Tis the season
I don’t tell a lot of Cop stories. I am still serving and it seems odd to talk about it. But I have a story that involves my late friend Mike.
Mike was a senior and very, very well respected member of my department. I was lucky enough to work with him benefit from his wisdom. A lot of junior guys learned a great deal about policing by listening to Mike and following his example. I certainly did. Mike had a way about him. I don’t think I ever heard him yell at a junior guy nor belittle or tease. He said what he had to say and said it with quiet dignity. If you were smart you listened, you followed his lead and paid attention to the example he set.
I worked what we call “The Out Last”, or midnights if you prefer. One summer morning I took four hours of overtime filling in a car for four hours after my shift. I was lucky enough to be in Mike’s district. Toward the end of a boring four hours we got dispatched to check a residential burglar alarm. Most of the time they were false alarms and this one might have been too except for the open window. The window was about seven feet off the ground, the house was a Victorian. Guys set up a perimeter. Mike and I would go in, let in a couple of other guys and clear the house.
Our path involved climbing up on a large tool box, the type that goes in the back of a pick up truck. Mike hopped up. Jumped into the window frame, looking like a paratrooper standing in the door waiting to jump. Then, Mike, who was in his fifties at the time, did some Ninja, Commando roll thing through the window. Then it was my turn.
Now, compared to Mike I was large and ungainly and I knew there was no chance of replicating his near gymnastic move. I opted to kind of dive head long through the window and shoulder roll, coming up standing. Well, that was the theory. I managed the first part of diving through the window. But my forward momentum stopped and I was hung up half in and half our of the window.
I looked up in horror to see my well respected friend and mentor staring at me. He was trying to suppress his laughter as I struggled. My holstered pistol had gotten entangled in the draw cord of the window blind. I managed to wriggle out and stand up, liberated from the wretched cord. I drew my pistol and Mike said with smirk. “Well, I guess that’s one way to do it.”
He said it dryly and not unkindly. That was Mike. We cleared the house and then I went home after my overtime shift ended. Mike retired and passed a way shortly after. I was lucky to know him and luckier still to call him a friend.