It’s the late spring, 1999, at The University of Georgia. Finals are in full swing, and students, bowed under the weight of both their textbooks and the accumulated knowledge in their heads, rush to classrooms to disgorge that knowledge back onto bluebooks. In a few short days, they will be free again- until the next quarter.
But one student doesn’t seem too concerned by finals… but is concerned about being seen. According to the witness who called 911, a figure carrying two suitcases and a trash bag skulked over to the dumpsters next to the Pharmacy Building and set them down gently. The figure looked around, trying to ascertain if anyone had seen them, and then scurried away.
The first officer to arrive at the suspicious package call had been trained on how to respond to them and noted the two suitcases, one a hard-sided clamshell and the other soft-sided, had an antenna wire wrapped around them, emerging from the soft-sided one. This was a far superior response to a suspicious package than the ones that happened during the ’96 Olympics …
…at least, until the officer opened the trash bag and rummaged through it. His radioed description was enough to prompt the Chief to send our brand new EOD unit to investigate further.
I mean, there’s 30,000 students on campus at any one time.
Now, understand that this response involves closing and evacuating 8 campus buildings, in the middle of final exams. That’s no small feat, and not without a lot of consultation with University VIPs all the way up to the President of the Uni. Which meant that a lot of them wanted to watch our response, and see if all the expense they footed to create and equip this EOD unit was worth it.
No pressure.
Dane and Andy had attended the FBI’s Hazardous Devices School at the beginning of 1999, and were a few weeks fresh from it when this call went out. I was slotted to attend HDS at the end of 1999, so my role during this was gopher and helping them don the suit. We had a majority of our equipment, purchased over the last year, in place- trailer to haul everything, EOD-7B and SRS-5 bomb suits, disrupter, X-Ray source and film cassettes, a small amount of explosives- C4 (untagged!), detasheet, 20 and 200 grain det cord, electric blasting caps- the film and explosives donated by the regional FBI SABT to get us started. (We did make a large purchase from a commercial explosives dealer later that year; but that deserves it’s own story.) No robot or real-time X-Ray yet; those would come later.
The initial officer had snagged some mail from the trash bag; bills addressed to a Married Housing unit… so we had a name, and a fuzzy description from the witness. So, while we were cordoning off the area and evacuation students, Detectives went to work and ID’d a suspect. He was a foreign student and his neighbors in Family Housing said he was leaving to go back home after his finals. A few more calls revealed he’d already gotten on a plane overseas.
Well then. Even though this is before 9/11, putting these facts together caused sphincters to pucker, a little tighter after each revelation. Suspicious person drops a package off in front of a campus building packed with students, the package has an antenna wire emerging from it, foreign student, skipped the country.
Andy and I help Dane suit up and he scuffled downrange with the X-Ray source and film cassettes, watched by the various campus VIPs as well as the chief and assistant chief. Were they too damn close? Absolutely; given the amount of explosives that could have been packed into these suitcases. But we were still brand new to this, and didn’t want to tell the Provost and President that they might catch some shrapnel to the forehead and could your holynesses go around the corner? We made this point during the after-action and they grudgingly agreed; miracle of miracles.
Dane zaps the packages with a few pulses and returns, and we develop the film. It’s a Polaroid product, BTW; basically a film gets ripped off to release developing chemicals and you wait a few minutes while it develops. Don’t have to fan it around like the songs say, though. We pull the sheet from the developing cassette and crowd around to see what we’ve got.
Aaaaaaaannd….
…It’s very, very dark. You can barely make out some wire, and electrical components, but overall it’s so dark you can’t be sure of anything.
I mentioned that our X-Ray film was donated by the FBI; but did I mention that it was donated because it was past its shelf life? Yeah. It has a shelf life because old X-Ray film tends to get dark. Like this.
Into a huddle we go. We can’t see all the components; but we’re fairly sure there’s no triggers on the suitcases themselves. Is that nebulous mass explosive filler? There’s a circuit board; but it’s too dark to see discrete components. Anyone see a detonator anywhere? What is this coil of wire? All the time we’re huddled, the VIPs are getting restless. The Assistant Chief keeps walking over to us and to see what’s going on. Lots of flop-sweat.
Andy, much later, hasty-whipping Kinestick with det cord
Finally, we decide, fuckit. Let’s open these packages and see what’s really in there. There’s no identifiable power source to target with the disruptor; it will open the hard sided one OK but not the soft-sided suitcase. Solution?
Wrap both with 20 grain det cord along the seam and spill the contents.
We take turns working in the suit, so it’s Andy’s turn. He trudges downrange trailing 2-conductor wire and a spool of det cord and proceeds to wrap the suitcases. Attach the cap, attach the wires, slog back to the CP and strip down.
“Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!”
The det cord opens the suitcases beautifully; an absolute perfect disruption as the contents of the suitcases are blown 20 feet into the air and across the parking lot. The contents showered down; a hair dryer, an FM/AM desk radio with a long antenna, and-
Frilly panties, skirts, dresses, and halter tops.
…
Detectives made contact with the student after he landed, and after we blew women’s underwear across South Campus. He liked to cross-dress, and as this was his last quarter at UGA, decided to toss his collection before flying home to his parents. He didn’t want anyone to know, hence his furtiveness when dumping them at a dumpster near Family Housing. He tossed a few other things- the hair dryer, the radio with long wire antenna, etc.- in there as well, and added the collected trash from clearing out his room as well.
Whelp.
The VIPs, despite this being a false alarm, were apparently impressed enough by our response- in handling the evacuation, in Investigations’ quick work, in the EOD unit’s actions in the face of shitty equipment- that we weren’t shut down right away, and so we did get funded for the real-time X-Ray and Andros robot. And I got to make HDS class B-2-00.
“Partulian!” the Master cried weakly from the tower window, “Come here for a moment? I need you.”
Partulian sighed quietly and laid down his quill. The stoop-shouldered badger levered himself up from his stool and shuffled carefully between the stacks of musty books piled on his desk. He glanced briefly at a fanciful collection of elaborate laboratory glassware and the particolored liquid bubbling inside; patted the top of a cage holding a sullen ball of fluff that snapped at his hand. The Master, a gaunt but still imposingly tall panther, stood gazing out of the window.
Partulian cleared his throat. “Yes, Master Kal?”
Kal glanced over at the interruption. “Ah, Partulian. Come here, come here.” He placed one gnarled, grey paw on Partulian’s shoulder and gently led him to the glass. Partulian looked out at the bustling cityscape below; magnificent golden and azure towers whose tops were wreathed in wisps of cloud, gleaming arrows of gravcars zipping in and out of the spires, a rippling carpet upon which rode an imposing tiger calmly smoking a churchwarden pipe. Partulian glanced over at Kal, who was staring out at the scene, once more lost in thought. Partulian cleared his throat once again.
Kal closed his eyes and squeezed Partulian’s shoulder. “Lad, how long have you apprenticed under me?”
Partulian looked curiously at the Master. “One hundred and fifty two years, Master; ever since I completed grade school.”
Kal opened his eyes again, blue and filmed with age but still piercing when he fixed them upon you. “One thousand years ago, magic returned to our world after countless millennia of absence. Our kind has adapted and evolved magic to coexist with and complement our technology and industry, and a new golden age dawned. For seven hundred and twenty of those years, I have been studying the arcana and occult and its intersection with science and engineering. But still there are mysteries that elude me.” He took his hand from Partulian’s shoulder and rested it on the one piece of modern technology in the room, a small silver flex-tablet, and looked at his apprentice sadly.
Partulian sighed wearily. “You can’t get your sudoko game to run, can you?”
Kal shook his head and turned away. “Be a good lad, will you?”
Honestly, this is the least graphic image you’ll see; and it’s been cropped. Keep that in mind before moving forwards.
NOTE: I *highly* recommend following the links in this essay, both to my own and others’ work, on a variety of topics; for the bigger picture and more exposition on the topics presented.)
By now, almost everyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock (literally or Fox news metaphorically) has heard about the death of Tyre Nichols; and has probably seen the video footage released by the Memphis Police Department. If you haven’t seen it, and you’re already over-stressed by the world we live in and its injustices… don’t. It is heinous to anyone’s eyes, and just knowing a summary of what happened is traumatizing enough. I will not link to the videos, but I may use still frames from them to illustrate my points. Be aware.
However… if you are currently or were in Law Enforcement, then you absolutely need to watch the videos. All of them. And do not fucking look away. Especially if you were or are part of a “crime suppression unit”. And if you’re wondering who the fuck I am to cast judgement, I was one of those “jump-out boys” at one time.
This is a sad tale of the drug war, the militarization of the police, us vs. them, dehumanization of the bottom rung of society… and, yes, the Prison Industry, and the inevitable results of decades of this.
January 7th, 2023, at approximately 8:24 PM CST, Memphis PD SCORPION Unit members initiated a traffic stop on 29 year old Tyre Nichols for reckless driving. SCORPION, standing for “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods”, was a crime-reduction effort by the Memphis PD focusing on auto thefts and gang-and-drug related activity. Nichols, according to the official police report, actively resisted being detained and ran from the officers. After a search of Memphis neighborhoods, police found him and attempted to arrest him again; but he once again resisted and responding officers had to employ a number of measures to restrain him; including physical force, OC spray, and TASER. Nichols died three days later in the hospital.
That sounds sort of… clinical, doesn’t it? Dispassionate? Like it was an official summary report?
Well, that was intentional. That’s what official LE press summaries sound like. Hell, just read the MPD’s official press summary after the incident happened:
As officers approached the driver of the vehicle, a confrontation occurred, and the suspect fled the scene on foot. Officers pursued the suspect and again attempted to take the suspect into custody. While attempting to take the suspect into custody, another confrontation occurred; however, the suspect was ultimately apprehended. Afterward, the suspect complained of having a shortness of breath, at which time an ambulance was called to the scene.
