Monthly Archives: January 2010

(Read “Shots Fired, Officer Down!” parts one and two before proceeding)

It was the night after Officer Ross got shot and I was seated in the briefing room of the police department. At the beginning of the shift, the off-going Sergeant would come to the briefing room and fill in the on-coming shift on the day’s events….a swapping of information essential to patrolling the streets. Quite often, some of the evening shift officers would hang around and it would become a major bull-shit session too.

This night was no different, the evening shift had arrested a volatile thief..there had been a fight involving 3 officers in the booking room of the jail. We were told to keep a close eye on him, they had already removed his mattress from the cell …and made him remove his belt and shoe-laces. I actually had worked two suicides in the jail since I began at this department….even with video monitors, it sometimes happened. Where there was a will…there was a way.

The subject of the shooting was a hot topic…we had never had an officer shot at this suburban police department. Comments and barbs were made, in good nature, about the TV news story…and the fact that Ross got shot in the ass.

But there was one officer that zeroed in on my participation and actions regarding the previous night. I had always sensed that he had a problem with women officers. I think it infuriated him that this big event had happened on my watch….and I had handled it well.

The radio recording of the events had been passed around the department all that day…everyone had heard the drama unfold…from my checking out at the tire store until the bitter end. Civilian employees and officers alike had patted me on the back that day and congratulated me on a good job…..all but this officer…his name was O’Riley.

There he sat in the briefing room, leaning back in his chair, his combat boots resting on the table before him. O’Riley was a tall, thin red-head…he always kept his uniform perfectly creased and pressed. He looked like a Irish cop right out of central casting…..with an accompanying brusque behavior.

No compliment came from his lips….he began to mock me in front of two shifts of officers. I sat across the room and watched as his laughter grew louder and he gesticulated wildly with his arms. O’Riley was talking about the pitch of my voice…..how it went up a couple of octaves when I arrived at the scene of the shooting.

O’Riley was told to simmer down by the Sergeant, but he continued…he did a crude imitation of me, talking very high and repeating my commands to the ambulance and my back-up…the very commands that had saved Ross’ life just over 24 hours earlier. He didn’t care to notice, that no one in the room, save his best buddy, was sharing in his sardonic laugh and verbal attack.

After the shooting, I had gone home and slept for a few hours. After a big rush of adrenalin, comes the crash….and I did just that on my sofa.
Upon waking, I joined some other officers and we went to visit Ross at the hospital. Dinner followed..then another short rest…then I found myself back at the briefing room. Here I was…watching a red-headed, chauvinistic buffoon belittling me in front of my peers.

I hadn’t cried the night before…..I hadn’t screamed in an emotional release. I had pushed down anger, fear, and excitement…suppressing all in my attempt to be a good cop…to be professional. To do the job better than any man would have done it….to avoid the very thing I found myself witnessing. I could take not one more moment of this idiot’s rant!!

I rose slowly from my chair….walked over to O’Riley….picked up the only thing on the table besides his size 12s…..a full can of Dr. Pepper.
I popped the top…..and poured the entire contents over his red hair…sent it cascading down his starched uniform…all over his leather duty belt…until it puddled right at his crotch area!

O’Riley did not move an inch…he sat perfectly still as I drained the entire soft drink all over him! It did stop his mouth though….he uttered not another single syllable. He stood up….and walked back to the locker room alone. You could have heard a pin drop in that briefing room….good grief, two Sergeants had witnessed my assault on O’Riley.

When you are the only woman in the department and you do such a thing…well, let me tell you…..I have never shut up 14 men at one time again in my life! They all stared at me with funny shit-eating grins on their faces, as I collected my stuff and went out on patrol.

I had to give my Sergeant a written statement about what I did…and he wrote up a report, complete with witness accounts. The Chief called me to his office the next day…..I sat down directly across from him, ready for my punishment.

The Chief smiled and ever so slowly grabbed a Coke that was on his desk and placed it on the floor behind him…out of my reach. His opening statement was, “O’Riley is a prick and got what was coming to him!” “Walk out of here like I scolded you and go home to get some rest!” As I was about to shut the Chief’s door…he said one last thing to me…..something I have never forgotten. “You are the only woman at this department because when I hired you…I knew you would be a fantastic officer, regardless of gender, and the night before last, you proved me right.”

