330 million Americans will be gathered with family and friends, celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lights will be blazing from inside family homes, Christmas music softly playing in the background as families gather around dinner tables for a grand meal. Excited children, faces beaming with the innocent anticipation of what Santa may bring  them, will have trouble falling asleep, listening intently for the sound of reindeer hooves on rooftops. Laughter and joy, two of the most precious gifts to be given and received, warm hearts and lighten spirits.

Except for a few hundred thousand folks, clad in blue, brown or gray, who chose to serve and protect.

From personal experience, many times over, I can unequivocally say that there can be no more lonely place other than inside a police cruiser on Christmas Eve...short of being in a foreign land serving our country in the military.

Our men and women behind the badge, dedicated to a life of upholding the law and maintaining order, will pilot those cruisers this evening and throughout the night, answering calls for service. Big city coppers might not have time to reflect on being absent from those family gatherings, running call-to-call, but their wives, husbands, parents and children will, missing their public servants who, more likely than not, will be absent once again from their homes on a major holiday.

We'll sit in our darkened cruisers, interiors lit only by the glow of  dashboard lights and mobile data terminals, as we cruise neighborhoods whose houses are adorned with festive Christmas lights and displays, wishing we, too, could be with our families.

We accept it, though; it goes with the job and we knew that going in. Its one of the many sacrifices we make without complaint, though inside we anguish over missing these precious moments, undoubtedly not for the first time.

Its not just us, though; its the emergency dispatchers behind microphones sending us on those calls for service. Its the nurses in hospitals, the firefighters, the over-the-road commercial truck drivers trying to make a living, all giving up an important day in their lives that cannot be recovered.

Tonight I pray for the safety of all our police officers, our fire fighters and nurses, those working this Christmas to provide for their families, remembering what it was like to be working during Christmas for my thirty-plus years on the job.

I ask you to pray also, and to think about those dedicated to protecting and serving our great United States.

To my brothers and sisters of the badge I say Merry Christmas! I am one old, retired cop who has not forgotten you.

Remembering A 'First'

Anyone who has ever served the public behind a badge can tell you about their ‘firsts’… first homicide scene, first bar fight, first fatal accident… and remember it with clarity. One of my ‘firsts’ is The Hanging Man.

It was turning into a beautiful spring Sunday morning in 1982; I’d worked the overnight shift at OPD and the eastern sky was turning that deep purplish-blue that precedes the rising of the sun. It was always about that time of the morning when I’d take my meal break at Denny’s, because they were the only all-night joint open in the village back then.

I’d been inside for a bit, long enough to have my scrambled-eggs-and-hashed-brown-potatoes set in front of me by the waitress when I got the call.

“112, we have a suspicious circumstances complaint…” and the dispatcher went on to give me the location. Then, at the end, she added “…possible suicide.”

Possible suicide.

I threw a couple of bucks on the table, having had one bite of my meal before jumping up and heading out the door. As I recall, the other guy I was working with on that night had arrested a driver for DWI earlier in the shift and was at the station working on his report. We’d usually wait till the latter part of our shift to start working on paperwork, as the hours between 0500 and the end of the shift at 0800 were the slowest.

The place I was sent to was in a semi-rural area; it was a farm with acreage, but the area had been somewhat built up around it. Access to the farm was back a long, dusty lane which ran between a construction company and radio station.

I approached the house, which sat to the left of the drive with a barn further down on the right, and pulled into the gravel drive leading to the home’s garage. The overhead door was up and I was met by a woman who was probably 70 years old or better, wearing a house coat over her night clothes. The look on her face was one of concern…and pain.

After getting pertinent information from her, she explained that her husband had gotten up sometime around 0430 that morning and had gone to the barn to feed their livestock, which was his usual routine. Then he would come back to the house, where she would have his breakfast waiting for him.

On this morning, however, he hadn’t come back. The woman feared something had happened to him but she was too afraid to go look. “He’s always back around five-thirty to eat his breakfast”, she’d said, “and I’m afraid he’s done something terrible.”

It seemed the woman’s husband, who’d always been a fit and healthy man, had recently developed some problems; problems deep enough that he’d made an appointment to see a doctor which, she’d said, he would never have done unless it was something serious. He was due to see his physician the next day.

Tears welled in the woman’s eyes. “He’s afraid he has cancer.”

The woman pointed out the barn, which sat probably seventy-five yards from the house, indicating that was where he’d gone. I backed my cruiser into the gravel lane, traveled the short distance and then parked in the grass in front of the two-story red barn, entering through the open man-door on the lower level. I called out a few times, not wanting to startle the man, and was met with only the sounds of chickens and cattle.

