A simple rookie mistake

In 1980, the city of San Francisco announced that it was opening up unrestricted applications for police officers. Over 3,000 people responded, which led to block long lines of applicants waiting to take written exams, physical agility testing, and weird psychological screenings. The Korean War veterans who took the oath previously were retiring en-mass, or leaving in droves based on medical disabilities, and the ravages of too many off-duty drinking binges.

My academy class of 45 eager beavers stepped in to try and fill the gaps. Of the nine districts, the three busiest were designated as Training Stations. The Mission had it all: Sex (hookers a plenty), Drugs (Heroin everywhere), and rock-n-roll (Hispanic gang shootings nightly, and multiple drug turf wars continuously.)

In my first week of field training, I saw three dead bodies in four days:

• A “natural” where an impoverished Swedish pensioner died in his sleep in his overheated 5 foot by 6 foot Patel Hotel room, and wasn’t discovered for 3 weeks. (You’d think the maggots crawling out from under his triple locked room door would have gotten some attention, but apparently not in that sort of place.)
• A heroin OD who died in his car, and was only noticed because it was being towed away for triple parking outside a “known spike bar.”
• A 14 yr. old Nortenos banger who was on the receiving end of multiple machete whacks because he was wearing the wrong color headband on the wrong street corner one dark Friday AM.

My primary FTO was Officer Charlie E. Like his father, Charlie could have been picked out of a Hollywood central casting lineup as a “Viking Warrior.” Wearing the obligatory paratrooper side-zipper combat boots, Charlie literally had to duck under the top edge of the armored rear sally-port door to enter the barn like interior of 1240 Valencia.

When Charlie entered a room, all the non-6’6” men stood up straighter, and the women would get knock-kneed clutching at their pearls, while wondering if Charlie’s massive catchers-mitt sized hands meant anything else. I liked working with this Nordic God clone because it meant I never had to worry about calling for back-up, while practically knowing that if we encountered a “field situation” the Cronk would try and go over my more modest hill-sized uniform, rather than try and futilely take on Charlie’s mountain sized persona.

Charlie had this sweet deal going when he got assigned a patrol car, in that since he was so tall, the guys at the departmental body shop had to specially modify the driver’s side seat floor rack literally into the rear seat prisoner transport area. This meant nobody else got to mess up his ride. While on the days that I was being

evaluated on my driving skills, allowances were made because while I could almost use the accelerator petal with my right boot toe, the power brakes had to be used using BOTH of my feet, while I slouched sidewise under the steering wheel.

We walked a lot. One afternoon, in the same flop house where we had Swen the dead sailor poured into a body bag, some very foolish alcoholic head-case came boiling out of a side corridor waving a sturdy 3-foot metal table leg, with the intent of avoiding a well-deserved ADW arrest for nearly killing another head case.

Naturally, being the rookie, I was in the lead position “demonstrating my field leadership aptitude.”

My police baton was about two feet shorter than my Olympic-rated Collegiate Saber, but muscle memory is a great modifier. I did a disarm strike and was hoping that his probably broken right hand fingers would not be considered excessive force. Two seconds later when he kept coming at me and I added a knee-cap strike and (if I say so) a well delivered elbow dislocation twist, he finally sank to the soggy and rat feces covered hallway carpeting, vomiting and moaning in pain. Charlie smiled and gave me a thumbs up.

On some days, however, the best of all intentions cannot be covered by the Rookie Documentation Guidelines. We were standing on the brick staircase in front of the station a few days later when it happened. This Chevy sedan screamed up, and in skidding from twice the posted speed limit to an almost stop, nearly bashed in Charlie’s parked-at-the curb Crown Victoria.

I knew from my right eye peripheral vision that Charlie beat me to drawing out his duty weapon by only fraction of a second. The right front passenger door opened, Cholo Numero Uno gets out, smartly showing both heavily tattooed arms and hands to the heavens. He opened the rear right-side passenger door and dragged out a girl wearing a maroon sweater and a short gray plaid mini skirt, dropping her in the gutter behind the squad car.

Without so much as a backward glance, he dove into the car, which burned rubber while it screamed off with both right-side doors still open.

I was rolling the girl out of her fetal position when I saw the semi-loaded hypodermic syringe still sticking out of her left arm below the elbow.

I shouted to Charlie, “Call a 408-overdose” (police jargon for SFFD ambulance) while I picked her up under the arms, and dragged her to the sidewalk proper.

In several of my previous incarnations I had taught and demonstrated CPR / rescue breathing, and medical triage classes. This, however, was not a Rescue Annie breathing dummy nor a sterile well-lit classroom.

She was maybe 14-years-old, had an ornate Catholic cross around her getting paler neck, and had clear plastic braces on her upper teeth. Her outfit meant she went to Mercy Catholic High school, just uphill from Mission Station.

Take it as routine Dave, I found myself saying sotto voice when I went down my mental checklist. Tilt the head back to clear the windpipe. Drag a finger through the mouth to clear the tongue while risking a clamp-down bite onto my right index trigger finger.

I could feel her slightly padded little girl bra under the palm of my hand as I began chest compressions, and then ignoring the flecks of foam around her ruby red painted lips, I began rescue breathing.

I was vaguely aware of Charlie waving his tall as a tree arms at the approaching ambulance.

Unceremoniously, a senior paramedic that I knew from the Swen case pulled me off the girl, and he and his partner did a classic grab and go drill.

Charlie had smartly gotten the license plate of the Chevy, and he and “a few of the troops” went after the driver and crew right then. My lieutenant pulled me aside at the end of the watch and said that I was also going to the ER because the girl, while was expected to survive her experiments with injectable heroin, had been also diagnosed with Hepatitis B, and I needed to go through the approved drug therapy for my good Samaritan exposure.

I’m not sure I did any good, but it was what I had to do, and got me my first life-saving award ribbon at the next pay day inspection. As it said in my weekly evaluation for that time frame, ”It was just a simple rookie mistake,” but after that incident I carried a “breather mask” in my gear bag.

Whenever I walked out that doorway for years to come, and even today, I have one overriding image in my mind’s eye. She had such amazing emerald, green eyes.

10-7

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