That is entirely typical. And had the agency tried to stonewall, refuse to release the footage of the event, might have been all we heard.
But it is a farcically abbreviated version of the truth that paints a completely different picture; and exposes a festering boil that we, as a country, should not have been surprised to find after countless similar incidents over the past few years. What really happened saddens and enrages me…
…but does not surprise me. It’s happened many, many times before, and those incidents garnered this amount of attention… but it still happens.
The initial reason given for the traffic stop was “reckless driving”… but MPD has yet to explain what that driving behavior was, and, indeed, seems to want to forget about the initial stop. Let’s say Nichols WAS driving recklessly… would that warrant the response we see?
No. Absolutely not. Was there a serious safety risk to the officers, they would have utilized a “felony stop” approach. I talked about what that consists of in an earlier article here. I suspect, however, that the most reckless thing Nichols did was probably fail to signal a turn, or perhaps nudged the centerline… if even that. All the officer needs is the slightest infraction to initiate a traffic stop; a simple pretext to give them a reason to pull this person over- a pretextual stop. And, let’s face it, absent any video evidence of the offense, proving that the officer is lying is going to be next to impossible.
So, what did they do, if not a felony stop?
They charged out of their cars, yelling “You gonna get your ass blowed the fuck up!” and “Get your ass outta the fucking car!”
Nichols, not surprisingly, is confused and frightened; and, given the number of different commands being shouted at full volume at him, is slow to comply. The officers continue shouting “Bitch, put your fucking hands behind your back before I break it!”and for him to lie down. Nichols replies he IS on the ground, and they proceed scream “On your stomach!” Then one of them decides to pepper spray him.
Folks, trust me, when you pepper spray someone, it doesn’t just hit the target. It hits everyone nearby, and these guys were crowded on top of Nichols in a group. So it’s no surprise that they all flinch off of him, and Nichols takes that opportunity to get off the ground and run.
“A-HA!” I hear someone yell triumphantly. “He’d be fine if he hadn’t run!”
Convicted Shitbag Dinesh weighs in with a predictable opinion. There’s gonna be a lot of this crap, folks.
OK, fine citizen, let’s put YOU into this scenario. You are pulled over by un-marked vehicles, and, when you stop, find yourself surrounded by people twice your size, pointing guns at you and screaming that they’re going to shoot you. When you do your best to comply with their confusing orders, they shout even louder, threaten to break your arm, and then pepper spray you. Do YOU feel like you’ll be OK if just do what they say… even though that’s what you’ve been trying to do?
No. No, you wouldn’t. You have no idea what you’ve done to piss these guys off, you’re being calm, but they’re growing increasingly more agitated. I’d be terrified that I was about to be killed by a gang of crazy psychos. And keep in mind this all happened in the space of 40 seconds… that is not nearly enough time for the average person, who is suddenly thrust into this situation to process what’s happening.
Side note: One of the officers gives chase as Nichols runs off, but can only make it HALF A BLOCK before having to huff and puff back to his car. For an “elite” unit, I really would have expected them to be in better shape.
But, they do catch up with him again, and here’s where it goes even more egregiously wrong. He is pepper sprayed again, several times. He’s punched in the face with a closed fist. He is kicked in the side and the head repeatedly. And he’s beaten with an expandable baton, several times, while the officer yells “Give us your hands!”
When the show’s over, the officers stand around and talk exultantly about their triumph. They tell each other several times “He tried to go for my gun”- despite their not being one shred of video that shows him trying to do that, or any of them struggling to keep his hands off of their gun. They know the bodycams are recording; this is all post-hoc justification in court.
“A-HA!”Oh, christ, not this idiot again. “He was resisting; if he hadn’t resisted, he’d be OK!”
That is an expandable baton. And the only reason it’s here is officer rage.
Sparky, you sound like you need a refresher on Use of Force,and the response certain levels of resistance call for. For starters, Nichols’ behavior is between Passive and Active resistance… clenching up, moving his hands towards his face instead of putting them behind his back, pulling away. So, Mr. Hypothetical Sealion, allow me to punch and kick and pepper spray the fuck out of you for a few minutes. I guarantee you you will try to protect your face with your hands, no matter what I’m yelling at you.
“But but but, you said he was resisting!”
I see you still haven’t read up on Use of Force. For someone who is merely resisting- not assaulting– you use pressure points, join manipulation, locks and holds, possibly TASER or pepper spray. You are absolutely NOT to use closed hand punches, strikes, or kicks… and ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NOT use an impact weapon like a baton. Assuming- and it’s a big fucking assumption- that they had a legal right to detain Nichols, these fucking thugs COULD have gotten his hands behind his back and gotten him cuffed if they’d paid attention to the simplest defensive tactics and handcuffing techniques they assuredly learned in the Academy. That they couldn’t speaks to me not only of their incompetence, but also of their bloodthirsty nature… there was no need for things to have ever gotten to this point if this was just a traffic stop for reckless driving.
“You’ve never worked the mean streets of the big city, brah; you have no idea what it’s like out here in the Urban Jungle.”
Aaaah, Officer Studly weighs in. No, I have never worked a major metropolitan area like Memphis or Atlanta. But I have been by myself with a bunch of methed-out tweaker good-ol boys in the darkest corner of a rural county with the next Deputy 20 minutes away; and you know what I learned? Fighting your way out of every situation is a fucking stupid thing to do and really shortens your lifespan. If you get in a fight in every encounter with the public, maybe it’s not the public that’s out for violence; maybe it’s you.
So, we’ve seen why this response was brutal, unnecessary, and extremely excessive. Is the only encounter like this the SCORPION unit has had? And, WHY was it this way?
For the first part… I guarantee you it wasn’t. For them to be this callous, this violent, you know they’ve gotten away with it many times before. As for the second… well… let’s take a look at special “Crime Suppression” teams.
Take any jurisdiction that is experiencing a rise in violent crime, gun crime, and illegal drug activity. There will be an outcry- sometimes universal, sometimes only
He was a neighbor. But he was viewed as a target.
from the people who have just read about in their safe enclaves- for the police to “do something”. Police have limited options in combating this “epidemic” of crime; they can’t change to social inequities that led people to choose the illicit drug trade as the easiest way of making cash; they can’t provide safety nets and housing; they can’t provide health care. All they can do- and one that meets the expectations of more well off population- is act proactively. “Go forth and arrest everyone you can for guns, for drugs, for violence!”; all with much fanfare and media attention. It’s a quick and easy “solution” to create a specialized unit that exists only to police high crime areas… that tend to be inhabited by the poor and POC.
And, since these are the “mean streets”, these teams need to look aggressive and act aggressively. If you did read that earlier essay on Use of Force, you know that Officer Presence is the beginning of the continuum. You’re dressed in all black, BDUs rather than (what used to be) the normal cop uniform, and ready to respond to violence with violence. You gotta get the jump on these scumbags before they jump you, after all. Law Enforcement already has a problem with the “Us vs. Them” mentality, and the longer you’re in- if you have that outlook constantly reinforced by your Sergeant, your FTO, your peers- the deeper your distrust of the public you are serving becomes. “Protect and Serve; bullshit… I ain’t no Waffle House waitress!”
And- until you fuck up so bad that your unit gains national notoriety- the middle-class suburbanites will applaud your efforts. “Look at how many guns they took off the street! How many drugs! How much money, taken from these scumbag thugs!” All is right in the ‘burbs; the SCORPION unit is keeping the animals at bay. And… you know… the PD sure can use those seized assets… they’re so chronically underfunded… In fact, the Sheriff is having trouble staffing his jail, and running that thing costs the taxpayers so much money… Why don’t we house all these ruffians in the new privately run CoreCivic prison that the Governor and my state Senator brought in?”
You know who isn’t so happy that the crime suppression unit is in the ‘hood?
While I was at my second LE agency, the citizens of the county- well, the well-off vociferous ones, who voted for things like Sheriffs- were very concerned about drugs- meth and crack- and gun violence. To them, the mantra was “Drugs mean guns”; and that was the mantra of Law Enforcement as well. We had home-grown meth labs in the rural part of the county crack being slung in the projects of Winder and Statham, Mexican Mafia members with huge grow houses, even an underground cocaine processing lab; obviously, something’s got to be done! No, no, not legalization and harm reduction programs; that’s too easy.
So, the Narcotics unit worked overtime, snagging low-level users and getting them to flip on their dealer as a confidential informant; and then flipping that dealer to nab his dealer; and so on and so on.
But, you know what? They never got very far up the ladder. A parade of dime-bag dealers who were actually lured from outside the county, and not much else. The public was growing restless. The City of Winder wouldn’t do much in their housing projects; and the dealers on the corner shouted jeers at them when they passed. Obviously, they needed a lesson in respecting authority.
I had the same CSU on my SWAT BDUs as I did my Traffic Unit.
So… let’s take it a step further and create the CSU, Crime Suppression Unit. Made up of members from the Narcotics Unit, the SWAT Team, and the Traffic Unit (gotta get those pretextual stops in somehow), most of their initial activity was supporting narcotics investigations, highway interdiction, and high-risk no-knock search warrants. Random stop-and-talks in high-crime neighborhoods weren’t really on the RADAR at that point; but soon that itch was begging to be scratched. However, there weren’t really neighborhoods out in the rural areas where methamphetamine and oxycontin were an issue; so the whole stop-and-frisk approach wasn’t really viable out here.
But, you know where there was a denser population of higher gun and drug statistics? In the two aforementioned cities; in neighborhoods that were almost exclusively black and poor, and the drugs of the day were crack and marijuana.
So CSU became HEAT; Heightened Enforcement Action Team, and the street-level interdiction began in earnest. Now, this wasn’t a full-time unit- this was a 200-person Sheriff’s Office; we didn’t have the resources for a full-time squad doing nothing but this. But, whenever it was decided that it was time for some Heightened Enforcement, we’d set up an evening and break the unit into 4 or 5 cars to go looking for people to “stop and talk” to. Cruising around the neighborhoods, looking for anyone out after dark, and then pull up, jump out of the car, and ask to talk to them.
