September 30, 2008

We keep fighting, the five of us.

Scotty tries to curl into a ball to protect the gun deep in his chest.  We try to pull him open so we can get the gun.  The magazine, loaded with 13 rounds, has popped out and disappeared, but still there is a round in the chamber.

I hold on as tightly as I can.  If I let go, he’ll be able to turn and shoot.  I imagine him climbing off his mother, shaking off his father and the girlfriend’s uncle as though they were pesky bugs.  I imagine him leveling the gun and firing.  I imagine that single round going not into my chest because he knows we wear vests, but elsewhere.  Neck.  Head.  Face.  Femoral artery.

So I hang on to his back, my hands on that gun.  At one point, he starts banging his head backward, trying to head butt me.  I tuck down tighter so he can’t get to me.

And I hang on.

Fucking forever.

And I’ll go longer than that if I need to.  If stalemate is the best I can do until help arrives, then that’s what I’ll do.

Then, almost magically, the gun squirts out.  It clatters along the floor and I’m not sure anyone realizes what’s happened.  A second later, the girlfriend’s uncle snatches the gun up and runs outside.  I don’t know until half an hour later he locked the gun in his truck and then came back to keep fighting.

At that moment, I don’t care.  At that moment, with the Glock 21 danger gone, I have a new focus.  Now I have to fight him like I’ve been trained.  Now I have to get him into cuffs.

But now he can fight back.

I immediately tag him with the OC spray.  The entire can.  It has no effect, unable to cut through the PCP and booze haze.  At one point, Scotty plays at eating the gel, and laughing, while I spray him.

I use the baton.  A three foot chunk of metal.  Against soft tissue – thighs and biceps and ass.  I hit and hit and still he fights.

I punch and punch and still he fights.

I twist and yank and kick and gouge and still he fights.

And then, quietly and anticlimactically, he stops.

He stares at me, his face stained orange from the OC spray.

“I’m done, Trey.”

Months Later

In the months after, the cops all talk about it again, but now they’re angry and righteous.

Scotty has been offered a deal.

If he pleads guilty, he’ll only have to suck down seven years.

That’s it.  Seven years for two counts of domestic battery, one count of disarming a peace officer, one count of aggravated battery of a peace officer, and one count of resisting.

He’s eligible for better than 20 years.

He’s offered seven.

I’d spent quite a few hours talking with the victim’s advocate.  Not because I considered myself a victim, though the advocate did, but because she let me rant and rave as long as I needed.  I ranted about everything.  I questioned whether or not law enforcement was for me.  I wondered how I could have handled the call better…a different approach to the house?  A different response in the house?  More hands on deck before I even get to the house?  (This question burned me because my partner had specifically asked if I wanted help and I’d said no.)  More force?  Less force?  I hollered on and on about his mother, who had driven him to the girlfriend’s house.  I squealed like  stuck pig about my radio not working.

But mostly I ranted about the defenses Scotty’s attorney kept throwing up.

The first was involuntary intoxication.  In other words, he didn’t know the cigarettes he smoked had been doused with either PCP or formaldehyde.  Problem with that was he’d been smoking marijuana cigarettes and if you’re illegally intoxicating yourself, then you can’t really argue someone did something illegal to you.

Then there was general intoxication.  He was so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing.  The problem is that drunk ain’t no defense.  In fact, in front of the right judge, it can be aggravation rather than mitigation.

Then there was what I like to think of as the ‘Good Samaritan’ defense.  What happened, see, was that the officer, see, dropped his gun, and I – Scotty – was simply helping him pick it back up.  See?  Of course, that doesn’t answer why he fought for twelve minutes, including four or five minutes after he dropped the gun.  Doesn’t explain why he didn’t just drop the gun on the floor when he realized what was happening.

Then there was the final defense in which he said he was too mentally unstable to appreciate or understand his actions.  The problem here is that this county’s judicial system has been dealing with him for better than ten years.  He’s not crazy, he’s a fucking idiot, and everyone knows it.  It’s why his mother works so hard to blame someone else.  Also, this defense stumbled after Scotty answered fairly complex legal questions perfectly when asked by the judge.

Then it was time for trial, which he was prepared to face until I went back to a retirement home, more than a year after the incident, and talked to some witnesses.

