Blog #4: Ticket Quotas, Fact or Fiction?

“The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them”
-Lois McMaster Bujold

Benjamin Franklin once said: “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Valid point. However, as great a countryman as he was, Benny never lived life through the eyes of an Angelino’s front windshield during rush hour traffic! He has never had a careless driver cut him off without signaling. He has never been tailgated for no apparent reason other than to raise his blood pressure. He has never been stuck behind Driving-Miss-Daisy catching all red lights. And I doubt he’s ever been flipped the bird after honking at a horse drawn carriage who drifted into his lane while on his cell phone. Ugh! Don’t you HATE it when inconsiderate people do whatever the heck they want without repercussion!? It’s a part of life that’s all too certain in the life of an Angelino. If Benny Franklin were alive today he WOULD have said: “In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and bad drivers.” How many times have you wished the police was around to give that weasel a ticket? That way they’d get what they deserved! That would feel great!!! Wouldn’t it? Like true justice was served! And best of all, you’d get the last laugh **long sigh** Even simply daydreaming about it feels good...but of course, the police are never around when you need them.

For my father, the convenience of police presence seems to always work against him. He is a ticket magnet! Always getting pulled over ‘unjustly’ by a police force that is never around when the TRUE culprits of road-rage are terrorizing innocent drivers like himself. Since I became a po-po in the summer of 2004, he has inquired about the issue of ticket quotas over and over again, as have many of my family and friends. I find it interesting that anything less than a “yes” fails to satisfy their need for an answer to the question of ticket quotas being a part of my job or not.

I can tell you what you want to hear:

Yes. My sergeant tells me: “Son. I expect 15 tickets from you today” As I reply with an obedient “Yes, Sir!” I scurry into my patrol car and look for 15 average Joe citizens to issue citations to. I can tell you what you want to hear by saying how I received an award and a pay bonus for being a stellar ticket-writer amongst my peers. I can tell you what you want to hear by telling you we have betting pools at work for the officer who comes in at the end of the shift with the most tickets. Then what? You’d say, “Aha! I knew it all along!” Well thats simply not the way things in my line of work go. And thats definitely not a work ethic I go by. But it seems like these are the only answers that will appease my inquisitive family and friends.

I can tell you what you DON’T want to hear:

That public safety is one of our main responsibilities. When there is a pattern of citizens (usually children and the elderly) being struck by vehicles at certain intersections, the public has scrutinized police records and noted the lack of citations for speeding at these intersections, then placed blame on the local police department. This scenario happens quite frequently across the nation. And while I believe writing citations simply for the purpose of avoiding public blame is wrong, I do believe issuing citations at these intersections because we sincerely do not want anyone getting struck by a car is completely valid. Enough citizens get seriously hurt or die as a result of these accidents that the police department SHOULD be proactive in analyzing all the problematic intersections in our city. That way we can implement traffic enforcement plans and lessen the potential for these accidents to occur. Is that not something you want the police department to do in your community? I feel it is safe to assume that the answer is Yes. (Except of course the city would give YOU an honorary ticket exemption card, that would be sweet! Good luck! Tell ‘em Chris sent ya!)

In my pre-police life, I noticed that the general public in Da Hood was only exposed to the police in one of two ways. Either Deputy Big Shot and his entourage were pointing big guns and yelling orders at obscure nameless criminals, or the common law abiding citizens themselves were being issued citations for relatively small infractions. Aside from that there were no positive community policing efforts like we see in modern day police work. It was simply not a priority back then. Result? The community feared the common patrol officer instead of that officer being a symbol of public safety. I truly hope I can change that mindset in people through my day to day actions while on duty.

Personally I don’t write very many tickets. I’m not a big fan of ruining a hardworking citizen’s day in this age of financial distress. Occasionally I see blatant violations which make me cringe in fear of potentially witnessing a bad vehicle-vs-pedestrian impact. When I do write those tickets it is with the purpose of public safety in mind, as cheesy at that sounds. There is no malicious intent or lack of compassion in that part of my duty. I know that my family and close friends still continue to walk the streets that I patrol and I will use all the tools in my power to protect them. If your mother or child was hit at an intersection, I’m sure you’d wish that a police officer was there to issue those careless and inconsiderate drivers a ticket with a hefty fine. Maybe...just maybe, a ticket on a prior occasion would have slowed that driver down an extra second, or made that driver not read his text message so he could see the pedestrian in the street before a catastrophic collision.