That’s all consensual, right? No coercion here.
“Hey, what’s going on? You haven’t seen any illegal activity out here, have you? Hey, can you keep your hands out of your pockets, it’s making me nervous… Say, have you got any ID? You sure are acting suspicious; I’d better frisk you for my safety.” Nine times out of ten, the guy doesn’t have anything; but that tenth might have some weed, or powder, maybe even a weapon… Or they’d run, which was exciting for everyone and you could get in a merry foot-chase that you’d all laugh about at the end of the night… and, more importantly, they knew the Jump Out Boys (as the residents began calling us) weren’t like those pussy City cops; and they’d best respect us.
Respect is earned; and respect from the end of a gun or an ASP baton isn’t respect.
We were always a microscopically thin hair from- if not over, at points- violating civil rights. But in this era of the courts allowing almost ANYTHING to support a Terry Stop, it didn’t matter what you knew; only what you could get away with (“articulate”). I do want to make it clear, we NEVER went to the point of the aggressiveness seen by the SCORPION unit; and, in fact, rarely had to use force (other than that officer presence) at all; beyond the reasonable amount needed to place someone in handcuffs (again, not that SCORPION shit-show).
But if this had been a larger department, with a different culture; and had it operated long enough with impunity…
We might have become them. To be honest, the mentality was already there.
Sometimes these jump-out sessions were spur of the moment. We (the SWAT team) had just gotten finished with an evening search warrant and were about to leave the scene and head back to the SO, when the Captain (who was the team commander) had a flash. “Hey… let’s split up in a couple of cars and do some jump-outs before we call it quits.” Most everyone enthusiastically agreed (as for me, I was tired and ready to head to the house); so we piled into an unmarked car and a dual-cab pickup and headed for the ‘hood. I got into the bed of the pickup- I outranked the other 3 passengers, but at that point I just wanted to take in the air- and lay down amongst the assorted tactical tools.
Just the Jump Out Boys relaxing after a long day of flirting with the 4th Amendment.
I was really tired.
After 30 minutes or so of cruising slowly down city streets, still fully clad in our tactical vests and BDUs, the Captain finally found someone to stop; choosing this time to pull up alongside and question him from the window. The guy was hesitant and resistive- not really surprising, is it?- and I could tell the Captain was about to jump out with 3 others and get to the frisking part. The guy was slowly backing down the side of the truck and had reached the bed when I popped up.
He jumped back and his hands went in the air, eyes as wide as saucers. “Oh, shit! You damn guys are everywhere!”
Yeah, we had a good laugh about it later. Hah-hah, high-fives.
And I’m NOT proud of it; not then and even less so now.
So. What can we do to keep a tragedy like Tyre Nichols (or George Floyd; or Breanna Taylor; or Eric Garner; or Freddie Gray; or…) from occurring again?
That’s a good goddamn question. And not one that I can answer in this essay, without making it a novel, literally.
But we’ll take a stab at it in a future post. Stay tuned…
This post is a response to a post on Usenet al.tasteless about flatulence. What’s Usenet? It’s what we had before web forums, Facebook, etc. What’s alt.tasteless? It was a Usenet group that specialized in… well… tastelessness; and body humor is a big part of that. Probably the best description, other than the one in the FAQ and found in the 1994 Wired article linked above about the AT war with rec.pets.cats, is that it “was created in the autumn of 1990 “as a place to keep the sick people away from rec.humor and other forums”. It’s what 4-chan thought it could be, before it it became infested with alt-right, MAGA types.
>Well I think I've figured out what the problem is here. I'm on a>course of pills to try to overcome a long-term case of major>flatulence that can come on oh-so-quickly with incredible strength>(nostril-wise), a course of pills that involves 8 pills per day for a>week.
Good god, man, why? Revel in the nebulous ether that is your flatulence! Why, in some circles, a person’s ability to rip a true stinker is tied to their promotability! I’m rather certain that my own ability in producing sphincter-tearing, paint-peeling methane emissions is largely responsible for my lofty position within the department. Many’s the trainee that has been laid low when they dared to challenge my dominance in this arena.
Picture a scene out of “The Matrix: An officer runs pell-mell into the locker room and shouts “The trainee’s trying to gas out Sarge!” The locker room empties and gathers around the door to the Sergeant’s office. The trainee, gripping the edge of the desk with whitened knuckles, strains until the veins in his neck bulge and corded muscle stands out along his forearms. He bears down with a “Hunnggghhh” and produces a watery, rippling fart that curls gelatinous tendrils around the nostrils of the onlookers. He smiles, surreptitiously patting his ass-crack to make sure he doesn’t need to change his underwear.
I lean back lazily in the chair, feet propped on the desk, and return his smile. “Yes, but-” I effortlessly release a subsonic rumbler that makes the paper-clip holder on the desk vibrate across the surface and tickles the inner ear in such a way as to cause vague feelings of panic and discomfort in the crowd. The titanic temblor continues unrelenting for nearly a full minute, singing the eyebrows of those who venture too close for a good view of my navy nylon-clad buttocks flapping together. The tired air-conditioning unit in the wall quits with a clunk and a sigh, refusing to process this vile effluvium through its filter.
The trainee slinks off dejected to the men’s restroom for a quick safety-wipe as the onlookers slowly shuffle back to the locker room, awed by the display. The first officer grabs a wizened Corporal and asks “But…. what does it mean?” The Corporal smiles and shakes his head.
“Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. Everybody shits themselves, the first time.”
…Well, that should be enough of a hot-take title to garner some angry retweets on Twitter,
Obviously, this guy didn’t grow up with 3 older sisters.
A couple of mornings ago, as I entered the bathroom stall at work to begin my morning paperwork conference call on the white porcelain phone, I noticed that some nasty-ass slob had left the seat down and sprinkled the pristine white surface with urine. Normally, that’s not an issue; as the custodial staff generally cleans this bathroom before it’s time for the Brown Line to leave the station.
As I stood there looking at the amber droplets (someone needs to hydrate!) drying on the rim, my gaze traveled upwards to the these days ubiquitous container of flushable paper toilet seat covers. I would have just grimaced and wiped the seat dry with some toilet paper, but a stray thought leapt unbidden to my mind:
MONKEYPOX!!
It’s not that unreasonable a thought. Shit, we’ve been living through three years of rotating pandemics; a thought like that is be expected.
So, little flap situated in the bowl, I gently nested my derriere on the barrier and thought about the first time I’d ever seen a toilet seat cover, around 1989.
Became a member after completing HazMat Technician; and I still think it’s a badass patch
At the time, I was working as a dispatcher for the UGa Public Safety Division. It was, in those days, a “Division” rather than a “Department”, as it incorporated Environmental Health and Safety as well. Located in a two story building, the bottom floor housed the Police Department; and the top, EHS and Administration. Needless to say, the bathrooms were much nicer on the second floor; so if I was working after business hours when all the whiteshirts had left for the day, I’d do my business up there.
And it was there that I saw my first toilet seat cover. I knew they were there; there had been a memo circulated a few months prior where we were all informed that a member of EHS had been diagnosed with AIDS- but it was OK, because they were providing these covers.
Did those covers do much, if anything, to protect against getting AIDS from a toilet seat? Can you, in fact, get AIDS from a toilet seat at all?
No. No, you cannot. But this was still relatively early days of the AIDS epidemic, and Reaganite misinformation still persisted (Thanks, Nancy!)… as did the stigma of having AIDS or HIV. You don’t think there was speculation over just who in EHS had AIDS? Of course there was. “What about that John, guy? He looks queer to me”. And those seat covers wouldn’t have done anything even if you could get HIV from a toilet seat; other than as a psychological balm for your jangled, misinformed nerves.
“I checked with epidemiology before calling you back, just to be sure,” said Sharon Greenman, environmental health services supervisor with the Seattle/King County Department of Public Health. “She agreed with what I thought, which is that they probably do absolutely no good whatsoever other than psychological.” I’m pretty sure she meant the toilet-seat covers, not epidemiology. (see second link)
And, even though I dried the seat before applying the cover, it probably wouldn’t help against monkeypox, either; even if you could catch it from a toilet seat- a myth (catching diseased from a toilet seat) that persists today.
So, why do we still have toilet seat covers?
Psychological nerve-soothing. No matter that it still perpetuates the catching-AIDS-from-a-toilet-seat myth (or swimming in a pool, or standing next to an HIV+ person) that made being HIV+ a social death sentence.
OK, so that’s toilet seat covers; WTF are “S&A” cards?
Aaaah, there’s me with hair; and that dot-matrix NCIC printer
Remember I started my eventual Law Enforcement career as a “service officer” (read: unarmed security guard working for the DPS) and then dispatcher. And in 1989, dispatch was a different place than it is today- paper call logs, a dumb terminal for writing reports, another for the NCIC/GCIC terminal that let us check for warrants, a double reel-to-reel recorder that recorded phone calls and radio traffic… we even monitored some alarms for campus buildings; the monitor was a bank of peanut bulbs with labels and a buzzer. And we were considered fairly high-tech for a southern PD of the time!
Anytime an Officer encountered another person, we would fill out a “Service and Assistance” card with that person’s information, description, and a summary of the call that would get stored in a bank of card file drawers. If an Officer was out with someone they thought might be a repeat customer- for example, on a traffic stop and they thought they remembered the name- they’d ask to “check the S&A”. The dispatcher would open the correct alphabetized drawer and flip through to the last name, and check how many cards there were for the person and why they were filled out. “10-4, 845; two warnings for running a red light on 10/23 and 9/1 of this year.” The Officer would then scratch out a ticket after informing the driver that he’s already had two warnings for the same thing and this is the third strike.
