Tag: tear gas

Categories
The Call Box

The Call Box: Gas Pains

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

Tear Gas: [definition] A solid liquid or gaseous substance that on dispersion in the atmosphere irritates mucous membranes resulting in blinding of the eyes with tears, used chiefly in dispelling mobs.

Okay, so everyone knows what tear gas is right? Well, yes and no. You know what it is but unless you have been subjected to its use, you can never really appreciate the effect it has upon the body. How it removes any desire to continue your present activities.

Three years USMC plus two reserves, LAPD academy, plus five Metro years has given me more than a nodding acquaintance. I heard the lectures, gave the lectures, been gassed, gassed others, watched film and demonstrated its use.

However, I had never seen it used under actual field conditions, until this night.

I was assigned to Metro and was on my way home at end of watch. It was probably somewhere between 0100 and 0200 hours. I lived close to downtown and always tried to use surface streets at that hour. Any morning watch copper can verify that the streets are usually strangely quiet and empty—almost otherworldly—a science fiction movie and you are the last person on earth.

I awakened from my reverie when an overtaking black and white blew by me code three. Seconds later, it was followed by a second, then a minute later, a third.

I stopped, rolling down all the windows to listen. The air was filled with sirens. Something big was going down and I wanted to be there.

Westlake_Shopping_Center_3I caught the last car and followed him to the action. As I got close, I heard sporadic gunfire. The scene was an old-fashioned shopping center. Two blocks of older two-story business buildings, glass storefronts, with second floor living quarters, and flat tar-paper roofs. The street was filled with 12-15 black and whites with officers crouched behind them. The sharp smell of tear gas hung in the air.

I parked about a block away and walked in. No challenge. I am in civvies, so I hang my badge, but didn’t draw even a glance.

The center of attention is a second floor, corner apartment at the far end of the block. A police search light was set up mid-block and focused on the windows fronting the street. The rest of the block was an unreal collection of light and shadow. An expended tear gas canister lay on the sidewalk below the window.

At this point I assumed a barricaded suspect as I was at the wrong end of the block and too far away to get involved. I picked a good spot and settled in to watch.

Behind the light, a sergeant with a bull horn talked to the suspect. Then the suspect suddenly appeared and fired two quick shots at the light. By the time the officers reacted, he was gone but “what the hell.” They volleyed 2-3 rounds each.

Have you ever seen an action movie where a machine gun fires dozens of rounds and strikes a house in slow motion? Amazed, I watched as glass shattered and window sills splintered. I could almost hear the old building moaning.

This scene plays out a few more times with the same results.

I was out of the line of fire when the suspect shot so I wasn’t worried about my safety. Not so the officers. Several are around the corner shooting at the side window and there have been several ricochets.

Tear gas launcherI watched the window screen fall half off, the gutter downspout shot away and a piece of tar paper flutter to the ground. About the time I wonder what could happen next, I hear the deep throated thomp of the teargas gun. The sound was unmistakable as the stubby barrel launched a “flight right” grenade. It looked like a small rocket. As it cleared the barrel, fins snapped into place to stabilize flight. The round was well aimed and went through the window.

We wait. Gas drifts from the window. No suspect.

Two officers with gas masks enter and then returned quickly, holding up four fingers. “Code four,” all over.

in those days, things were done in a more casual manner. This was before SWAT. No one had ever heard of “fire discipline” and officer involved shooting teams were in the future.

As a result, half the cars were gone within five minutes.

I figured I would find out the results when I went to work that night.

I did: twenty-five to thirty officers fired several hundred rounds at the suspect with zero hits.

Then, a sergeant fired one round from a teargas gun. It struck and killed the suspect. Killed by something that looked like a Buck Rogers toy rocket ship.

Go figure.