How many times have you been driving and slowed down at the sight of a police car then quickly looked down at your speedometer? Shoot, even I do it! And I have a get-out-of-jail-free card! (Well, kind of. I’ll touch on THAT issue on a future blog, dont worry.) I understand that for most of you police work is a profession you choose not to do for various reasons. On the other hand I guarantee at times you would LOVE to have the power of ticket writing. Heck, even off-duty I sometimes wish I could write these road-rage terrorists a ticket. Unfortunately, as a police department and as a community we can’t catch them all.


I was going to begin this blog with a morbid narration describing the visceral reality of traffic collisions with an example of a vehicle-vs-pedestrian accident that I was unlucky enough to witness. Instead I’ll allow you to do the math. The average vehicle is 4,000 pounds of hard metal. The average human body is 180 pounds, 61.8% of which is made up of water. There is no competition. Pedestrians must be protected and the police department looks to protect YOU. It’s a hard concept to ascertain. Especially when you’re the recipient of a ticket. “I’m getting fined for my protection?” It seems not to make sense. But in a parental kind of way it actually makes perfect sense.

The simple answer to your question is: No. I have never been given a ticket quota responsibility. There are many issues concerning citations that I will touch on with future blogs. But the issue at hand here is the ‘Ticket Quota’. They are as real in police work as unicorns and mermaids are in our skies and oceans. The occasional ticket you get is annoying, inconvenient and pricey. You curse the officer under your breath and feel like the system cheated you under some codified ticket quota clause stipulated in our department policy. The way I see the big picture of things, receiving that ticket makes you merely collateral damage in the fight to make your stroll around the block with the family a safe one. We can’t make citizens care about common courtesy while driving, but utilizing citations and fines we can make them think twice about driving with some common sense. Instead of focusing on proving the police have a quota for tickets, focus on the main objective of the tickets themselves. Citations educate the general public, make people think twice before making unsafe decisions and best of all prevent accidents which can seriously injure or even kill citizens. If we can all atleast agree on that, then we can start working together on other methods of influencing safe driving for the protection of you, me and our loved ones.

In the meantime I’ll be working on your honorary ticket exemption card...until my next blog, dawg!

PIECE LOVE & WHISKEY

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Fallen Officers Since Last Blog: 3 Souls
Total Line-of-Duty Deaths for 2011: 63 Souls

Police Officer J. Christopher Kilcullen

Eugene Police Department, OR

End of Watch: Friday, April 22, 2011

Age: Not available

Tour of Duty: 12 years

Cause of Death: Gunfire
Survived by: wife and two children (11-year & 4-year old)

Deputy Sheriff Clifton Taylor

Johnson County Sheriff's Office, TX
End of Watch: Saturday, April 23, 2011

Age: 31

Tour of Duty: 3 years

Cause of Death: Gunfire

Survived by: fiancee, parents, and siblings.

Police Officer Daryl Hall

St. Louis Police Department, MO

End of Watch: Sunday, April 24, 2011
Age: 34

Tour of Duty: 5 years

Cause of Death: Gunfire

Survived by: mother, stepfather and a brother

++This blog is dedicated to LAPD Officer Jose Diance. 23-years old. Died off-duty in a traffic accident on 4/24/11.
Officer Diance, I will continue protecting and serving in your honor with pride and courage. God rest your soul.++


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Blog #3: Street Food Vendor Wars

“If a man is called a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of Heaven and Earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

The frequent walk my mother and I took to our local supermarket was an eclectic frenzy of sights, sounds and especially smells. It was a short walk, about one city block roundtrip, but one that felt like an expedition through several worlds, all wrapped up into one tiny insignificant neighborhood. A neighborhood that boomed with as much cultural diversity as it reeked! Oh yes, good ol’ Jons Market on 8th St. and Irolo St. We’ve come a long way, friend...we’ve come a long way...

