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It was a quiet Sunday morning 25 years ago in the watch commander's office at the police station. My portable radio droned away on low volume with routine dispatch calls as I caught up on reviewing reports. I had 14 officers and two sergeants on the street to handle anything that came up and expected to get a lot of paperwork done in the peace and quiet. Most of the guys on the street were enjoying their coffee and a break from the usual high tempo of weekday day watch. I wish I could tell you it was a Python, but I had just completed weekly disassembly and maintenance of my issued S&W stainless Model 669 9mm, reassembled it, function checked, reloaded and reholstered in my black basket weave Safariland SSIII holster that hung on the matching belt along with matching double magazine pouches and two matching handcuff cases. With 37 rounds of 9mm Black Talon on me, I was well armed and prepared for anything, but doubted I would be tested today. In addition to my duties as watch commander I was also commander of the department's SWAT team and was thinking that I needed to order practice ammo for monthly SWAT training.
Suddenly the tranquility of my office was shattered by the phone on my desk. It was dispatch. There was a complaint from a lady about one of my officers, who we'll call Officer G, not doing his job. I said fine, put her through. She was a widow, 82 years old and lived alone. She went out to the street that morning to get her Sunday paper and it was gone. Someone had stolen it. This wasn't the first time. She suspected the young hooligan across the street who went around with his hat on backwards and his boxer shorts hanging out. Why does he wear his pants that way, she wondered. ( I thought to myself, someday when I make the climb to see the Dalai Lama, I will ask about this great mystery of the universe, as well as why I periodically have so much trouble with the "High 2" on the skeet field.) Anyway, she called the police and officer G responded. The lady told him who she suspected of the theft but no one had actually seen him pinch the paper. The officer went and knocked on the hooligan's door but nobody answered. The officer correctly told her that if no one had seen him steal the paper, and he didn't admit it, there was no enforcement action we could take. (By the way he was also carrying a S&W Model 669 9mm handgun which he had recently transitioned to from a Model 64 revolver. I recall this because I am the one who administered first aid to him when he used a classic thumb-over-thumb revolver grip on the semi-auto during familiarization and the slide made two clean slices on the top of his left thumb. ) The lady thought she deserved better service as a taxpayer. I called the officer and asked him to make another attempt to contact the hooligan to humor the lady, and he did, still with no joy.
Now it gets interesting. Shortly after Officer G left the lady's house the second time an anonymous caller dials dispatch and wants to talk to the lieutenant in charge. She is very mysterious but wants me to know that the hooligan we are looking for is in the duplex and comes outside to look around each time the officer leaves. The tipster knows the subject's name and also thinks he may be wanted. So we run his name through the computer and get a hit on narcotics trafficking warrants. With a cautionary note on the warrant that the subject is armed and dangerous and has made statements that he will never be taken alive. So much for catching up on paperwork.
Following standard procedure for such cases I put a discreet perimeter on the house and initiated a SWAT call. The staging area is a block from the target house. Team members were quick to respond and we were soon resplendent in our black BDU's, load bearing vests, and flame retardant balaclavas. (except one of the guys who always seemed to forget hisbalaclava. He's married to a female officer and it is rumored that he keeps his hood and a spare pair of handcuffs on the bedpost at home. I never pursued this theory and just loaned him a spare). Weapons are being loaded and checked. The basic weapon is the H&K MP5 with 30-round magazines, loaded with 147 grain subsonic hollow points. Two of our MP5's are the Navy version which are suppressed and with three round burst selector. One is set up as a close range sniper rifle. The snipers are armed with Remington M700 police sniper rifles with 3X9 tactical Leupold scopes. Sniper rifles are .308 and we have a couple of them in .223, loaded with Federal boattail hollow point match ammo. Snipers qualify twice a month and their standard of accuracy is to hit a dime sized target at 100 yards from a cold clean barrel. There are also a couple of REAL Colt AR's in 9mm and in .223 and one M-14 select fire in the truck for just in case. Handguns are mostly S&W 669's or 6906's with a Colt 1911 thrown in here and there. Everyone has an Air Force style survival knife and miscellaneous other items in addition to spare ammo in their vests. We looked prepared, professional, and dangerous. We were afraid of nothing. (Well, other than falling in the water or catching fire with all that ammo and gear on). We gathered around for a briefing and any civilians looking on would think we were preparing to invade Baghdad (If anyone had known where Baghdad was back then). Static crackled in radio headsets. Photos of the fugitive were passed around. Pre-mission tension was in the air. Somebody broke wind but hooded faces revealed nothing. Somebody asked, "Where's the donuts?"