There was also a space on these cards for hazards: “Known to carry weapons”, or “Suspect in several B&Es”, or “Has fought with officers before, dispatch 10-78”.
Or… “Universal Precautions”.
First responders reading this will immediately grasp what “Universal Precautions” means. These days it’s usually called “Personal Protective Equipment”; or PPE. But no matter what you call it, it means latex gloves…
…and it means the person is known to have an infectious disease.
“Well, what’s so bad about that? Shouldn’t the Officer know that information about someone they’re going to have to put hands on?”
Well, HIPAA wasn’t passed until 1996… But, even then, it only applies to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers; NOT Law Enforcement. And, believe me, there are times that you really wished you had this information…
…Like the time I had an arrestee in the back seat of my squad, before we had cages separating the front and back seats (because we were a University PD and cages were deemed to look too aggressive), who had been coughing non-stop on the trip to the jail. While I was in booking, filling out my paperwork, I heard the jailer asking the arrestee the usual health questions…
…And heard him say he had TB.
Yeah. Vaccination or no, that’s really a damper on your evening, learning you’ve spent 20 minutes in an enclosed space with someone who’s been hacking up a lungful of TB.
BUT… there was one little tick mark that got added to the end of “UP” that indicated something special. It was a little + sign, and it meant the person was HIV positive. And when an Officer heard that in 1989, they immediately shrank away and started donning as many pairs of gloves as they could, and repeatedly dousing their hands in antiseptic gel.
Yes, it’s true that the myths of HIV were still strong in 1989; and the fact that if the guy’s not bleeding onto your own open wound, the chances of contracting it were virtually nil, were still largely unknown. That’s a fault of public health messaging and the (sometimes) unconscious biases of the public against homosexuality; especially amongst Law Enforcement.
But that little + continued to bias LE for YEARS after this. It really wasn’t until HIPAA passed- thanks to misinformation about who was subject to HIPAA that persists today- that the UP marker was removed from S&A cards, and their digital equivalent, at that agency.
But everything that’s old is new again; especially in an era of ultra-conservatism that makes Reaganites look like the Weather Underground. Monkeypox has become the latest far-right “gay plague” (although that idea probably won’t get much traction as it isn’t primarily a sexually transmitted disease- wait ‘til DeSantis catches it).
And lo and behold, we’re drug right back around to toilet seat covers and my fears of monkeypox; and the stigmatization of homosexuals over a disease.
Police use of force is certainly a popular topic these days, and a source of criticism when that force is perceived to be excessive or unnecessary. There have been plenty of examples of excessive and unjustified force in the news cycle over the past few years; along with a lot of examples of justified use of force that are unjustly decried because of the public discourse surrounding police brutality we are currently experiencing.
But what exactly is justified or necessary; and what is excessive and unnecessary? Let’s look at how police officers are trained in use of force.
(Please note: While what I’m going to talk about is more or less standard across the US, my training came at the hands of the State of Georgia; and will reflect the laws of that state. I am also by no means an attorney or qualified to offer any sort of source of legal wisdom; so none of this is to considered legal advice of any kind. Or any kind of advice; period- honestly, I’m a hot mess; anyone who takes my advice is gonna be disappointed. Also, I have not been active in Law Enforcement for 10 years now, and terminology has no doubt changed.)
Me, enjoying my chance to tase a Lieutenant
First and foremost, any use of force is about one thing: Control. The police officer or sheriff’s deputy is trying to exert a level of control over the scene and the people in it. The need for control may or may not be justified; but to use force is to exert control, usually over a person. Our Courts have established some level of control by police is necessary, to preserve the life and safety of all involved, to determine the facts of the crime committed, and to bring the persons who committed the crime to answer for it. This isn’t a blanket license for law enforcement to exert total control over everyone they encounter, however; constitutional rights limit and guide what control is allowed and when. However, this essay is strictly about what use of force is, and what it entails. Believe me, reams and reams of paper have been written on this topic, and it is subject to constant wrangling in courts of law- as it should be.
Use of force is a very fluid, very dynamic situation. Moving from just showing up to a scene and then ending up putting some guy in a joint lock may happen gradually, or it might happen immediately, depending on the situation. The force used will generally flow from one level to another, and possibly back down again. Rarely is it a formal, set series of steps in a predictable order… but that’s how it’s been portrayed in training sessions for decades. It might be given a fancy name like the “Integrated Force Model”, complete with impressive jargon; but, honestly, it’s the same stair-step diagram, and it looks like this fancy IFM diagram. Compliant subject on the left, cooperative controls by the officer on the right; stepping up to Assaultive, serious bodily harm or death by the subject, use of deadly force by the officer.
The simpler model, the one I learned back in the 90s, looked like a staircase, with mere Officer Presence at the bottom, and Deadly Force once again at the top.
No matter how you look at it, the concept is simple: you match your force with the level of resistance given by the subject; or one step above. You don’t have to start at the bottom and work your way up- if the subject is swinging a bat at your face, you’re not going to start with “Sir, please don’t”; that would be stupid. And, you can- and should– move both up and down this continuum as their resistance changes.
In fact, de-escalation should be your goal;to resolve this incident with the absolute minimum use of force necessary. It may start out looking like it’s gonna be a knock-down, drag-out, knuckle-duster of a brawl; until someone de-escalates and ends up just being some harsh words and later apologies. Ego and macho have no place here.
Except Deadly Force. You never jump to that one without meeting some specific criteria. But more on that later.
So, let’s match the levels of resistance with the levels of force.
Lowest on the scale is compliant subject, matched by officer presence and verbal commands. This guy is cooperating based solely on the fact that you are a LEO. The best situation, and it’s gained by your presence and your communication skills.
But let’s think about that presence. The middle ground is Officer Dogood Squarejaw, who steps from his gleaming cruiser with his hair perfect, his shoes and leather gear polished to a high gleam, his uniform immaculately creased. He approaches calmly and confidently, and when he speaks his voice is calm and comforting. What sort of reception do you think he’ll get?
I mean, Slobheart’s probably a nice guy, but GAWD DAMN son!
Well, almost anything, really; the subject could be in any state of mind. But without even saying a word, he radiates competence and confidence, his body language speaks of his legal authority but not in an overbearing, authoritarian manner. He’s much more likely to gain compliance, or de-escalation, just by his presence alone.
What about Slobheart McCheesedoodle? The guy that leans heavily on the door when he gets out, uniform smudged with grease marks and bits of fried chicken, who smacks his baton in his palm as he approaches?
Well. The subject is probably gonna think he can get the better of this tub of shit, and he’s probably right. Even if he isn’t thinking of escalating just because he can, he certainly isn’t going to believe he’s going to get any help from this guy; and Slobheart’s attitude will probably match his appearance.
Then there’s Chad Tactical, who leaps from his cruiser festooned with black tactical gear and immediately begins asserting his authority. This is an escalation in action, without any words having been spoken. Multiplied if there other officers of his ilk swaggering their way onto the scene. And, sadly, there are a lot of Chads these days.
In other words, just because “Officer Presence” is at the bottom of the continuum, it doesn’t mean it can’t have an outsized effect on how the rest of the encounter turns out.
Next up are Verbal Commands, and Passive Resistance. Simply put, this is the uncooperative but not actively resisting subject; and verbal commands are… well, just that. “Place your hands behind your back”. And, of course, how these commands are given- volume, phrasing, tone- can have a great impact on whether or not this situation escalates or de-escalates. Shouting in “command voice” at the wrong time can be just as bad as lackadaisically suggesting that he, you know, put his hands up; if it’s not too much trouble. And it often works in concert with that officer presence mentioned before.
But what if verbal commands don’t work; and the guy continues his passive resistance? You may have to move up the continuum another step- physically move this person, or get them to unclench from the steering wheel. No, no; not whack a baton across his knuckles; that’s three steps above where we are, Mr. Trigger-Happy. Back off.
(Quick story time, because cops love to tell “war stories” to illustrate some point or another. Second agency, short, unassuming deputy we all called “Gunny” because he had been one in Vietnam. Much older guy, perhaps 5 foot 6, grey flattop, very soft spoken and gentle. But he had seen quite a bit in his day; according to stories others had told- he himself never spoke of Vietnam- he should have won the medal of honor for rescuing other soldiers while seriously wounded himself. You’d never know it by talking to him.
But I watched him talk down a guy 6 foot 3, drunk, and very angry; who swore if got out of these handcuffs he’d kick all our asses, and was trying his hardest to do just that. He was gonna be a real bitch to get in the back of the car, handcuffed or not.
Gunny walked very calmly up to him, put one hand on his back, and whispered in his ear, having to stand on tip-toes to do so..
The guy immediately stopped struggling. “We’re not gonna have any problems on the way to the jail, are we?” Gunny asked softly. “No, sir” the man said, and proceeded to calmly seat himself in the back.
Gunny never did say what he whispered in the man’s ear, but, small and unassuming as he was, he could always de-escalate a situation.)
Storytime over, back to standing on your heads. Active Resistance– the subject is actively trying to pull away or resist; but short of trying to land blows. This is met with “Soft Hands” techniques; usually in the form of pain compliance- joint manipulation, pressure points, etc; or less-lethal devices such as OC spray or TASER.
Whoa, whoa! You cry. Pain compliance? What medieaval torture crap is this!?
Seriously, guys, work on it. We thought it was the TASER; but nope.
Well, until we invent a Star-Trek stun setting on our firearms, it’s all we got. And, frankly, for a great number of people, pain is an effective motivator. You perform an action and it causes you pain, you stop doing it; for fear of injury to yourself. But, this person isn’t actively trying to harm you; they’re just actively resisting you. We’re assuming you are justified in controlling them; so… how? With methods least likely to cause them injury?
