Chronicles: Alan B. Rowley II - Success Warrior - ECoach - P90X

Ask a Cop: One that I let go . . . sort of

I was cruising around one night.  The clock had just moved past midnight so it was no longer Christmas eve, it was now Christmas day.  It was quiet.  You know, nothing was stirring, not even a mouse.  It was me and Ninja out trying to pretend like there was something for cops to do in a small town on Christmas Eve. 

I was cruising residential areas (yeah, that's just about everything in Tinytown) and saw a car parked in a weird place.  One of the cool things about being a cop is that when you hear yourself say, "I wonder why that car is there," you get to go try and find out. 

It was parked on a dirt road that was going to become a new part of a subdivision.  I drove out there and flipped around on the car, turning on the bright forward lights.  The passenger door cracked open, a hand snuck out, and a beer can was put outside the car.  The hand snaked back in and the car door was quietly shut.  It was like the beer fairy goes around on Christmas Eve and leaves cans of beer by cars of couples that are "just talking."  That was the answer that couples always give cops no matter how little clothing they are wearing.

I told Ninja that I was probably going to need back up and had him head my way.  I approached the driver, got is ID, and got the admission that he had been drinking.  I had him step out so we could do field sobriety tests.

I checked his eyes.  They were bouncing all over the place.  Only it wasn't just his eyes.  My hand was bouncing all over the place too.  It was about zero degrees out and neither of us was wearing a coat.  I tried again but I was shaking too bad to do the test.

The guy and the girl in the passenger seat that he was "talking" with had left a party about a block away to have some privacy.

It was butt-frio and we were getting colder by the second so I came up with a new plan.

"How's this for a deal?" I said.  "We forget about the DUI, I cite you for the open container that your girlfriend tried to sneak out of the car, and you get back to the party and stay there until you are sober."

"Deal," he said.

I had him get back in his car before he froze to death.  I went back to my car and cranked up the heater so I could write the ticket.  I hadn't really put together what time it was and what day that meant it was until I wrote the date on the ticket.  December 25th.  "Nice," I thought.  "Merry Christmas."  That was cold, even for me, the Iceman.  My only defense is that my brain was frozen when I made the deal with him.  I think it's the only ticket that I ever wrote on Christmas.

Ask a Cop: The FBI would call these clues

I was cruising around one quiet night.  It wasn't the Summer of the DUI anymore.  It was cooler now.  Not extremely cold and no snow but much cooler.  I received a call of a guy passed out in a car.  The motor was running and there was a beer spilled outside.  Yeah, I get the hard ones, don't I?

I pull up behind the car and it's just like it sounded.  The driver side door was open.  There was a beer laying on its side outside the driver side.  There was a guy inside asleep. 

I checked to see what gear the car was in first.  Always a good step in these situations.  Sometimes the car is in drive and the drunk has their foot on the brake.  You wake them up and the car starts rolling.  It was in park so I called out to the guy.  He didn't budge.  I put my flashlight in his face.

Those of you that have been pulled over by a cop at night understand just how blinding these things.  Even with your eyes closed, you can see the light.  He woke up.

He said he was at a party, pointing at the house that he had come from, and had gotten into an argument with a girl.  He came out to sleep in his car because he knew he was too drunk to drive home.  He had gotten cold so he started the car so he could have the heater on. 

We ran though the field sobriety tests.  I passed.  He failed.

I hooked him up for the DUI.  It was a sucky deal for him because he was doing the right thing by not driving.  I gave him a ticket for the DUI and gave him a ride home.

***

If you have credit cards, read today's Success Warrior post: Have you heard of Universal Default?

Ask a Cop: Drunken Summer - Part 4

It was a quiet night.  I was sitting on a quiet street running radar on absolutely nothing.  Yes, Milan was patrolling with me.  We were sitting there talking because there were no calls and no cars.  It happened a lot.  It was possible to work a whole shift and not get a single call or make a single traffic stop.  Some of the officers made that there goal even.

A truck pulled up behind us and parked.  I told Milan, this time sharing the information that I was able to get from the rearview mirror.  We got out as the driver got out of his truck.  He was all kinds of excited.  It took him some effort but he told us that his sister was getting beat up by her boyfriend.  He was not able to give us the address and the directions he gave us didn't help much either.  It sounded like it was in the county but this guy wasn't making a whole lot of sense.  Finally I told him to show us where she was.

He got back in his truck and we followed him.  We did go out of the city limits and I told dispatch that they had a domestic somewhere near our town.  I had them start some units this way and I would tell them the address when I knew it myself.

"Is he drunk?" Milan asked.

"I didn't smell anything when I was talking to him," I answered.