Recently I was in court in a county south of Fort Worth. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw O’Riley walking around the district attorney’s office! He was now an investigator for this particular county, assigned to the very court where I was standing. He and I exchanged awkward pleasantries…then I went to the back of the court to hang out with other defense attorneys. O’Riley had never spoken to me about the Dr. Pepper after that night….not a word. We continued to work together..but the subject was never addressed.

At the back of courtrooms you will find defense attorneys gathered about, shooting the bull….very similar to police briefing rooms. The other defense attorneys were talking about O’Riley…he was difficult to deal with and very surly. They relayed to me that he required a lot of information to just get a copy of your client’s DWI tape and often kicked back requests that had minor errors. I felt compelled to tell them the story of my assault and we all agreed O’Riley had a twenty year tenure as a prick.

What can I say, I am now beloved by all defense attorneys in that county. I meet someone new every time I go down there and they have all heard about the cascading soda…the prosecutors even treat me better now!

I think O’Riley knows that I shared the story with my fellow defense attorneys. Every time he rejects a request for a DWI videotape because of a typo or other minor errors…he finds a Dr. Pepper sitting on his desk the next day.

221? 221, go ahead. Be en route to the jail for a prisoner release. Wow, that is an exciting call, I thought. 221 en route. Sometimes in law enforcement what starts out mundane, turns into a war story that you are still telling your friends about 20 years later….this is one such story.

I arrived at the jail at about 11:30 p.m. and entered its fetor confines. If you are ever unfortunate enough to be in jail, you will quickly pick up on a unique combo of smells….think urine with a healthy dose of gym locker room.

We shall call this calamitous guy Carl…well, because it sounds good with calamitous. Carl had sat in our jail for four days rather than pay some old traffic tickets. He was on parole for aggravated robbery, having served several years in the Texas Department of Corrections, (TDC). The traffic tickets were nothing for him to worry about and would have no effect on his paroled status.

Carl was institutionalized, TDC tends to do that to someone. I used to like dealing with guys like Carl, you knew exactly what to expect…and so did they. Believe it or not, arresting a local dentist for DWI was a larger pain in the ass than dealing with Carl.

I did the discharge paperwork and Carl was sent walking. As I checked back into service, I watched his shadow disappear westbound up the access road to the highway. Carl’s mother lived about 2 miles from the police station, he was headed in the right direction.

Driving around for eights hours, alone in the dark, is a unique way to make a living. I drove alley ways, checked businesses, checked backyards for scared old ladies….I did whatever came across the radio.
The dog shift was a mix of calls for service relayed to you by dispatch and self-generated activity. I excelled in self-generated activity…for the stats, but mostly to just stay awake.

After leaving the station, I mozied on down to the 7-11 to get a coke. Diane, the manager, appreciated that I took short breaks there, it made her feel safer and she enjoyed the company. I walked into the store and Diane cut her eyes quickly to a guy standing by the ATM.

She said one thing, “10-56.” That let me know the guy was drunk. We had prearranged radio signals and other buzz words for almost any situation that I might walk into on my frequent visits.

I approached the white male and began checking him for signs of intoxication. He showed me a driver’s license, and told me he had been to a local honky-tonk….honesty…I liked that.

221? 221 go ahead. The burglar alarm is going off at the junior high on Church Street. 221 en route. In small departments, improvisation is also needed on a nightly basis. The dude was intoxicated and not getting back in his truck. I asked him for his keys, told him to call a ride and he could pick up his keys the next day at the front desk of the police department.

I pulled onto the 200 block of Church street and killed my headlights, taking the last three blocks blacked out. There would be no back-up coming, all units were handling other calls. I hit the foot release and pulled the shot-gun out of its floor rack. I got out of the unit and started to check the perimeter windows and doors. It was about 12:20 a.m. on a Thursday morning.

