I had several calls in my 25-year police career where I did everything right, but I still can’t help but think that my solid police work caused more harm than good. Here’s the one I think about most.
It happened a couple years before I retired. One of the new guys on the shift made a traffic stop at about 4:00 pm on a busy road. Very quickly he called for an additional backup unit. I was the farthest car away, so I didn’t respond.
The backup officer arrived quickly and everything seemed under control. About 15 minutes later, the new officer called for an additional backup unit and specifically asked for me to respond. That’s very unusual, unless the suspects spoke Spanish. I was the only officer on my shift who spoke the language and I often got called out to translate on traffic stops.
Expecting that he needed my translation services, I rolled to the scene. When I arrived, I was surprised to see two white dudes in their mid-twenties handcuffed and sitting on the curb. A couple handguns and a baggie of meth were laid out on the hood of the police cruiser. The detained men were speaking English.
Clearly the officers didn’t need me for my Spanish skills. I asked the new guy what was going on.
He told me that he had made a traffic stop for speeding and noticed that both the driver and the passenger seemed nervous. As the officer looked into the passenger compartment of the car, he noticed a bag of what appeared to be illegal drugs sitting in plain view in the cup holder in the center console. He called for backup. The two officers got the suspects out of the car and handcuffed them.
The initial officer then retrieved the baggie of drugs from the center console. He field tested the brownish-colored powder. It tested positive for methamphetamine.
The officers then proceeded to search the car’s passenger compartment. They found a Taurus G-2 handgun loaded with ball ammo under the driver’s seat. They found a .22 Heritage Arms single action revolver and a partial box of .22 long rifle cartridges under the passenger seat.
Those guns warranted felony “carrying concealed weapons” charges at that time in the state of Ohio. In addition, both suspects had felony drug convictions which gave them an additional charge of carrying “weapons under disability.”
The officers knew that I was the department’s former training officer and a firearms instructor. They needed help. Neither knew how to unload the single action revolver.
The .22 revolver that the new cops couldn’t unload
I unloaded the gun for them and asked the officers what these guys were up to.
The officer who made the stop said: “I don’t know. They won’t talk to us.”
I asked if they had been Mirandized (they had) and if the officers wanted me to try to interview the suspects. They did.
I walked over to the detained driver and introduced myself.
“Hey man. We arrest people with guns and drugs pretty regularly. I have to tell you though, I don’t see many .22 cowboy guns like that one you have. I’m betting there’s a story behind why you are carrying it. Want to tell me about it?”
The guys looked visibly relieved and the driver let out an audible sigh. “It’s a long story.”
“Dude, I get paid by the hour. I’m all ears.”
I don’t know for sure why these guys were willing to talk to me and not my coworkers. Maybe because I was nice to them. Maybe it was the fact that I was old enough to be their father. Maybe they thought I was in charge because I was so much more senior to the guy who pulled them over. It doesn’t matter. Both prisoners began talking.
These guys were minor drug dealers. They weren’t big players. They were the kind of dudes who were long-term drug addicts. They bought a little extra to sell to their friends in order to help finance their own habits.
They had been roommates with another guy who was also an addict and small time dealer. That dude (the roommate) had been killed the week before.
It seems the roommate had run his mouth, bragging about being in possession of $1200 worth of crack cocaine and heroin. A gang banger who had two previous murder arrests (no convictions) heard about the drug stash and tried to rip the roommate off. The roommate fought back unarmed. The murdering gang member shot the roommate twice in the face, killing him.
The guys we had arrested were on the way to their dead roommate’s funeral. The roommate’s girlfriend was a tweaker who hadn’t been able to score any meth recently because her dead boyfriend was her primary drug supplier. She was going through extreme withdrawal symptoms. These dudes didn’t want her to be dope sick at her lover’s funeral. They were going to give the meth we found in the car to the girlfriend so that she could make it through her late boyfriend’s closed-casket showing and graveside service.
“You know the meth is illegal and we have to deal with that, but I can understand why you guys have it. Your roommate’s girl is probably hurting pretty bad right now. She’s in a rough spot and you guys are trying to help her out. I can respect that. I might have done the same thing if I was in your position.”
