Day In The Line of Duty

It was my squad’s final night of a week of graveyard shifts. We usually head into the barn at 0530 hrs but not this night.

While several of us were out in the rain, checking a car load of Gangbangers, another car sped past us, in the opposite direction, with the driver staring at all of us on the sidewalk. At the rate of speed he was going, it would have been a good check as everything about the car/driver said that he was either drunk, high or the car was stolen.

Unfortunately all of us were tied up with these several knuckleheads, who were known to be dangerous, and we couldn’t break away and leave too few officers with the bad guys. Most of the squad was on scene with these guys and at this time of night there are no other officers to call on for help.

We wrapped up the check on the bad guys just as a call was coming in from an off duty officer two blocks up the street. The officer was heading into the station for day shift when he found an elderly person lying in the middle of the street. My whole squad immediately went to the scene to help. We found an elderly person in the street moaning and shivering on the wet pavement among pieces of the car that had hit them.

The pieces matched the color and style of the car that had zoomed by us not 5+ minutes before.

This person was badly injured with serious head injuries. Their skull was cracked open like a flip top dispenser with a clear view inside. The person was still alive but barely.

We were left wondering what kind of human piece of garbage would hit another person and then leave them for dead roadkill without stopping to help, even just call 911? This 80+ year old person laid in the street, in the rain, on cold asphalt for several minutes before anyone found them.

The person died shortly after arriving at hospital. Who knows if they could have survived if 911 had been called at the time it had happened but I’m willing to guess that they would have had better odds.

We found ourselves wishing we’d chased the car when we saw it but that might have lead the driver to do more harm then already done. If a loser won’t stop to help in this case what would they be capable of if police were actually chasing them?

This was an awful way to end the shift but none of us complained, even a little, because a person had been killed in a violent and graphic way. We were going home eventually, this elderly person was never going anywhere again.

I can tell you that the level of frustration in a situation like this is palpable. Wishing you could have done something different in a vane hope of altering the circumstances.

To the driver who killed this person (he was caught): ROT IN HELL YOU COWARD PIECE OF S**T!!!