I made my way to the back of the barn where two large doors stood open, facing the east…and the rising of the sun, which was just peeking over the horizon.

I found the man in that place. He had hung himself, his lifeless form hanging by a rope from a cross-beam, facing that rising, burning orb, a step-ladder laying on its side beneath him.

It is one of the indelibly-etched scenes in my mind, one which would be joined by countless others in the coming decades.

This man, who had worked hard all his life to provide for his family, had chosen to end his life because he thought he had cancer.

Blast From the Past: A Rookie Learns A Valuable Lesson

I was a training officer at Mansfield PD for five years, training 19 officers during that time, two of which would go on to become Chief of Police. Another officer and I had been sent to Northwestern University’s Traffic School to attend a Field Training Program Development course, a week-long class that would enable us to set up a certified Field Training Program for new officers. When we got back, John and I set up the course outlines, developed the Daily Evaluation Report forms and the program was adopted by the department.

Out of the nineteen rookies that were assigned to me over that 5-year span, three didn’t make it through their training. I’d told each of them that not making it didn’t mean they weren’t good people, but sometimes candidates just weren’t cut out to be cops, and that was nothing to be ashamed of

.

‘Jack’ was one of those people.

This young man had some personal issues that worked against him: he didn’t deal well with stress or irate people, he’d get ‘tunnel vision’, not being aware of what was happening around him other than what was straight ahead and he had a more than a slight issue with verbal correction after making glaring mistakes, mistakes that could get him or another person hurt or killed.

Case in point: one night during his training we’d reached the point where I was letting him drive while I handled the cruiser radio traffic. Jack has the steering wheel in a white-knuckle death-grip, nervous as hell, staring intently at the road ahead.

We’re westbound on East Third Street, approaching the intersection of North Foster; we have a stop sign, cross traffic on North Foster doesn’t. It’s a residential area which has nearby factories and businesses. As we get closer, I see an older Chevy Camaro approaching from our right, on my side of the cruiser, and Jack isn’t braking at all. He blows right through the stop sign to the sound of screeching tires and a blaring horn, the Camaro stopping two feet from my door. The driver of the Chevy throws up his hands in a ‘what gives?’ gesture. Jack just sat there in the middle of the intersection, my blood pressure going through the roof. I got out, walked to the other car and apologized, explaining that I had a rookie driving.

Finally, I got back in the car and told Jack to pull over and stop. I got out and took a little stroll on the sidewalk to calm myself; the guy had been staring so intently, had been so nervous, that he hadn’t even seen the stop sign and almost caused an accident.

Reentering the cruiser, I told Jack to take us to the station, instructing him to wait in the Hutchison classroom. I pulled out the Ohio Revised Code, our Standard Operating Procedures and Rules and Regulations books and made him read aloud each section pertaining to operation of a patrol vehicle. After he finished each section I asked him if he understood it, which pissed him off

.

Too bad. Some things you have to learn the hard way.

I drove the rest of the shift.

We had a call one night from Little Jean’s Place, a bar on North Main Street; Jack was driving and I told him he was going to handle the call start to finish, without any help from me. He said he was ready.

The bar owner, Jean, had called because a man was passed out drunk in the small, narrow vestibule entering the bar, an area between the door from the street leading to the door into the bar proper. No one could get past him unless they stepped over the man.

Jean met us on the sidewalk. “He came in off the street, laid down and just passed out. I tried to get him to leave but he won’t budge.”

Jack didn’t say a word.

I looked at him. “Well, what are you gonna do?”

“Uhh, wake him up?”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’ll be a good start.”

Jack pulled the door open; I stood in the doorway watching, my foot keeping the door propped open; maybe the cold outside air would help rouse the guy. I recognized him as one of our frequent-flier winos, a nasty, stinking drunk who could get surly.

Jack bent down, gently prodding the man with his bare hand. “Sir…sir, you need to wake up…”

From my vantage point I saw what could be a potential issue for Jack. The man was wearing a ratty jacket that covered…barely…his butt. I could also see that his beltless pants were already halfway down his backside, meaning that, when he stood up, his pants could drop to the floor. The wino wasn’t wearing underwear and Jack wasn’t wearing gloves.

Jack continued. “Sir, you have to get up and move, please.”

No response.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I intervened, kicking his feet. “HEY, BUDDY! YOU GOTTA GET UP AND MOVE OR YOU’RE GOING TO JAIL.”

