Gun calls are the most dangerous, and the most exciting that ­police officers can respond to. Rookies sometimes become myopic in their zeal to confront the suspect, which can lead to hastily prepared tactics, occasionally with tragic consequences. Veteran cops learn to arrive discretely, survey the situation, deploy backup and wait for the best time to act, with a contingency plan already in mind.
Usually gun calls come from an anonymous witness who is threatened by the armed thug, or has seen the gun displayed, and simply wants him off the street, sometimes only to eliminate drug competition in the neighborhood. In those cases, the complainant often describes the villain, and the weapon, with sufficient detail to warrant a stop and search of the gunman. Responding units know something about the suspect, gun, and it’s hiding place prior to arriving so a plan can be in place beforehand.
It’s not the known gun calls that are the most dangerous. It is the gun that surfaces without warning that can be the more deadly. These are cases where the Officer discovers the weapon inadvertently, or without adequate suspicion to warrant backup.
My first experience with these scenarios occurred my rookie year. I was assigned to on call weekend, in a blazer and tie, with my marked unit parked just out of view at a cafe just off I-70. Glancing out the front window, I noticed an unkempt young man, dressed in fatigues, displaying a distinctive bulge to his right waist enter the restaurant and take a booth just ahead of me.
I knew instinctively he was carrying a gun, likely a revolver, given the rounded nature of the protrusion from his jacket, and didn’t think he could be an off-duty officer I hadn’t met in the area yet. I would be even more surprised, if he was, to discover he was trying to conceal his off duty gun so poorly as to make it apparent even to my limited powers of observation.
I needed to ensure that if he was a cop, he knew that I was also, to avoid an awkward, and possibly dangerous confrontation. I opted not to call for other units, partly to avoid embarrassment if he was in fact a cop. I chose not to address him inside the cafe, for if he wasn’t a cop, and he had a gun for the wrong reason, I would then be forced to deal with him in a building full of people. Waiting until he finished, I paid my check and followed him into the vestibule where he and I were the only ones in harm’s way. Seeking its confines to my advantage, with some trepidation, I confronted him displaying my badge in my weak hand, my right hand on my holstered Combat Magnum beneath my blazer.
It turned out, he was an off ­duty officer from a Kansas City suburb, who exhibited the poor taste to carry his S&W Model 15 in a bulky and conspicuous carry rig that printed his choice of weaponry to everyone in sight. He desperately needed a lesson in ethics, tailoring, and choice of equipment, and I was more than happy to give him all three.
Several years and dozens of gun calls later, I was in my office during the last few moments of All Hallows Eve, the night before my thirtieth birthday. We had already taken a number of calls on what is one of the busiest nights of the year, when a vague disturbance call was dispatched to the city ­patrol units in a rough housing area where fistfights and gunshots were common. It was approaching the witching hour and out of curiosity and concern, I radioed city dispatch that I would be en route myself, assuming a large crowd might have the idea of a mass melee. I pulled up, in my unmarked car, near the address, directly behind a dark colored sedan parked just off the roadway of the apartment entrance. That sixth sense you develop after surviving years of your own bad judgement, kicked in and I decided to check out this car while two marked units entered the complex and disappeared from view.
Aiming my spot light into the rearview mirror of the sedan, I got within 10 feet of it when a man rose up from the front seat, with a Ruger .22 auto pistol in his hand. The perp’s left hand overlapped the top of the slide and began a series of maneuvers akin to clearing a jam and charging the auto pistol. I stopped, unlimbered my Model 19 and challenged my antagonist in a pointed exchange of demands, threats and promises, all alluding to his impending demise if he ignored me.
Murphy’s law is only eclipsed by Nall’s law, which maintains that Murphy was an optimist. The pistol wielding perp refused to drop his gun, regardless of every pejorative, insult and command I could muster. In desperation, mere feet away and concealed only by the darkness, I charged him. Introducing him to the muzzle of my magnum, I wrestled the Ruger from his grasp. Later I found that the original call was from the estranged wife of my arrestee. She had been threatened at gunpoint by him, yet she had neglected to inform dispatchers of that salient point beforehand.
A decade later, I was working a detail one night in a seedy part of town. Surreptitiously rounding a corner of a raucous juke joint, I happened upon one of the evening’s revelers leaning casually against the wall with a dozen colleagues in various degrees of intoxication and humor. On one of the few occasions I sported a uniform, my sudden presence was as welcome as the plague to this bastion of iniquity.
The telltale aroma of cannabis wafted from the end of a doobie, bogarted by an exceptionally large and imposing vulgarian, who had elected a much heavier leather jacket than the temperature demanded. He took a final toke just as I approached.
Big bad guy nearly swallowed his ill-timed joint and hurriedly searched for a convenient and secretive place to deposit it before I got up to his face. Big bad guy, was also big dumb guy, because in his drug and booze laced stupor, he “hid” his wacky tobacco inside his nearly empty beer bottle. Now the contraband was preserved in both alcohol and glass. Grabbing the bottle, I tossed it into the sand at his feet where I could watch it as I searched him, expecting to issue a summons to appear, if all he had was a misdemeanor amount of grass and a good attitude.
“Up against the wall, you know the drill”, I said almost by habit. “You got any machine guns or hand grenades on you?” Big bad guy assumed the position. Something wasn’t right about the heavy leather jacket he wore, as my left hand reached into the inside left-hand pocket I grasped the butt of a revolver. And so began the dance.
I knew big bad guy and, based upon his previous indiscretions, he couldn’t have a permit. Now instead of simply leaning against the wall, he stiffened and braced against the building as if to push backwards, with his right hand reaching ominously towards my left, still tucked inside the jacket pocket with a death grip on his revolver. I tried first to remove the gun, but the sharply curved spur of its hammer naturally caught on the lining of the pocket.
To my rear, the original crowd, that vaporized as soon as I arrived, was now gathering three deep and taking exception to my ancestry. With each of our hands on his gun, I speed rocked my Glock 17 from its holster, and planted it against his right temple to discourage any further debate over who was in charge. Cuffed and kneeling, big bad guy grimaced as I pulled a loaded H&R .32 Magnum from his leather jacket, pocketed it, and assured the crowd there would be no further nonsense as I led my charge away.
Murphy’s law, while never repealed is occasionally superseded by patience and a large dose of good fortune.