Category: Street Stories

Stories from the streets-law enforcement memories

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Captain’s Blog, 4/29/16: Right Team, Right Place, Right Time

https://www.facebook.com/SantaRosaPoliceDepartment/?ref=nf

This post appears on the Santa Rosa Police Department Facebook page.

 

Capt Craig Schwartz
Captain Craig Schwartz of the Santa Rosa Police Department

 

By Captain Craig Schwartz, Santa Rosa (Ca.) Police Department

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog article called “The Cost”, in which I spoke about the devastating effects of suicide. Today I am happy to bring you all a story about a life saved rather than lost. It is a tale of teamwork, talent and training combining to literally bring someone back from the precipice. Detective Chris Mahurin, who showed tremendous skill and empathy while performing his duties in this incident, told me the following story about his experiences last Wednesday night. I cannot overstate the sense of pride and gratitude I felt about the men and women I get to work with after Chris told me his story. In my admittedly biased view, we are blessed to live in a community of good and caring residents and talented, professional public servants.

Enough of my blathering. Let’s get to Chris’ story about a life saved. It’s a long one, but I think it’ll be worth your time.

Detective Chris Mahurin’s regular assignment is to investigate sex crimes and domestic violence cases. He has a real passion for fighting human trafficking and also for working with youth. Our recent Youth Citizens’ Police Academy was his idea and he led the program. He also volunteers to help out with staffing shortages in our dispatch center, and on Wednesday night he was working an overtime shift there. He was supposed to be done working, but agreed to stay on a little longer to help out. About five minutes after he had been due to go home; a call came in from downtown.

A city employee from the Transit and Public Works Department was in a city parking garage next to the transit mall and found a young person seated on the ledge at the very top of the garage, threatening to jump. Dispatch immediately routed the call to patrol officers nearby. Officers Kyle Boyd and James Harris got to the scene quickly, but the distraught 19 year old did not want to speak, except to express his desire to die.

Chris is also trained as a member of our Hostage Negotiations Team, and was the only HNT member on duty at the time. Knowing that his training and skills could help the youth, he drove to the garage to try and save the youth’s life. He parked in the garage and began running up the stairs to reach the suicidal young person. As he climbed, he found himself alongside another young man. He asked his new companion, who we’ll call John (not his real name), who he was and where he was going, and learned that John was friends with the person on the ledge, who we’ll call Nathan (also not his real name). John gave Chris a quick briefing about the identity of the person on the ledge and what led him there. John wanted to talk with his friend, but Chris was able to convince him that he would be most helpful by telling Officer Harris everything he could about his friend.

When Chris reached the top floor he saw Officer Kyle Boyd trying to convince Nathan to come in off the ledge. Chris took over for Kyle, trying to establish a connection with Nathan. Chris said the next 25 minutes were the scariest, most stressful time he has faced in his career. Knowing that he was the only person in a position to keep this young person from leaping to his death was far more frightening than arresting a violent or potentially armed suspect. Chris didn’t have much success for the first 10 minutes or so as he tried to build a rapport with Nathan. He listened and watched as the young man cried and rocked forward on the ledge as if about to cast himself over the edge.

Eventually, Chris was able to use his training as a negotiator, along with his empathy and personality to open a window of communications with Nathan. He shared personal details of his own life and convinced Nathan that he was not alone in the pain and trauma he was experiencing now. He helped Nathan realize that surviving these experiences would allow him to help others going through similar trials.

Through the 25-30 minutes that Chris worked to save Nathan, Officer Kyle Boyd stood with him, relaying information from Officer James Harris and Nathan’s friend John. Information like that is invaluable to a negotiator working for a tidbit of information that would be the key to getting through to a distraught person. Finally, Nathan came off the ledge and sat on the floor of the garage. The officers sat with him, and then took him for help at Sonoma County’s new Crisis Stabilization Unit. Chris went with him so that Nathan had a person he trusted with him during the admission process. When Nathan was released from the CSU, he called Chris to talk and get more information about the resources Chris had offered on top of the garage.

 

These events are traumatic for all involved, and it is so nice to be able to report a situation in which teamwork between an alert citizen, dedicated friend, dispatchers, patrol officers, and negotiator saved the life of a young person. Thank you to all involved for a job well done. Thank you especially to the young person for choosing life.

