THE PENNY JAR

The penny jar

Every police officer knows that there is a gun at every call they respond to.  It’s on their hip.

Not every person who is placed under arrest just says ‘ok,’ and renders themselves up for handcuffing.  People will resist violently for no apparent reason, to the most minor of charges.

While not every resisting arrestee can be subdued easily that does not mean they get a free pass.  We can’t just say, ‘ok, you don’t want to go to jail, go and sin no more’.  Yet the offense/situation does not rise to the level that shooting is an option.

When a struggle ensues to accomplish handcuffing it exposes the officer and the subject to injury; it also means the possibility of their gaining control of your firearm.  Too many officers have been killed with their own weapon while trying to detain someone for a minor offense.

One of the greatest dilemmas facing law enforcement is the need for an intermediary ‘disabling’ tool.  What is needed is something that is less than lethal and can stop resistance in its tracks.   Police science has struggled to find the perfect intermediate weapon. 

So it was with great appreciation we received the first delivery of pepper spray.  Finally, something that would stun a resisting person long enough to apply handcuffs, yet you didn’t have to inflict blows with a night stick or get up close and personal to wrestle or fight.  And the best part – keeping your firearm far enough away from snatching hands.   

After orientation, an unpleasant personal experience with the substance ‘oleoresin capsicum’, and the rules of engagement our department settled on, it was issued for use. 

 Finally, something that could stop a fist fight instantly.  It was nicknamed ‘ass-whipping’ in a can’.

I was an FTO (field training officer).  The first thing you realize when you train new officers is that they fall into three categories:

·        The natural born officer:  They instinctively get it and all you’re called upon to do is orient them to the city geography, department procedures, rules and policies. 

·        The created officer:  Ones that didn’t get it thru DNA but they pick it up pretty good.  You have to add explain the 'why and how’ to the aforementioned training needs. 

·        And finally, the never gonna get it, gonna get washed out non-cop.  These are the ones that are totally lacking in common sense, no aptitude what so ever.  They are either going to get killed or get someone else killed.  It’s just a matter of who and when.

And it’s your job to explain that in volumes of reports to justify why they are not suited for this kind of work.

***

So it’s the first night on patrol with my new recruit.  It’s the first night on patrol with a can of pepper spray on my gun belt. 

The recruit is a pleasant looking, good size young man with a reserved demeanor who had obviously been frightened by locker room warnings about what a holy terror of an FTO I was.  He looked something like a deer in the headlights.  His tactical / survival plan was to lay low, agree with whatever I said and hope I approved of him.

I spent the first part of the shift showing him the perimeter of our zone, assessing his willingness to learn and how quickly he picked up on things.  He was bright and pleasant but remained cautious.  I knew he was afraid of me.  That’s ok, I had his attention and this is not a popularity contest.

It started out quiet, not many calls and those were mundane.  Then around 0300 we got a loud music complaint at a local apartment complex.  When we arrived the person who’d called was an off duty state trooper.  The apartment complex had a policy of discounting rent to law enforcement officers in exchange for them being willing to intervene in minor neighbor disputes. 

One of the residents in his building called him to report her neighbor was playing his guitar and singing so loud she could not get to sleep.  When the trooper asked the performer to knock it off for the night the guitarist told him where he could stick it.  So the trooper backed off and decided the guitarist needed ‘on duty’ persuasion.

This was a perfect call for my recruit to spread his wings a bit.  Just knock on the door, ask pretty please be quiet, take a few names, run them thru the system and say nitey-nite.

Well, we all know there is no such thing as a routine call.  I couldn’t wait to see how this easy one was going to go south in nothing flat.

We approach the door and can clearly hear the guitar and singing.  The apartment is the kind with interior doors to an interior hallway.  The doors are hollow core, no threshold so sound and light emit from the units into the common hall. 

Recruit knocks.  No answer.  Recruit knocks louder.  We hear discussion in the room but it is undecipherable.

Finally a young man opens the door, “Vat u vant?” he says in a thick Russian accent.

Recruit, “Your music is disturbing the neighbors, can you call it a night please?”

“Dis is free country, I play if I vant.  Police can no tell me what to do, dis is FREE country!” and slams the door in our faces.

Recruit looks at me, I could read his face…. Ok, now what do I do?

I nod at the door, he knocks again.  A young woman opens the door.  “I am sorry,” she says, “he is new here.  He does not like police.”

“We need to make him understand that it’s very late and the neighbors want to sleep” we told her.  She invited us inside.  He was on the sofa stroking his guitar and singing some kind of Russian folk song.  (Not bad either but it was not for me to say).

