Tag: shotgun

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Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings: Cop Dreams

By Hal Collier, Retired LAPD

sweet dreamsThink back to the days when you were very young.  Your mom or dad would put you in bed and maybe kiss you on the forehead and say, “have sweet dreams.” Why did they have to say dreams? You were afraid to go to sleep in your bed.  Some nights there were monsters under the bed or the monsters were in the closet. Didn’t matter—they were someplace in the room. You’d wake up screaming for your mom! If you had parents who never read Dr. Spock they might let you sleep in their bed for the night.

Flash forward a few years, now you’re in school and the monsters are gone but so are your pajamas, that’s right you’re naked in class. Who hasn’t had that dream?

You somehow reach adulthood and if you’re lucky you’re no longer naked in public. Now you’ve moved on to adult night mares. You wake up in the middle of the night asking yourself, did I pay the electric bill or what will they ask me at the IRS audit next week?  My point is that you will always have bad dreams!

cant sleepI’m about to describe some other bad dreams that sneak into what was supposed to be a restful night. That’s right cop dreams. Now, I don’t want some $300 dollar an hour doctor to analyze my dreams. I have enough things to think about when I lay my head on the pillow.

Early in my cop career, I had visions of bad guys trying to do me harm but one dream really stands out. I was in Hollywood just south of Hollywood Boulevard in a parking lot. I was chasing this dirt bag in a trench coat. I got within 50 feet of him when he suddenly turns and is now holding a machine gun. Oh, crap. I dive behind a parked car and make myself as small as I can behind the front wheel. Bullets are hitting the ground all around me. I suddenly have a shotgun. Don’t ask me to explain where it came from. I pump a shell into the chamber and without looking I reach around the front tire and fire off all five rounds at where I think the dirt bag is standing.

 

it_s_all_just_a_bad_dream____by_whatabunchoffreaks-d19r7o0

I’d love to tell you I filled the asshole with double OO buck from the shotgun but, no. I suddenly sat upright in my bed. My heart raced and I was sweating. I tried to reason—it’s  only a dream, but I really would rather have been naked at my high school prom! Guess how much sleep I got that night.

I had many cop dreams during my 35-year career. They usually involved not being able to run from danger and the worst were that my gun wouldn’t fire. It jammed or I couldn’t pull the trigger. Now, I didn’t have these every night or in my case sleeping during the day, but I still had them every so often.  I sometimes punctuated my dreams verbally. That’s right, I talked in my sleep or better said, I yelled. That usually woke up my wife and the dog, and it explained why the cat slept in the other room.

 man and wife sleepingAfter thirty-five years of sometimes violent encounters, I retired. I assumed that after a while the dreams would be replaced by dreams of retired old folks. Wrong! I’ve been retired for over 12 years and I still wake up punching my pillow or yelling out to halt! In these dreams, I sometimes have partners that I haven’t seen or talked to in decades.

 This upsets my wife and dog very much. I can now go back to sleep rather quickly but my wife tells me in rather stern terms that I need to sleep in another room. Sometimes she suggests I sleep in another county.

I asked around and found that most cops, retired or not, have these dreams.  You can take off your badge, and throw away those uniforms, you might even lose contact with old partners but the dreams will always come back. They’re deep inside of a cop’s head for life. You just never know when they’ll resurface!  

Hal

P.S. Do you still have cop dreams?

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The Call Box

The Call Box: Three New Copland Stories

polic-call-box-pedestal-lapd-gamewell-DCAL2786_dt1By Ed Meckle, Retired LAPD

My partner Frank Isbell and I have been assigned a plain clothes stakeout inside an apartment where the occupant has been threatened with death. He has been temporarily relocated while we wait for the intended killer.

Frank and I hear a tentative tap on the door. I look through the peephole but see nothing. I shrug and signal, “Nobody,” to Frank. A few long seconds later there is a second tap. Again nothing. I signal Frank that I am going to open the door.  Frank is to my right, shotgun ready as I pull the door open quickly with revolver in hand. And there is a very small girl staring into two guns, who says, “Would you like to buy some girl scout cookies, officer?”

Officer? Talk about presence of mind.

 

 

Here I am, still at 77th Street Patrol, morning watch, still doing scut work, checking tickets, reports, etc. It is very quiet when the jailer from across the hall sticks his head in the office and announces, “One of the prisoners wants to talk to a supervisor.” The elderly lieutenant does not acknowledge the interruption which I take as my cue to handle the situation. Now, I have been on the job long enough to know that someone who wants to see a supervisor is not about to deliver good news.