– Captain Craig Schwartz

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LAPD Remembers: All Is Not What It Seems

By Ron Ray, retired LAPD

Around 1980-81 my partner and I are working a T-car (traffic) and looking for dui drivers. We are in Hollywood Division driving west on Santa Monica Boulevard west of Cahuenga Boulevard. A car ahead of us is weaving all over the road and makes a left turn into a parking lot cutting off opposing traffic. The parking lot belonged to a low class nudie bar which had the reputation of having some of the ugliest dancers to ever get up on stage. If this guy was going in there then he was probably already drunk.

 

I get him out of the car and my suspicions were correct. The guy reeks of booze, he can barely stand, his words are slurred, and he generally looks like something the cat drug in. As I am about to give him the F.S.T. (field sobriety test), I notice the passenger in the car trying to get out to talk to my partner on the right side of the car. My partner tells the passenger to stay in the car. The passenger replies very loudly, “You can’t tell me what the hell to do,” and proceeds to get out of the car. My partner and the passenger start snarling at each other and I know things are going to go south.

I quickly handcuff the driver so I can go help my partner in the fight that I know is coming. As I walk around the back side of the car I can see that the belligerent passenger can hardly stand up by himself. He is rocking back and forth shifting his feet constantly to maintain his balance. He looked like a fisherman standing on a deck in rough seas. As I get close the guy takes a swing at my partner who ducks and then grabs the guy by the front of his jacket. In a smooth motion my partner picks the guy up, turns him upside down and slams him to the pavement much like you would see a pro-wrestler do to his opponent………and breaks the guy’s back.

 

The guy is bent in the middle with his legs up and around both sides of his head. It appears that my partner has turned this guy into a paraplegic. The guy is screaming and my partner tells him to shut up and quit sniveling. As I watch this I thought of two things. First, that my partner was much stronger than I ever imagined and that secondly, we had to get our story straight. This is the kind of thing that today would probably get us sent to Federal Prison.

 

As the guy continues to scream I notice a pair of single pole crutches  along side the front passenger seat. They were the kind that have a handle and a u-shaped support for around the back of the arm. We come to find out that all is not lost and that my partner was not as strong as it first appeared.

My partner had just body slammed a double amputee. He was missing both legs mid-thigh and his prosthetics (not the high-tech ones of today) loosened and popped off.

 

Later after getting another unit to transport the amputee home and us booking the driver in jail, I teased my partner about what had occurred. I said, “My my, body slamming a poor little double amputee,”

He calmly replied, “That guy will never mess with me again.”

 

Ron Ray LAPD Retired.

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Dispatcher Appreciation Week

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Dispatchers

The Thin Gold Line

911

Between the Thin Red Line, the Thin Blue Line and the Thin White Line lies the Thin Gold Line. This narrowest of lines represents those who are rarely seen but always heard and appreciated. The calm voice in the dark, the heroes behind the scenes, the Golden Link that holds it all together:

DISPATCHERS

 

By Thonie Hevron

The week of April 10-16, 2016 is National Public Safety Telecommunicators Appreciation week, also known as Dispatcher Appreciation Week.  Dispatchers answer most of the incoming calls to public safety departments, assess and route the 911 calls, take appropriate action (some centers provide EMD-Emergency Medical Dispatch which means a dispatcher will direct the caller in first aid techniques to mitigate problems until the arrival of fire-fighters/paramedics) and relay important information to officers in the field. There is so much more they do: keep locations of patrol units in their heads as well as updated on the computer, provide confidential information when needed, recall bad guys’ dates of birth, listen for a tone in an officer’s voice to indicate trouble or need or whatever…

Telecommunicators Week began in California in 1981 and quickly grew to national recognition. Just ten years later, Congress designated the second full week of each April as a time to remember the critical role that dispatchers play in keeping us all safe.

