Search Warrants And Sex Toys

 

If you've been a police officer for any length of time you know there are certain truths to the job.

There are slackers on every shift in every police department. Everywhere. Guys who work harder at avoiding calls than actually handling them. We had one guy on night shift, years ago, who we started referring to as ALMO....Always the Last Man Out. On Friday and Saturday nights when the streets were hopping and we had calls backed up due to watch change, this guy would poke around on station until every other officer had signed on as 'in service' and been dispatched to waiting calls before he signed on. Whether it was taking an extended dump after roll call and jail shakedown or immediately pulling his cruiser into the wash bay to spray it off, he was always the last one out. Every time.

Your lunch breaks, at points in your career, will be interrupted by A). radio calls, and B). people with stupid questions. Take those two to the bank.

Everyone sitting in Mom's basement in front of a keyboard knows how to do your job, even as they chow down on tater tots and pizza rolls....and probably showerless for the sixth day in a row.

There will always, always, be people in command positions that have no business holding rank; some should never have become police officers but took the job for the steady paycheck and benefits and were somehow able to slip in the back door. Great test-takers, bad at street sense and interacting with common citizens....and, generally, arrogant and self-centered.

And then there's the search warrants and...uhh...'marital aids'.

Throughout my thirty-plus years as a copper I was involved in countless search warrant executions, for everything from drugs to stolen property to evidence of illegal gambling to illegal weapons...and one homicide. On easily half of those warrants, while looking through drawers, in closets and under mattresses we would invariably come across any manner of sex toys, both AC and DC powered. Some didn't even need power. Every size and shape imaginable, and the property of folks you'd never dream used them. 

We executed a search warrant years ago in an apartment, in which a dealer, who'd also been a user, had been found dead of a heroin overdose. Items in plain view inside the home and in the decedent's car were the basis of the warrant; for the uninitiated, there's this term, 'probable' cause', that is central in search warrants. You have to draw up the warrant and list reasons why you need it. You have to describe, in detail, exactly where you intend to search and what you're searching for. You then take it to a judge and, after reviewing it, if he feels you have enough valid reasons for needing to invade someone's domain in search of evidence of crimes, the judge will sign it. 

In this particular case there were needles and a cook spoon laying in plain view; in taking a look at his car, which had a couple of windows opened about an inch ( and it was a hot August day to boot) I could smell an extremely strong odor of marijuana coming from the inside. I remember telling a supervisor on scene that he could have my next paycheck if there wasn't at least ten pounds of marijuana inside the vehicle.

The total was 13 pounds, so I got to keep my paycheck.

In the bedroom, while looking through a dirty laundry basket (with gloves!), we located an under-clothing-worn mini-vibrator. We also recovered over $2300 in cash and another two pounds of wild weed and a couple of bindles of heroin. Apparently the dead man sold marijuana to support his heroin addiction.

His on-again, off-again girlfriend, in whose apartment he'd died, left this earth a few years later. She, too, died of a heroin overdose, tragically leaving behind their little girl, who would have to grow up without either parent.

In another incident, a young guy thought he could beat detection by having U.S. prescription-required phenobarbitol mailed to him from a South American country. He lived with his mother, her boyfriend and his two younger sisters in a rather affluent area. During the warrant execution, a vibrator was found under the mattress in his thirteen-year-old sister's room; in the master bedroom, nude  photos of his mother were located. We ended up seizing drugs, cash, a .50 caliber Desert Eagle handgun and an AK-47 rifle. Disgustingly, we had to leave an on-duty officer completely out of the loop on that one because he commonly rode motorcycles with the mope responsible for having his now-embarrassed family's home invaded by police.

Lastly, while working in the Special Investigations Unit, we raided a home in which two middle-agers lived, as the male had been running an illegal gambling operation by phone. I was upstairs searching what evidently was the master bedroom in this home, a rather tidy two-story, well-kept place. As I opened the bottom dresser drawer I was shocked to find it completely full of vibrators and rubber male appendages.

