Heartbreak. Rage. Sorrow. Justice

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Four words that, right now, dominate my thoughts in the aftermath of the Dallas shootings/executions.

I am heartbroken for the families of the as-of-now five fallen police officers; families that now have vast voids in their fabric. I am heartbroken for the officers struggling for their lives in Dallas-area trauma centers, shot as they provided security for peaceful protesters/marchers by misguided monsters in elevated positions; the very fact that they had chosen such locations indicate prior planning and calculation. I am heartbroken for the law enforcement community as a whole, who now suffer yet more tragedy. I am heartbroken for our nation, as now in the aftermath we will be subject to political and media saturation of this event from every angle. There will be some that will call the deaths of these heroes of the badge revenge for recent shootings in Minneapolis and Louisiana of black men by police…no matter what those investigations reveal.

Rage. Rage resultant of the actions of a very few that stain a whole class of people, be it police or citizens. Rage that festers in the hearts of those who believe that shooting police officers is justified. Rage that some in the media will stoop to new depths in an effort to get that one interview, that one exclusive…no matter how it affects those grieving families. Rage that liberal politicians will use this incident to advance their agendas calling for stricter gun control laws and a ban on what they refer to as ‘assault weapons’.

I am sorrowful for our nation because this shooting of police officers will create yet more divide, divide as a result of political maneuvering, professional race-baiting and those whose stringent voices calling for just this type of action against police are given platforms by the media from which to spew their hate over a much wider audience.

Justice, in at least one instance, where one of the shooters took his own life after being cornered by police. Three other suspects are in police custody; it remains to be seen how/if they are connected to this tragedy. Justice, in most cases, moves slowly. We must be patient, for justice will prevail in the end.

Pray for our nation.

One year ago...

...I was in the Intensive Care Unit at Mount Carmel East hospital in Columbus. The day before I'd had a third of my left kidney removed because it was cancerous, small-cell renal carcinoma being the correct term for it, an aggressive form that shows no symptoms until it spreads to the liver and lungs. I started bleeding pretty badly during surgery, to the point that I received six units of blood to replace what I lost.

I was lucky.

They'd caught it early, while it was still totally inside that section of the organ. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't be writing this right now.

There IS a silver lining, though, in the form of 'lessons learned'; I don't take life for granted anymore. Family and friends are more important. I don't let small things bother me nearly as much. The sky is bluer, my wife's touch is cherished even more than before. People, no matter how small a space they have in your life, matter. I appreciate what I've been blessed with, though I'm not wealthy. I have all I need to get me through this journey I'm on.

Today matters, too. Do something with it, something positive and uplifting.

My First Story Has Been Published!

You can read it here: http://narrative.ly/i-was-a-cop-for-31-years-this-is-the-one-night-that-still-haunts-me/

Technology

How lazy has our society become when we need our refrigerator to connect with our smart phone so we can see what’s inside?

Apparently the Samsung Corporation, headquartered in South Korea, thinks today’s kitchen appliance consumer is a pretty shiftless bunch, because they’ve sunk enough cash into their ‘Family Hub’ refrigerator to pay off the national debt of Bolivia.

We can’t put our Galaxy 7s down long enough to walk to the refrigerator; instead we can decide between yesterday’s meat loaf or those three slices of pizza from the comfort of the recliner, thanks to those wonderful cameras Samsung installed inside its glorified icebox/laptop combo.

However, due to the smart interface and screen monitor Samsung slapped on the outside of the upper right door, you can stream music, watch videos, shop or just surf the ‘net while waiting for your toaster to eject its crispy, hot bread for breakfast. And get this … now you can tell if you’re out of butter or jelly without opening the ‘fridge door!

We ARE becoming the Jetsons.

Samsung has created a Fridge Too Far.

Next we’ll have cameras inside the cupboard doors to tell us if we need more Rice Krispies or we’re out of sugar. Then someone will figure out how to hack our bathroom cabinets; the last thing I need is for some guy living in his Mom’s basement outside of Prague knowing that I’m almost out of Q-Tips.

Our toilets will have under-the-rim sensors, interfaced with the new RollHub dispenser, so that we don’t use too much toilet paper…and you’ll be able to check the toilet paper roll status via your smart phone.

I mean, after all, we now have smart beds to tell us via our smart phone just how well we really slept, don’t we?

I’m living in a world I don’t understand… and yes I DO want the 70s back.

Questions

 On August 4^th, I will celebrate my third year of retirement. That alone is surreal for me, because in my mind I could still gear up, get in a cruiser and work a shift. The reality, however, is much different.

I retired after having surgery for the second time on my left knee in 2013. Well, the fourth; I had a couple of scrapes/clean-ups in the 90s after stepping in a groundhog hole. At night. While trying to arrest a drug trafficker who was thought to be armed. He’d crashed his car over an embankment way out on Beal Road, on a very dark fall night, after an extended vehicle pursuit. Larry Caudill and I were partnered up in an unmarked minivan while working in METRICH, the ten-county drug task force, and had driven by the guy’s house to see if he was home; a judge had revoked his bond on a drug trafficking charge and we were actively looking for him. In the end, he went to jail and I ended up in the ER.

The knee wasn’t my only issue. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that I was a frequent flier with the medical community. Look up the term ‘accident prone’ in the dictionary and you’ll see my picture.

So it’s been three years. A lot changes in three years, especially concerning the law and law enforcement. I do, however, get calls seeking advice on legal issues still to this day on an almost weekly basis. If you are now or have ever been in law enforcement, you know what I’m talking about. People will call, stop by the house or grab you by the elbow if they run into you in a store and ask about all kinds of scenarios, explaining the difficulty or situation they’ve encountered in a particular event. You’re expected to know the answer or solution immediately.