Yesterday, the Sonoma County dispatchers celebrated twenty years of April Dispatcher Appreciation get-togethers. The venue was Sally Tomatoes in Rohnert Park and the event was well attended. My estimate was over one hundred dispatchers, retired and active-duty, as well as managers and department heads.

the usual suspectsHere is a mug shot of the usual suspects: Kathleen, Daralyn, Kathrina, and Jan are seated. I’m standing next to Natalie and Carli. Here are the faces of the women who calmed the mother of the dead baby down enough to get an address (not all calls are on landlines), who woke the fire-fighters up for the inferno next door, and the dispatcher who stayed on the phone with a young caller who heard an intruder in her home.

I’ve been through a lot with these women. There’s a bond that transcends distance and time. All but three are retired now. During the luncheon, someone brought up Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD). Natalie asked the table, “How many of you have trouble sleeping?” To a person, we all raised a hand. It was a little humbling to realize that we all have scars from the job. But we live with them and temper the ghosts with fun memories of camaraderie, blowing off steam, and the knowledge of a job well done. The general public will never see these things and that’s just fine by us. We know we did what we were supposed to do—trained to do.

If you don’t notice when you’re on the phone with us, that’s fine with us.

 

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Hopscotch with a Cop

Orange County Register ran a story worth repeating last week. Here's the link to watch the video. The text is below.
By Adam Carlson@acarlson91
04/02/2016 AT 11:25 am EDT 
Police officers have to have many skills to be effective – including how to play hopscotch.
Just watch this video from the Huntington Beach, California, Police Department, posted on Facebook on Wednesday, which shows one of their officers teaching a homeless girl how to play hopscotch.
The sweet moment has a serious lining, according to the department: Officers Wednesday morning were investigating a "suspicious occupied vehicle" when they learned that a mother and her 11-year-old daughter were living out of their car.
While officers worked to arrange housing for the family, one of the officers "began displaying his expertise in hopscotch to the daughter," according to the department.
 
Video of 'Officer Friendly' playing hopscotch with a homeless girl in the affluent California community of Huntington Beach is all the rage on mainstream media channels, but few noticed the original reason why the cop was there.
Turns out, anonymous neighbors tried to ‘shop’ the girl and her mother to police. They rang the authorities to complain about a “suspicious occupied vehicle” Wednesday, rather than doing the neighborly thing by going out to offer assistance.
Officers Zach Pricer and Scott March were dispatched to “investigate”.
Fortunately, they decided not to criminalize them, which is often the reaction by authorities, but instead March contacted the Homeless Task Force while Pricer started teaching the girl how to hopscotch.
The video, which was filmed by March, has been viewed more than 750,000 times.
Comments below the Facebook post reveal a number of people in the area know the mother and daughter. One commenter recognized them from church and said they had been attending services for years.
“They have lived in their van for a while. Very nice and respectful mom and daughter,” another commenter said.
While most of the comments were gushing with joy at the sight of a police officer playing hopscotch, as opposed to shooting unarmed civilians, another commenter got real.
“Wait. People know this mother/daughter living situation AND they attend a local church AND they've been homeless for years? Why hasn't anyone offered employment or a place to stay for a while, while they save a little money and get back on their feet?” read the Facebook comment.
Huntington Beach is in Orange County, which has one of the most expensive housing markets in the US with values increasing by almost seven percent last year. The median house price in Huntington Beach is $735,500 and the median rent is $3,000 per month.
The oceanside city has a largely hidden community of homeless people who live in tents and cars, or on the streets. The county’s homeless population grew by 5 percent between 2013-2015, according to the Orange County Homeless Count & Survey Report, due to rising rents and a lack of affordable housing.
In Orange County, a person must earn $65,760 to afford a two-bedroom apartment, according to the California Housing Partnership Corp. With California’s minimum wage at $10 per hour, this leaves low-income employees at a shortfall.
Nearly 4,500 homeless people were counted in the survey, which is carried out every two years and reflects a single day in January 2015, half of them sleeping outside of a shelter, a 31 percent increase in two years. 450 of them are military veterans.
Huntington Beach passed a no camping rule in 2012 in reaction to complaints from residents about the shelters created by homeless people on beaches and in parks.
 


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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The Decoy Story

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			
This post from Ron Ray, retired LAPD


Ok, here goes—


It was the late seventies. I was working Hollywood morning watch. My partner had just finished writing a ticket at the intersection of Santa Monica and Western. We were in a parking lot across the street from a local dive bar and since it was close to closing time we decided to sit and wait and snag a DUI driver leaving the bar.