Then, from the bottom of the stairway, the woman of the house pleads, "PLEASE don't open the bottom dresser drawer!".

"Too late", I replied, which was followed by the woman's wail of embarrassment.

Now, sex toys in and of themselves are not illegal to posses or own; in all of the instances mentioned, none were taken as evidence of a crime. However, if you're going to be involved in crimes which might subject your home, office, apartment or car to being searched by law enforcement, save yourself from embarrassment by NOT having sex toys on hand.

...though there was the time a plastic vibrator had been thrown by a wife, which struck her husband in the head, during a domestic dispute; THAT one was taken as evidence.

What Cops Do During Heavy Snow

 

Well, right now here in north central Ohio we're getting some significant snowfall accompanied by gusty winds, meaning it will be drifting. Since the wind is howling out of the north, that means east/west roads will be subject to some large drifts. Our local Sheriff just declared a Level Three snow emergency, meaning only emergency vehicles are permitted on the roadways

The Sheriff, J. Steve Sheldon, has been a good friend since the early 1980s, when I was a pup at Ontario PD and he was a road deputy on midnight shift. We'd often eat lunch together at Denny's at around 0400 hours. Off duty, we got into more than a few capers together, usually involving alcohol. All I'll say is, I'm glad I stopped drinking a few decades ago.

Back in those bygone days, most smaller law enforcement agencies didn't have 4-wheel-drive vehicles in their inventory; I clearly remember, though installing chains on our cruiser tires in order to get around. Hey, you did what you had to do to get by. I also remember Sgt. Lou Bemiller, who was in charge of vehicle maintenance, chewing me out for going too fast with chains on, which caused one of the chains to come loose and beat the crap out of the rear fender. Lesson learned.

One weekend night shift, during which it was snowing like crazy, the Chief ordered everyone to double up instead of riding solo. I was paired with a guy named Rex Knee. Rex was a nice guy who was four years older than I, very laid back, who absolutely loved Neil Diamond and eating the British burgers at the aforementioned Denny's.

He was also, as I would come to find, very cold-blooded. Not in the sense of being ruthless, he just had a hard time staying warm. The entire shift was a fight over the heater settings and me opening my passenger side window. Rex had the inside of that cruiser feeling like a blast furnace, to the extent that I felt like I couldn't breathe. 

That one lands in the top three longest-8-hour-shifts-ever.

At Mansfield PD it was a different story. We had a street crew who actually did a pretty fair job at making the streets passable; the real issue was boredom. On those very slow, snowy nights when nothing in the city was moving, five or 6 of us would 'coop' in the city parking garage, which once stood right next to the municipal building. We'd park, side-by-side, five cruisers across; most times, one or two of us would stay awake to monitor radio traffic while everyone else slept. If someone napping got dispatched to a call, we'd wake them up and away they'd go.

Yes, coppers do sleep on duty. Not every guy I ever worked with, but a large number of night shifters.

It's not only the coppers working nights. Several years ago there was a long-time dayshift officer who was found sound asleep in his cruiser...in the middle of the day...in the parking lot of a busy shopping complex. He retired a short while later.

I mentioned boredom earlier. When a young police officer is bored, the mind runs wild, and no time during the year is more boring than winter on night shift during/after a heavy snow and/or extremely low temperatures. 

One night, while I was training a young officer, we were cruising the northwest end of the city and pulled into the parking lot of a closed restaurant. We sat idly chatting about the job, life, who was stepping out on his wife....whatever it was, when we heard another unit call in a dead possum in the roadway. Yes, that's how boring it was. The dispatcher replied that she'd put it on the street department's list for pick up.

Out of curiosity, after we were sure the other offer had left the area, we drove the short distance to where the animal was located, finding it in pristine condition...well, for it being dead and frozen solid.

"Grab the yellow emergency blanket out of the trunk", I told my partner, "We're gonna do something with this."

Gary scooped it up, wrapped it and in the trunk it went.

So began the legend of The Possum Drag, which is a story for another time. 