He was driving down the center of the road.  This old county highway didn't have any lines on it and there was no oncoming traffic.  As we continued to follow him, he didn't drive straight down the middle but just used the center as a kind of general guide, swaying a bit to the left and to the right.

"Is he tweaking?" Milan asked.

"I thought it was just the adrenaline but he might be," I said.

I called Rabies to come for back up.  The guy wasn't driving fast and Rabies caught up to us shortly after we got to the house.  I told dispatch what the address was.

When the driver got out, I told Rabies to watch him while we checked on the sister to see if she was okay.  I told him that I'd be doing field sobriety tests when I came back.  Milan and I went to rescue the sister.

Just in case the guy had a weapon, Rabies said, "Do you have anything on you I should know about?"

"I have dope in my front pocket," the guy answered.

The sister had left the house already.  Milan and I drove to another house and found her.  We got a statement from her and returned to the house.  Deputies had arrived.  I gave them the statement and went to see Rabies.

The driver was in cuffs and Rabies showed me a baggie with meth in it. 

"Good call Milan," I said.

Milan and I took the driver up to the hospital where I put the guy through field sobriety tests.  He failed miserably.  I arrested him for the DUI.

"They just come and turn themselves into you now?" Slider said the next time I saw him.

"Yep.  It's easier that way."

Ask a Cop: Drunken Summer - Part 3

Unlike the night before, this night I was looking for a DUI.  And like the night before and so many that summer, Milan was out patrolling with me.  The number of DUI arrests that I made only encouraged me to go look for more so we were out making traffic stops.  I would stop just about any traffic violation I could find.  I would talk with the driver, checking for any signs of impairment or the smell of alcohol, then I would run the driver for warrants and in most cases let them go with a warning.  On Friday and Saturday night, it's just a game of averages.  Stop enough cars and you'll get a DUI.

It's not like they'll all make their presence known by running you off the road. 

I stopped a van, I forget why, and checked the driver.  Everything checked out so I gave him a verbal warning and we got back in the cop car.  Most cops will wait for the pulled over vehicle to get safely back into traffic before they take off.  It's a safety thing.  We protect the vehicle and warn approaching vehicles with our lights that there is a vehicle on the shoulder.  Some cops are killed doing this. 

Part of the reason they are killed is because people tend to steer where they look.  They look to the right, checking out the pretty lights, and they steer their car toward the lights as well.

So I've released the driver and I'm watching the rearview mirror (or the 2 X 6 horror show as Rabies calls it) and I see a car coming up the road drifting toward my cop car.  It keeps on coming and it looks like it's going to hit me.  I put both hands on the steering wheel and my head against the headrest, bracing for impact.  He misses my side mirror by inches.

"Shit!" Milan said, not having the luxury of the rearview mirror and me being selfish with a warning for him.

"Oh no, you di'nt," I said, and dropped the car into drive and took off.  By the time I was behind him, he was across the center line, having way over-corrected for just about hitting a cop car.  I managed to get his attention and made the stop not too far down the road. 

I approached the vehicle and looked in at the driver.  He was sitting there with both hands on the steering wheel and puke down the front of him.  This is what the FBI would call "a clue".  I have a usual set of questions that I ask when I suspect a DUI but I threw them out the window.

"Been drinking?" I said.

For all of the answers to these questions, it helps if you have seen the movie Meet Joe Black.  When Joe is first getting used to his new body, he says yes in this slow but certain manner.  I can't explain it any better than that so on with the story.

"Yes," he said.

"How much would you say?  Too much?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

I put on my latex gloves and had him step out of the car.  I was afraid that once I had him standing, I was going to have to catch him.  That happens quite a bit and it's amazing that fall-down drunks would even get into a car, and once in, get them to go anywhere near straight enough to get home.

I took him off the road where we would be safe and checked his eyes.  6 points out of a possible 6 points.  He didn't have "head nystagmus" which is a funny thing to watch that some really intoxicated people get.

Next I had him stand with one foot in front of the other.  I waited to explain the rest of the test because I was sure that he wasn't going to be able to even stand there.  He did stand there and I thought maybe I was misjudging him.  So I started explaining the test and demonstrating it.  It's the "walk the straight line" test.  I took a few steps and he stepped into an easier balanced stance.

"Dude, I'm drunk," he said.

"Would you say that you are too intoxicated to even attempt these tests?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Should I just arrest you for DUI and we can skip all this?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered.

"Okay, you're under arrest for DUI."

And my reputation for having DUIs turn themselves into me grew.  And yet, the summer wasn't over yet. 