The Recruit tries again to charm the Russian, “sir, please, no more music tonight.  You can play tomorrow”.

“Fuck You, I come to free country, I can play if I vant”.  Clearly he had learned some American slang, and now the aroma of metabolized Vodka was wafting toward us.

He jumped up off the sofa and began to shove my trainee to get him out the door.  Well, I’m pretty sure that in Russia if you start shoving the cops around you end up bruised, bloody and in the gulag for a very long time.  Something we certainly have in common.

So it was on.....

We are in the process of switching from being shoved out the door, to dragging him out into the hall for handcuffing.  When we got to the door he head butted my recruit into the door.  Unbeknown to us in the corner behind the door was a huge onion shaped bottle.  If full of water, it could have held 5 gallons easily.  However it was half full of loose change. Mostly pennies.  There were thousands of them.  

Run thru a Coin-Star machine there was probably enough to buy this nit-wit a one way ticket back to Moscow.

Well, as the recruit was pushed into the door, the door was pushed into the jar.  There was a big loud popping noise almost an explosion as the glass burst and pennies flowed like liquid onto the ceramic tile foyer.  In a situation like this you have two immediate problems, glass to get cut on if you fall down, and the pennies acted like ball bearings, they were a slippery as KY jelly!

Ok, no more fooling around.  We managed to drag this guy, slipping and sliding across the penny slick tile out the door and onto carpet-firma in the hall.  We had him pinned down but he was squirming and bowing to avoid the handcuffs. 

My recruit looked to me for a hint at our next move.  I pointed to my brand new can of cap-stun and said ‘you or me?’  He said I want to do it.  (Good boy, he was not afraid to get his feet wet). 

The freshly issued protocol called for us to step back and announce pepper spray would be used if they refused to submit.  When we stepped back the Russian looked bewildered.  He’d never seen a wrestling match end or what the ‘though’ was end, in quite such an abrupt and inexplicable way. 

He was still trying to figure out why the stupid police had let go of him when my recruit told him to put his hands behind his back or he would be sprayed.  Well, this guy was not about to comply and had no clue what getting sprayed meant.  Too bad.  As he tried to get up he said his final “fuck you”.  Just then the recruit gave him a full face soaking.

It worked like a charm.  All the attitude and fight melted out of this idiot instantly.  He fell back on the floor and couldn’t wait to follow my recruit’s instructions.  He walked out to our car like a whipped puppy.

The unfortunate aftermath of pepper spray is many fold.  First you are not immune to it.  It burns your skin, eyes, nose and mouth.  It hangs in the air, clings your hair, clothing and the interior of your cruiser.    It can linger on for hours and sometimes days.

Needless to say the decision to use cap-stun is tempered with the knowledge that the user will have a price to pay, thus this decision is entered into with some prudence.

Back to our Russian. 

The full scope of the pepper spray deployment dawned on us gradually.  As we were stuffing him into the back seat of our car his companions emerged from the apartment like rats fleeing a sinking ship.  This didn’t surprise us. 

However, when old ladies in night robes and hair curlers began emerging from the far end of the building we realized that the positive air pressure of the hallway had driven the fumes into all the adjoining apartments-- the entire length of the hall.  Thus effecting 20 apartments. 

 Within 10 minutes the parking lot was filling with angry, sleepdeprived residents.  


Well, part of our job is problem solving.  We had solved the case of the defiant Rusky guitarist and now we had to solve the problem of the pepper bombed apartment building.

We summoned the fire department who responds, as always, lights and siren.  Waking all the residents of the other half dozen buildings in the complex.

When I explained the situation to the Battalion Chief he laughed, shook his head and deployed vent fans.  Thus our job here was done - we had gone from one sleepless resident to 300+ angry, residents forming like a swarm of bees from  a poked at hive! 

Time for us to bail out and take our prisoner to jail.  A trip made  with all windows down; if the prisoner tried to squirm out his half open window he’d just have to hit the pavement head first at 35mph!  We pulled into the booking sally port and the doors were rolled down.  We entered the booking vestibule, barely able to breathe ourselves. 

During this entire episode my recruit never gave away one expression of what he was thinking.  Dead pan face the entire time.  He is at the counter filling out the paper work and looks up at me without cracking a smile. He gets a little glint in his eye and and a telltale micro curve at the corner of his mouth as he says to me “I think I’m gonna like this job.”

He turned out to be the smartest recruit I ever trained.  He was a natural born cop.  He has done a fantastic job over the years and was a superb detective.  I am very proud to have had a part in his career.

Good job Tom!