We did not have to wait long and saw our future arrest come staggering out of the bar and start walking to his car parked at the curb. As he walked to his car we noticed that he was placing his hands on other vehicles for support as he walked. He gets in a late fifties Cadillac, starts the engine, cranks the wheel, and punches the accelerator. The car makes a sharp U-turn from the curb, tires are screeching with rubber burning and it goes blasting east on Santa Monica to the entrance to the Hollywood Freeway.


The guy has a lead on us and my partner does some driving to catch up. We are south bound on the freeway about three miles or so before we get the guy stopped and pulled over on an off ramp. We get him out of the car and one thing is readily apparent. 


He is old. His driver’s license says he is 89. 


One other thing becomes apparent. He is not under the influence. No booze on his breath, no nystagmus in his eyes, and his speech was clear and distinct. We asked him if he had been drinking and he said he had not had a drink in fifty years. We asked him what the hell was he doing in a bar then. He replied that he lived in an apartment down the street from the bar and went there because he was lonely and he could talk to people. We asked what the hell was up with his driving. 


He replied, “I was sitting there in the bar when someone come in and says that there is a black and white parked across the street. Someone else asks, ‘Hey, Pops you want to earn some money?’”


“They pass the hat, everybody kicks in a few bucks—I think twenty to twenty-five. They say, ‘Take this money and go take the cops on a wild goose chase’……so I did.”


We kick the old guy loose. I am laughing, my partner is fuming. We race back to the bar and of course find it locked up tight. 


All the cars gone, not a soul around.


 


 


 


 


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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Tim Dees Answers:

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			
		


	


	
	


		


			
Why do detectives have to be cops first?


T Dees downloadTim Dees, retired cop and criminal justice professor, Reno Police Department, and Reno Municipal Court, is considered a “Top Writer” in the field of Law Enforcement, Police Procedures, and Criminal Justice. He’s been read in Time, Newsweek and many more professional magazines as well as on Quora.


This post was taken (with Tim’s permission) from Quora, an online Q & A forum on many subjects. Tim is a Quora “Most Viewed Writer” in Interacting with Police. 


 


First, detectives are cops. They simply have a different assignment than the uniformed guys in patrol.


Television has convinced many people they know everything they need to know to be detectives. TV makes it look easy. You want to question someone, and they are both immediately available to you and willing to talk. You only work one case at a time, and if it goes to trial, the trial is later that week. If someone clams up and demands their lawyer, all you have to do is act mean and they’ll come apart in a heartbeat. Confessions are obtained in minutes.


Police work is very seldom like what you see on TV. No two calls are exactly the same, and you have to be able to apply broad legal and procedural principles to ambiguous situations, often when the immediate world is coming apart. While you think you can keep it together at these moments, I can guarantee you will have experiences where you have no idea what you are supposed to do next. Those experiences happen less often as you grow in the job, but they still come around now and again for everyone.


In order to do long, complex interviews, you first have to learn to do short ones. Those happen on traffic stops, on field interviews, when you’re talking to a domestic violence or burglary victim. You have to know about search and seizure, which is a field that changes constantly. When can you stop someone? When can you search them? Is there a difference between a search for weapons and a search for evidence of a crime (hint: yes, there is). If you have a search warrant for someone’s house, can you also search their garage?


You also have to learn about people very different from you. You have to be aware of the body language of native Asians and Hispanics, which can be very different from that of Americans. You have to know your community at a level people who live there all their lives never get into.


These things are all learned while you’re a patrol cop. Some people learn faster than others. Hardly anyone gets it before they’ve been doing it five years. A few people circumvent the usual career path and get promoted before that, but they nearly always become substandard cops, people who could have been much better in their jobs if they were left on a vine a little longer.


Policing is something almost no one understands until they have done it. There is no way to acquire the necessary experience in a classroom or from a book. You have to live it.


Dees at Quora


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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Too Many Lost This Year

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			
By Thonie Hevron Too many law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty in 2013. One is too many but thirteen is unfathomable. And we’re only in mid-March. Patrolman David Ort…


Source: Too Many Lost This Year


		


	


	

		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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Too Many Lost This Year

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			
By Thonie Hevron


Too many law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty in 2013. One is too many but thirteen is unfathomable. And we’re only in mid-March.






