What they don't know, and would probably find surprising, is that we routinely respond to life threatening situations - situations where we expect someone is going to get killed or seriously injured before it's over. I'm always amazed at how these situations go right to the edge of violence and then miraculously a peaceful, or somewhat peaceful, resolution occurs.
I was involved in such a situation last week. I'll need to leave out a few names and details - as this is an on-going case, but I should be able to get the main point across.
A State Task Force was looking for a suspected child pornographer/molester in our jurisdiction. He was expected to be armed and dangerous. He was known to have AR15 assault rifles, multiple handguns, and various other firearms. We were told to use extreme caution if we found him. Under cover agents were in the area watching for him to return to his home.
I determined that we needed to find this guy and find him as soon as possible. I decided that I would spend all of my available time on shift hunting for him. I pulled up his photograph, got a picture of what his car would look like and memorized the license plate. About an hour into my shift, I had a crazy thought, "just drive by this guy's house and see what's going on"... so I did.
I drove out to his neighborhood and turned onto his road... and to my surprise, there was his car parked in the driveway. I drove down the block, turned around and positioned my car at an angle so he couldn't get a shot on me from one of the windows in his house. I pulled up an email with the phone number to the agent leading the task force and called her up. "Hey", I said, "are you still looking for this guy?"
"Yes, we sure are", came the response. "Well, his car is parked in his driveway and I've got observation on the house", I told her.
"What? Really? ok, we're turning around. Give us a little bit to re-assemble our team and we'll come get him.... oh, he's super dangerous so be careful."
"Game On", I thought. I unbuckled the webbing holding my AR15 rifle to the seat next to me and got out of my patrol truck. I pulled out my heavy body armor and put it on and then put on my ballistic helmet. I moved over into the backyard of a home and found some concealment in some bushes. Another Deputy was on his way to my location (there were only 2 of us on duty at the time) and I sat there wondering "did this guy see me pull up and does he have a rifle pointed at my head right now". All of the windows were closed and the curtains pulled so I figured unless this guy was really good, he probably didn't have a bead on me at the moment.
After about 10 minutes I got a call back from the task force leader. They were ready and were planning on coming up to the back of the house. Our other Deputy was with them. "Ok, Where do you need me", I asked.
"Well, sounds like you've got the front of the house covered, so why don't you keep that", she replied. From my position, I could stop him from leaving in his car.
"Got it", I said and pushed the red circle on my iphone. I was about 125 yards from the front of his house. There was a small pasture with a little barn about half the distance to his house. It looked like better cover than what I had, so I started moving. I got to the barn and realized it had windows facing his house so I went inside and found a good place to set up. It had a lot of concrete between me and incoming bullets (if it went to that) and a stable place to shoot from. Then I got another call...
"We know this guy has a lot of guns and it's probably going to get ugly if we go in that house" - it was the task force leader. "We just had a thought, we're going to call him on the phone and see if we can trick him into coming out".
"Ok", I said and got ready for whatever the next 60 seconds or so was going to bring. I calmed my breathing and scanned the house and yard through the optical sight on my rifle.
Prior to all of this happening, they had seized his computers and electronic devices. They called him up and told him they were outside and wanted to give his computers back. They asked if he could come outside to help get his computers out of the car.
Well.... sure enough, he came out unarmed, and thinking all was well, and they took him into custody without incident. Now you won't read any of this in the news... because nobody got shot or killed. You only hear about what we do when it goes badly. Nobody ever hears about it when it goes right.
The whole thing reminded me of incidents from the book of Alma in the Book of Mormon.
"And thus it came to pass, that by this stratagem we did take possession of the city of Manti without the shedding of blood." Alma 58:28The Book of Mormon records situations where tricks and strategies were used by the Nephite army to take an objective, or capture a city, without getting a bunch of people killed. Moroni, the great Nephite Captain was described as, "And he also knowing that it was the only desire of the Nephites to preserve their lands, and their liberty, and their church, therefore he thought it no sin that he should defend them by stratagem;..." Alma 43:30
God's word has application in every aspect of life. There is always something in scripture that we can learn from and apply to our life today.
We go to great lengths to protect everyone's life - even the people we're trying to arrest. It doesn't always work out that way, but usually it does. So we hope for the best while training, planning, and preparing for the worst. We routinely make life or death decisions - and we're happy when it's all over and everyone lived through it.
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