Cop Stories

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Bear's story about the possum made me think of strange tales from my days as a police officer. Both of these scared the shit out of me, although I can laugh about them now.

It was a dark and stormy night. Okay, so maybe it wasn't stormy, but it sure was dark. Cold, too - colder than a witch's titty. And I should know. It was also about 2am, and there was about a foot and a half of snow on the ground. One of those nights when you just wish all the bad guys would stay in bed and let you hover over your car's heat vent with a cup of hot chocolate in your hands.

But that was not to be. The radio crackled and fizzed, and the dispatcher called my car number. I answered. She gave me a house alarm, and the address. I acknowledged, and moved on. Since we didn't have partners, I was riding through the night alone, and since a house alarm call is not considered a "hot" call, especially in the winter when forming ice sets off alarms every five seconds, nobody chimed in to back me up.

I pulled onto the street - it was a cul-de-sac. My heart sank a little when I saw that this was not an inhabited neighborhood. It was a brand new development, and some of the houses weren't even built yet. The house in question was dead center at the end of the lollipop. All the houses were dark and empty, their windows looking at me like dead eyes. There weren't even any street lights for comfort.

Being a good cop, I didn't just drive by and see if everything looked OK from where I sat in my PD. I got out of the car, flashlight and gun in hand, to check each door and window for signs of breaking and entering.

Front door was good - locked tight. No windows were broken. Time to move to the back. By now, the alarm's siren had stopped wailing, so the night was once again silent as the grave. I moved along the side of the house, cursing mentally as the drifted snow wedged its way into my shoes and socks.

I got about four feet from the back corner of the house when I heard it. Coming from behind the house. The sound of footsteps coming toward me through the snow! My heart began to race, the blood pumping in my ears. I gripped my gun tighter, and steeled myself to meet the burglar face to face. Who knew if he had a gun, or how big he might be?

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. The sound of those footsteps in the snow was about to drive me mad.

I decided to move first - rather than let him come around the corner, see me, and have time to plan his attack.

I turned the corner in a rush, flashlight and gun pointed....... at a rabbit.

RUN AWAY!!!! RUN AWAYYYYY!!!!!!!

Poor little sod was probably just trying to get home to his warm den, and nothing more. But his hopping through the snow had sounded just like... well, at this point I was just glad that nobody had backed me up on the call, and my embarrassment was unshared by anyone except the rabbit.


And THEN there was the time.....


It was broad daylight, in the spring, and as warm and sunny a day as you could ever hope to live through. I was wearing my uniform without the jacket, and the shift was going about as well as I could have hoped. A couple of light calls here and there, no families beating the shit out of each other, nobody dying in a car accident - a good day.

Then I got the call. House alarm. The easiest call you ever get as a cop - because 99% of them are false alarms. That's where the danger is, though - if you handle a call as if you already know the outcome, you lose big time when you get that one-percenter. So I always went ready for anything.

This house, as I found out when I got there, wasn't a house but a trailer. Yes, there are still trailer parks on Long Island, Virginia. They're a dying breed, but some still remain. This particular trailer had a raised deck built on the front of it, with lattice covering the opening from the deck floor down to the ground. A couple of sparse bushes were planted in front of the lattice in an attempt to make the place look homey instead of homely. I can't say it worked.

I had my holster unsnapped, just in case, but I really didn't think anything was going to be amiss on this gorgeous day. Just the same, I approached with caution. I started going around the trailer from the back, figuring if anyone was going to make his escape, it wouldn't be through the front where my police car was parked.

All the windows were secure, the back door locked, so I proceeded to walk around the front of the trailer. As I was angling for the stairs to go up on the deck and try the front door, I heard a sudden rushing sound come towards me from under the deck. The dry leaves of a thousand falls were under that deck, and they just amplified the sound of whatever that was coming at me, making it sound like a hundred pound pit bull. Which it very well could have been.

I whipped my gun out and pointed it at the lattice - couldn't see shit, didn't know what was coming - and then, out from under the lattice came.............. a chicken. A fucking chicken!!!!!

How did the folks in Hong Kong get hold of my story???

You would have to live on Long Island to understand how unlikely it is to encounter a live chicken outside of a petting zoo or game farm. It just doesn't happen. Unless you live in a trailer park, apparently. Jeez.

No shots fired, embarrassment count: 2.