It began with a journey through our Koreatown apartment on the South 800 block of Ardmore Ave. The long unventilated hallway through two closed doors allowed the boiling kimchi to fester and linger. There was a Korean Kimchi Cook-Off Festival and we were ALL invited, like it or not! There was an orange tint in the air as we swam through the thick of it. I remember my mothers expression distinctly. It soured her face as she puckered up her lips and wrinkled her nose in a feeble attempt to seal her nostrils. The old Korean lady with a baby wrapped on her back simply looked at us and laughed. We escaped out through the lobby and into fresher air. My mother held my hand, as mother’s do, and we walked briskly towards 8th St. Catcalls from drunken winos (aka: ‘paisas’) were a norm.
(I remember fantasizing about drop-kicking them one by one, with the help of The Ultimate Warrior & Hacksaw Jim Dugan, of course. My fantasy starred Me, bouncing off the ropes and drop-kicking multiple paisas. With their bodies scattered around the ring, The Ultimate Warrior violently jerked the ropes up and down in celebration of my victory while Hacksaw Jim Dugan gave me one thumb up and held a 4X4 on his left shoulder...HOOOOOO!!!!)
POOF! The smell of a sharp Budweiser-urine medley, vomit and half eaten burritos wrapped in aluminum foil quickly slapped me back into reality. These paisas weren’t studying for the Bar or the MCAT-exam anytime soon, and as quickly as I was ready to escape the kimchi corridors, I was ready to step up my pace and leave paisa-country far behind as well!

We cut through the Jons Market parking lot as usual. Larry in the orange work shirt and bottle cap glasses fed bread to scores of pigeons as he always did. He didn’t look my way. The skinny 26-waist sized MS-er normally rocking a size 44-waist pair of perfectly creased tan Dickie pants passed by my mother and I. He was with HIS mother. But this time he wore 26-waist sized pants. He didn’t look my way either. Nor did he sport my Swatch Watch. One of my best friends, Pablo, passed by us too. He wore the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shorts that my other best friend, Henry, and I always made fun of him about. He had a patch on his left eye from a rock that hit him during horseplay. Pablo said hello to my mother in Spanish and “what’s up” to me. My mother was fond of Pablo and ordered him to get home quickly. She wondered why he was out by himself. I was more interested in the elote (corn) he had in his hand. Slathered in mayonnaise, parmesan cheese, hot butter and chili....my mouth watered.

We exited the parking lot for the last stretch before making it to the market and were met by a fresh plume of dark black smog which engulfed us, compliments of an RTD bus with so much undecipherable graffiti on it you could barely make out the Marie-Lu Cookie advertisement on the side of it. As it loudly sped away to it’s next stop, I could make out the all too familiar “Chaka” tagged on the Chupa-Chups advertisement on the backside of the bus. The smog ascended and cleared as we were then teleported to a whole new part of the block. We were now in what I like to call, Little Central America. El Salvadoran and Guatemalan restaurants, bearing their country’s flags proudly, could be seen up and down the street. The distinct slang of Salvadoran and Guatemalan chatter penetrated my ears, but it was the food that really caught my attention.

Steaming silver buckets of tamales in boiling water inside of shopping carts. Yellow water jugs filled white styrofoam cups with hot champurado to willing customers. Buckets of corn-on-the-cob laid under hot damp towels. Pupusas were being prepared from scratch, the maize being sharply slapped from hand to hand, as a few already sizzled on the tin tray with a bunsen burner below it. Propane tanks, market produce baskets, shopping carts, colorful umbrellas and bowls of uncooked foods were all set up in a make shift food court along the sidewalk. The smells were delicious. Familiar feel-good-foods like tamales reminded me of Christmas dinners at home and home-cooked meals in the motherland of Guatemala.

I looked up at my mother with hungry eyes. She knew exactly what I wanted and quickly snapped back in Spanish, “You’re not eating that disgusting food! They don’t even wash their hands! Look at the streets they are serving from. There are roaches and rats all over the sidewalk where they keep their surplus food! They’re two feet from that sewer! Are you crazy?!” With a hard tug of my arm we were finally in our destination, Jons Market, only to once again retrace our steps back on that expedition to the safety of our apartment on Ardmore Ave.

**Time Warp Five Years Into the Future**

As I entered my early teens, my mother no longer held my hand when we walked around. As a matter of factuality, she even sent me to those Jons Market Expeditions on my own! Despite her best effort to ward me off from the sidewalk food vendors, I used my paycheck from the part-time job at Clean & Green to fill that curiosity. It was my first job. I cleaned alleys and painted out graffiti while wearing a green shirt and hard hat at a hefty $4.25 an hour. In my mind I was my own man now. I made my own money. And for the next few years I enjoyed the tasty treats that my mother warned me against. Of course, I would never admit it to her.

