"DO YOU KNOW C.P.R.?!?

"DO YOU KNOW C.P.R.?!?"

I had just picked up a stack of arrest warrants at the office and was on my way to serve one. The guy I was looking for had been in trouble on several occasions, but not for anything very serious. A few minor drug possession charges, as well as some driving charges. I knew he drove a blue pickup truck and as I pulled in to the driveway of the trailer he was supposed to be staying at I saw his truck parked behind the residence.
I walked through the yard to the front steps and knocked on the door. I heard someone rustling around inside and finally an older man answered the door. It was this man's son I was looking for. I asked the man if his son was home (I was already sure he was because his truck was there). The man told me that he wasn't, I asked if he would mind if I came in and looked around just to be sure. The man became very nervous and told me that he didn't want me to search his house. I tried again, but he was very adamant about not letting me in, which just furthered my suspicion that he was indeed hiding inside. I told the man that I had a warrant for arrest and to tell his son to get in touch with me. The man assured me that he would let his son know.
I left the residence feeling a little bit duped but knew I would eventually catch the guy I was looking for. I drove about half a mile up the road when I got a call to do a death investigation at the house I had just left. I turned my car around and headed back to the trailer. When I pulled in the driveway a large older woman was standing on the porch yelling at me "DO YOU KNOW C.P.R?!?" I told her I did and she just said "He's in the bedroom!"
I went into the bedroom and saw the man I was looking for a few moments ago laying on the bed, his father standing over him looking helpless, "Please help him, he's so cold." he said never taking his eyes off his dead son. I knew immediately that he had been dead for several hours. The dead have a certain facial expression, that only the dead seem to be able to make. His eyes were wide open and blindly staring at the ceiling, there was mucous running from his nose to his mouth. His mouth was fully open and frozen in a silent, violent looking yawn. The man was laying on his back and from the middle of his body down he was purple, from his non flowing blood settling where gravity had left it. I felt the man's neck for a pulse knowing there would be none. This guy was stiff, so stiff you couldn't even move his arms or fingers. I looked at his father and called E.M.S. on the radio. "Please help him." his father pleaded, as several tears had begun flowing down his cheeks. "I'll do the chest compressions if you do the breaths" I told his father. I knew this would do no good, but it would make the parents feel better and less helpless than just staring at their son. I began to give the compressions, and when I finished a cycle I instructed the father on how many breaths to give, and to make sure that air wasn't escaping through his son's nose.
As he gave the breaths I saw the air go straight into the man's stomach as the belly of the dead man began to swell. I knew that air was going to come back out in a fetid way and was glad I wasn't giving the breaths. I began another cycle of compressions and felt two of the man's ribs break under my hands, it made a sickening sound and a bad feeling to my touch, it felt very unnatural, and I prayed that his father hadn't heard it.
E.M.S. arrived and pronounced the man dead. His mother begged and pleaded with them to do anything to help her son. I was glad not to be them at that moment. I did my report and took the required pictures, while waiting for the funeral home to transprt the body.
After everything was finished the man's father pulled me to the side and told me he appreciated everything I had done, and that a part of him realized that his son had been dead too long for help. He said that after I had left he went to wake his son up to take him to the court house to take care of the warrant and found him lying in the bed. He said he was sorry for lying to me about his son being there. He told me that his son had recently gotten divorced and wasn't allowed to see his children, and was very depressed as well as having a drug problem. He said his son had actually made several comments about ending his life the night before, but that was not uncommon for him. I told him that there was nothing he could have done to help his son. That his son had already made up his mind about dying. I returned the warrant unserved.

"It will if you hit it hard enough!"

"It will if you hit it hard enough!"

