Vancouver Blue. Wayne Cope
to the northwest to see the sky quickly turning dark. It was like a blackout curtain was being drawn across the sky from the North Shore Mountains, and I began loading up my gear as quickly as I could. The rain started and it was so heavy that it bounced off the asphalt right back up to my knees. As I was about to get on the Harley, a beautiful Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn pulled in behind me and the driver waved at me through the window. I walked over and spoke to a woman in her sixties, who looked over to her husband in the passenger seat, who appeared to be about forty years older than she was. She was wearing a huge rock on her finger and very expensive clothes. She said, “We’re from California and we’re lost. Can you tell us how to get to the Bayshore Inn?” I figured they were going to get lost in that downpour and said, “No, I can’t. But you can follow me and I’ll take you there.” I turned on the emergency lights and delivered them to the breezeway of the Bayshore Inn as the rain thundered down in a biblical deluge. The doorman at the Bayshore must have thought I was escorting royalty to the hotel and the front desk had forgotten to give him the memo, but I think I left those folks with a pretty good impression of Vancouver.
On another occasion I pulled over a car full of tourists beside the Hudson’s Bay Store on Seymour Street for a minor infraction. The car had California plates and the driver seemed confused as she alternated between fumbling in the glove box for the insurance papers and fumbling in her purse for her driver’s licence. I decided to cut the exercise short because she was taking far too long finding her documents and ultimately I was just going to give her a warning anyway. I asked her name, which she readily provided. The conversation that followed went something like this:
Me: “And Carol, where are you from?”
Carol: “Hwhy?”
Me: “Well, it’s a requirement of Canadian law that you tell me where you are from, so let’s try it again. Where do you live?”
Carol: “Hwhy?”
Me: “Okay, Carol, I think I’ve explained the legal requirements clearly enough. You are required to tell me where you live.”
Carol: “Hwhy?”
Me: “I’m going to give you a few minutes to reconsider your position, then a paddy wagon is going to make an illegal left turn onto Seymour Street—just like you did—then pull up beside us, load you up and take you to jail.”
I left Carol for a few minutes and returned to find that she had started to cry. Finally locating her driver’s licence, she presented it to me. Carol and her passengers were from Honolulu, Hwhy.
Shiny Side Down
I started keeping track of how many times I dropped my bike. The first happened when one of the senior members of the squad had let me borrow his brand new 1980 Kawasaki KZ1000, which was the fastest production bike on the market. This first accident was fairly mundane and involved my dropping the bike while westbound on First Avenue just west of Boundary Road. Nothing spectacular, no injuries. The bike just came out from under me and I was left standing in the middle of the road watching it scraping along on its crash bars as it continued down the road without me. The senior constable was surprisingly understanding.
This Kawasaki 1000 was the fastest production bike model on the road. Ironically, while the Harley had no kick-starter and frequently needed it, the Kawasaki had one but never did.
Number Two happened when I was working alone in Stanley Park and two drug addicts passed me driving an old pickup truck—stolen, of course. A female was driving with a male passenger. I put on the lights and siren and pulled them over just past Brockton Oval on Park Drive. When they pulled over and stopped, I angled my bike away from the curb (just like they taught us at VPD motorcycle school) and started to get off, keeping my eye on the two in the truck. But as soon as the truck stopped, the driver and passenger began trying to switch places—I suppose this was so the male could play the role of gentleman and take the rap for driving the stolen truck. While they were going through this acrobatic manoeuvre, one of them hit the gearshift, putting the truck into reverse. As it slowly rolled over my motorcycle, I stepped away like a matador avoiding the bull. It was evident that the driver had not meant to drive over me, but had the two of them simply driven away at that point, I would have had no way of pursuing. I walked up to the driver’s door, tapped on the window with the barrel of my pistol and said, “Get out.”
Number Three happened when I was in the curb lane eastbound on Robson Street approaching Burrard, and a vehicle in the lane beside me changed lanes right into me. Having pretty fair reflexes, I rode the bike up onto the sidewalk and crashed it into a mailbox. The driver got a ticket. His defence was that I was the one who had an accident, and that it had nothing to do with him.
Number Four occurred as I was southbound on Granville Street near Nelson and heard a commotion—doors slamming, tires squealing—just to the west. I realized a vehicle was rocketing southbound down the lane at a high rate of speed, so I rode west across a parking lot to intercept it. When the car finally came into view, I saw it veer toward a scruffy-looking, long-haired character standing about fifteen yards in front of me in an apparent attempt to hit him. The intended target raised a pistol and fired three times as the car swerved past, barely missing him and continuing down the lane. I dropped the bike and drew my revolver, pointing it at the shooter, who had his back to me. I called out, “City Police! Drop that gun,” and the man turned toward me with his hands at his sides. I warned him two more times, thinking that he appeared to be in a state of shock. Finally calming, he yelled, “RCMP! RCMP!” Again I ordered him to drop his gun, which he refused to do. Just then I noticed a Vancouver Drug Squad sergeant running toward me from the south. He was a friend of mine and a fellow member of the Vancouver Police Pistol Team. He called out, “Wayne, he’s RCMP!” before going over to relieve the shooter of his firearm. When I returned to the station, the story was all over. The corporal asked, “Why didn’t you shoot him?” The first reason was that when the shooter opened fire, he crouched and used a two-handed grip on the pistol. The average drug addict would not normally have that kind of training and discipline, so it clicked immediately that something was wrong with the scene. The second reason was that I was a pretty good shot, and I had drawn and aimed at a shooter who had his gun at his side; at point-blank range I was confident that I had control of the situation. Besides, he had already missed the driver of the car with his three shots.
For Number Five I pulled over a westbound vehicle on Georgia Street, directly across from the Hudson’s Bay, for a routine traffic stop. It was rush hour so there were well over seventy-five people on the north sidewalk waiting for the bus, and now they were all watching me. The car stopped without incident, I put down the kickstand of the Harley and leaned it over. That’s when the kickstand snapped, and the bike went onto its side with me on it. I got up, dusted myself off, walked up to the driver and told him to get lost. I rode the Harley back to the city works yard, where I leaned it up against a wall to await repair.
I had a few more accidents while in Traffic Division. Fortunately, in this instance, I was driving a car, not a bike. Westbound on Cordova in the curb lane, I was stopped at a red light beside a tractor-trailer. With the light still red, the driver of the tractor suddenly decided to make a right turn, crushing the police car against a power pole. As I climbed over Crowther, I hit the lights and siren before the two of us spilled onto the sidewalk. This driver actually advised me that the accident was my fault because I was in his blind spot.
Although the members of Traffic Division ride our bikes in the sun, rain and sleet, we don’t ride in the snow. In one of the few blinding snowstorms Vancouver has ever had, Dan Dureau and I were westbound on Cordova Street in one of the big Traffic Division battlewagons. Dureau was driving, and it was slim pickings for tickets when we noticed a vehicle driving toward us with one headlight on. Dureau pulled a U-turn behind it and put on the lights and siren. The vehicle pulled over without incident but stopped right in the middle of an intersection where the northbound traffic would be approaching down a very steep hill. I got out and approached the driver, an Asian male who apparently spoke no English. His wife was the passenger. I told the driver several times to pull forward because any northbound vehicle would never