**Time Warp Thirteen Years Into the Future**

Two years into my career, I found myself assigned to a task force with a specific mission to shut down these makeshift food courts in Da Hood. The team I was assigned was to shut down business on James M Wood St. east of Vermont Ave. Our Bicycle Unit, Senior Lead Officers, Patrol Officers, Vice and monstrous city dump trucks stormed in and shut off escape routes with a letter-of-the-law mentality. My job was merely presence, watching my brother’s backs while they did what they had to do. Food, stoves and supplies chucked into the mouths of hungry massive dump trucks. Ticket after ticket issued to every violator without hesitation. Every municipal code, every business and professions code, every city ordinance & every vehicle code violation imaginable, nothing was out of the question. Proprietors attempted to abandon their business but we were too swift, too organized and too well prepared.

Clientele came from far and wide to get a taste of home from this particular street on the weekends. They slowly walked away from the ruckus and I received dirty looks by people shaking their heads in disgust as they looked at me with abhorrence in their eyes. Comments were thrown out here and there reinforcing their seditious sentiments. “There are gangsters killing people out there”....”We have to make a living too, ya know”....”You are all racist assholes”...the onslaught of opposition weighed heavily on my morals, values and childhood memories. Before this incident I thought I knew exactly what I stood for. But as I watched my fellow officers cite these hard working people with whom I could relate to, I was genuinely conflicted and confused. I had not eaten at these places since I was a teen, but witnessing the project unfold made me question a small part of who I was.

In the following years working patrol in Da Hood, I slowly became exposed to the reality behind street food vendors and how they affect a community as a whole. The different radio calls and personal observations I made slowly made me think twice about this issue.

March 22, 2006. Daywatch in Koreatown. My 26th birthday and I spent it at work. I responded to a call for service at a local mom-and-pop restaurant and met with the owner: Mr. Hernandez. He was in his 60’s. A widower with four children, three of which were in college, also survivors of Da Hood. He had a twelve year old daughter whom he still provided for. He told me of how he worked hard, sacrificing everything for his children to have a better chance at life than he did, despite the challenges of raising four children in this gang and drug infested inner city. He told me of how he saved his money for years and was finally able to open a business and put some away for his children’s education. An American Dream come true.

I listened intently....

He continued his story, lamenting about how he had six months to shut down his business. He said that the street vendors sold the same food he offered and their presence dropped his business by 70% in the last year, sadly not enough to provide for himself and his daughter. He had business-owner taxes to pay, city codes to follow, laws to abide by. The street vendors who were sending him into bankruptcy did not have to follow any of these decrees. They simply abandoned ship when the police drove by. Only to reemerge the following day. They were bold and persistent. The lack of repercussion from the police and the system allowed them to flourish while causing legitimate businesses to fail. The people that followed protocol and ran a lawful business were being ousted by the businesses that defied the law. Mr. Hernandez was frustrated and had a valid point. And so did hundreds of other businesses throughout the LA area.

Dispatcher: 20-Adam-44, respond to a battery-domestic violence investigation at 842 S. Mariposa Ave. Respond Code-2.

Arriving at this radio call I immediately noticed equipment strewn around the tiny apartment: maize, pork chunks, banana leaves, red salsa & large steaming pots told me she sold tamales on the street. As I investigated the crime at hand, all that ran through my mind was the countless cockroaches that roamed freely around and in between her tamale paraphernalia. Goosebumps arose and my mind flashed back to a time when my mother scolded me about the not so well kept habits of these street food vendors. They didn't have to worry about the County Health Department inspector making surprise visits. It was hard to focus on the matter at hand as my personal opinions continued to evolve.

The truth is the city of Los Angeles is flooded by similar arenas of illegal street food vendors in most, if not all, Latino communities. We receive daily radio calls and have the street vendors leave. Seldom do they get cited for their actions, probably because the average cop realizes that this is how people earn a living for their family. But that is simply not fair to others and it cannot be ignored without alienating law abiding community members. The street vendors have grown accustomed to the street cop simply shooing them away for the meantime. Both sides know the vendors will be back to open up shop the very next day, and it’s hurting many legitimate business owners like Mr. Hernandez and his family.

