Fireworks
Sunday, November 30th, 2008Thanksgiving and Christmas are usually busy at work. Families get together hoping that their problems will be forgotten for the day. Sometimes it works, mostly it doesn’t. This Thanksgiving was no exception. Near the end of shift, I was dispatched to a fireworks call. The man called in saying that his neighbor was shooting fireworks, and he was tired of listening to them. He then told the 911 call taker that if we didn’t get out there in ten minutes, he was going to [children, cover your ears] “shoot those mother fuckers right now!” Since it’s illegal to threaten to shoot someone, three officers responded. Since it was near the end of shift, my initial plan was simple: calm the situation down, get the guy to admit that he was overreacting and that he didn’t mean it, and talk to the neighbors about the fireworks. My plan was the best, because everyone would be happy, and I’d get to go home on time. Unfortunately, the guy didn’t like my plan.
When I knocked on the door, he came out and said, “It’s the stucco house on the corner!” I asked him what was going on, and he said that they were shooting fireworks, and we never do anything about it. He then said that if we didn’t do something to stop the fireworks (which were not going off at the time) that he was going to take a baseball bat to his neighbors.
I decided at this point that this man needed to go to jail. He had already made a threat in the presence of the 911 call taker on a recorded line, and he made a threat in front of three officers, who were all recording as well. We were standing on a porch that was about four feet wide. The man was about six feet tall and 300 pounds.
We then attempted to place him in handcuffs. He immediately said that he was claustrophobic and began resisting arrest. When a 300 pound man doesn’t want to move, he doesn’t move. During the process of arresting him (which took about five minutes) each of us had been thrown off of him. My parter ended up tearing his ACL in the process and is going to be at a desk for several months while he heals.
In the end, we were able to trip him and dog-pile on top of him. I charged him with two counts of terroristic threats (felonies), three counts of obstruction (felonies) and one count of aggravated battery (felony) for tearing my partner’s ACL. Aggravated battery on an officer carries a minimum of ten years in prison. This guy is going to jail for a long time, and all because of fireworks.
I later spoke with the neighbors and told them not to shoot fireworks anymore.
Arresting someone means a lot of paperwork. There was the arrest report, the warrant, the jail papers, the use of force report, and a report of injury report; plus, each of the other officers wrote supplemental reports.
I clocked out at 4:00 am, after 14 hours of work.