Joint Manipulation is exactly what it sound like- manipulating joints in such a way as to either immobilize them or hyperextend them to the point of causing pain (but not far enough to cause injury, if done correctly). Pressure Points are nerve clusters that pressure can be applied to to cause pain, and hopefully stop the person from resisting. Mandibular nerve, infraorbital nerve, hypoglossal, clavical notch… all places pressure can be applied and produce pain.
What about OC and TASER? Well, because they are unlikely to- not impossible to- cause death or injury, they fall at this level. And on paper, they seem ideal- relatively high level of compliance with very little risk of injury to subject or officer? Hell yeah; sign me up! But, as we’ve seen, there are no magic bullets. I won’t say much more about them here as they are subjects of an essay in their own right, with a lot of nuances. And one thing to remember here is that once the resistance stops- so does the use of force. Continuing to arm-bar someone who isn’t resisting is excessive use of force; as is jumping up the continuum when the subject’s actions don’t warrant it.
Whoops- now the guy is assaultive; and trying to punch, kick, and hit you. Now the soft-hands gloves come off (or on, if you’ve got lead filled sap gloves; that are a step above this as impact weapons, and are banned by most all police agencies… or should be.) This active assault may be met with strikes of your own… or various impact weapons such as ASP Batons or “less lethal” impact rounds such as super-sock munitions or so-called “rubber bullets”, if the subject is also employing impact weapons. BUT- you must realize that you are now getting very close to lethal force; as these weapons have a much greater chance of causing serious injury or even death if they are misused… which we have all seen before, especially lately. These “hard hands” techniques are used when the attacker could cause bodily harm, but not great bodily harm. What is great bodily harm? “Visible bodily harm” involves visible injuries- bruises, cuts, etc- while “great bodily harm” is more serious- “injury to another person which deprives him or her of a member of his or her body, renders a member of his or her body useless, seriously disfigures his or her body or a member thereof, or causes organic brain damage which renders his or her body or any member thereof useless.”… in other words, the type of injuries likely to occur when impact weapons are used improperly; and the difference between the two may be the difference between hitting someone on the thigh or hitting them in the sternum.
Which brings us to Deadly Force; which, as you might expect, is described in deliberate terms.
OCGA 16-3-21a:
A person is justified in threatening or using force against another when and to the extent that he or she reasonably believes that such threat or force is necessary to defend himself or herself or a third person against such other’s imminent use of unlawful force; however, except as provided in Code Section 16-3-23, a person is justified in using force which is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm only if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or herself or a third person or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
A forcible felony, by the way, is armed robbery, rape, etc.
Well, that seems pretty clear; doesn’t it? Not much wiggle room there.
…Welllll, except for the words “reasonably believes”. What is reasonable? There is some “guidance” in case law with Graham v Connor, but… well… it starts to get very complicated again. In this first part, I’m just going to explain what the law is; in the second part, we’ll look at how it gets complicated.
Graham v Connor, in a nutshell, says that any use of force must be viewed in the lens of what a “reasonable” officer would have used; the force must be reasonable necessary when viewed by an officer of the same experience based on the totality of the circumstances. This is about the extent of the training cops are given on Graham v Connor; a simple paragraph that’s glossed over and usually a question on an Academy exam:
25: “What case established the Reasonableness Doctrine with regards to use of force?
A: Eugene v Debs
B: Graham v Connor
C: Tennessee v Garner
D: Terry v Ohio
But the background of the case, the make-up of the Supreme Court at the time, the numerous back-and-forth cases both before and after it… they all play a part. Which is why they’re in Part 2.
A good shorthand for judging such use of force, and taught in the Academy- and endlessly debated on internet forums- is Ability, Opportunity, and Jeopardy. As in, did the assailant have the Ability to cause death or great bodily harm; the Opportunity to do so, and was I in imminent Jeopardy of receiving the same?
Let’s say you’re standing on the corner of a very busy 6-lane street. On the opposite corner is a big, burly, 6 foot 5, 280 pound bruiser in a stained wifebeater staring straight at you, brandishing a switchblade and yelling “I’m gonna cut you wide and deep, boy”! Does this scenario meet AOJ?
Well, he certainly looks like he has the ability to gut me like a fish. However, he doesn’t have the Opportunity to do so… he’ll be run over six times before he gets across one lane of traffic. And I’m
God I love Google image search.
not in imminent jeopardy of that; so, no… deadly force is not justified here.
Now, what if that same guy is standing right next to you, but he’s calmly cleaning his fingernails with the knife and haven’t said anything threatening to you, or even acknowledged your presence? Well, he still has the Ability; and all he has to do is turn and stick you, so he has the Opportunity…. but you are not in imminent jeopardy. Should he turn to you and tell you to meet your maker; well, then, all three are met.
There is a fourth leg to that stool that comes and goes in Law Enforcement training depending on the era; and that is Preclusion: the idea that deadly force is the only answer to protect yourself, and that all other options have been exhausted. Is there anything you could have done in that moment to avoid using deadly force without being hurt yourself? For example, if a robber says “Give me your money or I’ll hurt you”, is giving him the money a viable option? Unless you have some reason to believe he’ll hurt you regardless; then yes, it is. What about a car driving deliberately towards you? Is the better course of action to get out of it’s way? (hint: yes, yes it is. Because even if you hit that ol’ medulla with a perfect cranial vault shot, your bullet won’t stop that car, and you’ll wish you had spent your time getting out of the way instead of believing what movies told you.)
“Preclusion”, when it was introduced, was met with moans and groans from the LE audiences I taught. As for the reason why Preclusion has gone in and out of favor, well… just look at all the “stand your ground” lately.
So, there it is… what use of force is, and how it’s taught to Law Enforcement. Again, until we invent a way to safely and harmlessly incapacitate another person so that they cannot inflict harm on another, policing will always involve some use of force in order to control… the person, or the situation. The real question is in what is reasonable and necessary, and what is excessive.
But before we move on to Part 2, and take a more nuanced look, let’s add another, more human element to this dry, classroom explanation; and one that results in a lot of excessive force: Fear.
Fear is a system overload stimulated by the perception of danger or threat.
Fear is an emotional response to perceived danger or threat.
Fear is an autonomic emotional response to a perceived threat/danger.
Fear is an alarmed response that is characterized by a high negative effect (or emotion) and arousal.
Fear may be reasonable- that huge guy with the switchblade is a reasonable threat; hell, I’m afraid of him. I’d be afraid of him even without the knife; he’s got 5 inches and 60 pounds on me. The fear becomes unreasonable when, in scenario 2 of our little AOJ exercise, I whip out a gun and start blasting.
Pretty sure this is unreasonable fear at work here.
Fear can also be unreasonable right from the get-go, when you perceive a threat that doesn’t exist; from racial, cultural, or societal differences. Fear of a black man, based on stereotypes that have you believing that any black guy on a street corner wants to rob you. Fear of a Muslim, because you’ve been told they’re all jihadists looking to blow something up. Fear of that panhandler, because those filthy beggars will stoop to nothing to get your money. Other fears, such as fear that your training and skill isn’t up to the task. Fear of not being accepted by your peers, who may use excessive force because they can and they get away with it.
And let’s face it, there’s a lot of fear in this country right now.
So. Part One introduced you to highway drug interdiction and what it typically looks like. On the face of it- if you’re a straight white male who’s lived in a straight white
This guy gets it.
male world your entire life-
Well, then, it’s pretty cut and dried. Yup, drugs are a scourge that should be eliminated by any means necessary to protect our society, so you can safely raise your kids and those kids can grow up to have more kids and so on and so forth. Sure, there’s lots of clever defense attorneys who’ll throw every technicality in the book at your case in order to let this evil scumbag go; but you’ve been trained by the best. You’ve seen a thing or two, and you know EXACTLY how to articulate this case to thread it around the traps those godless attorneys will throw at you. You sleep well at night knowing (and I mean this honestly) that you’re protecting society from these evils.
If you’re seething while reading this, just remember you haven’t been in this world. There are thousands and thousands of cops who chose LE as a career because they honestly wanted to protect their fellow man. There are plenty that saw it as an opportunity to further their grade school career as a bully, yes; but that’s not what I saw amongst the officers I worked with. Most of us got into it with the noblest of intentions; and while I may have been lucky in the agencies I worked for, the sort of scandals you see at agencies like Minneapolis, Portland, NYPD, LA- even Atlanta PD- were unknown in the ones I worked. I don’t know how I lucked out in that.
But the longer you’re in- especially if your agency doesn’t have a strong ethical and moral center- the idea that you’re “losing the war” grows ever larger and more influential. Every case that you busted your ass on, that you crossed every T and dotted every I on, that you lose on a “technicality” or through the foibles of the judge, is another strike in favor of juggling the odds in your favor. As a very minor example, I once had a municipal court judge dismiss my Obedience to a Traffic Control Device (running a red light) ticket because “it’s Valentine’s Day, and everyone should go free on Valentine’s Day.”
Now, that’s very minor, yes; but it pissed the ever-living fuck out of me. Where’s the case law on Valentine’s Day being an automatic get out of jail free card for traffic misdemeanors? Judges are Gods in their courtrooms; what can you do? What about that evidence you found on a search warrant that’s thrown out because you didn’t describe the instruments, articles, or things which have been used in the commission of a crime exactly right in your affidavit and your evidence is determined to be outside the scope of the search? Never mind that the whole system, through countless cases and appeals, is pretty firmly tilted in your favor. Pretty soon, you get tired of following every rule to the letter; every policy to it’s exact wording; and you… cut corners.
And these “acts of omission” pretty soon become “acts of commission”, and before you know it, you’re deep into unethical behavior that you’re convinced is the only way to do your job.
And, almost every time, you get away with it. And you get bolder, and lazier, confident that the prosecutor and judges and city or county officials will give you, the cop, the benefit of the doubt; and let you get away with it in the name of “public safety”.
And the body of “case law” gets deeper and deeper in your favor; and you get even more fat and lazy and complacent.