Patrolman David Ortiz of the El Paso, Tx Police Department End of Watch March 14, 2016Patrolman David Ortiz El Paso Police Department, Texas​​




Peace Officers Down Memorial Page offers statistic that are difficult to believe. Taken from FBI statistics drawn from every police agency in the US, they are a sobering reminder of the inherent peril in this work. Few men and women can do this job with the alertness and cognition it requires–twenty-four hours a day. Cops are never off duty. Badges and guns may be put away but a warrior mindset must always be present. It’s like a sneaker wave at the beach–nine times out of ten, it’s okay to turn your back, but the tenth wave can kill you.






The effects of a career last a lifetime–PTSD is almost a cliche but honestly, we live with it day in and day out. Every cop, every emergency worker (I know because my husband is a retired fire fighter) has ghosts that will forever haunt us. There is no laying them to rest, closure is an illusion. Turning away has been my coping mechanism–remembering the camaraderie, the sense of accomplishment when an incident went right ( I’ll never forget a hug from an officer and close friend when only he and I–in dispatch–were on duty. He had a particularly dangerous pursuit that ended safely with a solid arrest due to the fact that we both did our jobs well–that hug was a highlight of my career), acknowledging the adrenaline spurt and excitement is satisfying enough.




​​


Standing in the rain directing traffic around flooded streets during two El Nino events, smelling the airborn toxins as I drove up to a burning house, being nervous as hell doing CPR on an old man who fell off a ladder are memories that make me who I am. All of us have these memories and worse–I was a civilian Community Services Officer for seven years before I traded the uniform for  the climate controlled chaos of dispatch. I saw but a small slice of the life on the streets.








Those of you who wear or have worn the badge, get it. Those of you who don’t, count your blessings that there are those people out there who love this job. It can’t be done well if they don’t.




All know this could be their last day, but do it anyway.




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A Happy Ending

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			
Be sure to check out guest author Gary Delfino’s account of a pooch rescue with–yes, a happy ending at Thonie Hevron’s Just the Facts, Ma’am.


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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Santa Rosa Police Department-The Dish on Dispatch

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			


THE DISH ON DISPATCH


by Greg and Janel


The Dispatch Blog Team


Welcome to the first blog of the communication center for the Santa Rosa Police Department, aka dispatch. We hope to give you a little insight into the way our dispatch center operates and would love to answer any questions you might have about what we do.


Dispatchers are the link between the community and police officers. As dispatchers, we understand the importance of taking care of our community and officers at a moment’s notice. We are always available to our citizens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.


During a normal 24-hour period, dispatchers enter approximately 375 calls for service. Calls for service include reports of criminal or suspicious activity, traffic accidents, stolen property, parking violations, request for an officer’s assistance, or other quality of life issues. When you call the Santa Rosa Police Department you will be greeted with “911 what’s your emergency” or “Santa Rosa Police Department”, depending on if you call 911 or the non-emergency number. At any given time there are anywhere from three to seven of us working on the phones and radio, helping out the community and our officers.


Each of our 18 dispatchers answer an average of 12,000 calls per year. That’s over 200,000 calls every year to our department in the dispatch center alone. The calls come in on 911 lines, non-emergency lines and inter department lines. Each line has its own special ring so we don’t even have to look at the phone screen to know what line is ringing. Some of us have been working for Santa Rosa for 27 years others just 3 months. We all have gone through or are going through a year of on the job training as well as keeping our skillset up with mandatory state trainings. One thing we all have in common is, we love helping others.


Our workstations include 6 different computer screens, 3 different keyboards, phone keypad, and 4 different mice. It might sound like a lot, but while we are talking to you we could be using almost every piece of that equipment to get you the help you need.


As we develop our blog, we hope you will feel more involved with what is going on with your local law enforcement dispatch center. We are excited to share with you some information about who we are and what we do. We look forward answering all your questions and hope you enjoy the ride.


~ Greg and Janel

(Your SRPD dispatch blog team)














Santa Rosa Police Department's photo.


Santa Rosa Police Department's photo.