“He was drunk,” they all said.  “And he was threatening people.”

September 30, 2008

Before the former girlfriend’s parent’s house, there is the retirement home.  The former girlfriend works there and an angry Scotty needs to talk to her.  He walks in, though it’s supposed to be a secure facility.  He demands to see her, though she’s already fled because he’s called a number of times earlier and said he was coming for her.  He wanders the halls until just before the local police show up.  When they arrive, he’s gone.  A couple of hours later, he arrives at the former girlfriend’s house.

After I get him cuffed, he offers a few more kicks but they’re half-hearted.  His mother is on me immediately, telling me he’s only drunk, not stoned.  Telling me he doesn’t need jail, he needs help.  Telling me he thought I was going to kill him.

When I ask her how she knows all this, because I’ve been with him since the fight started and she’s not talked to him at all, she withdraws and spends the rest of the night staring at me with daggers.

My partner arrives.  He takes custody of Scotty.  Scotty says, “Trey, don’t let him take me, he hates me.”

Later, my partner tells me my response is, “I don’t give a fuck.”

I don’t remember.  I remember very little of the after.  I remember standing in front of my sergeant, my hands shaking and trying not to throw up on his boots and asking him over and over where my gun was and him continually pointing out it was in my holster.

I remember yelling at him that Scotty should be dead.

I remember him pulling me away from the house and telling me to quit talking and just breathe.

I remember one of the officers on scene, who I don’t know, finding the knife.  It was a four inch paring knife, partially broken, and not even in the kitchen.  Scotty had never touched it while I was at the house.

In other words, Scotty had never had deadly force while I’d been with him.

I remember laughing hysterically over that fucking knife.  Staring at this tiny, little, broken, dull knife and realizing I’d almost killed a man because of it.

One Year Later

Finally, it’s all over.  It’s a closed case so now I can write about it.

Scotty took a deal for ten years rather than go to trial.

I’m good with that.  Should have been longer but could have been shorter so I’ll take the split.

I was in Indianapolis when I heard, attending a writers’ convention.  In fact, I was with an investigator for the Florida Department of Investigations, both of us being tourists at the Indianapolis Speedway when I got a text message about Scotty’s sentence.

He’ll be inside for four of the ten years, which means out in three since he’s already done a year in county.

Seems like not very much time for what he did to those people but what do I know, I’m not an attorney or a judge.  But I can promise this: when he’s free, he’ll get stoned and drunk again and he’ll hurt someone.

He’s had twenty five years of listening to his mother tell him his troubles are someone else’s fault, usually law enforcement.  He knows nothing else and so lives his life under that guiding principle: that whatever he does is okay because if it goes south, it ain’t his fault.

He’s escalating.  Not like a serial killer, but like a repeat loser with zero prospects in life.  Every time law enforcement deals with him, he’s slightly more violent.  On the street or in custody, it doesn’t matter.  More violent.  More violent.

It will continue this way until he kills himself or until someone else – cop or victim – kills him.

The question is how many people will he kill before he’s done and will Mama still say it was someone else’s fault?

Days Later

We’re still talking about it, the deputies and I.

They ask me the logistics of what happened and they wonder if it’s too soon for bad jokes.  I’m good with the jokes.  It helps cover my anger.

Their talk is my therapy.

My partner and I, together with my dispatcher, try to piece together exactly how long the fight lasted.  At the Academy, they tell recruits most fights last less than 30 seconds.  Bad fights go two or three minutes.  Terrible fights go upwards of five minutes.

We figure out, in the days afterward, that my fight with Scotty lasted the better part of twelve minutes.

September 30, 2008

He’s on the far side of the kitchen.  Then he’s directly in front of me.  The stink of booze is large and foul on his breath and his eyes are hard on mine.  I realize then why he didn’t recognize me.

He’s not there.

His body comes at me but no one is home.  Utterly vacant.

“Scotty?  No, no.  Stay back, stay back.”

As he’s coming, his mother screaming at him to stop, he raises his hands and my finger slips into the trigger guard.

I’m sure I’m going to see the flash of a hunting knife.

