Who Says Motor Cops Don't Do Real Police Work?

Then there was the time that Bill Rugh and I pulled over a suspected drunk driver. While I was talking to the driver and doing a field sobriety test, Bill looked in the glove box to see if there was a registration certificate.

Bill couldn’t find the registration certificate but he was able to spot a note scrawled on a bank deposit slip indicating, “put all your bills in the bag. I have a gun and will use it if I have to.”

We were able to get a booking approval for bank robbery after we had the driver spend some quality time visiting with a nice robbery detective we knew.

And no. We never found the gun on his bod or in the car.

November 7, 1991

On November 7, 1991, I was assigned to Central Traffic Division working alone in the Rampart Area as Unit 2M3 (motorcycle).

I was just finishing up a traffic stop on Montana Street just west of Alvarado when I heard the following broadcast on my police radio: “2A55 is in pursuit northbound Alvarado at Beverly.” That meant the pursuit was very close and coming right toward me. So I mounted up and chose a tactically sound position from which to observe the festivities.

The next broadcast was “2A55 is still northbound approaching Sunset in pursuit of a Code 37 (stolen) vehicle.” 2A55 followed this with the vehicle description (brown Toyota van) and the license number. They also advised that the vehicle was occupied by the driver only and gave his description.

About the time they were finishing up the broadcast, the Toyota goes by right in front of me, still northbound on Alvarado, with three black and white police cars hot on its tail. LAPD policy only allows two vehicles to be in pursuit unless there are extenuating circumstances. And none of those can be motorcycles if four-wheeled vehicles are available. So I just watched them go by and then started to follow at a safe speed and distance (no red lights or siren). The pursuit continued northbound on Alvarado and then they turned left to westbound on Berkeley. The Toyota again turned left to southbound Allesandro.

They were outrunning me but an air unit (helicopter) arrived. By listening to the radio and watching the helicopter it was easy to keep track of the relative location of the pursuit. They were now going south so I made a U-turn and also began going south on Alvarado. Then the Toyota turned left to eastbound on Scott Avenue (toward Dodger Stadium) and passed right in front of me again as I stopped southbound on Alvarado at Scott. Then everyone headed south on Glendale Blvd with me trailing safely behind again. I got left behind again but heard on the radio that the suspect had turned left on Bellevue. On Bellevue, the suspect crossed Sunset again (now northbound again) and then turned left on Everett.

Bingo! Everett is a dead end street that ends at a park that is up on a hill. The easiest way out of the park if one decides to run, is to take a long, long stairway (150-200’) down. At the bottom of the stairs is Innes Street. Well, I knew all of this but the suspect apparently did not. I decided to head over to Innes Street at the bottom of the stairway and see if our suspect decided to run down the stairs.

So I did, and he did, and by the time he got to the bottom of the stairs and saw me he glanced back and saw some officers barreling down the stairs after him and he just gave up. I didn’t even get dust on my boots.

I just love a good pursuit and believe it or not, this is an accurate portrayal of what happened. I have a few others I’ll write about later.

Grafitti On The Palm Trees

A few years ago my partner, Bill Rugh, and I were riding northbound on Hoover Street coming to a stop at the red light at Vernon Avenue. This location is about four blocks south of the Coliseum. In fact, if you continue northbound on Hoover, you will enter the coliseum at about Gate four.

The sun had just set. Bill and I were really hungry after working all afternoon protecting and serving (writing tickets) and we wanted to get to one our favorite eating spots, Pete's, with no further delay. We were riding Kawasaki 1,000 police motorcycles (the best motorcycle I've ever encountered for police work) and we were working as 12M51 and 12M52 (South Traffic Division - 77th Street Area).

As we came to a stop, I was aware that a "Robbery in progress" call had recently come out at Vernon and Figueroa, about two blocks east of us. I also knew that several Southwest Units had gone "Code Six" (police lingo for they had arrived at the location). I also knew an Air Unit was overhead because we could see it.

While this could reasonably be deemed exciting stuff to most people, those of us who work in south Los Angeles (it's not PC to say "South Central" any more but this was the heart of South Central in activity as well as geography), it really is pretty normal stuff. So I tell Bill, "just keep your eyes to the front. Let's not get involved in anything that will delay our arrival at Code Seven (dinner)."

I can now hear a loud argument in the gas station right next to us on our right... a loud and very angry sounding argument. But we are focused (hungry) and we don't look to the right because we don't want anyone to think that we know there is something happening.

And the red light is taking forever to turn green.

Then we hear a really loud collision-like noise... that's right a collision as in a motor vehicle hitting something, and then accelerating with sounds of squealing tires, etc. We finally had to glance to our right just to make sure we weren't going to be hit, shot, or otherwise involved in this situation. By the way. This was not related to the "Robbery In Progress" but we weren't sure at the time.

As I glanced over, I saw an older car rapidly backing away from a destroyed phone booth. There is a female at the wheel of the car and a guy spread-eagled on the roof and hanging on for dear life. The girl skids to a stop, jams the gears into a forward mode and shoots out of the gas station with the guy still hanging on. They're heading into the hear of all of the "Robbery in Progress" festivities over at Figueroa and Vernon and a sizeable group of people saw us looking at the action, so we pretty much had to go after her.

As our suspect nears Figueroa, she veers into the Unocal gas station lot there on her left (NW corner of the intersection) which happened to be the location of the aforementioned robbery. She succeeds in gaining the attention of about four car-loads of young Southwest cops who are already a little frustrated because they didn't snag the robber. And we are still right behind her. She accelerates out onto Figueroa going north (left) and makes an immediate left onto 43rd Place. Now she is really flying and I'm getting nervous.

Then the patrol cars go flying past us and nearly run us into the parked cars on the south side of the very narrow street. As the girl flies around the corner to northbound Hoover again, the guy goes flying. Bill and I, recognizing a dignified and manly way to get out of this life threatening situation, go the the guys aid.

He actually wasn't too badly hurt but we called an ambulance for him anyway to patch up his somewhat significant cuts and scrapes. The pursuit didn't last too long. There were too many cops and the air unit was, of course, on it from the Unocal station on.

You might be wondering why this all happened.

The guy was on his way home, driving southbound on Figueroa when temptation, desire and opportunity combined as he noticed the girl standing on the sidewalk acting like she was more than willing to satisfy the temptation and the desire. A few minutes later, in the darkening lot of the gas station at Vernon and Hoover, where we first became aware of these two idiots, he decided to tell her he didn't have any money. When that didn't seem to be working, he told her he needed to make a phone call in order to rectify his cash flow problem. When the phone call turned into three phone calls, she decided to take the car instead. In order to distract our hero, she decided to pin him into the phone booth by applying high speed pressure from the car to the booth. He evaded that impact and succeeded in jumping on his car's roof as she attempted to get away.

This was, in every detail, a true story. I will tell others from time to time. I wrote a lot of them down but, in order to spare my wife some unnecessary worry (I am after all a manly man and tough to boot) saved them for sharing until a later time. See, I don't do these things anymore. Hope you enjoyed.