The prisoner who sits across from me is a very well dressed man who has been arrested for DUI. He says, “The man in the cell with me is wearing his suit.”

“Okay,” says I. “But I need some details.” He tells me he was the victim of a burglary several weeks prior and the thief made off with several custom-made suits. “And the man in the cell is wearing one of my suits.”

“How can you be sure it is yours?” I ask.

He tells me when the man fell asleep, his coat fell open. He checked and found his own name embroidered on the lining.

I pulled the burglary report and there it was.

The next radio car that came into the station got an easy felony pinch.

 

One of our elderly sergeants was enroute to eat in the wee hours of the morning when he spotted a man on a side street pushing a bulky wheeled item covered with a blanket. Curious enough to check but not enough to get out of the car he pulled up alongside the “pusher” and began a routine conversation as they both moved along. Eventually the question was asked. “What’s under the blanket, friend?”

At this point the “pusher” lost the battle of nerves and turned rabbit, gone in a flash.

Under the blanket? A box safe on wheels.

 

 

 

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Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings: Stupid Crooks, part 2 and Stupid Cops

By Hal Collier, LAPD Retired

 

How many times have I arrested a suspect with a gun that wouldn’t work because he had the wrong ammunition? 

Here’s a classic. I was investigating a shooting where a suspect ambushed the victim in the dark parking lot behind an all-night hot dog stand. The suspect shot the victim with a shotgun at fairly close range. The victim sustained non-life threatening wounds to his left upper body and face. The victim was shot with #8 shotgun shells. That’s small birdshot. Two days later I arrested the shooter in a motel on Sunset Boulevard. I’d like to tell you it was my superior investigative skills but the truth is, a snitch told me where he was staying. When I arrested him, he had the shotgun and a bandolier full of shotgun shells. My suspect was mad that he didn’t kill

the victim. The bandolier had shotgun shells that contained #4 shotgun shells. A #4 shot would have easily put the victim into the next world. My suspect just didn’t know that #4 shot shells were larger than #8’s. Stupid, huh?

 

In 1993, I made a mistake and promoted to Sergeant. I was transferred out of Hollywood and sent to South Central Los Angeles, AKA Watts. I left the town of glamour, movie stars, and millionaires. I spent the next 15 months watching the sun rise over the Watts towers. Impressive, but not Hollywood.

 

One of the favorite crimes in Watts was stealing cars and taking the engine and transmission. The culprits would then roll the car a few blocks away and abandon the car. The cops would then follow the oil trail back to the thief’s house and arrest the occupant with the oil on his clothes and an engine in the living room.

 

Not only are the crooks stupid but sometimes I suspect that cops are in competition. Hollywood had an officer who married a “reformed” prostitute. He shows up for work late one night and sees his bride handcuffed to the hallway bench along with the rest of the soiled doves. He releases his wife out the back door of the station without the proper paperwork. I believe he’s now a greeter at Wal-Mart.

 

We had another JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) reject who wanted to book a suspect for possession of a controlled substance. The officer displayed the drugs to the Watch Commander in the suspect’s prescription bottle in the suspect’s name. The W/C explained that if he had a prescription, it was not a crime. Our brilliant officer scratched off the suspects name and went to another supervisor and obtained booking approval. The former officer was later observed selling magazine subscriptions.

 

It’s not just the junior officers who do stupid things. I had a captain who was arrested by an outside agency for making and selling pirated DVD’s. She was arrested at Hollywood station and walked out the back door in handcuffs. How about the Hollywood sergeant who owned a big sail boat? He bought a million dollar home at a marina only to discover that his boat was too big for the boat slip at his new house that just cleared escrow. 

 

Last stupid cop story.  My partner and I are having a cup of coffee at the Winchell’s at Melrose and Vine. Were into about two sips of our coffee break when a hot shot radio call comes out. I toss my almost full cup of coffee and jump into the driver’s seat. I’m racing northbound on Vine Street and as I cross Santa Monica the road rises and then drops. My partner screams out in pain. He was cradling his hot coffee over his lap. Think about jumping on a trampoline with a hot liquid poised over your privates.  By the way the coffee was free. Saving a free cup of coffee verses cleaning a uniform or possible burns to your groin area, stupid. 

