B. L. Marchant
A Cop's Beat
by Daniel P. Corcoran
© 2010 D P Corcoran
Here it is, fall, a beautiful quiet night, a million brilliant stars to enjoy. The night sounds all around like a symphony. This is the NW urban side of town. Pristine, manicured lawns, heavily wooded estates, with $250,000.00 dollar homes throughout the area. Why am I explaining all of this? Well this is our assigned beat. My name is Daniel Patrick Corcoran. I answer to Dan-0- or Stryker. I earned that nickname by having to fight a bar room brawler nicknamed, “the Indian”. I’ll explain more about him a little later.
Once again my new partner and I seem to have irritated the Lieutenant for some minor bending of the rules on our last assignment. I don’t know how it happens, but for some reason I always seem to find myself with multiple situations. So I use the Murphy curbside justice rule to take care of the lesser problems and send them on their way. I wouldn’t say that it is within the Justice Systems way of doing things but my methods usual get better and less costly results. Sergeant O’Riley dropped us off and with a laugh said, now don’t you boys cause any trouble and drove off smirking. As his patrol car sped away I looked at my partner, and said well this is another fine mess I’ve gotten us into. Now, Mike Braddock is an easygoing guy with a very quiet manner. Then again not many people want to challenge someone that is six foot six inches in his stocking feet and is as wide as a barn door. He says, well consider this a break. We can walk around for a while, take a nap under a tree and just relax. Let them do all the heavy stuff and just think they have to answer all the calls while we get to relax and enjoy the night. I said, “Yea! Maybe so! Lets go find a spot to settle in.”
The start of our second week of this assignment was on another cold winter night that my partner, Mike Braddock, and I had once again been assigned a walking beat in outer Siberia, the NW zone, permanently according to the sergeant! The rational was that if we are in an area that has little activity we wouldn’t be able to rack up a lot of arrests. Of course the fact that he didn’t like us may have had something to do with our assigned area! This area is mostly forest and large tract homes in the middle of nowhere. The reason for our assignment was that as a team we had been very successful in averaging 35 to 40, felony arrests per month citywide. As part of a working squad of 8 officers, One Lieutenant, one Sgt and six investigators we (Mike and I) had approximately 40 felony arrests vs the rest of the squad which averaged 8, usually less than 10 collectively. So needless to say they are a little pissed off at us because we are not the team players they wanted us to be! Ha! Fat chance of that! They just don’t want to keep up to our goals and standards, which was to work! They could very well have been team players, only they didn’t want to play on our team! Their idea of team playing is to meet at the rear of the American Legion and set up to the bar at 7:30a.m. So the 1st week was rather uneventful. We just wandered around familiarizing ourselves with all the backyards and alley-ways (right-of-ways) and getting the lay of the land. You would be surprised at how many clotheslines were strung across backyards. And every other yard seems to have a dog. Our second night we observed a vehicle traveling at a very low rate of speed down between the right-of-ways erratically and stopped as it rolled into a tree. Well, as we approached, the driver attempted to exit the vehicle and fell out instead landing on his head and tangling his feet up in the seat belts. After we extricated him from his dilemma, he proceeded to walk in circles and kept falling down. After determining that he was intoxicated and not ill or injured, we arrested him for D.U.I. And so it began; we contacted dispatch ref our D.U.I. arrest, requested a wrecker, and a zone or citywide unit to pickup our Subject. The Lt. (Mac) requested us to change frequencies to our car-to-car channel. He wanted an update on what we had. We advised. How could you make a D.U.I. arrest on foot patrol? Lt. Mac ordered us to wait. Mac arrived and demanded to know the circumstances. We again advised the situation as it occurred. Lt. Mac advised me to let him go. I advised him THAT wasn’t happening. The man couldn’t even stand and he wanted us to let him go. I advised that if he wanted to give me a written directive to let him go I would then turn custody over to him to do as he pleased. Lt. Mac then demanded to know if I was going to follow orders? I replied that I would pending a written directive. Which, he refused. The Lt. told the Sgt to deal with the situation. Grudgingly, the Sgt. proceeded to direct dispatch to send a wrecker and a unit to transport the Subject to the Station for processing. As the assigned unit was preparing to depart with the subject the Sgt. advised him to take the arrest. At that point I advised the Sgt that no one was taking the arrest other than Mike or I. We had made the apprehension and not the transporting officer. Their goal (Lt. and Sgt.) was to deny us the credit for the arrest. I advised that one of us would accompany the unit officer to process the Subject and one would stay in the Zone. I threatened to go to internal affairs, at that time run by Sgt Russell. And there was no love lost between them. Mike processed our D.U.I. At that time Mike was a D.U.I. Technician certified on the Breathalyzer 500A. I stayed in the field until the oncoming shift remembered that I hadn’t been picked up yet! What they didn’t know was that I was in my element and having fun exploring the entire area on foot. Hell! I didn’t have to answer any calls! What more could I have asked for? During the next day we even stashed a couple of mountain bikes in the woods. We sure are moving up in the world! We get to cover more ground in comfort and it was a silent way to travel. The end of the shift proved to be an uneventful night and the end of our workweek.