It had been snowing all day and all night, in all we had gotten several inches, and the stuff was still falling. The roads hadn't been plowed and it was hard to tell where the pavement was. We were riding two to a car that night for safety reasons, it's hard to get to someone who needs help in inclimate weather. At shift change the Lt. had told my partner and I about a man who had made threats to his girlfriend and told her he was coming to take her car. We looked this guy up in the system and found he had warrants outstanding for assault on a female. We took the warrants and left the office to patrol our assigned area.
I remember how bright out it was with the moon reflecting off the snow, it was almost like mid morning. My partner and I checked a few buildings and rode through the crack-hood to see if there was anyone there we could lock up, but everything was dead. My partner T. asked if I wanted to go and check on that warrant and I said sure. We slowly meandered our way through the snow and finally arrived at the address this guy was supposed to be going to. The driveway was exceptionally long and we saw a black truck leaving the trailer and heading towards us. We thought it might be our man so we waited for it to get to the end of the driveway. The truck pulled up and it turned out not to be the guy we were looking for, but after talking to him for a moment he told us he had just dropped the guy off at the trailer. We let him leave and the car that was supposed to be stolen by our wanted fellow started up and headed our way. As the car approached I recognized him as the man we were looking for. I turned on the blue lights and got out of the car. The other car stopped and the man rolled down his window. I told him to turn the car off and get out, that he was under arrest. "I can't do that " he said matter of factly as he rolled the window back up. I started towards him eager to yank him out of the car, when his back tires began to spin crazily in the snow as he laid down on the gas pedal. The car was headed straight towards me. I was in a bad position, he was about to crush me between the two cars.
I began to run to the front of my car and managed to make it to the front quarter panel and dive to the side just before he hit me. As he passed the side view mirror of his car hit me in the elbow, his car was about to pin me in, so I punched out the drivers side window of his car, knowing that when the glass shattered he would jerk the wheel in the other direction, and steer away from me.
I felt no pain as my hand hit his glass and broke through, coming within inches of his face. He continued to drive wildly and nearly wrecked as he spun onto the snow covered road. I looked over at T. and he just looked at me in amazement and said "man, I didn't know a car window would shatter like that." "It will if you hit it hard enough" I replied.
I threw T. the keys and said "let's get this guy." As I was going to the passenger side I noticed that my hand felt like it was soaking wet and sticky. I looked down and saw that my hand had been cut pretty badly. I remember seeing my blood in the snow at my feet and being strangely fascinated by the stark contrast of my blood on the pristine white of the snow. I got in the car and wrapped my hand in a sock hat, to keep any more blood from getting on the interior of the car. I don't know how much good that did as the door was already covered with my blood. T. spun the car around and began to chase the offender. The Lt. called us on the radio and told us to stop the prusuit due to the weather. I called him on the phone and told him what happened and that we were going to see if the guy didn't crash somewhere down the road. We didn't see him anywhere which amazed me, because the guy was driving so badly when he fled the scene. T. asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital and I told him yeah, but I wanted to take out warrants on the jerk first for trying to run me down with his car. Another guy from the shift got a lead on where the maniac had fled to, a house in the next county over. We called that jurisdiction and they had no trouble identifying either him or the vehicle.
I went to the hospital and recieved several stitches, which I ended up taking out myself a couple of weeks later. When the case went to court I remember testifying and the whole time this cat was sitting next to his lawyer just smiling at me saying he was going to get away with it. His smile turned into a frown when he was convicted and sent to prison for a term of several years. I remember the D.A. in this case asked me about letting the guy plea to a lesser offense, but I stuck to my guns and we convicted him of the felony. I don't always win, but it is sweet when I do.

The ones we love the most.

The ones we love the most.

I was sent to a house to take an assault report. A woman had called and stated that she had been attacked by her husband. She said she had left the home to call us, so I was the only one responding (typically we send two officers to a domestic or fight type call). I thought this would be a simple enough call and I would probably end up telling the woman to take out a warrant on her attacker, as well as a protective order.
I get to the house and am greeted by the callers brother, he tells me that his sister is inside and has her come out to see me. When she comes out I am shocked by what I see. This woman is bleeding from nearly every orifice of her face, her mouth, nose, ears, she even has blood coming down her face from her hairline. Her face is streaked with blood and tears, and her eye is purple and swollen shut already. I ask her what happened.
She told me that her husband had been drinking and began arguing with her, she said he threatened her with a baseball bat, and when she tried to leave he began punching her in the face. She said she managed to get out of the house and into the yard, but he pursued her, caught her and drug her back inside the house by the hair. She said her brother heard the commotion and came to the house and helped her leave. While at her brothers house she was laying in bed in a back room, with the window above her head open. She said suddenly hands came in through the window, and grabbed her by the hair, and her husband actually drug her through the window by the hair and started back across the yard towing her behind him. As I talk to her she continues to swell and bleed, I notice large clumps of her hair are starting to fall out by the roots from where he had been pulling on them. "Where is he now?" I asked. "Next door." she answered, "Does he have a gun?" "No but he has a ball bat, I think he has it on the couch next to him." I start to the house next door expecting he will try to assault me also. I walk into his yard and come up to the front steps, I am about to enter his territory and his comfort zone. My heart begins to speed up.
I walk up the narrow wooden steps, the door is a cheap trailer door, with a diamond shaped window in it. There are no lights on in the house and I don't hear any movement. In the dark through the small window I can make out a shape lying on the couch. I bang on the door as hard as I can. I see the guy sit up, reach underneath the couch and pull out a baseball bat. "WHO IS IT!" He yells drunkenly and a little to aggressively for me. He gets up and starts to the door readying his bat. I take a good position and steel myself for the probable attack.
"SHERIFFS DEPARTMENT!" I yell back "IF YOU BRING THAT BAT TO THE DOOR WITH YOU IT WILL BE THE WORST DAY OF YOUR LIFE!" I yell through the door. All the neighbors in the trailer park have come into their yards to enjoy the show. He slowly returns to the couch and puts the bat back underneath it. He opens the door and staggers onto the porch. "What happened tonight?" I ask him. "That bitch won't leave me alone so I sent her to her brothers." I told him to put his hands behind his back that he is under arrest. His drunken mind pauses as he sizes me up. He decides I will probably make a short day of him and complies. I handcuff him and put him in the back of my car.
I go back next door and begin the arduous task of paperwork, and evidence collection. The whole time every time he thinks I'm not paying attention I hear the jerk kicking my car window. I don't care though If he kicks it out he will just get more charges, his attempts must have been half hearted because he never could get it out.
While transporting this jerk to the jail, he cussed me and told me how many ways he was going to hurt me when I took the cuffs off. I just told him that is fine, they will be off shortly. When I got him to the jail, I told him now was his chance I was taking the cuffs off. I told him he could either fight me or shut his mouth sit down and not say another word. I put the key in and unlocked the cuffs.
The cuffs were off and before I could even get them put up he sat on the bench and stared at the floor. What a little punk, but I always had the opinion if you beat a woman you are not a man. He just proved me right.
For the rest of the evening I pondered relationships and marriage. I wondered how you could do that to someone you had sworn before God to honor, cherish and take care of, in sickness and in health.
conversely this "gentlemen" came to court with a plea of not guilty, and his wife wanted to have the charges dropped. The D.A. informed her that we would not drop the charges and when they showed the defense attorney the evidence I had collected he changed his plea to guilty. Sometimes the good guys do win.

