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Effective policing often involves being in the right place at the right time. I found myself at that place one night when a vehicle pursuit began on the interstate. A state trooper attempted to conduct a traffic stop, but the driver refused to pull over. What began as a small chase in another county turned…
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I received an interesting telephone call at the office one day. A mom I knew asked me about a certain neighborhood. Her son had just bought a house there, and she wanted to know if it was a safe area. I paused a moment and stared at the phone. “Safe? Compared to what?” I asked.…
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As a young deputy sheriff, I often found it difficult to stay out of my own way. It amazed me as much as anyone that they issued a badge and gun to my immature self. It’s only by the grace of God that I survived those years. One day, Dispatch called me off patrol to…
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“The Judge is standing at the door!” (James 5:9) When I was a patrol sergeant, another agency called me to the scene of a barricaded suspect in their jurisdiction. A patrol officer tried to stop a vehicle occupied by a wanted suspect. Instead of stopping, the guy drove home, got out of the car, and…
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I’ve flown commercial airlines many times. On a few occasions, I flew with missionary bush pilots. Bush pilots take flying to another level. These guys fly in the remotest regions of the world and land on the crudest airstrips. I once flew with a bush pilot in a single-engine Cessna in rural Africa. The flight…
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I studied Criminal Justice in college, partly because it required no math. The arithmetic part of my brain doesn’t function as I would like, so I avoid it. Criminal Justice, therefore, sounded like the perfect major. In almost four decades of police work, only a few circumstances required that I do math. Those events, however,…
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In law enforcement, vehicle maintenance is a high priority. We drive patrol cars hundreds of miles per week, so the oil must be changed on time and regularly. Failure to do so is frowned upon, to say the least. We were required to get the oil changed every 3000 miles. That meant we kept a…
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In 1986, my naive eyes were opened by a new job as a jail guard. The jail baptized me into the world as it was, not the world I believed I lived in. For the first time, I met members of the human race who were damaged beyond repair. I had no idea humanity was…