The heavily armed teams were just moving out from the command post to their assigned positions when up walked an elderly lady escorted by a younger woman, I presume a neighbor. The lady, our original complainant, asks me "Is all this about my missing newspaper?" Frozen in my practiced policeman's ruminating pose, left hand on my portable radio and right hand resting on my gun butt, I recognized this as one of those moments in time from whence legends spring. I should explain to her that we discovered the warrant for a dangerous fugitive while following up on her initial theft complaint. What I said instead was, "Yes ma'am, my boys are going to get your paper right now".
Well we flash-banged the duplex and searched it, but it was an empty hole. The next door duplex was unoccupied so some of the team searched it while we were preparing to go up into the crawlspace of the crook's place. To everyone's surprise, the fugitive dropped out of the attic in the middle of the unoccupied duplex, right in the middle of several team members who were milling about smartly awaiting further instructions. A sudden spate of colorful language ensued from the team while the fugitive was secured in handcuffs and searched. He had some cheap Saturday night special semi auto made in Miami in his pocket. The tension was high in the room. Someone broke wind. The crook's philosophy had shifted from "I'll never be taken alive" to "I give up please don't hurt me" somewhere between the time he sold the drugs to our undercover officers and when he met the SWAT team. We called the undercover guys and they set up shop in the guy's house and answered his phone all day telling people who called looking for drugs to "come on over". Shortly after all marked units and SWAT guys cleared out, a car load of four thugs pulled up out front and got out carrying baseball bats and tire irons, apparently intending to collect on a debt our guy owed them. They were disappointed that he was not at home but did learn about the Walther PPK/S's the undercover officers carried and soon followed our original fugitive to jail on miscellaneous charges. The thugs were armed with various handguns as well, every one of them stolen, one of which was a Colt 25 auto hammer pistol. It was a good day for the drug cops and the SWAT team, a number of bad guys taken off the street, and no one got hurt.
Only one problem. We never found the newspaper. The fugitive we arrested admitted to numerous felonies but vehemently denied stealing the newspaper. I was crestfallen. We had once again failed to deliver the service our elderly complainant expected from us. We had to have closure. There was only one thing left for us to do. So I drove down to the nearby 7/11 and bought the last Sunday paper in the rack, brought it back and delivered it to her at her door. I thought she was impressed. The younger woman who was her neighbor smiled at me, then followed me to my car. "That was the Journal", she said. "She gets the Tribune". Oh, well, back to reviewing reports and ordering ammo.
Suddenly the tranquility of my office was shattered by the phone on my desk. It was dispatch. There was a complaint from a lady about one of my officers, who we'll call Officer G, not doing his job. I said fine, put her through. She was a widow, 82 years old and lived alone. She went out to the street that morning to get her Sunday paper and it was gone. Someone had stolen it. This wasn't the first time. She suspected the young hooligan across the street who went around with his hat on backwards and his boxer shorts hanging out. Why does he wear his pants that way, she wondered. ( I thought to myself, someday when I make the climb to see the Dalai Lama, I will ask about this great mystery of the universe, as well as why I periodically have so much trouble with the "High 2" on the skeet field.) Anyway, she called the police and officer G responded. The lady told him who she suspected of the theft but no one had actually seen him pinch the paper. The officer went and knocked on the hooligan's door but nobody answered. The officer correctly told her that if no one had seen him steal the paper, and he didn't admit it, there was no enforcement action we could take. (By the way he was also carrying a S&W Model 669 9mm handgun which he had recently transitioned to from a Model 64 revolver. I recall this because I am the one who administered first aid to him when he used a classic thumb-over-thumb revolver grip on the semi-auto during familiarization and the slide made two clean slices on the top of his left thumb. ) The lady thought she deserved better service as a taxpayer. I called the officer and asked him to make another attempt to contact the hooligan to humor the lady, and he did, still with no joy.
Now it gets interesting. Shortly after Officer G left the lady's house the second time an anonymous caller dials dispatch and wants to talk to the lieutenant in charge. She is very mysterious but wants me to know that the hooligan we are looking for is in the duplex and comes outside to look around each time the officer leaves. The tipster knows the subject's name and also thinks he may be wanted. So we run his name through the computer and get a hit on narcotics trafficking warrants. With a cautionary note on the warrant that the subject is armed and dangerous and has made statements that he will never be taken alive. So much for catching up on paperwork.
