I think the reason that I enjoy being a field training officer (FTO) is that I am fundamentally a ham, and when you're the senior officer and have a captive audience of one, you get to perform and direct, too.
FTOs who didn't have trainees were generally assigned the ride-alongs. Ride-alongs are citizens at large who want to get some insight into policing and ride shotgun for a shift. Most people find it to be a memorable experience. They ask a lot of questions, do what I ask them to do, and are generally pleasurable company.
And then there was Steve.
My Steve experience began unremarkably. The briefing sergeant told me to pick up a ride-along at the front desk. I was looking at a downtown graveyard shift, and it was nice to have someone with whom to pass the time.
Steve was waiting at the front desk, bearing the expression and body language of a golden retriever who has seen what he believes to be the last tennis ball in the universe. He had recently discovered that the local DMV office sold logo apparel bearing the emblem of the highway patrol troopers association, and I think he may have bought out their inventory. He was wearing a baseball cap, sweatshirt, and T-shirt bearing the association's logo. Since the logo was based on the same seven-point star that we wore as our badge, I was a little concerned that someone might assume that Steve was a police officer. Steve, on the other hand, was hoping desperately that someone might make that assumption.
Steve was bursting to tell me something, but I told him to first lose the sweatshirt, hat, and T-shirt, or at least put something over them so that he wouldn't be mistaken for a cop. He found something else to wear, and we walked out to the motor pool to get a car and hit the street.
As soon as we got into the car, Steve began a kind of stream-of-consciousness narrative about his ambitions, his perspectives on law enforcement, his hopes for the night's events, and no doubt some other topics that got lost in the mix.
Like this: "I'mreallygladIcouldridewithyoutonightOfficerDeesbecauseeveryonetoldmethatyou'reareallygoodofficer…"
Get the idea?
It was a Friday night, and the teenage cruisers were downtown in force. People drove over a hundred miles to take part in "the cruise" down our main drag, an activity we did our best to discourage with draconian traffic enforcement and a generally surly attitude. Someone had the idea that having a supermarket downtown would be a great addition to the casinos and souvenir shops, so we had a market with a huge parking lot–just where no one would ever expect to find one. The lot was a popular place to let overheated engines cool, get girls' phone numbers, find out where the keggers were, and start and end fights. I tried to drive through the lot a couple of times an hour. I turned into the lot and was immediately flagged down by a group that had been involved in a fender-bender. I told dispatch that I would be out taking a report and got out of the car.
Walking up to one of the drivers, I asked him for his driver's license, registration, and proof of insurance. While he was retrieving the documents, I became aware that Steve had gotten out of the car and was approaching the other driver. "Driver's license, registration, and proof of insurance," he said in his most authoritarian tone.
"Get back in the car." Steve started to protest, but then demonstrated he was smarter than he looked and did as he was told. From his expression, you would have thought I had taken away his next three Christmases.
While I was filling out the report form, dispatch called on my portable radio, asking me if I could secure for another call. They didn't generally do that unless the call was something fairly important.
"I'm kind of busy right now. What've you got?"
"We have a report of shots fired at the Dairy Queen at Sixth and Virginia." The Dairy Queen was one block away.
"Securing." I gave the vehicle documents back to the injured parties and told them to go to the station to finish their report. I ran back to the car and flicked on the overhead lights and siren and headed down the street. It was maybe a fifteen-second trip.
Although I never fully understood the logic behind it (this was not uncommon), our departmental policy stated that our primary weapon was the shotgun. If you had access to your shotgun, you were supposed to use it before your sidearm in any situation where the introduction of police firearms was appropriate. Our shotguns were 12-gauge Remington 870 Wingmasters, loaded with 00 (always pronounced "double ought") Magnum buckshot shells. At close range, a barrage of 00 pellets could sever a major body part. From a short distance away, the effect was that of firing twelve .38 Special bullets simultaneously, making marksmanship, at best, a secondary consideration.
But the most often used feature of the shotgun, and probably the most practical, was its capacity for intimidation. The sound of a shotgun's action, pulling the forearm back toward the receiver and then forward again to chamber a shell, translates into almost every language and culture as "Immediately stop what you are doing unless you are bored with life." In my experience, "Halt, police!" had an efficacy of maybe 50 percent, but "Halt [rack, rack], police!" worked every time.