Categories
More Street Stories Tales from the Barking Muse

Police Academy Redux, part 3

By Gerry Goldshine

Petaluma Police Department, retired

Part 3 (conclusion)
While firearm training was an ongoing process, almost from day one to graduation, emergency vehicle operation training was done over a three day period. All of us were excited because we were going to be the first class to receive training through the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving at what would one day become Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma (Now Sonoma Raceway) . Sadly, we were all sorely disappointed. First of all, the vehicles we were to train with were compact cars, nothing like the big high powered beasts we would be driving with our various departments. None of the vehicles had any emergency equipment installed. There were no flashing lights, no sirens wailing and no blaring radios; none of the distractions that would drive our adrenaline sky-high under actual emergency driving conditions. Then, there were the instructors; they may have been excellent race car drivers but none had any law enforcement background or experience driving emergency vehicles that they could share with us. I suppose the final frustration was that we were not permitted to drive over 35 miles per hour during any phase of this training. I got very proficient at avoiding cones that day and not much more.
The first supplemental training that I received upon graduation was eight hours of training with a Sheriff Office’s driving instructor using retired patrol cars. I’m here to tell you there is no quicker learning experience than losing control one of those high powered vehicles in turn at 65 miles an hour because you didn’t set up properly entering a corner. As a result of that, as well as refresher training, I had confidence in my driving abilities the night I pursued a suspect, who had just stabbed someone as well as trying to run me and other officers off the road, down Highway 101 at over 120 miles per hour. With one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding the microphone to communicate with dispatch, the siren, radio and scanner blared away. At the same time, I had to be aware of my location, that of other responding units, other traffic ahead and around me, changing weather and road conditions. I had to constantly evaluate whether any of those variables would make the safety of the public outweigh the need to continue the pursuit. All of that was something the Bondurant experience failed to provide in their block of training.

As the weeks passed, our sponge-like brains desperately tried to absorb still more material in other subject areas. There were more classes on how to write police reports, criminalistics (that whole CSI thing) and seemed to be everyone’s least favorite subject, traffic accident investigation. There was also training in non-lethal defense methods, which meant some form of CN or CS or what is more commonly known as tear gas. Our practical exercise involved a group of recruits going inside a closed plywood shed accompanied by an instructor where they would expose them to some form of that blessed substance. Unbeknownst to our instructor, a retired FBI Agent, was the fact that I had also been an instructor of essentially the same type of training for many years in the Army. As my group nervously entered the shed, I found a corner, leaned back, slowed and steadied my breathing, knowing what was about to happen. As the effects of the gas hit them, my fellow recruits hit the door like a stampede of water buffaloes. It wasn’t long before it was just the instructor and me staring at each other, him with a very surprised expression. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” he asked after about five minutes had passed and I still hadn’t gone running for the exit. I nodded my head and then explained my background. He sheepishly asked if I wouldn’t mind leaving before him, as it would damage his mystique if I came out last. Still, I had quite the charisma having stayed as long as I did.
As we neared graduation, we were all looking forward towards finally getting practical training on making vehicular stops. Vehicle stops are perhaps the most common, most complex as well as most dangerous activities for a patrol officer. When an officer makes a traffic stop, they have no idea what the driver’s intentions are. Has the driver just committed a crime? Are they armed with a weapon? Are they intoxicated? Are they going to flee when you turn on your emergency lights? In addition, an officer has to exercise proper radio procedure in notifying dispatch of the stop. They have to know something as basic as their location, which can be difficult in a large city or seldom traveled country roads. An officer has to be aware of traffic around them, how they park their patrol vehicle and how they walk up to the car they’ve stopped. An officer also has to pick a strategic spot to stand when they make contact with the driver. While no means the last thing that goes into a traffic stop is how an officer talks to the driver. He can calm a tense situation or escalate a calm one. Though I had already made several hundred vehicle stops while in the Military Police, I was painfully aware that back then, circumstances were far different on a military base than in a city. Not exactly something to inspire confidence in my abilities.
As was the case with my firearms training, I’m still not sure what my expectations were as to training when it came to vehicle or traffic stops, both low risk or “routine” and high risk or “felony” stops. I know I anticipated more than twelve hours of both classroom and practical instruction. Many of us felt the scenarios devised by our instructors for the high risk stop exercises were ridiculously complex and bordered on the impossible. The geekier side of me recalls the Star Trek “Koboyasi Maru” test; for those non-Trekkies, it was a final exam scenario at the Starfleet Academy that was designed to be impossible to survive. I can still vaguely recall my own Academy “Koboyashi Maru” test; it was at night in a poorly lit area. Another recruit and I were to make a car stop on a vehicle that contained four “armed” suspects. As the car came to a stop, all four bailed out of the car and ran off into a darkened field. Our “backup” was many minutes away, leaving us to decide on a course of action. If both of us went after the suspect, the bad guys would have been lying in wait and “killed” us both. If one of us stayed and one pursued the suspect, the chase would have ended with either recruit officer being “shot” or taken hostage. If both officers stayed, then they would be ambushed because the suspects had doubled backed to launch an attack. It was a designed to be a no win scenario which does little to teach or inspire confidence outside of Star Fleet Academy.