Things sure were a lot more fun back in the day, is all I'll say. 

Then Versus Now: Police Cruisers

 "I miss the old days."

You'll hear that said by pretty much any retired copper who started out in the sixties, 70s or eighties. Times were simpler then, though the anti-Vietnam war protests were a huge thorn in the sides of big-city police departments in the late 60s to early 70s. Serial killers seemed to abound three of four decades ago, too, something we don't hear about much anymore.

I started my journey of wearing a badge and enforcing the law in September of 1979, back when disco was king and country was cool, largely thanks to John Travolta and Debra Winger's 'Urban Cowboy' film. Dudes wearing cowboy hats and big belt buckles were everywhere...and not a one of them had every roped a calf or even sat on a horse. I hated it. I also grew to hate the Bee Gees.

But it sure was fun being a copper.

Plymouth Fury with the 440-cubic inch V-8? I drove one. Chevy Impalas and Caprices? Yep. Ford Crown Vics? We got a shipment of them in the late 1980s at Mansfield PD; guys would line up in the police compound in order to snag one from the guys coming in on the previous shift. I preferred the boxy Impalas.

I did not, however, every drive a Dodge Diplomat. Side story: we had a guy in the mid-eighties who got into trouble by lightly damaging a cruiser and not reporting it. Instead, he bought a can of black spray paint and did a little back-alley cover-up paint job. Of course, he got caught. As punishment, he had to drive one of the old K9 cruisers...a Diplomat...throughout the summer on afternoon shift; in addition to smelling like a hot, unwashed dog, the air conditioner didn't work, nor did the AM radio. He was miserable.

Speaking of radios, it was rare to have AM and FM, but then the music was a lot better back then, by far. At Ontario PD in the early 80s, we had our own cruisers which you could take home if you lived inside the then-village (it attained city status several years ago). As such, you could make personal, minor alterations if you wanted. I installed an am/fm/cassette player, 7-band graphic equalizer and some after-market speakers. I also added a ten-band scanner so I could monitor neighboring agencies. Before that, if I wanted to listen to, say, the sheriff's office, you had to take an extra hand radio, set it to the SO's channel and wedge it under the passenger side head rest.

The police radio was a pretty straight-forward setup, 4 channels, including the LEARNS network. If you got into a multi-county pursuit, you could use that channel to talk to any other police agency equipped with it. Some of the cars were equipped with an external loudspeaker, which meant an extra microphone in the setup. Then there was the siren control box, which let you choose between a wailing siren or a warble. The European high/low didn't come into vogue until the late eighties. I never used it.

A couple of us also mounted the air cleaner lids, which sat directly over the carburetor, upside-down, which added a powerful roar to the engine. Hey, we were young guys who thought they were indestructible, right? We'd find, though, that it was kinda tough to stealth up to a break-in in progress with that loud engine.

In my early days at Mansfield PD, there were a couple of cruisers fitted out with the Federal Signals siren system. If you had to run 'hot' somewhere, if you could get the selector switch set just right between 'wail' and 'warble', it would produced a higher-pitched warble, which sounded a lot like the police sirens in Mel Gibson's 'Mad Max' movie. I think the old-timers hated it; as I got later into my career. I'd find that some of the things younger pups did grated on my nerves, too.

That was it; simplicity in the driver's seat. Nowadays, you slide into the seat of a patrol car and there's lights and switches everywhere. There's also a mounted laptop computer that will do everything but wipe your nose. Run plates, sign off and on calls, write traffic citations and police reports. Heck, in my early days, we typed our reports...on a typewriter. Then we went to handwritten reports. Nowadays coppers tippity-tap reports on the in-car laptop. Sitting in a present-day cruiser is like sitting in a space capsule.

When I retired in 2013 we had the in-car laptops. I didn't like them but there were certain tasks we were compelled to use them for, there wasn't a way around it. Suffice it to say, I retired at the right time, having worked across five decades.

Man, do I miss the old days.

Typical early-day radio/siren set up

Present-day cruiser