So this, then, is what I’m going to do.  I’m going to shoot him in the chest twice…maybe three times…until he’s no longer a threat.  I can’t let him kill us.  I can’t let him stab me and take my gun.  If he gets it, he’ll kill everyone.  Me first and then the girlfriend’s parents and uncle.  Then his parents.  Then he’ll torture the girlfriend with rantings about how much he loves her and just wants to be with her and why did she have to break up with him.  Then he’ll kill their kids, maybe doing them first in order to terrorize her, maybe doing her first and then cleaning up the loose ends.

Then he’ll kill himself and when my back up arrives, they’ll find ten bodies.

I’m raising the Glock 21 and I’m ready to go.  This is what I have to do.  Deadly force with deadly force.

But in the moment before he reaches me across that yellowed kitchen floor, I realize his hands are empty.

There is no knife.  At least not here, not now.

I start to reholster.

Scotty slams into me and then we’re falling to the floor and my Glock is not in my holster and it’s not in my hand.

We hit the kitchen floor and his mother is beneath him, trying to squeeze him tightly to her chest.  Trying to keep him from moving, I realize.  Scotty’s father is trying to hold one of his arms.  The girlfriend’s uncle is trying to hold the other.

And I’m on top, my cheek pressed to his back, trying like hell to get my hands between him and his mother.

I’m trying to get my Glock 21 back.

Scotty has taken it from me and has one hand wrapped around the butt, one hand around the barrel.  He’s having a hard time manipulating it because his mother is hanging on to him so terribly tightly.

I get my hands on the weapon and try to yank him free of it.  But when I pull his right hand, I realize his finger is wrapped around the trigger.  If I yank too hard, he’ll squeeze off a round and someone will die.

So I try to turn the gun.  I try to get the barrel pointed as much as I can toward Scotty.  If that goddamned thing goes off, I want Scotty to be the only one dead.

Weeks Later

Everyone has given statements.

Except Scotty and his parents.  They refuse to talk and I understand.  His mother doesn’t want to make it worse for her son.

But she did speak to me in the moments immediately after, when I was coming off the adrenaline dump, confused and shaking and boiling in my own anger.  She said, “He’s not on drugs, he’s just drunk,” and “He doesn’t need jail, he needs help.”

Even then, it feels like Mama is prepping Scotty’s defense.

The other deputies and I don’t talk about the incident so much in the weeks after.  Thus is law enforcement.  Something else comes along and becomes the newest item of discussion.

But I want to talk about it.  I want to talk about the white-hot acid anger burning me from the inside out.  I’m enraged at Scotty for putting me in that position.  I’m enraged that his mother drove her intoxicated son to his former girlfriend’s house at 3 in the morning and thought it a good idea.

If I can talk to someone, I can bleed out some of that anger.

But also I can decide whether or not I did the right thing.  That’s the thought that plagues me for weeks after.

Should I have fired?  Should I have fought?  Did I fight the best way?  Did I use the right training and tactics?  Or was it a street fight with no fucking rules because he had my gun and that trumps everything?

Some deputies say straight up I should have killed him, that there was more than enough justification to shoot.  Others refuse to take a stand because they weren’t there and say they don’t know what I was facing.

It’s pretty simple, really.  I faced nothing but fear.

And a drunk man high on PCP (allegedly, though Scotty has never admitted it ‘officially’).

Nothing but the worst fear of my entire life.  There was a drop in my belly and white noise in my head and my vision was nothing but Scotty even as my knees went weak and my own bile choked me.

But when he slammed into me and took my gun and we fell to the floor, I had only one thought: get that gun back.  Whatever it takes, get that gun back.

Most deputies don’t want to talk about what happened, though one came to my house within hours to make sure I was okay.  The entire incident scared some deputies while others were bored with it and one or two were jealous it happened to me and not them.

But in the weeks after, my dispatcher, my partner, and I still talk about it.  We talk about the girlfriend’s phone call.

A few minutes into the fight, when the magazine had popped out of the scrum and suddenly I was worried about one bullet rather than fourteen, the girlfriend, yelling, asked what to do.

“Call 911,” I yelled.  “Tell them he has my gun.”

She didn’t call 911.  She looked up the number for the Sheriff’s Office in the phone book, then called that.  But she told them the right thing.

My dispatcher told me she screamed at my partner, “Scotty has Trey’s gun!” and my partner was gone in the blast of a burning engine and smoking tires.