Following standard procedure for such cases I put a discreet perimeter on the house and initiated a SWAT call. The staging area is a block from the target house. Team members were quick to respond and we were soon resplendent in our black BDU's, load bearing vests, and flame retardant balaclavas. (except one of the guys who always seemed to forget hisbalaclava. He's married to a female officer and it is rumored that he keeps his hood and a spare pair of handcuffs on the bedpost at home. I never pursued this theory and just loaned him a spare). Weapons are being loaded and checked. The basic weapon is the H&K MP5 with 30-round magazines, loaded with 147 grain subsonic hollow points. Two of our MP5's are the Navy version which are suppressed and with three round burst selector. One is set up as a close range sniper rifle. The snipers are armed with Remington M700 police sniper rifles with 3X9 tactical Leupold scopes. Sniper rifles are .308 and we have a couple of them in .223, loaded with Federal boattail hollow point match ammo. Snipers qualify twice a month and their standard of accuracy is to hit a dime sized target at 100 yards from a cold clean barrel. There are also a couple of REAL Colt AR's in 9mm and in .223 and one M-14 select fire in the truck for just in case. Handguns are mostly S&W 669's or 6906's with a Colt 1911 thrown in here and there. Everyone has an Air Force style survival knife and miscellaneous other items in addition to spare ammo in their vests. We looked prepared, professional, and dangerous. We were afraid of nothing. (Well, other than falling in the water or catching fire with all that ammo and gear on). We gathered around for a briefing and any civilians looking on would think we were preparing to invade Baghdad (If anyone had known where Baghdad was back then). Static crackled in radio headsets. Photos of the fugitive were passed around. Pre-mission tension was in the air. Somebody broke wind but hooded faces revealed nothing. Somebody asked, "Where's the donuts?"
The heavily armed teams were just moving out from the command post to their assigned positions when up walked an elderly lady escorted by a younger woman, I presume a neighbor. The lady, our original complainant, asks me "Is all this about my missing newspaper?" Frozen in my practiced policeman's ruminating pose, left hand on my portable radio and right hand resting on my gun butt, I recognized this as one of those moments in time from whence legends spring. I should explain to her that we discovered the warrant for a dangerous fugitive while following up on her initial theft complaint. What I said instead was, "Yes ma'am, my boys are going to get your paper right now".
Well we flash-banged the duplex and searched it, but it was an empty hole. The next door duplex was unoccupied so some of the team searched it while we were preparing to go up into the crawlspace of the crook's place. To everyone's surprise, the fugitive dropped out of the attic in the middle of the unoccupied duplex, right in the middle of several team members who were milling about smartly awaiting further instructions. A sudden spate of colorful language ensued from the team while the fugitive was secured in handcuffs and searched. He had some cheap Saturday night special semi auto made in Miami in his pocket. The tension was high in the room. Someone broke wind. The crook's philosophy had shifted from "I'll never be taken alive" to "I give up please don't hurt me" somewhere between the time he sold the drugs to our undercover officers and when he met the SWAT team. We called the undercover guys and they set up shop in the guy's house and answered his phone all day telling people who called looking for drugs to "come on over". Shortly after all marked units and SWAT guys cleared out, a car load of four thugs pulled up out front and got out carrying baseball bats and tire irons, apparently intending to collect on a debt our guy owed them. They were disappointed that he was not at home but did learn about the Walther PPK/S's the undercover officers carried and soon followed our original fugitive to jail on miscellaneous charges. The thugs were armed with various handguns as well, every one of them stolen, one of which was a Colt 25 auto hammer pistol. It was a good day for the drug cops and the SWAT team, a number of bad guys taken off the street, and no one got hurt.
Only one problem. We never found the newspaper. The fugitive we arrested admitted to numerous felonies but vehemently denied stealing the newspaper. I was crestfallen. We had once again failed to deliver the service our elderly complainant expected from us. We had to have closure. There was only one thing left for us to do. So I drove down to the nearby 7/11 and bought the last Sunday paper in the rack, brought it back and delivered it to her at her door. I thought she was impressed. The younger woman who was her neighbor smiled at me, then followed me to my car. "That was the Journal", she said. "She gets the Tribune". Oh, well, back to reviewing reports and ordering ammo.
