Shotgun!

My partner and I were just leaving the scene of a welfare check and I hear this voice from inside the car go, "ALERT!" It startled me a bit as I had never heard the car talk to me before. So I asked, "What is it, car 2948?" It turns out the voice was coming from our little Lo-Jack box to my left. I knew that the box was there, I had just never heard it go off before.

So I call it in, "Flytrap, I'm at walk and don't walk and I am getting a Lo-Jack signal with 6 bars on ABC123." Dispatch responds and tells me that particular number is tied to a silver mercedes license plate number 1ABC234.

We and like 5 other units, spend the next 15-20 minutes driving very slowly around our area trying to find this damn car. We went from 4 bars to 20 bars. Now for those of you who don't know, and I did not know until this incident, that 20 bars means you are right on top of the stolen vehicle.

After about 20 minutes my partner notices his kids in the car next to ours. So we slow down and wave to them. At this point the whole Lo-Jack thing seems like a wild goose chase that is going to amount to nothing.

I hear over the radio, "Houston, confirm the plate is 1ABC234 on a silver Mercedes?" Dispatch comes back, "Houston, that is affirmative." Houston responds, "Houston, I have the vehicle at the freeway on ramp at walk and don't walk, felony stop." Oh shit!

I know that Houston is a one man unmarked car. So we flip on the lights and sirens and start booking hard to the felony stop. It was approximately 6pm, so traffic was moderate and people just will not get out of our way. I am picturing in my head Houston having this car full of felony dirtbags at gunpoint by himself, so we were going just slow enough not to break the sound barrier.

We are just about to round the corner to the felony stop and I call out, "Flytrap, on scene." I want Houston to know I am there and that I am going to be coming up along side him.

As we drive up, I realize that we are the first unit on scene, so I whip out the shotgun and point it at the driver's head, who is craning his neck around to get a good view of me racking the shotgun directly at his noggin'. Now this I will never forget, as I rack the shotgun, the driver's eyes just about pop out of his head. If he had any inclination of resisting, it was now gone.

After all the units arrive and we are ready to clear the car, we have the driver step back, search him quickly and plop him in the back of a unit. I still have the shotgun pointed at the vehicle. There is a K-9 at the scene, so after we announce that we are going to send the dog, the handler lets him loose and the dog leaps into the car. I almost laughed after I see this dog wagging it's tail leaping into this felony stop car.

We call out to dispatch, "No more units needed, Code 4." We ask the suspect some questions and to my suprise he lays it all out for us. "Yeah, so I was walking by this car and saw the keys on the dashboard...so I took it. Oh and I was going to use the screwdriver to take off the license plates later. I saw you guys driving around like twice, what took you so long to catch me?"

That was pretty much it. I was riding that high for the rest of the night. I still remember after I racked the shotgun, I couldn't feel the safety. So I looked down to make sure my finger was in the right place. It was. I will chock that up to weird things that happen to you on a quick shot of adrenaline. I was able to keep myself calm with some tactical breathing exercises. I still couldn't tell you which way we drove when we left the scene. I was in kind of a daze. They say the most dangerous time for an officer is right after something like that. Your body does weird things to recover from all that excitement.

I made it through my first major incident with no mistakes and no injuries. That is a success in my book.