An LA Cop. John Bowermaster
he was going back to the car to call for an ambulance and have A-91 transport their suspect to the station. “After you cuff him, look in the bedroom!”
Ed made the notifications and went back to the apartment. Mike was questioning the suspect about the shooting. The suspect was explaining, “Me and my old lady been fighting all night. She pissed me off. I told her to shut the fuck up! She kept talking shit and wouldn’t shut up! I fired over her head, trying to scare her and make her shut up—that’s all I wanted! I aimed too low. It was an accident—I didn’t mean to blow the top of her head off. I just wanted her to shut the fuck up!”
A few minutes passed. Paul and his partner Bill, followed the paramedics into the apartment. “What’s happening, guys?”
Ed directed the RA unit to the bedroom, suggesting to Paul, “Go see what’s happening!” Paul followed the paramedics to the bedroom, stopping at the door.
Ed watched Paul as he gave the paramedics room to work. Paul look around the bedroom. His eyes looked at the ceiling then at Ed, asking, “What happened here?”
“It’s all just a big misunderstanding. It was an accident! He just wanted her to shut the fuck up! But he aimed too low!”
Paul looked at Ed, “Well, I’d say mission accomplished—she’s quiet now! She’s still alive but circling the drain. We’ll follow the RA unit to the hospital until they call it. Maybe she’ll regain consciousness, sit up, and tell us it was all just a misunderstanding!”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that happen!”
“You never know! I can’t believe she’s alive! Maybe the doctor can duct tape the top of her head back on and everything will be okay!”
“Do me a favor—take this guy to the station along with his shotgun. We’ll be there when we leave the hospital.”
Paul went into the bedroom and unloaded the shotgun. On the way out, he grabbed the suspect’s arm, telling him, “Let’s go, Buffalo Bill!”
“Who’s Buffalo Bill?”
“My name’s Freddie, Freddie Jackson!”
“Okay, Freddie, let’s go.”
The officers followed the RA unit to the hospital’s emergency room. Ed told Mike he’d seen shit before, but this one was right near the top of the list! They followed the paramedic’s gurney through the double doors into the emergency room. The doctor followed the officers into the room.
“What do you have? We’ve got one circling the drain with a shotgun blast to the front of her head. The wadding from the shell is lodged in the front of her brain.” The doctor looked at Ed to see if he was screwing with him.
He walked over to the victim and stared at her for a moment. He leaned down, inspecting the shotgun wadding sticking out of her brain. Straightening back up, the doctor looked at the officers. “There’s nothing I can do for her except call it when she expires. It won’t be long.”
The officers were waiting for her to die when the double doors of the ER flew open again.
Two other paramedics wheeled their gurney through the doors. A blood-soaked sheet covered the body.
The doctor walked to the gurney and lifted the sheet. Looking at the victim, he asked the paramedics, “Why is this in here? It belongs in the morgue.”
“Yeah, Doc we know. He jumped from an overpass onto the San Diego Freeway. Several cars hit him before anyone stopped. The California Highway Patrol at the scene insisted we take him to the hospital. So a doctor could pronounce him dead. Otherwise they’d have to close the freeway for hours. If we brought him to the emergency room, they could reopen the freeway for traffic.”
“So here we are!” The doctor looked at the clock, telling the nurse. “The time of death is2:07 a.m.” Mike, standing next to their victim, heard an exhale after a final deep breath. “Doc, I think you can call ours too.”
The doctor walked over to the female. He checked her pulse again, looking at the clock. “Nurse this patient expired at 2:08 a.m.” Ed and Mike walked over to inspect the jumper victim. As they approached, they could smell the odor of the blood that saturated the sheet covering the body.
Mike pulled the sheet back. The victim was mangled from the impact of multiple vehicles. The remains were not recognizable as human. His arms, legs, and torso were so mutilated you couldn’t tell front from back.
His head was missing. Presumably still at the scene of the accident or stuck on the grill of one of the vehicles involved. Mike, not use to seeing bodies this mangled, blurted out, “This is just wrong!”
Walking out to the nurse’s station, he asked to use their phone to call communications. Mike dialed communications. “Hi, this is Officer Brown on 7-X-96. I need you to notify the CHP via land line. Ask them to have the unit handling the jumper call on the San Diego Freeway search the scene for the victim’s head. No, it was missing when the RA unit brought the body into the emergency room. Yeah, I’m sure it’s missing—they’re attached to the top of the neck or up their asses. But either way, his is missing! So ask them to look for it.”
“Thanks.”
“No, we’re not handling this caper. We have our own bucket of worms. But our victim still has most of her head attached! I know the victim’s family or friends would like to bury him with his head if possible. It’s somewhere at the scene or on one of the vehicles that hit him. Thanks.” Mike hung the phone up and walked back into the ER. Ed was staring at the victim’s body like it was a puzzle and he was searching for the missing pieces.
The body caused him to flash back to Vietnam. To a ground attack when a wounded NVA shot and killed the RTO. Six men threw grenades into the bomb crater he was in, killing him. His body was blasted into hundreds of pieces.
Ed was looking at the victim, trying to imagine where the pieces fit back together. He was deep in thought when Mike walked up next to him, suggesting, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” They left the hospital, heading to the station. They finished their reports and booked Freddie for murder.
The Streets of Los Angeles
Ed and Paul where in their fifth year on the department working Wilshire division. Paul, graduating from the academy a couple of months behind Ed. Mike graduated a year later. They met each other in Wilshire Division.
A couple of years passed, working a variety of assignments: patrol, the desk, and jail. They realized working the streets was a class in psychology. The difference was in college, it was an hour in a classroom. For them, it was every day all day, sometimes in a hostile environment with somebody trying to kill them or somebody else. Ed felt the dangerous call was a shooting in progress or a man with a gun call.
He realized that wasn’t true. He found the dangerous calls were the unknown trouble and family disputes. People in those calls were at their emotional limit.
When officers approached those calls, they never knew if their presence at the scene would be the straw that broke the camel’s back, causing the person to snap and kill the other person or take someone hostage, escalating the situation into a barricaded suspect with a hostage.
Handling hundreds of radio calls and traffic stops a month, officers learned how to read people, things the academy couldn’t teach them. They worked with different partners, developing relationships and learning how other officers handled situations. Being assigned to patrol with regular partners, Ed, Paul, and Mike developed a trust and an understanding of how each other worked.
They also saw how some officers handled situations on the street. The officers stopped a suspect driving a vehicle with no license plates. Ed asked the driver, “Where are the plates for this vehicle?”
The driver explained he bought the car and hasn’t been able to get to the Department of Motor Vehicles to register it yet.
The driver showed