That was the first moment, six or seven minutes into the fight, that anyone outside that house knew anything was wrong.

*****

Conclusion Wednesday

Hours Later

We didn’t hear you, my dispatcher says.

When I used my portable radio to call the Sheriff’s Office, to tell them Scotty had a knife, that he’d gotten violent, that I needed some help…they hadn’t heard me.  Maybe the weather interfered.  Or maybe I hadn’t charged the battery enough.

Either way, my dispatcher says no one heard my call for help.

I hadn’t known that.  When I drew my weapon and went inside, I thought my partner was on the way; I thought someone had heard and was sending help.

But it didn’t matter, I realized.  When I got inside and saw Scotty’s absolutely empty eyes, I knew help wouldn’t matter because it wasn’t going to arrive fast enough.

September 30, 2008

The weapon is a Glock 21.  It’s a big son of a bitch.  A .45 caliber with a fat, slow slug that can do all kinds of damage if needed.

I draw the weapon, take a deep breath, and go inside.

The girlfriend’s father is there, a bit of blood on his head.  The mother is behind me.  The girlfriend is protecting her young kids in a back bedroom.

Scotty is in the far corner of the kitchen.  His father is in front of him, his mother to the side.

The fuck are they doing here, I wonder.

“Scotty,” I shout.  “Let me see your hands.”

Scotty’s head turns my way and his eyes touch me but there is no recognition.  His father is yapping and yapping and his mother is pleading and pleading and I see their jaws move but I don’t hear anything.

All I hear is my heart pounding hell out of my chest.

My grip tightens on my weapon and I try to catch sight of Scotty’s hands.  Does he still have a knife?  Does he still have deadly force?

“Scotty?  You okay?  I need to call an ambulance?”

Dead silence except his parents talking and talking and talking and if they’d just shut up, I might be able to get through to Scotty.

I’m about thirty feet from him and I can’t see shit.  I have no idea where the knife is.  So I move forward, weapon still at my side.  I don’t want to raise it, to escalate this whole nightmare, just yet.

At twenty feet away, I stop.  “Scotty, let me see your hands.  Where’s the knife?”

Again, silence.  He looks at his father, then his mother.  Then again at me.

“Scotty, it’s me…Trey…what’s going on? You okay?”

My throat is like the fucking desert I grew up in: dry and hot, and my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth.  Still I can’t see his hands.  I raise my weapon halfway, what’s called ‘the hunt’ position.  Not all the way up and ready to shoot, but closer.

It’s a small escalation but I believe Scotty recognizes it.

I move forward slowly.  While I’m watching Scotty, I try to scan everyone else.  Are they wounded?  Are there other weapons?

I’m ten or twelve feet from him now.  He’s in the back corner of the kitchen.  I’m at the doorway.  Between us is an ocean of bad linoleum.

Again I ask to see his hands.  Again he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t give a shit.

But he looks at me and I know, at that very instant, even before he rockets across that linoleum, everything has changed and the worst is yet to come.

*****

Part 3 Tuesday

September 30, 2008

“Want some help?” my partner asks.

I decline. “It’s Scotty. I’ve dealt with him a million times. I’ll be fine.”

Scotty is in his ex-girlfriend’s parents’ front yard. He’s drunk. They want him removed. Scotty is always drunk. Or high. He’s done jail time for all kinds of penny-ante bullshit behind being drunk or stoned.

But he also had a four year prison drop for burglary.

He’s not even 25 years old.

The call is in one of our smallest towns. It’s less a town than a collection of houses built around a tavern and a railroad junction. It’s eight or ten miles from the jail and I’m in no great hurry. When I arrive Scotty will be, as he so often is, unconscious from booze or heroin or ganja. I’ll get him into my car, call his mother – who has enabled his alcohol and drug use for most of the previous ten years by saying law enforcement is out to get him – and get him home. I’ll write a report, finish the last few minutes of my shift, and go to bed.

I park and approach the house. I don’t see him but think he’s probably in a bush. Or under a car. Or curled up on the back porch.

When I’m twenty or thirty feet from the door, the girlfriend’s mother bursts out. She’s crying. “He’s in the house! He beat up my husband!”

I swallow and radio for back up.

“He’s got a knife. He’s threatening to kill everybody.”

*****

Part 2 Monday