Zero tolerance task forces like the one I participated in are projects called for by the community members THEMSELVES!!! That is what I want my readers to understand. As uniformed police in the streets, we get the middle fingers pointed at us for what we do. So be it, I’m thick skinned and so are my colleagues. However if those who blame the police realized that the ones calling for the removal of street vendors is actually the community and NOT the individual police officers, then maybe they would think twice before shouting out to me “Pinche Chota Racista!” (translated in nicer terms: “Racist Police!”) I will continue to do what I think is right and what current law mandates I do as a police officer. I’m sure my inner conflicts will undoubtedly continue to adjust as I am exposed to more food vendor adventures.

May your next tamale be roach-free and follow local city-ordinances....Until my next blog, dawg!

PIECE LOVE & WHISKEY

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Fallen Officers Since Last Blog: 2 Souls

Public Safety Officer Eric Zapata

Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety, MI

End of Watch: Monday, April 18, 2011

Age: 35

Tour of Duty: 10 years

Cause of Death: Gunfire

Survived By: Three Children

Deputy Sheriff Sherri Jones

Bowie County Sheriff's Department, TX

End of Watch: Monday, April 18, 2011

Age: 54

Tour of Duty: 6 years

Cause of Death: Gunfire
, from her own gun
Survived By: unknown

Blog #2: DUH!!!! Just shoot the knife out of his hand and voila!

“The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves”
                                                            -Logan Pearsall Smith

My neighbor told me the other day after a ‘contreversal’ police shooting of a drunk knife-wielding Guatemalan immigrant, “Of course you can shoot the knife out of a suspect’s hand, silly! Haven’t you seen that one movie?  You know, when that dude tries to rob a liqour store with a knife?”  I have no idea what movie he was referring to, but my mind drifted into a daydream....

Opening Scene:

The bad guy, sweaty and nervous, hunkers down behind the liqour store counter, knife in hand.  The store is in disarray, presumably from a struggle of a robbery gone sour.  Why has it gone sour, you ask?  Because Deputy Big Shot has arrived on scene.  Deputy Big Shot has a big badge........and a big gun.

Numerous police cars are parked in a chaotic fashion just outside the front door, red and blue lights spinning.  Every lawman is taking a knee behind their two-toned cars, revolvers at the ready.  An occasional cop runs from one police car to the next police car, mainly for dramatic effect.  It’s a tense scene.  Everybody is crouching and hiding behind whatever cover they can find.  Everybody that is...except for Deputy Big Shot.


Camera pans to a muscular silhouette, slowly moving up from sole to Smokey. 
Deputy Big Shot stands out in the open and centered between all the chaos directly in front of the liqour store.    One hand on each side of his duty belt.  He’s the only one with his gun still in it’s holster.  He stands as tall as Christ the Redeemer . Fearless.  He charismatically twirls a toothpick in his mouth. It’s the only movement giving life to this   statuesque man of law standing behind those mirrored sunglasses.  


Suddenly the robber sprints out of the store in a hysterical panic, knife in hand, straight for Deputy Big Shot.  Every lawman gets startled, except of course, Deputy Big Shot.  In one fluid motion he draws his weapon & fires a shot towards the robber.  A spark from the bullet impacting the knife gives way to a now unarmed robber.  He looks at his hand for a bullet wound.  Nothing.  Then slowly looks at Deputy Big Shot in amazement.  A slew of lawmen tackle the stunned robber as Deputy Big Shot is already half way back to his patrol car.  All in a days work for a man with a big badge...and a big gun.

If we could all be as perfect as Deputy Big Shot, criminals would think twice about attacking police officers or citizens with knives.  I practice my marksmanship skills once a month.  And my Sharpshooter medal gleams proudly on my uniform chest.  However it is not the highest accolade an officer in my department can bear for their marksmanship.  Many police officers have achieved the challenging “D-X” medal (Distinguished Expert).  This medal requires scoring an average of 385 points out of 400 for six consecutive months!  While earning these achievements is something to be proud of, keep in mind that these shooting courses are stationary targets made of paper.  There is not a drug induced criminal running at you at full speed flailing a Rambo knife around.  There is not a school filled with children in the background to worry about.  There are no professional cameras, special affects or directors yelling “cut!”, cueing a stunt man to stand in your place.