Alarms went off every night, the trick was to never get lazy. Sure, ninety-nine percent were false….caused by the weather, a stray cat, or the owner of the property…but you had to treat each call like the real deal.

At the back southwest corner of the school I found a window broken. The glass was blasted in and I could see a couple drops of fresh blood on the sill. I knocked out the remaining jagged pieces, stepped back into the shadows, and assessed my predicament.

There was no vehicle that I could see in the area, telling me that this “burglar” was on foot and not too bright. Not too bright because of the blood and the window that he chose to break….it was the only window at the back of the school with a giant spotlight right above it.

I softly told the dispatcher my location and notified her of the open window. Another officer was wrapping up a traffic accident and would be on his way in about 9 minutes. Just at that moment I saw the outline of a six-foot tall man walking in the school.

I would like to tell you that I did the right thing…waited the 9 minutes before entering the school. I always did the right thing when talking about officer safety….except this night.

I put the shotgun inside the window first, then I jumped up and went in head first. My hands came down on the classroom floor, right on the broken glass. As I pulled myself through the opening, my brass buttons popped off the front of my uniform shirt…..one at a time. This was not my finest moment of grace….and I wasn’t too quiet either.

I quickly jumped to my feet, grabbed my shotgun and walked towards the door. As I took my first step into the hall, I could see a man walking towards me…he had something in his hands. I racked a round into the shotgun…an unmistakeable sound…what we called a “scum-bag alert.”

I leveled the shotgun at the man and told him to drop what was in his hands. He released two boxes and about 200 pencils hit the floor and scattered. I got the guy proned out on the floor…and we held our positions. I could hear my back-up checking out at the school.

As the other officer walked up behind me and illuminated my bad guy for the first time…..I recognized him….it was Carl. “What on earth are you doing here and why are you stealing pencils, I asked?? Carl replied with five words, “I want to go home.”

We stood him up, walked him back to the same open window and pushed Carl through it, head first, and handcuffed. Back at the station I booked Carl in jail for burglary of a building….a felony…one that would ensure that he went back to TDC, his home.

I knew Carl was institutionalized when I set him walking to his mother’s earlier in the night….I just didn’t know to what level. He had a made a decision that he could not function in the real world. Breaking into a building without the effective consent of the owner, to commit a theft or other felony, while on parole in Texas, gets you a ticket to TDC….even if you are stealing 2 boxes of pencils.

Carl walked into the holding cell, sat down on the iron cot and took a very deep breath. The air that repelled most and the 4 by 8 cell others avoided, was the one place on earth where Carl felt normal.

I drove back to the 7-11, the ice in my coke had surely melted….maybe I would pick one up for Carl.

PART TWO

I was two minutes out when the dispatcher toned out the ambulance and fire department, telling me the neighbors were reporting a full structure fire at the house on Sugarberry Lane. I turned on the street passing the point where just over two hours earlier I had the encounter with Penny. I could see the house, smoke was filtering out the front windows.

I pulled up and exited the patrol car, running across the yard. A neighbor standing in the street asked if he could help. I yelled for him to stay away, as I heard screams from the rear of the house. The driveway was in the rear of the house and fed into the back alleyway. I continued to hear a woman screaming as I ran along the side of the house. At the back alley I located the woman, another neighbor, she was screaming, “the kids, the kids!!”

I asked her if any of the kids were still in the house? She responded that she didn’t know, but saw three of them running down the street. Thinking at least two small kids were in the burning house, as well as Penny and Zahhak, I entered the garage and observed the door leading to the kitchen open. I could hear my back-up arriving out front, as I drew my weapon.

I entered the kitchen and came face to face with Zahhak. My back-up entered right behind me, his name was Wilson. Thick black smoke was filling the kitchen and it was burning my eyes and throat. It was obvious that Zahhak had burns on both forearms, severe burns…as well as on his torso. He also had a butcher knife in his right hand and had appeared to have cut his hands…blood was pooling at his feet.

I told Zahhak to drop the knife or he would be shot….he dropped it in quick order. Wilson and I grabbed him and drug him out on the driveway. Wilson quickly returned to the house to attempt to find the children and Penny. I rolled Zahhak on his stomach and handcuffed his hands behind his back. The skin on his forearms was rolling up, burned and shriveling….falling off to my touch. With his injuries, I knew he was not moving, so I left him and ran back into the house.