Finally, the big day arrived; graduation. I was pleased, having finished fourth out of our graduating class of twenty-four. I walked up to the auditorium stage in my spiffy new Deputy Sheriff uniform, almost ready to bust my buttons with pride. Alongside my two fellow deputies, we received our graduation certificates from the Sheriff. Unlike Mahoney and his bunch of misfits from the Police Academy movies, we weren’t about to be turned loose upon an unsuspecting public. Ahead of us lay nearly another twelve weeks of training in the field under the watch eyes of our Field Training Officers (FTOs).
This was by no means a complete detailed accounting of the academy I attended nor should it be considered a blueprint for what’s taught today. Each recruit or cadet comes away with their own unique litany of successes, failures, achievements and disappointments. Laws change. Police tactics evolve as the threats change. Public perception of law enforcement changes as well. When I was taking Criminal Justice classes in college, the field of Police-Community Relations was new and a response to the turmoil of the Sixties and Seventies. When I had to retire in the late Nineties, Community Oriented Policing was the new buzzword after the public paroxysms that followed the Rodney King incident. While the reasons are many and varied, public perception of Law Enforcement integrity has waned again and once more administrators are looking for ways to shore up community support. Whatever the program’s name or acronym, its ultimate goals will have foundations in the next Police Academy.

 

Traffic Officer Gerry Goldshine aka T-36 Petaluma Police Department mid-1980's
Traffic Officer Gerry Goldshine
aka T-36
Petaluma Police Department mid-1980’s
Categories
Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings: 5150’s Part 2

By Hal Collier

 

My last Ramblings dealt with 5150’s, the California Welfare and Institutions Code for crazies, or to be politically correct, the term for the mentally impaired.  As I stated, some people with mental problems can be treated with therapy, some with drugs and others with the firm arm of the law.  That’s where I come in: “I carry a badge.” 

 

Mental Health can be treated with drugs.  Some are very good and allow people to function without notice.  The problem comes when they decide to stop taking the drugs, they start acting bizarre which attracts the attention of the local constable, or the clerk at the 7-11.

 

Bizarre behavior can be caused by taking illegal drugs or not taking prescribed medication.  Kind of a Catch-22 for the cops to figure out.  Illegal drug abusers become paranoid and think someone is out to get them.  We once had a guy run into the police station lobby and demanded protection from the guy who was following him.  The desk officers ran outside to find no one was following him.  They told him he could sit in the lobby for a while.  He refused and demanded that we arrest him and give him protection.  The officers couldn’t arrest him because he hadn’t committed a crime.  The officers never should have told him that.  He punched the desk officer and was arrested.  He was given the jail cell he wanted but only after he received some medical treatment.  He had what we use to say was D & S: Dents and Scratches!

 

I often would ask an individual who was acting bizarre if he was taking medication. If he replied “no,” I would ask him if he should.  The answer was usually “yes.”  That was a warning sign that he might be dangerous.  Another danger sign was when you’re talking to a possible 5150 and he seems to be listening to someone else.  I would ask him, “Are you hearing voices?” If he answered “yes,” I would ask, “What are the voices telling you?”  The voices might be telling him to grab the officer’s gun or fight to the death.  Both of these can be dangerous to the officers and the individual.  I hated fighting the voices and the nut listening to them.  I felt outnumbered, especially when the voice he was listening to was God.