Our shotguns were carried in an upright rack bolted to the dashboard, with the shotgun barrel pointed up. A cast-iron shank surrounded the magazine tube between the forearm and receiver, so a shell couldn't be chambered while the weapon was in the rack. Doctrine was to clear the shotgun before replacing it in the rack, returning it to "car condition," with four shells in the tube magazine and none in the chamber.
From time to time, a shotgun would be replaced in the rack with a shell still chambered, and someone would pull the trigger accidentally…or on purpose. The effect was spectacular. Patrol cars where this had occurred could be identified by the jagged holes in their roofs, missing or extremely disfigured light bars, and the occupancy of officers who responded to any question with "What?"
The shank that held the shotgun in place was released by pushing a small white button on one side. When the button was pushed, the latch was released, and the shotgun would fall into your hand. This was augmented by a large keyed cylinder that projected out of the shank. If the cylinder was extended, the button would release the shotgun. Pushing the cylinder in would lock the shank, and a key was required to unlock it. My practice was to lock the rack only when I was out of sight of the car. When I came back to the car, I would first unlock the shotgun, then put the keys in the ignition. Since I had not gotten out of sight of the car since we left the station, the shotgun was unlocked, and I was anticipating putting it to immediate use on arrival at the Dairy Queen.
That was the plan, but as a wise man once said, "Man plans, God laughs." If God was in the mood for a practical joke that night, then Steve was His instrument. Halfway to the Dairy Queen, without saying a word and to my profound astonishment, Steve pushed in the cylinder of the shotgun lock, making it impossible for me to get to the shotgun without fumbling with keys.
My response, I am sad to say, was something less than professional. Had I been given a bit more time to prepare an interrogative statement, I might have said, "Steve, please be so kind as to inform me why you have chosen this moment to operate this item of city equipment, when you have not first secured my permission to do so, and when you have not been properly trained in its use?" In my defense, time for proper reflection was a commodity in short supply, and I was under stress, given that I had every reason to expect that I was running toward a man who was shooting a gun, when anyone with good sense would be going the other way. Thus, my question to Steve was more pithy and agitated. "What the [colorful expletive] do you think you're doing?"
Steve started babbling something, but I was distracted, as I had turned the corner onto Sixth Street and saw the malefactor standing in the small parking lot of the Dairy Queen, pointing a semiautomatic handgun into the air. Shell casings littered the ground around him. Had he decided to open up on me, I might not be writing this now. Instead, he took the opportunity to depart the area on foot, and with great haste. He got less than a block before running into one of my comrades, who was also responding to the scene, and who collected him without further incident. Somewhere between me and the other cops, he had ditched the gun.
It took a few minutes for enough officers to arrive to secure the perimeter and begin a search for the gun. This was fortunate for Steve, as my affections for him had turned from annoyed to homicidal. Before I joined the others to search for the gun, I went back to the car, killed the engine, and took the keys out of the ignition. I looked Steve in the eye and told him, with as much restraint as I could muster, "Sit here. Do not get out of the car. Do not talk to anyone. Do not touch anything. If you ignore any of the instructions, I will lock you in the trunk." Uncharacteristically silent, Steve nodded his assent. I made a brief verbal report to my sergeant, whose immediate response was "What the [same colorful expletive] did he think he was doing?" I told him I had made a similar inquiry that had so far gone unanswered. I also told the sergeant that my intention was to deliver Steve back to the station as soon as we were finished with the task at hand, as killing him would involve too much paperwork. My sergeant voiced his enthusiastic support for this.
On the way back to the station, Steve again went into his stream-of-consciousness narrative, but I can't remember a thing he said. I parked the car, got out, walked around to his side, and opened the door. "Get out. Do not come back. Ever."
"ButOfficerDeesIwashopingthatIcouldridewithyouagainnextweekbecause–"
"Steve, if you ever ride in my car again, you will be sitting in the prisoner cage, wearing handcuffs. Goodbye."