On the return trip to the kitchen I had to immediately get down on my hands and knees. The only available air was at the one foot level, everything above that was total blackness. I could hear Wilson shouting, still calling out for the kids. Wilson checked several rooms and could not find any sign of life.

I made it as far as the living room and could go no further. I had never experienced heat at that level before. I could feel my eyebrows synging as I faced a veritable wall of hot air. I could not make myself move another inch…my mind wanted to find Penny and the children…my body would not allow it. Wilson had bravely made it farther than I did, but even he was retreating, not making it to the master bedroom. The house belched both of us back on the driveway, along with big billows of black smoke.

What had seemed like an eternity was only about eight minutes and the fire department was now on scene fighting the fire. The Careflight medical evacuation helicopter was ordered by the fire department Captain, as Zahhak’s injuries were life threatening.

Wilson stayed with Zahhak and would be traveling to Parkland Hospital in the helicopter with him. The fire was now extinguished as I looked down the alleyway and saw five small kids standing beside a woman. Thank goodness, Penny and the kids had made it out!! I took a deep breath of the fresh air and sighed. The woman was now running towards me, getting closer….it was sadly not Penny.

The woman was a neighbor from four houses down, she stated her kids were playmates of Penny’s children. They had run to her house in sheer panic, looking for help. I told her to take the kids to her house and keep them inside until someone was sent to get them. She turned to walk back and said that the kids had told her, “Daddy set Mommy on fire!”

The fire department Captain was calling my name and standing at the kitchen door. I met him there and followed him back through the smoldering house. The fire originated in the master bedroom without extending past the attached hall. The bedroom was completely black as we walked through it towards the master bathroom.

The Captain motioned into the bathroom and I entered alone. There was Penny, motionless in the bathtub. From the breasts down her clothes were burned and melted to her skin. I could see several knife puncture wounds on her breasts as well as her neck. She was staring at me in frozen disbelief….Penny was dead.

Zahhak had waited for Penny’s return that day, sitting in the driveway. He shouted as she pulled up and the shouting followed her as she escorted the children into the house. The fight had escalated to the point where Zahhak had grabbed the butcher knife and chased Penny around the house. At one point pinning her down on the floor of the master bedroom, stabbing her repeatedly.

The twelve-year-old son had watched as Zahhak had drug Penny to the bathtub, and threw her down. A waiting gas can was on the bathroom floor. Zahhak poured the gas over a screaming Penny. Zahhak was sloppy in his crime and got gasoline on his chest and arms. When he flipped the lit match into the tub, flames shot up and licked at his body.

I worked the crime scene and didn’t leave the house for four more hours. I helped lift Penny from the bathtub and watched as something shiny fell out of the side of her burnt jeans. Upon closer inspection I could see a gold-colored coin glistening on the blackened floor. I picked it up and found it was a token, a token for games from Chuck E. Cheese.

Officer Wilson was treated for smoke inhalation at the hospital. His valiant effort was done with no thought for his own safety. He was a good officer and had acted heroically on that “slow” Sunday.

Zahhak lived, but had to endure painful skin graphs and the loss of one testicle. He was convicted of murder in a Dallas County District Court. His plea bargain and attached sentence was so incredibly low, I cannot make myself include it in this blog. Zahhak would, at sometime in his life, walk the streets a free man again. I have no reasonable explanation for this fact, as I did not take part in the prosecution, past the point of arrest.

The five children were adopted by Penny’s mother…this is all I know about them. The last time I saw the twelve-year-old is when I walked down the street and told him and his grandmother that Penny was dead.

The coroner ruled Penny’s official cause of death as smoke inhalation. Could I have saved her if I could have made myself move beyond the living room? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I can still relive the unbelievable force and heat of that burning room sixteen years later.