The driver replied: “Thank you. I fucking hate meth. I’m a heroin addict, but I never do meth. You can give me a drug test and see for yourself I’m telling you the truth. It fucking sucks to get arrested for shit that I don’t even use.”
“Yeah, that does suck. What’s up with the guns?”
The men continued their story.
Both men had been present when the gang banger killed their roommate. They knew the killer’s identity. They ratted out the killer to the Columbus police homicide squad. They gave the detectives enough information to file a warrant for the murderer’s arrest. The warrant was on file, but cops hadn’t caught the killer yet.
The killer knew who had ratted him out. He was hunting the guy my coworker had pulled over and had threatened to kill him on sight. My prisoner thought his roommate’s funeral was the perfect opportunity for the killer. The killer knew my prisoner would be there and the killer would most certainly attempt to settle the score at the graveside service in the cemetery.
The prisoner I was talking to told me to look in his wallet. I did so and found a business card from a Columbus Police homicide detective. I called the detective and verified the story the prisoner told me was correct. The detective was certain that the murderer would kill our prisoner if he encountered the guy before the cops arrested him on the murder warrant.
My prisoner continued:
“I’m not a violent guy. I’ve never owned a gun in my life. But I know if the murderer finds me, he’ll kill me too. I knew I needed a gun. A guy in my neighborhood sells stolen pistols. I went to him and asked him to sell me two guns. One for me and one for my other roommate here. The murderer doesn’t know which of us talked to the police, but we were the only witnesses. He’ll kill both of us as soon as he finds us.
The cops can’t protect me. I’ve got to handle this shit myself. I bought the only two guns my street contact had. I paid $150 for the 9mm and an extra $100 for the .22 with a box of bullets. I’m just hoping the cops arrest the killer before he finds me or my family so I don’t have to use the guns.”
The driver admitted that he had purchased both guns and had given the .22 to his living roommate. The roommate didn’t want the gun and just stuffed it under the seat for the ride to the funeral. The passenger roommate admitted to buying the meth that they were going to deliver to their dead friend’s girl.
We charged the driver with both guns and the passenger for possession of methamphetamine. We seized the evidence and took both criminals to jail.
Looking back on this case, I can’t help but to acknowledge a few difficult facts:
– Both of these guys had just witnessed their roommate’s murder and were now getting arrested for serious felonies. Could someone’s week really get worse than that?
– They did the right thing by reporting the murderer’s name to the police.
– The police hadn’t worked very hard to arrest the killer, placing the informants in grave danger.
– The informants were trying to manage their own grief and help a dead friend’s grieving girlfriend through a horrible situation.
– They knew the cops couldn’t protect them, so they made the completely reasonable decision to purchase firearms the only way they could do so in order to protect themselves from the murderer who was currently trying to hunt them down.
Now because of a chance traffic stop, they were being arrested while the murderer was still free. We seized the only instruments they owned that would allow them to defend themselves and their families from the rampaging murderer.
We were taking them to the same jail to which the murderer would also eventually be confined upon arrest, thereby guaranteeing a confrontation inside. But the murderer was part of an organized street gang with lots of friends in that jail. What do you think our informants’ chances of surviving that jail confrontation are?
Did we do the right thing?
The low level drug dealers we arrested weren’t model citizens by any means. But they were trying to do the right thing by turning in the murderer at grave risk to their own personal safety.
If we hadn’t arrested them, there was a good chance that they would have killed the murderer in self defense, a net gain for society.
In the name of “justice” we screwed all that up, virtually guaranteeing that two men who were willing to testify against their friend’s murderer ended up dead themselves.
While the department congratulated us for getting guns and drugs off the street, I knew that the actions we took had far more lasting and complex consequences than incarcerating yet another “bad guy.”
Unintended consequences are a bitch and they haunt me even to this day. If I were walking in our prisoners’ shoes, I undoubtedly would have taken a similar course of action.
As I was clearing the call, the song “Snow” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers was playing on my cruiser radio. The lyrics hit me hard.
“The more I see, the less I knowThe more I like to let it go”
I can’t help but think that if my co-worker hadn’t made that traffic stop and those arrests, the world would currently be a better place.
