Street Cop
Street Cop
David Spell
Street cop
Copyright © 2010 David Spell. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-60899-696-4
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
To Sarah Shackleford
And
Rachel Hanna
I am blessed to have such incredible daughters!
I pray that your children will bring you as much joy as
you have brought me.
Preface
I have been in Law Enforcement for almost thirty years. I have been blessed with a wonderful career that has been full of incredible memories. That is what these pages contain. As I look back over my Law Enforcement career, I don’t know that I would have changed a thing. I am a street cop. My entire career has been one in which I have put on a uniform everyday, got into my marked police car, and gone to work, serving the citizens and residents of our community. I have spent the bulk of my time with the police department working at the various precincts as a uniformed officer, a Field Training Officer, a Shift Supervisor, and ultimately as a Watch Commander. I also did tours in two different Special Operations Units. Both of these were uniformed, enforcement positions. One sad reality is that the higher you go in rank, the less actual enforcement that you are involved in. As a Lieutenant, I don’t get into nearly the amount of “stuff” that I did as an Officer, a Corporal, or a Sergeant.
What follows in these pages are some of the interesting calls and incidents that I was involved in over the course of my career. I have not tried to organize them chronologically. Instead, they are loosely grouped by the type of incident. They are all true. In many cases, I have supplemented my memory with the actual police reports and other documents. I have chosen to only use officer’s first names because I do not want to embarrass anyone. I have changed suspect’s names and made minor changes to some locations. I also cleaned up the language so as not to offend. Some of these stories will make you laugh and you may find some of them to be disturbing. At any rate, I hope you enjoy them. More importantly, though, I hope that through these pages you will develop an even greater appreciation for the men and women in blue who are out on the streets of America 24/7 protecting our communities from predators.
I would like to express my thanks, love, and respect for the incredible men and women that I have been privileged to work with over course of my career. Thanks for watching my back on bad calls, sharing a cup of coffee with me on those long winter’s nights on third shift, and thanks especially for the part each of you played in writing this book.
David Spell
Buford, Georgia
2010
1
“Shoot Me!”
“Shoot me, shoot me,” the short, shirtless, muscular Korean man said as he walked slowly towards Officer Jay and me. He was holding a large kitchen knife and we could see the blood trickling down his chest and abdomen from where he had been cutting himself. Jay and I both drew our pistols and took a step backwards, preparing to defend ourselves.
We had gotten a 911 call in February of 1991, at around midnight, to this quiet Lilburn neighborhood from the Korean man’s adult son. The man had two sons at the house, both in their mid twenties. They both spoke English, but their mother, who was also there, only spoke Korean. When Jay and I had arrived at the residence, the two sons met us outside. They told us that their father was depressed about losing his job and other personal issues. He had been drinking all evening, which only increased his depression. We also found out later that he was mixing alcohol and prescription pain pills which made a bad situation even worse. The sons had been sitting with their father, but he had still managed to slip into the kitchen and get a knife. That was when he had said he was going to kill himself.
The two sons had immediately sprung into action and wrestled the knife away from their father. They had called 911 because they wanted us to take him to get some help. Officer Jay and I went into the house and made contact with the man. He was about fifty years old but appeared fit and very intoxicated. Jay found out that the man had been in the Korean version of the Marines. Jay was a former United States Marine himself and this created an opportunity for the two to talk.
While Jay was talking to the father, I spoke to the two sons. They explained that they were worried that their dad really was going to kill himself if we did not help him. The problem is, thanks to the lawmakers in Georgia, it is not against the law to kill yourself and threatening or even attempting suicide does not provide grounds for involuntary committal. The family’s options were fairly limited. If their dad would consent to go voluntarily to the hospital, we would take him. If he refused, there was not much that we could legally do. Another option was that if he committed some criminal offense we could arrest him and take him to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Up to this point, however, the subject had not broken any laws.
After Jay had talked to the father and I had spoken to the two sons, we compared notes. I told him that the sons wanted their dad taken into custody to get him some help but that I had told them that we could not do that at this point. Jay said that he had a good conversation with the man. Jay asked him if he would be willing to go to the hospital and get checked out. The father told Jay that he did not need any help and he was okay now. Talking with another military man had made him feel better. He assured Jay that he would not try and harm himself again. He even said that he might go see his doctor tomorrow if he wasn’t feeling better.
Both Jay and I felt that we had calmed the situation down as much as we could. We told the sons to keep an eye on their dad and to call us back if they felt that they needed us. We both left the house feeling that we had handled the call and done our good deed for the night. We could not have been more wrong.
As we were backing out of the driveway, one of the suicidal Korean’s sons came running down the driveway, yelling for us to stop. “He’s got another knife and he is stabbing himself!” Jay and I rushed back into the house and found the Korean man sitting on a couch in the living room holding a large knife. He was cutting himself on his chest and abdomen but did not appear to be feeling any pain.
When he saw that the police were back in his house, he stood up and started walking slowly towards us, holding the knife out in front of him. “Shoot me, shoot me,” he pleaded with us. Jay backed up as far as he could. The suicidal man’s two sons and his wife were standing behind him, pressing around him. They saw us draw our guns and knew what was about to happen. They were screaming, pleading in Korean for the man to stop and put the knife down. Jay and I both yelled at the man to drop the knife. Instead, he kept walking slowly towards us, saying in heavily accented and slurred English, “Shoot me!”
Now I know that in the movies and on television, knives are not really considered a threat. The hero usually kicks the knife out of the bad guys hand or grabs the hand with knife and twists it until the knife falls out. These “Hollywood encounters” do a great disservice to those in Law Enforcement. If an officer has to shoot someone who attacks them with a knife, they are often second guessed by the press and citizen advocate groups, none of which have ever been in a deadly encounter with someone who wanted to kill them.
I have been involved in some type of martial arts for most of my life and am proficient with empty hand