It was New Years eve several years ago, and wouldn't ya know, it was raining. I went to cover another officer on a traffic stop in a church parking lot, and a third officer showed up shortly thereafter.
The contact officer was talking to the driver of the car through the open driver window and I was at the passenger side with the other cover officer. All seemed to be going well..... then it turned into a friggin' episode of COPS.
All of a sudden, the driver starts to quickly roll up his driver window. Now, in retrospect, this was quite funny. Dude was literally CRANKING his manual window up as fast as his little arm could turn, and locking the door with his other hand at the same time. The contact officer was yelling at him to open the window.
After the window was up, he started the car. I'm on the driver side now, just ahead of the left front tire. The driver reached down to put the car in gear. As soon as his hand hit the shift lever, the officer on the passenger side smashed the right side window with his flashlight. It so frightened the driver, that he pulled the handle right off the shift lever. He literally had the shifter scared out of him. Once he realized he wasn't going anywhere, he unlocked the doors and promptly got up close and personal with the parking lot. I could not believe this asshole actually whined that the pavement was wet after he was about to run us down.
I didn't realize that I had even touched my holster when I was faced with this guy trying to drive over me, but I later discovered that my holster was unsnapped. The holster I had at the time could not have come unsnapped on its own. I had to rock a thumb lock back and push the snap open. This guy almost got shot, and I didn't even realize I had my hand on my gun. Adrenaline does strange things. They say when you are in danger, you follow your training.
We searched the car once the driver was in custody, and discovered his reason for putting my life and his own in danger. He had a cigar box on the rear floor of the vehicle with a marijuana pipe, and a little bit of marijuana. So instead of a citation for whatever traffic violation he was stopped for, and another citation for the weed, he went to jail for the night. Stupid.
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2 comments:
I love stories! One night at Sequoia I was getting out of my patrol car when a huge, dark shape came hurling out the window of my nieghbors house. I had my gun in my hand without even realizing it. I thought it was a burglar, but it was only a bear. I put the gun away and yelled at it as it ran away.
That's my funniest gun-in-hand-without-realizing-it story.
Yours is a great story. People do amazingly stupid stuff when the cops show up. I wonder if he realized how close he came to dying?
It was ONLY a bear. And you put your gun AWAY! I love it!
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