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Today’s post is a story that no
rookie police officer should ever tell an aspiring author (no matter how many
margaritas he’s had). It’s about the night he met the most unusual peeping Tom
ever.
The Prowler
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If I remember the story right,
the night in question was a warm summer night. And according to Eddie, the first warm summer
nights always signaled the start of “Peeping Tom Season”. Peeping Tom season was as
predictable as the swallows’ arrival at San Juan Capistrano. When the days were
hot, the nights were warm. People left their windows and curtains open at night
because they were desperate to cool off. Peeping Toms, also known as prowlers, love
to sneak around and peek into windows. So when the temperatures went up, the
Prowlers came out.
Prowlers are sneaky little turds and a big problem
for Law Enforcement and therefore they were a big problem for Eddie. The warm weather
brought another problem for Eddie. It was harder for our sleep-deprived hero to
stay awake… because the heat made the sleepy even sleepier.
"Some of these cops must be part vampire or something!" Eddie once lamented.
According to Eddie there were some cops, not many, who actually enjoyed graveyard shift. Being
up all night didn’t bother them a bit. A lot of the older guys, the veterans,
all had secret places where they could hide unobserved. Those guys were usually holed up somewhere fast asleep. Others were at 24 hr. coffee shops pouring
coffee down their throats, or standing inside of a 7-Eleven, reading magazines… trying
their best not to fall down. Then there were the rookies, like Eddie, who
hadn’t quite figured out how to handle this “being awake all night” stuff.
3 o'clock in the morning found Eddie
struggling to keep his eyelids up so he parked his patrol car and got out because it
was a lot harder (but not impossible) to fall asleep while walking.
Predictably prowler calls were on the rise and those creeps could hear his police car coming from a mile away, so it was a no brainer... he would patrol the neighborhoods on foot. Eddie picked a
large apartment complex to patrol because he knew there was a good chance he
would run into a prowler. There had been a lot of calls in this particular complex;
Eddie suspected it was someone who lived there. Sure enough, about fifteen
minutes later, Eddie spotted a Peeping Tom. He was wearing a dirty knit cap and
hiding behind a hedge. It looked like he was peeping into a window of a
downstairs apartment.
I am amazed at the things TV
cops do. They see some guy they’re looking for on the other side of the street.
So what do they do? They yell “freeze”! They always seem surprised when the bad
guy spins around and runs away. Real cops don’t stand 50 feet away and yell
freeze. They sneak up on the bad guy to get close enough to grab him and then they
yell freeze. Most of the time, they don’t bother to yell, they just pounce.
So that’s what Eddie did.
Eddie crouched behind a car
and moved towards the prowler. The prowler was partially hidden in the
shadows now, but Eddie could clearly see that someone was there. Eddie darted to a dumpster and then ducked behind a gigantic bush. There was a four foot wall that he was able to hide behind and get within feet of the prowler without being seen.
When he got
closer he noticed that the prowler was surrounded on three sides by that thick four-foot
hedge. If he decided to run he would have to run past the wall where Eddie
was hiding.
The prowler must have heard
something because he suddenly ducked down. When he disappeared something tightened
in Eddie’s stomach. What if that the prowler realized that he was cornered?
Would he do something drastic like rip the screen off the open window and take the
apartment occupant hostage? To his relief as he inched closer the prowler’s
head popped back up.
Before long Eddie was in a good spot, but he was alone so it wasn't safe to grab him and risk getting into a wrestling match. So the plan was to order the prowler to lay down and then Eddie would call for back-up. Then he would handcuff the prowler when his back-up arrived. If the prowler decided to run Eddie was close enough and confident that he would be able to
grab the prowler no matter which way he ran.
It was time to take this creep
down.
Eddie moved behind a tree and
used it for cover. He drew his gun from it's holster and pointed it at the
prowler. Then he unleashed a stream of foul language to let the prowler know he meant business.
And somewhere in that stream he must have ordered the prowler to “freeze” because that’s
exactly what the prowler did... he froze.
“Get down on the ground!” Eddie ordered, the prowler didn’t move. Eddie took out his radio and called for
back-up. Then he addressed the prowler again.
“Get down on the ground or I
will blow your F@#!% brains out!” He shouted.
The prowler didn’t budge.
That was when Eddie noticed
that the prowler was thin and as pale as a ghost and oh yeah, he only had one arm.
Oh wow! How in the hell am I going to handcuff this guy? He remembered thinking.
Eddie moved to another tree and noticed something he had missed before. As if things needed to get creepier, he noticed that his prowler was naked as a jaybird! The only
thing he was wearing was that dirty knit cap.
Now that's just nasty, who hides butt naked in the bushes at
3 AM?
Eddie could hear the sirens
approaching from the distance; help would be there soon.
“I’m not going to say this
again, get on the ground… put your arms… errr arm on the ground in front of you.”
The prowler ignored his commands
and just stood there.
Eddie was starting to get
irritated. It was as though this knucklehead figured that if he stood perfectly
still, nobody could see him. Eddie moved a step closer and that was close
enough for Eddie to finally get a good look at his prowler. A prowler who,
until now, had been mostly hidden in the shadows. It was not until that moment he
realized that his prowler was not a prowler after all… he was a statue.
Eddie had been sneaking up on
a statue.
What the hell is going on?
Eddie's head was spinning... what
about all the suspicious things he had witnessed? Belatedly he realized that it
must have been his old friend… sleep deprivation. But as his adrenaline started
pumping, the fog had lifted and he realized that he had just spent the last
fifteen minutes sneaking up on a statue. And with that realization came real
fear. Because it was not until that moment that Eddie understood that he had a big problem.
The guys were already giving
him a hard time in the locker room over what they were calling “the great zombie caper” and there was no way he was giving those guys anymore ammunition.
The sirens were closer; they would be there any second. He couldn’t just say never
mind… they would ask too many questions. Some smart-ass would no doubt notice
the statue. Sooner or later one of them would figure it out.
Eddie realized that he had to
get away from that statue, but he couldn’t just leave. He was desperate, but he
didn’t panic and then he got an idea.
“I’m in foot pursuit, the suspect is running
south through the apartment complex,” Eddie yelled into his radio as he started
running south. “The suspect is a white male wearing uhhhh… all white!”
The radio came alive as the
responding officers scrambled to catch up to Eddie and his fleeing suspect. The
dispatcher began calling out streets directing some of the responding units so
that they could get out ahead of the suspect. Somebody asked about the
helicopter. Fortunately for Eddie, the helicopter had just landed and shut down and could not get airborne in time.
After running a sufficient
distance, Eddie stopped and advised all of the excited officers that the suspect
had gotten away. The canines arrived minutes later, but were unable to pick up
the prowler’s scent (big surprise). After a short but fruitless search everything was called
off and everyone went back to being bored to death.
Eddie later found out that the
statue was a reproduction of the famous King David statue by the sculptor Michelangelo. At least he now knew why he
was naked, but he never found out why King David had only one arm or why he was
wearing a knit cap.
Eddie swore to himself that he would take this secret to
the grave and he probably would have except he had one too many margaritas
at a friends house one night.
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