I would have liked to have finished this blog with a happy ending or a funny phrase or twist. But there is no such ending to relate….domestic violence ends really badly sometimes….people get hurt…people die.
I would continue to go on domestic violence calls for the rest of my law enforcement career. I would look into the eyes of aggressive men and women…volatile and angry again. I would see others that had intent to cause harm and that were on the brink of madness.

But I would never see the blackness or evil-heart of Zahhak matched again. Nor would I forget a woman named Penny and her last Mother’s Day on Sugarberry Lane.

The black Labrador came ambling up to me and said, “howdy do” in dog-speak. His name was Jake and I recognized him and his purple collar immediately. No sooner had I exited my patrol car to greet him, did I see his owner approaching in the green Dodge mini-van. There were five kids hanging out both sides, screaming Jake’s name, and a mother behind the steering wheel. For the sake of this blog, her name was “Penny.”

I had met Penny a couple of times in the months preceding Jake’s dash from their yard. She was a good mom. The unfortunate thing about Penny was that she was married to a monster. We shall call the husband, “Zahhak.” Zahhak was a figure in Iranian mythology known to be a monster, so my pseudonym is approppo.

Zahhak was a waiter at a very high-end restaurant/hotel in Dallas. The type of place where you could make $60,000.00 a year in the mid-nineties. He was very meticulous and took great care of his customers. Zahhak was well liked by his co-workers, they described him as a very earnest immigrant. They said he had come from Iran and had found his American dream. All good monsters have an outer façade that enables them to walk among the general populace. This monster excelled in appearing normal…to most.

Zahhak had been in the city jail two times for domestic violence assault. I first met Penny one early evening on a Saturday. Penny and Zahhak had five children, under the age of 12. They lived in a well-maintained, two-story Ranch style home and were known to keep to themselves in the sub-division. Penny had originally fallen in love with Zahhak because of, and these are her words, “his dark good-looks and the intensity of his love.” The children had come in quick succession and they had settled in this bedroom community of Dallas in what was to them, an idyllic setting.

But on this day, it seemed that Zahhak had bounced Penny’s head off the kitchen wall for messing up his dinner. He was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor assault, bonding out 4 hours later. Zahhak received 6 months probation and took an anger management class as his penance for the crime. Penny accepted his apology, but this pattern had been established years ago.

Two months passed and my department was, once again, dispatched to the two-story house on Sugarberry Lane. This time was even worse, Penny was bleeding from a small cut over her left eye. Zahhak had back-handed her, in front of their five children, for “disrespecting” him.

Penny had finally reached the end of her rope after the second assault. She took the kids and moved out of the house. Zahhak came home from jail the next night and found a copy of a signed protective order, along with a petition for divorce, laying on the dining room table. It had taken Penny fourteen years, but she had made her break. He had never assaulted her before in view of the children, she knew his madness was escalating.

The details of the divorce matter not, except that Penny got primary custody and Zahhak had a standard visitation schedule for the five kids. Zahhak remained in the house and Penny moved into her mother’s home with her children…a safe 15 miles away.
My police department had a copy of the divorce decree at the station on file. Zahhak hated me and every other police officer he had met because we knew his secret…we knew the truth.

Eight months had gone by the wayside since Penny escaped the grip of her abuser. She bounded out of the van, her kids leading the way. I was happy to be talking to her in a non-exigent environment. There was a relaxed, ease about her and a smile from ear to ear. I told her she looked great and inquired why she looked so darned happy? Then I remembered, it was Mother’s Day,…it was May 8, 1994.

Penny told me she was going to take Jake back to the house, then she and the kids were off to Chuck E Cheese. The kids were treating her to lunch for Mother’s Day and we both had a chuckle at their culinary choice! Penny related that Zahhak had the children for the weekend, but had let her come to Sugarberry Lane that morning to pick them up for their special lunch. I helped her get the kids and Jake back into the mini-van and they drove back to the house to deliver the randy canine.

Zahhak was to have the kids until 6pm that Sunday and was none too pleased about the 2 hours he was “giving” to Penny for her Mother’s Day lunch of pizza. He had been promised that she would drop the kids back at 2:30pm. He would then keep the kids until 6pm, when Penny would again return to retrieve them. Zahhak sat in a lawn chair, on his driveway and waited for her return. The façade was beginning to slip, the neighbors could have seen true evil that day, if they had dared a glance in his direction.