 

This is a similar condo on Kings Road
This is a similar condo on Kings Road

My most scary incident occurred when I responded to a “meet the Fire Department” on Kings Road.  It was at a very nice condo building.  We met the fire captain who stated the tenant started a fire by lighting charcoal briquettes in the kitchen sink.  He had also ripped off the cupboard doors and tore up pieces of the kitchen counter, all by hand.   The captain pointed to the biggest man I ever saw.  He was about 6′ 6″ and 375+ pounds of muscle—he looked like a tackle for the Rams.  He was calmly sitting on the sofa and holding a long-stemmed rose.  His wife, all 100 pounds of her, said he stopped taking his medication and been acting bizarre for days.  Uh oh. Too late to call in sick!

I told my partner to watch him, I’m going to look around.  I walked into the den and suddenly I felt a soft brushing on the back of my neck.  I spun around and looked into the chest of that giant of a man.  I felt a chill go up my spine.  I swallowed my gum and as calmly as I could I called for my partner. 

 

My partner and three firemen came into the room.  You’ve heard of having a command presence in stressful situations, I mustered up a “go sit down!”  He did and I sucked in some air for the first time in 2 minutes.  I estimated that my weight, my partners, and his wife didn’t equal this guy.  If he had decided to fight we would have lost unless we shot him (numerous times). 

 

We broke protocol and allowed his wife to ride along with us the mental ward at USCMC. (County Hospital).  I think she was the boss in the family.  We never had to fight him but I couldn’t wait to drive away from the mental ward that night.

 

Sometimes, I wasn’t so lucky.  A fight with a person who believed he was talking to God or was going to die can have the will and strength of an army.  You couldn’t reason with them and only brutal force will overcome their will.  Almost all of my fights involved 5150’s or illegal drug intoxicated individuals.   My longest fight involved a little guy who got high on PCP at the Palladium.

 

Ok, you’ve just got a 5150 handcuffed and you’re going to place him in your police car.  In his twisted mind, he thinks he’s going to the gallows.  He will kick, spit and bite.  Try getting him in the back seat of a police car with the front seats all the way back.  We didn’t have cages or 5′ female partners in the old days, so the seats were always back, how else could you get in a little nap.

 

In the early 70’s we would lay the patient flat on the back seat or remove the back seat and lay him on the floor board.  Unfortunately, that caused some to receive burns due to the hot floorboard and a few to die due to Positional Asphyxia.  Unlike dinosaurs, we evolved and sat our suspects upright.  This created new problems because our arrestee would kick out the car’s windows and the passenger officer who was required to sit in the back seat with him.

 

The department came up with all kinds of new restraints for controlling 5150’s.  I spent a whole day at the academy being “Net” trained.  That’s right—we had a large net that took four officers to handle.  The first two officers would run past the nut and throw the net over the suspect and then all four officers would run outward with a rope that would cinch the net around the suspect.  It looked like an episode of Animal Kingdom.  The net worked great if your suspect was standing still in the middle of a football field.  Not so good in a small apartment, where most of our encounters occurred.

 

The department also tried using plastic cuffs, similar to the ties that you can buy at Wal-Mart for bundling almost anything.  The thin plastic ties cut into the struggling nuts wrist or ankles.  They later modified the plastic cuffs so they didn’t hurt the guy who just tried to kill you.

 

Cord handcuff
Cord handcuff

Finally someone came up with a cord cuff made out of a material that you could easily apply and remove.  The best part was that you could reuse them over and over again.  It was best if you cleaned them after some nut crapped his pants with your cord cuffs.  You’ve got a kicker? Cinch the cord cuff around his ankles and let the strap hang out the car door and close the door on the strap.  Your kicker can’t kick anyone or damage your car.

 

Here’s a twist: ever try to hand cuff a one armed man?  You can’t cuff his hands together so you cuffed his good hand to his belt or the cord cuff wrapped around his waist. 

 

Other department compliance restraints were Tasers and tear gas.  Both could be effective on sane people who feel pain but fruitless on a mind that thinks he’s going to die.  Tear gas (mace and pepper spray, too) a suspect and then place him in the back seat of your police car, is similar to having your dog sprayed by a skunk then climbing in your car.  No one happy!   

 

Ok, so you squeeze your handcuffed, cord cuffed nutso in the back seat and start to drive him to the mental ward.  In Hollywood you had to stop at Detective Headquarters (DHQ) downtown, and have a detective determines what you already knew: he is nuts.  He writes up a report stating same and you drive your new best friend to USCMC Mental ward.