The word ‘jail’ brought him around, grunts and profanity spewing forth as he unsteadily got to his feet. The man stank of cheap wine.

“What do you do now, Jack?”

Uncertainty in his voice, Jack replied “Arrest him?”

“Good choice. The man’s impeding this woman’s business.”

Jack suddenly gained his authoritative voice. “Alright, buddy, outside and put your hands on the wall”, he said as he tried to guide the drunk outside.

The man didn’t budge, leaning against one of the narrow walls. I grabbed him by the collar and helped him get outside, where I had the man put his hands against the brickwork. I stepped back and told Jack, “Go to it.”

I watched as Jack started patting the man down after telling him he was under arrest for public intoxication; I also watched as the guy’s pants slid a little further down his butt cheeks. It was like watching a train wreck…you know what’s going to happen but you can’t look away.

Jack finished frisking the man’s upper torso. His hands went to where the arrestee’s rear pants pockets should have been, without looking….

…and put his ungloved hands directly on the nasty drunk’s bare backside.

“AAARRRGGGHHHHH!!” Jack yanked his hands back as if he’d just grabbed a hot pot off the stove. I busted out laughing, Jack’s face bearing a look of horror.

“YOU KNEW THAT WAS GONNA HAPPEN! YOU KNEW!! WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY ANYTHING??!!”

After collecting myself, I said, “Jack, you just learned a very valuable lesson: ALWAYS look before you put your hands anywhere on someone’s person. What if he’d had an uncapped syringe in that pocket?”

Hurt, he replied “That’s not funny, man. You knew I was gonna put my hands on his bare ass, and you let me do it!”

Like I said earlier, sometimes a man has to learn a lesson the hard way.

What's The Difference?

Charles Manson, perhaps America's most notorious criminal, was convicted of ordering seven murders in California in 1969 as the head of quasi-cult Manson Family. Originally sentenced to death, his conviction was commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole after California ruled the death sentence unconstitutional.

Yesterday it was announced that Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the terrorist who orchestrated the attack on the United States diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya in 2011, was convicted of three counts of terrorism but not the murders of four Americans there, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

So tell me....what's the difference in these two cases? Neither of these monsters actually committed the killings but both were culpable. The 'not guilty' verdict on murder charges against Khatallah is nothing short of an outrage.

Manson

Khatallah

Veteran's Day

Today we honor our military veterans past and present, their sense of duty, selflessness, honor and sacrifice the driving force that has made these United States the greatest nation on earth.

To each and every one of our veterans we owe a debt of gratitude, without question, for their dedication to preserving our freedoms; though this day is celebrated in honor of them, every day should be Veteran's Day. We should ever be thankful that these men and women served or are serving in order that we may live in freedom.

I am deeply honored to write the stories of our patriot heroes, those who served during the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam, but let us not forget those today who are serving in places such as Forward Operating Base Delaram in Afghanistan, or those aboard ships at sea such as the USS Farragut, or those providing air cover to troops on the ground from Bagram Air Base...volunteers, every one of them.

Words feebly express the profound sense of gratitude and respect I have for our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, but to each, past and present, I say THANK YOU.

SUCCESS

SUCCESS. I've located contact info for one of the McArthur brothers' sons, the Bennettsvile, SC WW II veterans who wrote well in excess of a hundred letters home to their mother before, during and after the war; and that's only the ones that were recovered by Trina Browning-Niznik. I have no doubt there were many more.

One, Laurin McArthur II, was a Lt. Commander in the US Navy and served aboard the USS Daly. Laurin won a Bronze Star for his destroyer's action during the sea battle of Surigao Straights in the Philippines, during which the Daly was struck amidship by a kamikaze plane. Laurin died in April of 2010.

James D. McArthur retired from the US Army as a Colonel, his career beginning with the 263rd Coast Artillery at Fort Moultrie, SC in 1939. He wound up as an artillery instructor for the Army, serving in Texas among other places, and retired after serving in Vietnam. I'm still working to complete his timeline. James died in

1992.

I read some of the letters but had to stop; it just seemed too 'voyeuristic', an intrusion of sorts into lives past. Those treasures belong to the families of these patriots, not me, and I will be calling Mr. McArthur in the morning to make arrangements to return the family's history.

One other item i didn't include a picture of yesterday is the WW II Victory medal that was in the bag Trina gave me. Though there's no way to tell which brother it belonged to, I am assuming they both would have received one. I'll provide a follow-up after I speak to Mr. McArthur tomorrow, if all goes as planned.