I had come in early that Sunday to work a double-shift. A friend on the day shift wanted the holiday off to spend with his wife and kids, so I had traded 8 hours with him. I would use my 8 from him another day. It was about 12:30pm when I said my goodbye to Penny and her troop. I drove off to patrol my district on a very slow Sunday afternoon.

By the time May of 1994 had rolled around I had changed departments and made the rank of sergeant. I was supervising the evening shift in a Dallas suburb of about forty-thousand people. I was biding time, wanting to leave it all for law school, but until then I did my job, and I liked to think I did it well. My badge number was 212 and all hot calls were dispatched through me. A “hot” call was one in which you proceeded, code 3, lights and sirens.

212? 212, go ahead. Code 3, domestic on Sugarberry Lane…she didn’t even have to give me the numbers…I was flying towards the scene. It was standard for one more unit to be dispatched as back-up, he was 6 minutes out…I was less than 3. The time was 2:55 p.m., oh my, I thought….Penny had returned the kids late.

My heart raced with the car as I made my way, siren blasting. A sense of foreboding came over me, this time things would be different.

END OF PART ONE

Mrs. Broadway liked to lay down naked, right in the middle of the road, on the double yellow lines. She really wouldn’t give me an answer when I inquired about why she did this at least once a month. She wasn’t working with PETA and making some statement against furs. She wasn’t trying to block construction of the new Super Target in town…she just liked being a human traffic control device. I first met her when working a year stint on the evening shift.

It would have been bearable (pun intended) if she looked like Heidi Klum, but alas…she did not. Mrs. Broadway was 76 years old, weighed about 90 pounds and bathed rarely.

221? 221, go ahead. That 10/96 is up to her old tricks again, can you be en-route? The technical term for 10/96 was “bat-shit crazy.” I got stuck with the call EVERY time because I was the only female officer on the shift. 221 en-route.

The procedure was always the same for the “laying of the hands” on Mrs. Broadway. I would pull the car over, put on my latex gloves, and shove Vicks Vapor Rub up my nostrils. Vicks was often used on welfare check calls. You know the type…call to 911 comes in on a hot summer day and caller says they haven’t heard from Uncle Fred in two weeks, can you send someone out to his house? Vicks was always mandatory in that situation…good old Uncle Fred was usually pretty ripe after two weeks of sitting in the bark-o-lounger.

But getting back to Mrs. Broadway… notice the dispatcher didn’t give me a street name and block…because Mrs. Broadway always chose the same site. She liked a road just south of the downtown area, right in front of a convenience store. There would always be one kind stranger standing over her…sacrificing his jacket. The locals at the store would be yelling at the kind stranger to save the jacket, not the old woman!

Now before you start thinking I didn’t try with Mrs. Broadway, I did. She had been taken into custody on mental detention warrants twice before and released. Mrs. Broadway had answered the young admitting doctor’s questions correctly, devised to measure sanity, and had been quite proud of herself on both occasions. I particularly loved the 3 hour wait in the ER, handcuffed to her, that preceded each quiz.

Once again, I arrived at the scene, scooped up Mrs. Broadway and delivered her safely home. She always reveled in the walk back into her house, wearing a yellow police officer raincoat and strutting for the benefit of her nosey neighbors. I let her wear the coat, it belonged to an officer that shared the patrol car with me on the day shift. His name was Chancellor and believe me, he deserved it. One night, just for kicks, he had stayed late after his shift and filled my personal car, from floor to ceiling, with the department’s weekly total of shredded paper.

The behavior continued for another six months until the little old threadbare eventually got a legal guardian and moved into an assisted living facility. Mrs. Broadway’s days of terrorizing passing motorists and small children were over. I heard she liked to walk the halls in a long yellow raincoat that hit right about her ankles and had a funky smell.

Officer Chancellor hadn’t noticed it until one day several weeks later when a mighty rainstorm hit town. He telephoned me angrily at home asking where his yellow raincoat was? I told him it was “on Broadway.”