 

Now, I have a lot of respect for the medical staff who treat mental health patients but I believe they are a little too sympatric to their new patients.  I walk, or in some cases carry in some whack job I just fought with.  I have ripped my uniform pants and have an abrasion on my knee which I suspect is bleeding.  First words out of the doctor is, “Take the cuffs off of him!!!!”   I look the doctor in the eye and say not until I walk out the door.  I fought him once and I won’t do it again today!

 

Dealing with 5150’s was difficult most of the time but sometimes they were fun.  I’ll describe some of fun incidents in the next Ramblings, unless I get that ride to USCMC in the back seat of a police car.

 

Hal

Categories
Tales from the Barking Muse

Police Academy part 3

This is the last of 3 guest posts from Gerry Goldshine

 More firearms training

I’m really not sure what I was expecting from a relatively small regional academy, but it wasn’t firearms training from someone who split his time between firefighting and police work in the South Bay. I’m not saying he was not a decent instructor; it just was not what I was expecting. While I had qualified “Expert” with an M-16A1 rifle in the Army, I was only shooting just slightly above average with that .357 pistol. It wasn’t until several years later, that a new range-master discovered while right-handed, I was left eye dominant, which had a great effect on my pistol shooting accuracy. In addition to the firing range, we also received training in what was called “Shoot-Don’t Shoot”. The idea was to develop situational awareness and judgment when employing deadly force. Our “state of the art” technology back then for the practical portion of this training consisted of a video projector, a butcher paper screen and a pistol that fired wax bullets. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one that felt a bit foolish yelling “Freeze!” at that butcher paper.

Emergency Vehicle operation

Stanford, Ca Police Community Academy 2007

While firearm training was a bit of an ongoing process, emergency vehicle operation training was done over a three day period. All of us were excited because we were going to be the first class to receive training through the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving at what would become Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma. Boy, were we disappointed. First of all, the vehicles we were to train with were compact cars, nothing like the big high powered beasts we would be driving with our various departments. None of the vehicles had any emergency equipment installed. There were no flashing lights, no sirens or radios; none of the distractions that would drive our adrenaline sky high under actual emergency conditions. Then there were the instructors; they may have been excellent race car drivers but none had any law enforcement background or experience driving emergency vehicles that they could share with us. I suppose the final frustration was that we were not permitted to drive over 35 miles per hour during any phase of our training. I got very proficient at avoiding cones that day and not much more. Among the first supplemental training that I received upon graduation, was eight hours of training with their driving instructor using retired patrol cars from the Sheriff’s Office. I’m here to tell you there is no quicker learning experience than losing one of those vehicles in turn at 65 miles an hour because you didn’t set up properly entering a corner.  As a result of that training, I had confidence in my driving abilities the night I pursued a suspect who had just committed an assault with a deadly weapon and who had tried to run me off the road, down Highway 101 at over 120 miles per hour, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding the microphone to communicate with dispatch–the siren, radio and scanner blaring away. At the same time, I had to be aware of my location, that of other responding units, other traffic ahead and around me, changing weather and road conditions. I had to constantly evaluate whether any of those variables would make the safety of the public outweigh the need to continue the pursuit. All of that was something the Bondurant experience failed to provide in their block of training.

Tear Gas

St Paul, Mn. tear gas at demonstration Sept. 2008

As the weeks went by, our sponge-like minds tried desperately to absorb still more data in yet additional subject areas. There were classes on how to write police reports, criminalistics (that whole CSI thing) and everyone’s favorite, accident investigation. Then came training in non-lethal defense methods, which meant some form of CN or CS or what is more commonly known as tear gas. Our practical exercise involved a group of us going inside a closed plywood shed accompanied by an instructor where they would expose us to some form of that blessed substance. Unbeknownst to our instructor was the fact that I had been an instructor of essentially the same type of training for many years when I was in the Army. As my group nervously entered the shed, I found a corner, leaned back and steadied my breathing. As the effects of the gas hit them, my fellow recruits hit the door to get out like a stampede of water buffalos. It wasn’t long before it was just the instructor and I staring at each other, him with a very surprised expression. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” he asked after about five minutes had passed and I still hadn’t gone running for the exit. I nodded my head and then explained my background. He asked if I wouldn’t mind leaving before him as it would damage his mystique if I came out after him. Still, for about a day or so, I was quite the sensation having stayed as long as I did.