So for the next three and a half days I spent working on my home, which is a 1966, 38-foot Chris Craft Constellation cabin cruiser. Anyone that has ever owned a wood boat knows that it requires a lot of attention and the owner has to be very disciplined to do the daily rituals of maintenance. I found a little marina at the Monroe / Dade county line, just off US 1 and only an hour’s ride from the ocean. County Line Marina was perfect for the needs of a single guy recently divorced. It had a quaint little bar and restaurant and bait shop. The dock was shaped in the form of a horseshoe, just big enough for me to turn the boat around and always have it pointing out. The marina provided laundry facilities, picnic areas right on the water and it was far enough off the highway that allowed a peaceful quiet atmosphere.
That next Friday evening approximately 1:00am we were still patrolling our portion of Siberia when we heard loud gunshots from NE of our position (approximately 2.5 miles from N. Krome Ave.) Now gunshots in this area are rare but at night, on cold, winter nights a gunshot can be heard for long distances. Then shortly, the sound of a very large car’s squealing tires, rapidly, accelerating S/B on Krome towards the city. Well, we surmised, accurately that the 7/11 located just at the city limits had been robbed. A few minutes later the call went out BOLOing the description of three black males in a black GTO last seen heading S/B on Krome Ave. Well needless to say there wasn’t anything Mike and I could do about the situation because we were limited to foot patrol in our zone. So at this point we decided to take a break and sit down at a corner of one of the right of ways and listen to the radio as the units set up perimeters and search patterns for the Subjects. As we sat, contemplating our next course of action, we began to hear a very low indistinct rumbling sound coming in our direction from the South. But, we couldn’t see anything! And it is growing louder and more distinct we look at each other and start to rise we both came to the conclusion that the sound was growing continuously closer and sounded familiarly more distinctive. We both guessed that this could be the suspect vehicle even though it wasn’t likely. And then, we could see the gleam of a reflection of starlight from the chrome bumper. It was the deep-throated sound of the same vehicle that we had heard going south. We quickly devised a plan to wait at each corner of the right of way and when the vehicle crept past we would snatch open the doors and drag them out of the car. We waited and it seemed like forever before the vehicle got to our location. The waiting has a potential to let one’s mind roam too much in that all sorts of things fly through your head. You start playing the planned scenario in your mind’s eye over and over again, mentally practicing just how and when you are going to initiate the take down. Then you play the “what if game!” On the aspects of what if it doesn’t goes as planned. What are the results going to turn into? These random bursts of your thought processes occur in microseconds just prior to the car making its approach. Then, there is the car and you react to the plan and hopefully your skills will carry you forward as planned. Just as the car comes abreast there is no further time for thinking. As one entity we opened the doors, dragged the occupants out, slammed them to the ground and cuffed them. As we stood up and looked at each with grins on our faces we noticed that the 3rd Suspect was still in the moving car. He was wildly trying to figure out what had happened to his companions turning his head violently from side to side and trying to see out from the backseat. As the car rolled into a tree we ran to the car and arrested the 3rd party with out incident. We took a few moments to let our adrenalin slow down to normal levels and then began to contemplate our position and what we had accomplished. A quick critique of our actions revealed that we were also very lucky. Suppose the subjects had been wearing their seat belts? Or the doors had been locked? Fortunately for us they didn’t take time to fasten their seat belts and the GTO was not the type of model that had self-locking doors when started! We opted to critique our actions later after shift and plan any subsequent strategies for the many varied scenarios that we could encounter.