DRRRAGGING this conversation back to the point; what does that have to do with the interdiction stop of the DSU Lacross team bus recently?
Well, the stop itself was a TEXTBOOK presentation of how to conduct a highway drug interdiction stop. Each and every one of the deputies involved comported themselves in a professional and polite manner. It was all recorded, even if the Sheriff did spout off his mouth before he had the facts and, politely speaking, stepped on his dick. The investigation revealed no drugs and all parties were free to go on their way in a reasonable amount of time.
So, what’s all the hubbub, Bub? Why are all these bleeding-heart LIBRULS making such a stink?
Because they came from a very different background than these deputies; and they’ve seen this sort of “this is for your own good”, “I’m on your side, honest; if you ain’t done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to worry about” invasions of privacy based off of eggshell-thin probable cause before. Far, far too many times.
Well; maybe not Megabus; they tend to catch on fire a lot.
The video starts as the bus is stopped. Busses on the interstate are are particularly prized target amongst interdiction officers, because of the people who travel on them. Long-haul busses like those annoying Megabusses or, even better, busses that run from Mexico to various parts of the US, are juicy targets. They got a lot of “those” people on them- you know, poor, shiftless vagrants who just flit between cities; with no doubt nefarious ambitions once they alight in a new location. If you were an honest citizen; wouldn’t you be able to fly or drive your own car from place to place? Poor folks are always committing crimes; and drug mules can use this transportation vector efficiently. A Mexican bus? Anything from south of the border is suspect; and even if they’re not transporting drugs for some hazy Mexican cartel, they’re bringing people to take our (white male) jobs.
Am I saying every cop has this thought foremost in their mind? No, of course not.
But… The job DOES tend to promote these sorts of ideas into the back of your head; where they slowly work on you.
So you see this unmarked charter bus pass you and you get behind it, looking for any reason to pull it over. Lo and behold, the driver travels in the far left lane; a technical violation that you’ve probably never written on a normal basis (unless you’re a truck trooper), but gives you the opening you need to pull it over. A pretextual stop; remember those? Light ‘er up.
You’ve already got a posse of backup units with you; including that important K9 unit. That’s your ace in the hole. So, while you talk to the driver, the K9 sniffs the luggage compartment. Take your time; bring the driver back to your car and make small talk with him to give the K9 time to provide your PC to go further. Normally, you’d need a warrant to make such a detailed search of a vehicle; but being a vehicle, and “inherently mobile”, gives you some warrantless exceptions. Be sure to use all the good-sounding boilerplate phrases, like “they did a study a long time ago that showed how dangerous this driving behavior is” and refer to the “number of crashes and fatalities on this highway”. Hey, I’m the good guy here; just keeping the highways safe.
My favorite bit of verbiage along these lines had a modicum of truth- “Ga 316 is THE MOST dangerous highway in the state of Georgia based on fatalities”- was, actually, true. When it opened, because of it’s shitty, cost-saving design that had uncontrolled intersections every couple of miles, we racked up a truly obscene number of fatality accidents; the images from which will be imprinted on my brain forever. But save that for the guy that’s doing 110mph in heavy traffic.
Well, dang, it’s not a busload of mexicans running dope for a cartel. BUT, it IS a bunch of black college students; and you know how they love their weed. I listened to Busta Rhymes once, you know. Maybe you’ll get something after all. And hey! The K9 hit on the luggage area, so you’re good to go. Maybe you’ll dig up something. Be sure when you talk to the students on the bus that they know you’re looking for SERIOUS things… why, these busses are sometimes used to TRAFFICK CHILDREN as sex slaves.
Yes, that was said on this video.
Now, where have I heard that logic before?
They could have shortened their time on the side of the road by having the dog sniff the luggage after it was out of the bus; but I saw no evidence of that. We’re on a fishing expedition here, one with a limited timeframe of reasonability, so let’s fish quickly.
Whoa, what have we here?A plain package wrapped in brown paper? That got some pulses elevated. Alas, it turned out to be a still shrink-wrapped book safe that was a gift from an aunt to one of the students.
The expressions on their faces say more than I ever could.
(A BOOK SAFE?!? Why, those are used to hide CONTRABAND! Believe me, I got to know every variation of this theme- fake 2-liter cola bottles, cans of baked beans, you name it. This deputy didn’t pursue it much further, to his credit, when he saw it was still shrinkwrapped and unused; but you KNOW he was thinking “she’s gonna store her weed in here when she gets back”)
The one thing that I saw that made me think about the bigger picture in this little slice of interdiction reality was the expressions of the faces of the students on the bus. All black females, all with a resigned “this is bullshit, but what can I do about it” look on their faces. They’ve seen this from LE their entire lives; on every traffic stop or encounter with the police- or well-off white society- their entire lives. It’s an inescapable reality for them that those of us who have never lived it don’t understand. The idea that the cops are always there, always looking for some reason to snag you and make you pay for your “crimes”.
That they don’t seem to snag too many middle or upper class white folks at the same time is just another knife in the back. Does make you wonder how many busses full of retired white folks headed to a Senior’s Casino Vacation get stopped and searched, though… and of those that are, how many were done just to get some “clean stops” on their record in case some smartass defense attorney asks.
“Whoa there, skippy”, you heatedly interject. “Are you saying these deputies are racist?”
Now, how can I possibly know that? I’ve never met them, that I know of. I have no idea.
But I spent 20 years in LE in Georgia, and I’m pretty sure the undercurrents there are the same as they were for me. No one comes out and SAYS the n-word; but euphemisms are OK. If someone said they just broke up a house party full of “democrats”, they meant black people. “Wetback” was still an acceptable slur, but “chink” was a bridge too far. Poor whites busted for meth related crimes were “dirtlegs”. A photo recognition book of various homeless people frequently encountered was named the “Skinnies Final Solution Book”. Being poor was far more likely to make you a target than skin color; but being poor AND a minority generally led to harsher treatment.
By “harsher treatment” I don’t mean having someone kneel on your neck until you’re dead; although that has obviously happened, and happens more often these days. “Harsher” is the difference between going to jail or being given a warning; when going to jail will utterly crash your world to the ground. Most of the officers I worked with would not label themselves as racist, and would loudly proclaim that they treated everyone equally… because they didn’t even see how their disparate treatment was a problem. Most of them likely didn’t recognize it in themselves.
But it’s a pervasive, low-level rot; that slowly seeps into the consciousness and very fabric of an agency, and gradually changes you over a long period of time. And the “us vs. them” mentality that is hammered into you day after day, seemingly reinforced by your daily experiences, doesn’t help. If you looked back on those reinforcing experiences and critically dissected them, from start to finish, you’ll see that it’s your own conviction that the public is out to get you and therefore your enemy that made that interaction turn out the way it did. Is some of the public out to get you? Of course. There are very real dangers. There are countless stories of officers killed because they let their guard down for a mere second.
But there’s also millions of interactions on a daily basis that don’t result in bloodshed… and others that wouldn’t, had the police not treated everyone as a threat.
And in this corner of LE- the one tasked with eradicating drugs and drug use- has done more to reinforce all of the things I’ve mentioned and coalesce them into one messy package than almost anything else. Even the popular name for it- the war on drugs- implies that this is combat on a daily basis and only warriors can fight it.
So, yes, this was a textbook interdiction stop on a bus. Calm, courteous, and professional.
It’s also an assault on individual freedoms for a vague, unending war that could be better fought by addressing root issues than with guns and “investigative detentions” or jump-outs. A war that was declared for very shaky reasons and has resulted in punishing disparate numbers of minorities, forcing them into becoming a permanent underclass. A war that has even further tarnished police officers who fought it and antagonized the divide on either side of the “thin blue line between order and chaos”. A war, and the ensuing mentality, that has “us vs. them”’d us to the point that reforming law enforcement is going to take decades and drastic measures.
The interdiction stop itself was perfect on the face of it… but rotten to the core, nonetheless.
(NOTE: This is Part One of a two part series. In this one, I will explain what interdiction is and my experiences with it; I will talk about the recent stop of the DSU Lacrosse Team bus in part two. But for the folks who don’t know what interdiction is, this is required reading. It’s a little rambling; I’m sorry about that.
And yes, mimicking Dave Grossman’s attempt to pass his stuff off as a scholarly treatise with his title choices is intentional; just in case any of you thought I was that far up my own ass. I never really expect anyone to read this stuff.)
Highway drug interdiction stop on I85 south, sometime around 2004. We found no drugs on this stop, but money and something we never expected…
Let’s talk about highway drug interdiction for a moment. (Or just “interdiction”; because that’s less of a mouthful. Honestly, I’m surprised Law Enforcement hasn’t come up with a catchy acronym for it, like so many other things.)
Drug interdiction isn’t a new thing. It’s been around in one form or another long before the 1980s, usually involving federal agencies and various military organization such as the Coast Guard and other regular military units; generally aimed at stopping the flow of drugs from the border and at the source. It became a major focus in the late 70s and early 80s, especially after the rise of the Medellin cartels and the Mariel boatlift.
Drug interdiction on interstate and local highways really got its start in New Mexico and New Jersey in the 1980s, especially along I95 from Florida. Their successes attracted the attention of the DEA, who quickly seized on this and began providing training and intelligence to local law enforcement. The DEA had already established theEl Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) in 1974, ostensibly to focus on “threats to the Nation, with an emphasis on the Southwest border”, and began adding law enforcement into their operations in the 80s. My second agency, the Barrow County (Ga) Sheriff’s Office, for instance, sent two narcotics investigators to work at EPIC for 6 month stints in the 2000s. EPIC’s mission might have had a wide brief of intelligence for LE, but much of the information we ever received or acted on was related to the smuggling of narcotics. Every five to six months, we might get a notice from EPIC of a smuggler who would be traveling on I85, and we would wait for them on the highway. Most of the time, they would get nabbed by another agency before they got to us.