"PUT THE KNIVES DOWN AND TURN OFF THE MUSIC!"

"PUT THE KNIVES DOWN AND TURN OFF THE MUSIC!"

I was on my way to a home in which a deranged man had cut himself several times and then fled to a bedroom and locked himself inside. While his wife was on the phone with 911 the man could be heard in the background yelling that "when the cops get here I'm gonna kill them and myself!"
So here I was again driving to situation that most people would run from. while I'm driving I'm running scenarios through my head. Most of them are worst case. It's my way of mentally preparing to deal with these situations. I am someone who is deathly afraid of knives and being stabbed. There is something dreadful about the thought of someone being close enough to drive the steel into your body and then turn it this way and that, or even to eviscerate you. It's to personal, if I had the choice I would rather be shot.
I get within two miles of the house and my nerves start to tingle, I begin to get nervous, I am suddenly on edge and keenly aware of everything around me, it's like the world goes into slow motion for a moment. I can see a caterpillar in the road in front of my car, a bug flies past my windshield followed by a handful of leaves blowing this way and that, it's so slow it becomes bizarre. I am now just a few hundred yards from the driveway and it occurs to me that I don't know whether this guy has a gun or not. I realize that I am most vulnerable to gunfire while sitting in my car. I know that once I pull into the driveway I'm going to have to hit it hard. Out of the car and to the door in just a few seconds. I'm now at the end of the drive and pulling up to the house quickly, watching every window as I get out of the car and run towards the door.
I get to the door and am immediately overwhelmed by the sound of music blaring so loudly it makes my ears feel like they will start bleeding, some horrible tune, I think it was highway to hell by ac/dc. I bang on the door as hard as I can and almost immediately this enormous troll of a woman opens the door and starts yelling at me "He's in the bedroom and he's cut pretty bad!" "which bedroom?" I ask. She leads me to the room where the music is coming from, I can't stand this music. "Tell him to come out." I tell her, hoping he doesn't know I'm there yet and can catch him by surprise. She bangs on the door and calls his name and tells him to come out. No response. She looks at me and shrugs and goes back into the living room. I get my taser out and suddenly the bedroom door flies open.
There standing about ten feet from me is a thin white guy, he is holding two of the biggest knives I have ever seen out to either side. his head is angled down but he is looking right at me with crazy just spiraling in those eyes of his. He has long scraggly hair which is hanging down in his face, He is not wearing a shirt and I can see that not only has he been cutting his arms, but he has also carved several strange shapes into his chest and he was bleeding rampantly. The music is killing me, "Put down the knives turn off the music, come out and talk to me!" I scream at him. he doesn't respond so I give the order again, the red dot from my taser is on his chest. He breaks my stare and looks quickly at something in the general direction of whatever machine is churning out this awful music, he looks back at me, he starts slobbering and long strands of drool trail behind him as he points both knives at me and charges.
Everything goes back into that bizarre slow state I yell at him to stop then I pull the trigger on my taser. It doesn't deploy, he is now five feet away, I pull the trigger again, nothing, he is now four feet away and coming fast. I lower my taser and reach for my gun, my gun clears the holster he is now three feet away, I raise my weapon and he kicks the door shut. I try to catch it with my foot before it closes but I don't make it and he locks the door. I wonder if he was looking at a gun earlier and decide not to kick in the door, I can play the waiting game, and there is no one in the room he can harm other than himself. I decide to back away and ask the troll if he has any guns in the room. I make it about ten feet into the kitchen when the music stops and the bedroom door opens. He comes towards me with his hands hidden behind his back. This time instead of slowing down things move really fast. I decide to try my taser again, it's pointed at him, "Stop and show me your hands!" I order. He keeps advancing on me, hiding his hands. I give the order one more time but he keeps coming at me. I pull the tasers trigger, and hear a pop. The probes deploy and find their mark on his chest, I watch the barbed hooks dig into him, and I hear the electricity surging. He stiffens like a board and falls flat on his back, and stays that way the entire five seconds the electricity pulses through him. I get him handcuffed and have EMS come to treat the self inflicted wounds, fortunately none of them were life threatening, I took him to the hospital for mental evaluation and he was ultimately committed to a mental institution for several days. To my knowledge we have never had another call at that house again.