The grim reality of the criminal element out to hurt you with a knife is a sad and vicious one.  The blade of a knife, no matter the size, can disfigure your face in under a second.  While on probation I witnessed the aftermath of a jealous lover (partnered up with a two-inch Swiss Army knife) who made sure his pretty girlfriend was never appreciated for her beauty again.  I stood guard at the crime scene to make sure nobody accidentally stepped on her nose, left ear, both lips and a partial eyelid.  They looked like movie props on the kitchen floor.    I have seen a grown man on Normandie Ave and 7th St. holding his own intestines as they hung from an eight-inch long, horizontal, dark red gash just below his belly button. He looked up at me with glazed eyes, mouth ajar, face in shock.  Some areas of the body are purposely aimed at to ensure exsanguination within two to three minutes.  Sadly not enough time for a rescue ambulance to arrive and stop the bleeding.

The logistics of shooting on a police range in a controlled environment attempting to reach a certain score certainly help an officer’s ability in the field to utilize a firearm efficiently.  After all we are trained professionals.  However, The chances of hitting a tiny moving target (target being the knife), without hurting the criminal who is trying to kill you, and somehow controlling that bullet to fall on the ground instead of continuing it’s sizzle at 1,100 feet per second towards innocent victims in the background seems...well...what do YOU think?  Possible? Impossible?  If you sincerely believe you can make that shot, then take it!  If you miss, you will be responsible for the consequences.  If you miss, you will be stabbed by a big knife.  If you miss, that bullet will continue on a death path into that school yard filled with children.  These potential consequences are the things officers have to balance while making that split second decision to shoot or don’t shoot.  But who cares, right?  As long as we don’t injure the nice person trying to kill you.  As long as we don’t hurt the feelings of the quick-to-judge Monday morning quarterbacks yelling “murder!”

(Side Note: I don’t mean to be condescending or rude with the last three sentences. Your opinions are valid and important to me.  I once had the opinion that law enforcement in my community was heavy handed.  I used to believe law enforcement took action now and asked questions later.  But as a fellow survivor of Da Hood, it would be a disservice to you if I omit the fact that living life on the other side of violence and being exposed to death and mayhem while wearing a police uniform has dramatically altered my attitude for protecting the innocent, which is the emotion I spill onto this blog with fervent words.  Please do not misconstrue these words as judgmental to your personal opinion.  My adjectival narration merely represents my passion for protecting the innocent DESPITE the risk of officer’s losing their jobs or their lives.)

For those of you that know me, I love having big family and friend events.  I enjoy putting in the time and effort in preparing family picnics, cousin Thanksgivings and my infamous annual b-day shindigs.  Seeing my nephews, nieces, cousins, brothers, parents, aunts, uncles and friends all in one place is a reward in itself.  That effort fulfills my life.  Think about your own family.  Your husband or wife.  Your parents.  Your siblings.  Your children.  Would you risk your children being raised without you in order to be fair to a murderer out to kill you?  If you merely tried to shoot the knife out of the assailant’s hands, is that fair to your children?  Is that fair to you?  How many more innocent people would suffer if that mentality governed police work?  I don’t have children yet, but I wanna see my momma.  I wanna eat her homemade cooking.  I want to enjoy the beach...Fridays...Happy Hours...Family Guy re-runs...laughter...music....I want to travel...I want to live!

 The “shoot the knife out of his hands” theory is a concept that I wish my family, my friends and my community could understand is merely fantasy in everyday police work.  The ugly truth is, I have witnessed people who were stabbed and shot then continued running or fighting officers.  The combination of a criminal on drugs, adrenaline & fearlessness is an unnerving thought.  We shoot to stop a persons actions.  Shooting a knife out of an assailant’s hands is next to impossible.  Police work is hardly rainbows and giggles.  As a servant to my community, I want YOU to determine the fairness of judging a police officer who is put in this grim situation.  A situation in which we have half a second to make a decision.  Put yourself in my shoes.  Actually I’ll give you more than half a second to decide.  Heck, I’ll even give you a few days.  

In the meanwhile, I’ll keep striving to be like Deputy Big Shot.  Until my next blog, dawg.....