So, how does local interdiction work?
It’s really amazingly, stupidly, simple.
You simply sit on the shoulder or median of a major highway, interstate or local; and just look as glaringly obvious as you can possibly can. At night you’ll have your headlights, or “takedown” lights- the white lights on the lightbar that are meant to illuminate the car in front of you- on so you can better see into the cars that pass, and wait for someone suspicious to drive by. You WANT to be seen, to be noticed from a long way down the road. What side of the highway is up to you- do you want to find drugs, or money? For I85, drugs flowed INTO Atlanta; and money flowed OUT of it. On state highway Ga 316, it was Athens.
Why is that; and what makes someone suspicious?
The idea- borne out by countless successful stops and even more unsuccessful, narcotics-wise, ones- is that someone who’s smuggling drugs or drug money will be extremely nervous and alert for the cops. When they pass you, you note their behavior- are they driving at precisely the speed limit? Arms locked out rigidly on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, not glancing at you even for a second?
In other words, someone who just said “Cheezit! The cops!” and is now trying to do absolutely nothing to attract your attention. A lot of times you’ll find they’re in rental cars, rented by a third person, and have no idea who that person is. Rental moving trucks from U-Haul or Ryder are another good bet.
Of course, this means that you’ll pull over a lot of people who have a warrant or suspended license, or just a ¼ ounce of weed in the car, and are paranoid. All grist for the mill.
“Yessir, we’re headed to to the Devil’s Anus monument! Mary and I took the kids to see it once… Hey, I’ve got some pictures of them in my wallet…”
(As a side note, I always said that if I wanted to smuggle anything on the interstate, I’d use a kindly old couple who are gregarious and friendly, driving an RV. They’ll wave at the cops on the side of the road and drive merrily by.)
So, you’ve spotted a likely target and pull out behind them. Now you need a court-defensible reason to stop them, as “they didn’t wave at me when they passed” is hardly probable cause; or even reasonable articulable suspicion.
But that’s easy enough. You can find a moving or equipment violation on almost ANY vehicle on the road. Didn’t signal a lane change? Headlight out? Something hanging from the rear-view mirror, “obstructing the driver’s view?” Weaving within a lane? No county decal on the tag? If they’re not weaving, they will be when you zoom up behind them at high speed and park yourself an inch from their bumper. If it’s a commercial vehicle- a truck or bus- there’s a whole code section of violations you can find. Truck Troopers- excuse me, “Motor Carrier Compliance Division officers” (yes, there’s a lot of teasing in LE)– are usually the only ones to get that nit-picky; but you’ll use whatever reason you can find to pull them over.
This is what’s called a “pretextual stop”, and the only times I’ve ever used it was when I was working narcotics, SWAT, or interdiction.
Now; you’ve found a violation, and you pull them over. One of your backup units will be a K9 officer, who will walk the dog around the car while you talk to the driver. Rental car? Out of state license? Two passengers who, when you separate them and talk to them, give differing stories of where they’re coming from and where they’re going? That might be all you need. But you’ve got the dog there as your ace in the hole.
“But wait!” you say. “If the dog alerts to drugs in the car, why, that’s ironclad! They must be smugglers!”
Yeah. Except that the K9, no matter HOW assiduous the handler is in their training, really really wants to please their master. They get treats when they “hit”; so they WANT to hit. And even the most ethical, moral, 100% by-the-book handler gives off signals- signals that they don’t even realize they’re sending, and that the dog picks up on; signals that say “oh boy, I hope we get a hit!” Handlers are supposed to keep records on true hits and false ones, but no one ever looks at those in small town courts- and drug mules keep their mouths shut.
Not to mention what an unethical K9 handler can get away with.
So, now you’ve got PC for a more invasive search, one way or another. You could always articulate an “officer safety” reason to“frisk” the interior of the car; or get a search warrant… but cars are a special exemption to 4th amendment search and seizure rules; because they are “inherently mobile” and the time to get a warrant will be unreasonable. A K9 hit solves that right away- and although there is a whole body of case law on K9 hits and vehicular searches, you can bet that the LE doing interdiction know what all of them are and how to stay within court-acceptable limits but still get the job done.
Bingo, there’s drugs in the vehicle- possibly hidden in any number of very clever and intricate hidden compartments… OR, there’s more than $10,000 in cash.
No, of course not; and yes, absolutely… but it’s very easy to articulate that you believe this money was the result of illicit activity and seize it; and very difficult to prove otherwise and get it back.
That’s the world we live in.
Barrow County wanted badly to get in on the interdiction game, as the small town of Braselton- that sat on the intersection of 4 different counties and had a 5 mile stretch of I85 in their
I’m sorry about that link if you weren’t expecting gun porn. My patrol rifle was an FN-FAL .308, 4 MOA semi-auto rifle. Some of the magazines I bought had house-paint Rhodesian camo from the late ’70s.
jurisdiction- had made absolute mad BANK on drug interdiction and asset forfeiture. This tiny northeast Georgia town had the best patrol cars, packed full of the best equipment, everyone with their own M4 rifle (at a time when patrol rifles weren’t that widespread) and paid amazing salaries to their officers… all thanks to the insane amounts of cash they were seizing on the interstate. That’s one thing about narcotics investigations and asset forfeiture; after a while, you’re more concerned with what you can seize and make your own than anything else. We once seized a bright yellow Hummer H1 that was stuck in limbo for a year while the case wound its way through the courts… I know every one in the narcotics office was hoping to make that their personal undercover car.
But to start off, the Traffic Unit was tasked with learning about interdiction and starting a program. We invited Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office, a deep south Georgia county on the Florida line along I75 and who had a flourishing interdiction unit, to Barrow on several occasions to teach those of us on the traffic unit how to do it. We only had 1.5 miles along I85- a very rich source of traffic- to work with; and about 20 miles of Ga 316 from Atlanta to Athens in our jurisdiction. Development along 316 was only beginning its meteoric rise in these days. Over several week-long sessions, we learned what to look for and all the tips and tricks necessary. And, we did seize a lot of drugs- and, more importantly, money- during that period.
Y’all don’t understand how formative this stuff was on a young me
(Although, we did freak the ever-living fuck out of the Lowndes County deputies. You see, their stretch of I75 had cable-stay barriers in the median- a steel cable “fence” designed to keep out of control vehicles who enter the median from making it to the opposite lanes; so they only had limited spots they could cross over the median and change direction. We had no such barriers on I85 or 316; and were used to diving into the median at 70mph, cutting the wheel and stomping the gas to do a bootlegger turn, squealing tires as we fish-tailed into the opposite lanes and heading the other way to catch a car going the opposite direction. What can I say; we were all raised on Dukes of Hazzard, Smokey and the Bandit, and the video to Beastie Boys “Sabotage”. They had never seen this and were convinced we were suicidal lunatics bent on carnage.
Well. Maybe a little.)
At one point, the Captain over Investigations,- whose real love was the narcotics unit, and was also the commander of the SWAT team of which I was the Entry Team Leader- asked me if I wanted to join Narcotics full time as the lead of an interdiction and “Heightened Enforcement Action Team”, or HEAT (gotta love those acronyms) unit, primarily focusing on interdiction, SWAT narcotics raids, and “pro-active patrols”.
That latter one consisted of the SWAT team, most of which were narcotics agents, cruising through a “high crime area” so we could jump out of our vehicles and question anyone hanging around “the usual drug trafficking locations”- which were majority black,- and earned us the name “jump-out boys”
Did I mention that, more than once, we did it in full SWAT gear?
Geebus. Sitting on the side of the road, waiting for some poor schmuck who probably only has a blunt or a suspended license, day after motherfuckin’ day, so I could seize everything he owned, had no appeal to me. That’s not why I became a cop. I tactfully told him that interdiction bored the shit out of me, and he’s be better off with someone else.
Thankfully, shortly after this, I was promoted to Sergeant and took over the training unit; which was what I really wanted to do.
There’s one more type of vehicle that gets stopped on interdiction missions that I hinted at; and that’s busses… specifically, charter busses. And that, dear readers, leads us to the point of this exercise; and On Interdiction: Part Two, the Sequel-ing.
I met Jim 30 years ago, when I was a college freshman. He had been living with one of my older sisters for five years by then- it was really a marriage in all but name- and at one point I roomed with them for a couple of months in one of those typical college rental houses in Athens- 50 years old at best, and can only be described as “quirky”. Jim was a few years older than my sister, and I wondered what sort of person matched so perfectly with her.
I found out quickly he was a highly intelligent, very well read; a man possessed of an extraordinary amount of talents and interests.
Jim would freely admit to being a hippie, growing up in Chattanooga in the ‘60s; and we talked a lot about the racial tension he grew up in as compared to our situation today. He loved music and, even though he truly lived modestly, would save for the best equipment he could get. And not just music, he was a cinephile as well; and sought out the best gear he could here, as well. (I inherited a laserdisc player from him at a time when rental stores still carried that format.) He was a firm believer in seeing movies in the theater, and we had many long discussions about movies we liked; with him recommending genres I’d never heard of. In this day of streaming series, we spent more hours divining out the plot of Westworld and giving critiques of Game of Thrones vs. the books. More than once I was glad of his encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel and DC comic books- he was the first to show me the Tank Girl comic- when it came to tying the myriad characters and storylines in the Marvel movies together. Many more hours were spent talking about philosophy and religion, world events, books…
It would seem to some reading this account that Jim was an aging hippie geek with a rather large DVD collection, but that would be vastly underestimating the man. He was a quite competent mechanic of cars and motorcycles and worked for a time as a mechanic and auto body repairman. He was fond of motorcycles and had owned a number of them, including a BMW R60/5 and a Ducati Monster. Not surprisingly, he loved to travel and thought nothing of 24 hour drives across the country.