Ask a Cop: Drunken Summer - Part 2

Me and Milan were out patrolling one night.  It was the Summer of DUIs and even though we weren't really looking for them, it was on our minds.  We were just cruising around getting a feel for what was going on in the town.  I liked to do this when I came on duty.  Just drive around a lot of the main roads and the perimeter of the town to get a sense of the energy.  It may sound weird but it's what I used to do.  One of these days I'll tell you about my experience at a propane company so you have a better idea of how weird I am.

The city limits of Tinytown is best described as "+" sign or like the cross for the Red Cross.  You can drive out to the edge and then left and right a little, and then you are out of the city.  If you drive a bit and take a turn, you'll end up back in town.  If you drive in a square, you'll go in and out of the city limits.  It's not odd for cities to have jagged city limits but the fact that this one forms a cross is a bit strange.

Depending on our moods for the day, officers would either make a U-turn and stay in the city or they would go out to the corner of the square and come back to the city limits on of the other legs.  This night, I decided to go the corner route.

We were almost into the city limits when we encountered a vehicle.  I don't mean that we saw one or that something about it caught our eye.  We encounted a vehicle.  A van.  It was driving toward us.  Not in our direction but toward us.  I slowed down a little thinking that it would go back into it's own lane once it realized that it was going to be in a head-on collision with a cop car.  In my years of experience, most drivers try to avoid crashing into cop cars (not all, but those are different stories).

No luck with this guy so I swerved off the road onto the shoulder. 

"Oh helll no," I said.  Yes, for those of you that read all the posts in this blog, I used to say this a lot.  But really, what do you say when you're a cop and someone forces you off the road?  That's contempt of cop and something that just can't be tolerated.

I hit the lights and flipped around on the guy.  I told dispatch that I was going to be making a stop and I told the agency that had jurisdiction where the violation occurred.  In Utah, cops have statewide authority but are generally limited to taking official action in their own jurisdictions.  There are several exceptions to the rule and one of those is if the crime happens in your presence and you notify the agency of jurisdiction as soon as is reasonable.  For those of you familiar with the recent Trolley Square shooting, this gave the Ogden cop the authority to intervene even though he wasn't in his own jurisdiction and is a great example of why the exception exists.

I approached the driver and found that he had been drinking.  I had him get out of the vehicle and I waited for the agency of jurisdiction to arrive.  Satan arrived and I told him what had happened.  I asked him if he wanted it or if he wanted me to take care of it (part of that exception rule).  He told me to go ahead and take care of it.  I did the field sobriety tests and arrested the guy while Satan watched.

His attorney tried to fight it based on the fact that I had made the arrest outside of my jurisdiction.  He said that I didn't have any authority outside of my jurisdiction.  He acknowledged that he knew that Utah cops had statewide authority but that I couldn't make the stop outside my city.  You must have to spend a lot of time in lawyer school to contradict yourself in a way that other people might believe you. 

This was the first of the DUIs for that summer that I didn't have to go look for.  There would be more.  In fact, there was one the next night.  Tomorrow.

Ask a Cop: Drunken Summer - Part 1

When I hired on as a cop, oh-so-long-ago, the guys that I worked with were always happy when they caught a DUI.  With all the other duties they had, and how small the town was, they just didn't get that many.  They would congratulate each other when they found out the other had made a DUI arrest such as at shift change.  When I started working there, we only had one officer on duty at a time.  I can't explain why there was so much emphasis on DUIs.  Part of it was the emerging zero tolerance of DUIs, I'm sure.  Part of it was the rarity.  Even though I tried, it took me 9 months on the job before I ever made a DUI arrest and boy was that one a good learning experience.  Part of it was that it showed you were out there trying to make something happen.  It was a small town and it was possible to work all night and have absolutely nothing happen. 

Besides the sergeant, there were only two other officers besides me.  Both of them quit about a year after I started.  One moved to a different department in another state where he could get better pay.  Hell, you could probably work for WalMart and get better pay than we were getting back then.  The other became a school teacher because police work is so hard on marriages and family life.  He was a great cop and really taught me a lot about the right attitude on the job.  I never kept in touch with Jorge or PacMan but I sure hope everything worked out well for them.

Even though they left, the emphasis on DUI arrests stayed with me my entire career.  I tried to pass it on to officers that came streaming through our department.  We trained a lot of officers for other departments.  Our city was too small for the adrenaline junkies and the pay too low for just about everyone else.  Officers could get their foot in the door by working for us so we had a lot of people come through.

My efforts on DUI arrests paid off in that there were a couple of years when I made more DUI arrests than the rest of the officers put together, even when the department had grown by 50%.  That said, I have to say that even I found the summer of 2003 to be a weird fluke.

I'd come in on Friday night to replace Slider and he'd say, "Do you want me to just leave the door open when I leave so the DUI can walk in here and give himself up?"

It was funny because it was so close to the truth.  I'll recount some of them over the next few days.