Now, we had the three suspects, the car and once again we were in the middle of nowhere! So we took a few minutes to discuss our predicament
and concluded that we were going to have to once again call the Lt. and advise him of our circumstances. All this time we are listening to the other units as they deployed during this operation. I requested the Lt. to turn to our car-to-car frequency. He advised that he couldn’t at this time due to his involvement with the on-going robbery. Mike and I just looked at each other and smiled! I did try to advise the Lt. on several occasions the situation but he refused to listen so I went on the County-wide South District channel and advised that I had 3 Suspects in custody and the apprehension of the all black GTO that had been BOLO’d. Needless to say there was a momentary shock of silence. I then took advantage of that to advise my location and request a wrecker and unit to transport. Of course you know that the Lt. has just realized that he had shut me up on the county wide net when I tried to advise him. He immediately directed me to switch to the city net and of course he was most unhappy with us! He at first advised that we couldn’t have the suspects because they had been traveling south and away from our assigned zone! And I agreed with him but I still needed a car for transport and a wrecker for the GTO. I then asked him if I could keep the moneybag we had recovered from the vehicle that had the Community Banks logo and the name and address of the 7/11? He advised, “Don’t do anything I will be right there!” So, OK we wouldn’t do anything until he got there! What else could we do? We didn’t have a car we could use other than the suspect’s car! You can just imagine the reaction that would have elicited from our supervisors had we all piled into the car and drove it to the station. Upon his arrival it didn’t take him long to realize that we had once again made felony arrests, apprehended the suspect vehicle and recovered the money from the store while on foot patrol in outer Siberia! Was he mad! So wasn’t the Sgt. after he showed up shortly thereafter. Once again they tried to take the arrest by giving it to the zone officer. I reminded
them, that we were the arresting officers and would not allow that to happen I said, first of all I was the one that attempted to contact the Lt. by car to car to advise him of what we had and he refused. I then advised I had made subsequent attempts to advise him and was refused prior to my transmittal on the assigned County Net. He was given the opportunity and just wanted to be obstinate. So I took it upon myself to advise the County and other responding units that we had the Subjects and their vehicle and the money in custody. After all why continue to waste the time and energy of other units in a search for the suspects when they were already in custody. At that point there wasn’t much for him to do but grit his teeth and send us on our way! Needless to say both Mike and I received, Officer of the Month Awards for the 3rd month in a row. Hehe, they were not pleased. The unfortunate part for them was that our shift started at 2200hrs and ended at 0800hrs.
Now our court system is a little overwhelmed to say the least and the Department’s overtime budget has been strained due to our aggressive pro-active methods of operation. So we divided our responsibilities. Mike transported the subjects to the County Jail and I went to confer with the on call Assistant State Attorney. At that time only one of us had to appear at the pre-trial conference. As it turned out our day was stretched out to another four hours (of overtime). At the next oncoming shift I had collected our check-in receipts from the courthouse and turned them into the Sergeant for our pay. He frowned, wordlessly looked at the chits, then us and just waved his hand in dismissal. I knew that it was killing him to have to pay the overtime. Our next few nights were fairly uneventful. A word to one of our city councilman of our new assignment had resulted in the Lieutenant and Sergeant receiving a written reprimand for wasting the city’s resources. It is nice to have friendly resources in high places.
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