The truth is, sometimes we just don’t know the answer. Other times, you give them what you know or think they should do…and they don’t like it.

I haven’t kept up on changes in the law or legal procedures that have occurred since I took off the badge for the last time, unless it’s something that might affect me directly…such as the ‘if your windshield wipers are on, your headlights are on’ law that went into effect a couple of years ago. Civil or domestic issues? Your guess is as good as mine, but I can steer you to who you need to talk to in order to deal with them.

The question is…will you listen?

Foot patrol.

Walking a beat.

When’s the last time you saw a police officer walking, patrolling a business area?

For me, it’s been awhile. That’s too bad, too, because foot patrol was a very effective technique. An officer assigned to a foot beat became very familiar with the everyday people in his assigned patrol area, the shop owners, the residents and even the crooks and undesirables. He/she knew whether or not someone belonged to the area. He/she knew the trouble spots. He/she knew what belonged and what didn’t.

Business people generally loved when the beat cop walked into their shop or restaurant, because they’d know there wasn’t a chance of trouble happening. Neighborhoods got to know the cop on patrol because he wasn’t gliding on by in an air-conditioned cruiser behind tinted glass. He was real and he was present. He was personable, a cop you could actually hold a conversation with.

Back in the day we had foot patrol, but even then it was a dying assignment. We’d have guys/gals walking assigned beats on ‘all-hands’ days; those days during the shift cycle where no one was on scheduled days off. We’d have plenty of two-officer cars because we didn’t have enough cruisers for all the personnel who were working. Even then, though, the department was beginning to feel the budget bite; that was one reason we didn’t have enough cruisers. I always looked forward to all-hands days, because I knew there was a good chance I’d be assigned to downtown foot patrol, and I enjoyed it immensely.

You were assigned in pairs; back in the 50s and 60s, guys would walk a beat alone, being dispatched to calls via blue-painted call boxes mounted on poles seemingly on every corner. The call boxes generally had a red light on top that would flash if the beat cop needed to contact the station for a call, and the copper carried a key that would unlock the call box door, where the phone awaited use.

Call boxes were long gone before I started my career, replaced by big, boxy, heavy portable radios. Between the radio on one hip and the .38 revolver on the other, well, that leather gun belt rode low on your hip bones, which could become painful.

Anyway, we walked in pairs, making it a point to stroll several times through the bars that were known for trouble, like ‘showing the flag’’; you wanted the mopes to know that you were around and could appear unannounced at any moment.

We didn’t just stroll the streets, either. Oftentimes, we’d get up on top of a building and just watch activity below us. I remember one particular instance where my pal Keith ‘Biscuit’ Coleman and I were on top of the Reed’s Building on the square, just watching. We noticed a car come around the corner, pause in front of the store and then back in to a parking space. It was a Sunday, late afternoon, and Reed’s department store was closed. Why would a driver do that? No one ever backed in those spaces. The guy never got out of his car. We waited about fifteen minutes and then decided to pay him a visit. Keith and I climbed down the rear fire escape and approached from an alley that ran between Reed’s and the Olympic Lounge; the car was parked in a space near the mouth of the ally, so the guy couldn’t see us approach. We walked up to him on the driver’s side and he never saw us. In his lap he had a Frisbee, loaded with loose marijuana, and he was rolling joints. Every so often he’d raise his head and look around, but he never looked behind his car, so we stood, just back of the driver’s door, watching him through his open window. Finally, I spoke.

“What’s up?”

The guy’s head snapped around, seeing two policemen standing right beside his door, a look of surprise and horror on his face. Then his chin hit his chest, realizing he’d been caught red-handed, and he just handed that marijuana-laden Frisbee out the window to us.

“You got me”, he said dejectedly. It was priceless.

I miss the old days.

Life Imitating Art?

  Writing.

   It has become a passion. I started putting fingers to keyboard a few years back after having a dream about terrorists holding parishioners hostage in a mega-church, so I started developing a plot line, characters and settings. Then I started typing.

   88,000 words and four years later I’m still working on my crime thriller. It’s almost finished, just a couple more chapters to go, but it has been quite a journey. Hours and hours of research, phone calls, map and image searches…and miles. I traveled to Charleston two years ago, where part of the novel is set, specifically to research locations I’m using for certain events in the story.

   The issue I’m having is that current events in the world have come very close to the heart of my book, and I’m now having second thoughts about trying to get it published. Is it morally right in light of the shootings at the Emanuel A. M. E. church in downtown Charleston last year or, more recently, the Orlando nightclub massacre?

   Tom Clancy, one of my favorite writers, told a tale in his 1994 book Debt of Honor that, seven years later, was mimicked in the terrorist attacks in 2001; in Clancy’s book an embittered Japanese airline pilot, after losing his son and brother in a conflict with the United States, flew his fully-fueled Boeing 747 into the U. S. Capitol Building during a joint session of Congress, almost decapitating our government.

   We know what then happened on September 11^th.

   In 1997 two bank robbers, both armed with AK-47s and wearing body armor, were met outside a bank they’d just robbed in North Hollywood by responding LAPD officers; nearly 1750 rounds were fired, with eighteen civilians and police officers being wounded during the running gun battle in the streets. The only lives lost were those of Larry Phillips Jr and Emil Matasareanu…the two perpetrators. Two years prior to this incident the film Heat, starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, was released; in the movie, De Niro and his heavily-armed crew encounter police as they exit a bank they’d just robbed…and a running gun battle through the streets of Los Angeles occurs.

   Life imitating art, or just two instances of pure coincidence?

   I’ll still work to finish my novel, but I’m certainly not assuming it will be accepted for print. Getting a work into book form is extremely difficult and highly competitive.

   IF I decide to submit it.