 

Felony Vehicle Stops

Suffolk County felony car stop training

As we neared graduation, we were all looking forward towards finally getting instruction on making vehicles stops. Vehicles stops are perhaps the most common, one of the most complex as well as most dangerous activities for a patrol officer. As an officer, you have no idea what the intentions are of the driver of the vehicle you are stopping. Have they just committed a crime? Are they armed with a weapon? Are they intoxicated? Are they going to flee when you turn on your emergency lights? In addition, you have to exercise proper radio procedure in notifying dispatch of your stop. You have to know something as basic as the location where you are making the stop. You have to be aware of traffic around you, how you park your patrol vehicle and how you walk up to the car you’ve stopped. You also have to pick a good spot to stand when you make contact with the driver. While no means the last thing that goes into a traffic stop, how you talk to the driver can calm a tense situation or escalate a calm one. Though I had already made several hundred vehicle stops while in the Military Police, I was painfully aware that what little I knew about vehicle stops came from a class on patrol procedure in college and some on the job instruction I got from one the soldiers who worked for me. Not exactly something to inspire confidence in my abilities.

As was the case with my firearms training, I’m still not sure what my expectations were as to training when it came to vehicle stops, both low risk or “routine” and high risk or “felony” stops. I know I was anticipating more than about twelve hours of both classroom and practical instruction. Many of us felt the scenarios devised by our instructors for the high risk stop exercises were ridiculously complex and bordered on the impossible.

The geekier side of me recalled the Star Trek “Koboyasi Maru” test; for those non-Trekkies, it was a final exam scenario at the Starfleet Academy that was designed to be impossible to survive. I can vaguely recall my own “Koboyashi Maru” test; it was night in a poorly lit area and another recruit and I were to make a car stop on a vehicle that contained four “armed” suspects. As the vehicle came to a stop, all four bailed out of the car and ran off into the darkness. Our “backup” was many minutes away leaving us to decide on a course of action. If both of us went after the suspect, the bad guys would have been lying in wait and “shot” us both. If one stayed and one pursued the suspect, the chase would have ended with either the recruit officer being “shot” or taken hostage. If both officers stayed, then they would be ambushed because the suspects had doubled backed to launch an attack against them as they waited for back-up help to arrive. It was a designed to be a no win scenario.

Graduation

Academy Graduation Certificate

Finally, the big day arrived; graduation. I had finished fourth out of our graduating class of twenty-four. I walked up to the auditorium stage in my spiffy new uniform literally almost ready to bust my buttons with pride. Alongside my two fellow deputies, we received our graduation certificates from the Sheriff. Unlike Mahoney and his bunch of misfits from the Police Academy movies, we weren’t about to be turned loose upon an unsuspecting public. Ahead of us lay nearly another twelve weeks of training in the field under the watch eyes of our Field Training Officers. This was by no means a complete detailed accounting of not only just the academy I attended but of the many other law enforcement academies throughout the country, both then and now. Each recruit or cadet comes away with their own unique litany of successes, failures, achievements and disappointments and what I have written about are those experiences that I considered still note worthy enough to share after all these years.

 

Petaluma Police T-36 Gerry Goldshine 1987
photo by Mike Kerns

Gerry Goldshine is the author of this guest post.  Born in Providence, Rhode Island but raised in Southern California. Upon graduating California State University, Los Angeles, Gerry enlisted in the Army and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. After leaving active duty in 1979, he worked for the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. From 1980 until his retirement in 1996, he was a patrol officer, traffic officer, gang officer, field training officer and criminal resource officer at Petaluma Police Department. He has received training from Northwestern University Traffic Institute, California Highway Patrol, Institute of Police Technology and Management, Texas A&M Engineering Extension, College of the Redwoods and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Operation Safe Streets. He’s been married to his wife Linda for 33 years, has a daughter and lives in Sonoma County, California.

%d