"Do they really play dead when their scared?"

"Do they really play dead when they're scared?"

A guy from my squad and I were way out in the middle of the boon-docks one night while nothing was really going on, when two possums came ambling out of the woods and were just hanging out nearby. I watched them curiously for a few minutes and asked my buddy "Do those things really play dead when they get scared?" "I don't know" he replied. "do you want to get out and chase them to see if it works?" I asked. "Sure".

We got out of our patrol cars and ran at the two animals as fast as we could, one of the forest creatures shimmied up a tree, leaving the two of us in hot pursuit of the other. We chased him into a corner of sorts, it had nowhere else to run. We've got him now I thought to myself. Now I'm a big guy I stand 6 feet 5 inches barefoot and weigh about 225 pounds and this little rodent really should be no match for me. The possum turned to face us and in short order opened it's mouth and let out this god awful hiss, and began running straight at the two of us. Of course like the brave men we both are we screamed like ten year old girls and ran the other way. I thought I was going to pull a Duke Brothers and slide across the hood of my car to get away from it, when it found a small culvert running under the road and went inside.

We both got into our cars faster than I would have thought possible and sat there feeling stupid for several moments. Finally I looked over at him and said "Man did you see the teeth on that thing?" Trying to save some face from having just been run into a car by a creature just slightly larger than my foot. I did feel ridiculous, I was carrying a gun at the time, it just didn't seem right to hurt the brave little guy though. I guess it can't all be guts and glory all the time.

"What color were the sheets?"

"What color were the sheets?"

"What?" "what color were the sheets?" I asked him again. "I don't know." so I asked "which side of the room was the closet on?" Again "I don't know." I didn't expect he would. Though Frank was several years my senior in age it was my task to train him how to do the job, and part of the job is being aware of your surroundings. It was his first death investigation and I have to say it was a good one for him to see. This very obese woman had decided she no longer wanted to be a part of this world so she lay down in her bed put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

It was a fairly gruesome scene. I remember walking into the house and being amazed at how clean it was, I guess the victim knew how many people would be tromping through her house so she had spent the day cleaning it. She was in a back bedroom laying in bed, the top of her head had a large hole in it and there was blood spattered up the wall along with several large chunks of brain, in fact it was so forceful that bits of the gray substance were also congealing on her nightstand and a large chunk was on the pillow next to her head. Frank didn't want to go in but he knew I wouldn't leave until he had. We stood in the room for several minutes not talking just looking around. Finally we left the residence and I began quizzing him. He couldn't tell me anything about the room other than all he saw was blood and brains.

"They were pink, and it was on the right" I said finally. He learns quickly because at the next similar incident he was stumping me with things he saw that I had missed.

Blood, violence and shell casings

This Blog is not who I really am. It is a part of me that I have to keep to myself. The things I see and deal with every day and can't talk to about with anyone else. This is the Grim part of me. My world consists of guns, shell casings, blood and violence. After seeing this day in and day out it has to go somewhere, so why not here.

I have had my hand broken in two places, I have had a number of stictches in my hand at one point from some maniac trying to run over me with his car. I punched the window out to steer him away, all because he had beaten some woman I didn't know and to this day have not met. I have had several people try to stab me, and a few that have hidden in the woods after running from me, debating whether or not they should kill me. I get cussed at every day because I can't solve peoples family members drug problems. I have sent 50,000 volts of electricity through at least five people and have had it shot through me twice.I have had a wife divorce me in the midst of a terrible illness when I couldn't see to fend for myself. I wouldn't trade any of these experiences for anything in the world because they have made me grow stronger. I live in a world of black and white, right and wrong, there isn't much middle ground. So there you have it, that is "blog" me and this is my first post.