And some of those trips were on a bicycle. He was a bicycle mechanic as well and worked for a time for a bike shop in Athens, who sponsored him in amateur races. He followed the Tour de France religiously and could talk knowledgeably on each racer and their bikes. At age 67, he rode an hour each way to work; not because he HAD to, but because he WANTED to. I hope I’m halfway as healthy as he was at that age.
But cycling wasn’t the only sport he enjoyed; in his younger years he was also an experienced caver. He loved the region around Blacksburg for the caving and became a cave rescue responder. That skill with ropes also lent itself to a love of rock and ice climbing that remained strong- he took a week vacation this January to drive to wherever the ice was so he could climb it. At 67.
At 6’5” tall and with a deep, radio announcer’s voice, he cut a pretty impressive figure despite his lean frame. But you wouldn’t want to try and taunt him about it; because if he didn’t take pity on you and only verbally eviscerated you, he knew plenty of ways to do it in other, less pleasant ways. He taught me a lot about shooting and was proficient in handguns, rifles… even bows. And, being a movie aficionado, martial arts and other weapons interested him, too… he held black belts in Aikido, Jiu-jitsu, and Kashima Shin-ryu- a primarily sword-based art. Pile that on top his intellect, mechanical skills, and education and this isn’t a man I’d want holding a grudge against me.
But if you hadn’t pissed him off past the point of no return, he was a genuinely warm character. I hired him to work for me- he also has, not surprisingly, had a lot of experience with armed security- and I can think of no greater testament to his character than the fact that not only did my employees come to him for advice, a number of the plant’s employees did too.
When it came to his own health, the only word I could use to explain it is “stoic”… and possibly “stubborn”. While he worked for me, he had a deer run into the front tire of his Ducati… as in, the deer came from the side of the road and headbutted his front tire, knocking him and the bike over. He came limping into work the next day with one knee swollen to the size of a basketball and relayed the story. Go to the hospital? What for? I was a paramedic, I’ve already done what needs to be done.
And indeed he had, because it wasn’t long before he was riding the bicycle to work again, just to keep in shape.
I could continue for pages and pages more… What about his time in Oman caring for horses? His participation in the Society for Creative Anachronism? Love of fine wine and whiskey, as well as food? The stories of hunting rats in the warehouse he was guarding? The harrowing car trips and cave rescues that very nearly ended in disaster? His love of sailboats and catamarans? The number of near-misses, angry shouts, thrown beer bottles he received while riding? How dedicated he was to the environment and his seething anger at how we’re ignoring the climate crisis?
I could. And I wish I could tell you about his future exploits.
On Friday, March 4th, 2022 at 1:03 am I received a gasping, plaintive call from my sister asking me to pick her up at the hospital.
James Vivean Jones was killed while riding home from work by a drunk driver.
I dug this out of the musty recesses of my hard drive; my impressions from 20+ years ago of trying out for the EOD Unit. It reads a little choppy to me now; but meh.
It doesn’t look like much, laying on the ground in front of me. A pair of thick, olive-drab green overalls with curious looking half-booties attached. An oversized helmet with a large crest and a cloth patch embroidered with a maple leaf and the words “MED ENG”. I pick up the lump and it resolves into a large jacket festooned with velcro flaps. It feels like it’s lined with phone books, and weighs around 50 pounds. That’s not too bad, I think. It’s not that heavy.
I step back and look around. It’s a beautiful day, warm for January; even for the deep south. The sun bleached the concrete of the stadium a hard white and picked out every detail of the football turf. I wonder how long this will take- I still have an eye doctor’s appointment this afternoon. I thought back to the day a few weeks ago when the assistant chief called me into his office and asked if I wanted to be on the bomb squad. Hell fuzzy yes, I said. I wasn’t about to turn down a school like the FBI’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal class. There’ll be some tests, he said. A full physical. Eye exams. A psychological. And today.
Today I had to put on the bomb suit, pick up the disrupter and its stand, and carry it 100 yards. I’d set it up, take it down again, and carry it back. I picked up the disrupter. It was a three foot long polished steel tube; basically, a big shotgun barrel. A small charge, like a shotgun shell, was placed in one end. The business end got pointed at the suspect device. It shot a column of water through the bomb, severing wires and destroying control circuits. The water jet could penetrate a steel ammo can, blasting apart anything inside, before it could trigger itself. Hopefully. Attached to its small, custom made stand, it weighed perhaps 40 pounds. 100 yards? Hell, I could carry this 1,000 yards. No sweat. It was unwieldy, but not onerously heavy.
They’ve gotten better since then; but I bet they’re still heavy (attribution)
“You ready?” the agent from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation asked me. He was a little shorter than me, with close-cropped hair and clean shaven, angular features. They must order their agents from the same catalog, I thought. GBI Model 23R, Special Agent, Male. They all look alike. But he was pleasant enough, patient and not condescending to obviously untrained, neophyte bomb techs like myself. I nodded. “Sure.”
He held out the overalls and I shrugged into the shoulder straps. I fastened the velcro flap across my chest- I knew enough to do that. The GBI agent slid the half-booties over the toes of my shoes and began zipping the pants legs up. You can’t put on a bomb suit by yourself, unless you’re a masochistic contortionist. It’s put on you, by someone else- you’re just along for the ride.
I bent at the knees. The material of the pants was heavy, maybe a half-inch thick. It was a little confining, but loose. I had more mobility in it than I did with my quarter-inch thick neoprene wet suit. I stuck my arms in the sleeves of the jacket the agent held open for me.
Oof. This was a bit heavier. The jacket wrapped completely around my body. The sleeves were a bit long; but at $15,000 a suit, you can’t afford to pay for a custom fit. The agent busied himself sealing flaps and zipping zippers. A high collar, as yet unfastened, prevented my watching him.
I looked down at my hands. The sleeves extended over the backs of my hands, but they were otherwise unprotected. The only parts a bomb suit doesn’t cover are your hands and butt. You can’t perform delicate operations in thick gloves, and you have no sense of touch. The hands will be the first things to go- not that the rest of you wouldn’t follow soon after. Med Eng says that 9 people have been caught by explosions while in an EOD-7B; and two of them died. Med Eng says they died because they were too close to the explosion.
Well, no shit.
Your butt won’t be facing the explosion unless you’re running away. I fingered the quick-release toggles on my chest. Grab ’em and yank, and the entire suit would fall away so you could run unhindered. I wondered how often that happened.
The helmet was next. For all its size, it was cramped inside. The agent slid the chin cup in place and tightened the strap. He hooked the half-inch thick polycarbonate faceplate into the bottom of the helmet and secured the top with a rubber strap. The helmet was now as quiet as a tomb.
“Can you hear me?” he asked. Surprisingly, I could. A microphone on the helmet transmitted the outside noises to an earpiece inside. A communication wire could be plugged into a jack on the helmet, allowing the operator to talk to others back at the bomb trailer. The wire unreeled from a spool that could be hooked to the side of the suit. No radios here- some devices are sensitive to radio frequencies.
I nodded to him. He hooked a hose into the back of the helmet, and air hissed in. He guided my right hand to a box on my hip.
We called the vent tube “the big green donkey dick”
“OK, this button is the turbo switch. Hit it, and the fan goes on high for ten seconds.” I pressed it, and the hissing grew louder. I could feel the air across my face. “Behind it are the fan control switches. Top one speeds the fan up, bottom one slows it.” He stepped back. “OK, that’s it.”
I bent down to pick up the disrupter. Hmm, this was going to be more difficult than I thought. The suit hampered my movements, and the high collar virtually immobilized the helmet. I had to bend over to look down.
Put on as many pairs of sweat pants as you can find. Layer on several sweaters and top it off with a thick winter coat that has sleeves a few inches too long. Put on a motorcycle helmet and duct-tape it to the collar of the coat so it can’t move. Then put 50 pounds of lead weight in the pockets. You’ll still have more mobility than I did, although you might get as hot. Now pick up a briefcase filled with sand…
It took me a minute to find a good handhold. I couldn’t really cradle the disrupter in my arms; I had to carry it two-handed in front of me. Already, beads of sweat were lining my forehead, I hefted the disrupter and began shuffling across the field.
I was wrong. This was going to be a lot tougher than I’d thought. I wasn’t just carrying the disrupter; I was carrying the whole suit. I wondered how I’d feel if I were doing this for real, on a real call with a real explosive device waiting for me at the end of the walk. The suit was the perfect place for such introspection; it was like being in a sensory deprivation chamber. I felt a small shudder of claustrophobia and a little twinge of panic. I imagined such feelings would be multiplied on a real call.
100 yards. I gratefully set the disrupter down and rested. I unfolded the legs of the base and adjusted the angle of the barrel so it pointed squarely at a bronze statue of the school’s mascot. I leaned back and looked at the GBI agent.
“OK, good.” He said. “Now pick it up, and let’s head back.” I sighed and folded the legs once more.
If anything, the walk back was longer. I started panting about halfway. I hoped the agent couldn’t hear me. I was amazed that the ventilation system kept the visor clear. I could easily see why some folks panic when suited up. Instead of feeling like a safe, albeit heavy, security blanket, the suit felt more like a lead noose. Like those nightmares where you’re running from the monsters, but your feet are encased in clinging mud.
We made it to the end zone and I almost threw the disrupter down. The agent stripped the suit off of me with the efficiency of an expert. I wiped my brow and regarded the suit, now reduced once again to a pile of green cloth. Certainly different from Hollywood’s version of the bomb tech, where a handsome hero agonizes over a couple of wires attached to a fiendishly complex and exotic device before snipping one, seconds before detonation. The reality was that a robot was driven to the device by remote control, and a disrupter was used to render it harmless. The tech goes only if the robot can’t. Snipping wires is a last resort. And the cleverly constructed device? Usually a pipe filled with gunpowder or match heads. Then again, reality is boring- unless you’re the guy in the suit.