Footnote:  The officer recovered and later had children. 

 

We’re out there and we’re reproducing.  I won’t even get into politicians.

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Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings, What Scares Cops?, part 2

By Hal Collier LAPD, Retired

We are happy that 35-year veteran Hal Collier is sharing his ‘stories behind the badge’ with us.

Ok, so what does scare a knight in armor?  Be prepared to be shocked. 

 

First and foremost, the number one thing that scares a cop is that radio call, “Go to the Watch Commander.” Really, how bad can that be? You’ve spend half a shift doing everything right—well, maybe mostly right. You and your partner immediately go over all the radio calls and traffic stops you made that night. Did we piss off some tax paying citizen and he’s making a complaint? Did the Watch Commander discover that I missed court to go on that three day water skiing trip? Whatever, it can’t be good.

 

When I was the Watch Commander I would monitor the patrol units to see who was working and who was goofing off. If I had a simple request for the transportation of an arrestee to court or the downtown jail for medical treatment, I would get on the radio, and in my best “oh shit” voice tell the goof-off unit to come to the Watch Commander immediately. The officers would come into the watch commander’s office with their tails between their legs just like your dog did the last time he got into the trash. I enjoyed that—they weren’t doing anything productive anyway.

 

So what else scares cops? You handle a call with a drunk or drug crazed individual and you end up in a fight for your life. These fights are never pretty. You win the fight and go home. The next day you discover someone filmed the fight and it’s all over the news and YouTube. You watch the news broadcast and discover the media has edited the fight and only shows you beating the guy who just seconds earlier tried to take away your gun. They show the clip over and over again. Even you begin to think you over reacted.

 

Soon a maelstrom of vocal people are calling for an investigation including the President of the United States. Later a jury sees the entire video and acquits you. But it’s too late, you have been tried and convicted by the media. Your career is over. I’ve seen cops arrested then later acquitted when all the facts were presented. Rodney King happened over twenty-four years ago and is still brought up regularly. This is happening all across the United States. That scares a cop. These types of incidents are usually followed by a large lawsuit filed against you, the city you work for, and the Chief of Police. I’ve seen police officers homestead their homes so they don’t lose them in the lawsuit.

 

“Officer Needs Help” calls scare a cop.  In the 70’s some LAPD car radios had what we called cheaters. A cheater was a second radio that allowed everyone to hear an officers broadcast. This allowed an officer to know what other officers were doing and where they were doing it. The main point was you could hear the officer’s voice inflection. Was he excited or calm?  Ok, the scary part—the cheater radio suddenly blasts out “Officer needs Help.” The officer is screaming into the microphone. Your adrenaline has jumped so high you can hardly breathe. It doesn’t matter how close or how far you are from this officer you’re going to break all department rules to go to his aid. If the officer adds, “Shots Fired or Officer Down” to his broadcast, you’re glad you wore your ballistic vest and you unlock the shotgun. Are you scared? Bet your ass you are! Scared for the officer, scared for his wife and family. It may take hours for the adrenaline to leave your body.

 

Here’s another one that scares cops. You’re on a day off or just off hours. You’re relaxing in your living room watching the ball game. They break into the game to announce, “Breaking News.” An LAPD officer has been shot in the division where you work. Of course it could be any division, we move around in LAPD. They don’t have much information and they hopefully don’t give out the officer’s name. So you sit there and rack your brain, who’s working today and what are my partner’s days off? Yea, you could call the station and try to get some information but you know their busy, so you just wait. You just wait and listen to the news men report what they don’t know. That scares you.

 

Even after they report the officer’s name, and if you don’t know him/her, you’re still scared. Is he or she married and a father or mother. How old are the children? It scares you because you know that could be you someday.

 

You finally retire and figure nothing is going to scare you anymore. Wait, your son or daughter has decided to follow you into the noble profession of police work. You’re proud but you know the dangers. Suddenly all the above fears come rushing back only with a few new ones. Now you know what your spouse went through all those years. A late night phone call or knock at the door will send chills up your spine. Ok, the phone call was a drunk asking if this is Madam Whoopee’s all night massage parlor, but try getting back to sleep after that. The knock on the door is never good, especially if the people on your front porch are wearing uniforms.

 

Ok, now you know some of the things that scare cops and I’ll bet I missed a few. Give me your fears and I’ll add them to my list.  Oh by the way some cops really are afraid of snakes.       

Hal