PIECE LOVE & WHISKEY

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2011 Law Enforcement Line-of-Duty Deaths Thus Far: 58 Souls

Fallen Officers for April 2011:

Sergeant James Timothy (Tim) Chapin

Chattanooga Police Department, TN
End of Watch: Saturday, April 2, 2011

Age: 51

Tour of Duty: 27 years
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Survived by: wife and two children

Deputy Sheriff Eric Stein
Keokuk County Sheriff’s Office, IA
End of Watch: Monday, April 4, 2011 

Age: 38 

Tour of Duty: 11 years
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Survived by: 9-year-old daughter, sister, and father

Trooper Jeffrey Werda

Michigan State Police, MI
End of Watch: Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Age: 43
Tour of Duty: 11 years

Cause of Death: Automobile accident responding to a pursuit
Survived by: wife and three children

Patrolman Jonathan Schmidt

Trumann Police Department, AR
End of Watch: Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Age: 30

Tour of Duty: 4 years
Cause of Death: Gunfire

Survived by: wife and three children

Blog #1: Da Hood

“...’cause everyone in LA got a little bit of Thug in him...” -Tupak Shakur

What LA native hasn’t been robbed once or twice in his or her life? It’s a frightening experience which would make the average kid tremble and tear up with fear...but this ain’t no average city...and I ain’t no “average kid.”

No...no trembling here.  No tears.  My body goes into it’s ghetto survival mode.  That’s IF my preventative techniques and skills, acquired from living in the heart of MS-13 territory in it’s prime, didn’t do the trick.

“Where you from, puto?”

Being that my attire resembled a Grungy-Cobain existence and that I had played a fun game of 3-Flys-Up with this neighborhood acquaintance just the other day, I knew he wasn’t really interested in what gang I represented.   Now he rolled four-deep, and wasn’t interested in catching fly balls either.  I was “caught slippin”.  I transform into a hypnotic trance, giving up my bright red Swatch Watch (with big moving yellow digits) & the 50-cents I was going to use for a pack of Garbage Pail Kids and a paleta from the OG Yellow Ice Cream Truck on San Marino St.  As I surrendered my belongings to this skinny 26-waist sized MS-er rocking a size 44-waist pair of perfectly creased tan Dickie pants, maybe 2 years my elder (a lifetime in teenage-years), all I could think about was what excuse I could give my mother for not having my watch!  No way was I going to tell her about what actually transpired...are you kidding me?  She would have went looking for him! And I definitely cannot have that.  My adolescent street cred would have been tarnished!  This is youth-survival 101 in Da Hood.

I share this snippet of my life in Da Hood in hopes of relating to YOU: My soon-to-be blog followers.  If you ever crossed the street to avoid a thug on your way to school...if you ever had to cement dive at the sound of gunshots and screeching tires... if you ever lost sleep because of the ghetto bird circling your block... if you ever had to literally run for you life, then laughed about it with your friends and continued the conversation you were just having about baseball cards without skipping a beat....then the series of blogs that will follow is for you.

Being raised by a single mother in Da Hood was no walk in the park.  The potential for me becoming a product of my environment was enormous.  The odds of surviving and becoming successful were completely against me.  Luckily for me, the wrath of my mother’s death-glare and the sting of her heavy handed discipline far outweighed anything a common street thug could dish out.

Years of witnessing and experiencing ignorant violence has given me a sense of duty to protect the innocent from evil.  I never earned a sewing patch in the Boyscouts, so secretly tailoring a custom fit cape and mask was out of the question.  Result?  I joined the local police department and am now serving the same community in which I was born and raised.

Being a police officer has sparked many heated debates with my closest family and friends.  Topics such as ticket quotas, mandatory verbal warnings before using lethal force and arresting street vendors are only a few of the subjects I have debated about.  My inner conflictions with such issues have evolved throughout my seven years of being in this chosen profession.  With my blog I wish to humanize the badge through me: Chris.  A son, a brother, a friend, a cousin, an uncle, a God-father and a fellow survivor of Da Hood.

It is not my intention to recruit you into the police department.  Nor is it to convince you that all of your negative opinions about law enforcement are wrong.  I can’t compete with the morals, ethics and values which have been instilled in you throughout the years of living in Da Hood.   If I can dispel a rumor or two along the way and feed you a different perspective here and there, I’ll be a happy camper.

So read on with an open mind, that is my challenge to you.  Until my next blog, dawg.....

PIECE LOVE & WHISKEY