In 1982, I was an Albuquerque Police Department (APD) recruit working with a training officer (TO).  One day, we were dispatched to a hit-and-run crash.  The victim had a description of the vehicle, a very distinctive description of the driver, and a license plate number.  We ran the plate through the state Motor Vehicle Division, and it came back to the same make and model described by the victim, belonging to a Jimmie Joe L____.

We went to the address from the registration and found the vehicle in the driveway.  It exactly matched the victim’s description and had damage consistent with the crash.  The house, or I should say the property, was very strange.  There was an eight-foot wooden fence around the entire border except the driveway.  We walked past the vehicle and knocked on the gate, receiving no answer.  As we were walking back down the drive, one of us looked into the vehicle and saw a revolver lying in plain sight on the front seat.

Both front windows were open, so one of us simply reached in and picked up the weapon.  The gun was loaded, but the most distinctive thing about it was a strong chemical smell emanating from it.  Neither I nor my TO recognized the smell at the time.  We took the gun.

When we got back to the station, my TO did a record check on Jimmie Joe L____.  It turned out that Mr. Jimmie was a distinctive looking person who had an extensive criminal record and was an apparent member of a motorcycle gang.  He had me put the revolver into evidence as a “found item.”  When I asked about the legality of what we did, he pointed out that it was an unsecured deadly weapon sitting in an open vehicle in a driveway easily accessible from the street.  We were doing the owner a favor to keep his gun from being stolen and possibly used in a crime.  And besides, he said, Jimmie Joe L____ is never going to report his revolver missing.  He was right about that.

I wrote a report on the crash and forwarded it to the Hit and Run unit.  I never heard anything further about it.

Several months later, I was a rookie APD officer working nights in the same general area.  Another officer and I were dispatched to a domestic disturbance.  As soon as I walked in the door, something struck me as being familiar even though I had never been there before.  The complainant was a woman who reported that her husband had beat her up and left.  She also told us that he had a drug lab in the shed in the back yard.

My partner and I went into the back yard and were immediately struck by a nauseatingly strong chemical smell. When we opened the door to the shed, the stench was overwhelming.  We looked in and saw tubing, weird chemistry glassware, and a large jar filled with yellow liquid.  We immediately backed off and called for the narcotics unit.  Throughout this, I had a feeling of déjà vu that I couldn’t place.

Once the detectives got there, the other officer and I were just bystanders.  They interviewed the wife, who told them that her husband had been manufacturing drugs for a guy named “J” who lived a few streets over in a house surrounded by a tall security fence.  Her description of “J” was very distinctive.  At that point, one and one and one and one added up to four for me.  (My police math skills were not that good back then.)  The initial “J,” the distinctive physical description, the house with the fence, and, especially, the smell all came together.  “That’s Jimmie Joe L____,” I exclaimed.

I told the detectives about the hit and run when I was with my TO:  The vehicle that led to the house with the fence and the gun with the smell.  The detectives were skeptical at first but warmed up to my story when I told them about his ties to outlaw motorcyclists.

One problem was the detectives had no idea what we had stumbled on.  Our wife beater had taken all the product with him, leaving only the chemicals and lab equipment.  The solution was to put it all into evidence for later analysis.  “Jose, you’ve got a big trunk.”  So the entire stinking lab was loaded into my ’78 Plymouth Fury.  Doing 70 on the freeway with the windows open made the smell somewhat bearable.  When we got to police headquarters, we hauled the entire mess up to evidence and put it in the overnight lockers. At that time, the evidence department was on the third floor and the dispatchers were all in the basement.  A couple of hours later, the dispatchers and the rest of the building had to be evacuated due to the smell.

Jimmie Joe L____ eventually got arrested and sent to the pen for drug distribution.  I never met him in person.  My police car smelled like cat piss until I wrecked it a couple of years later.  I did become very adept at sniffing out a certain illegal substance in vehicles and on persons.  From then on labs seized in similar circumstances required the assistance of a fully suited-out Fire Department HAZMAT team.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I became the first APD officer to seize a methamphetamine lab.

After I retired, I told this story to an acquaintance who was a reporter for the UT Football News.  His response?  “That’s boring.  There’s more excitement in a single episode of Breaking Bad than that entire story.”  Which is true.  Breaking Bad is supposed to be exciting.  It’s fiction.  My reply was “Real life doesn’t have scriptwriters.”

Real life also doesn’t have reshoots, alternate takes, director’s cuts.  Real life happens once.  Real people are not characters, they don’t have arcs, and they don’t rehearse their lines.  Real life doesn’t have a plot; there is no narrative.  Yes, real life is mostly pretty boring.

Fiction is just a simulacrum of real life, and it always gets something wrong.  Breaking Bad‘s premise was off from the start.  Meth is like Night Train^®; its consumers are not particularly concerned about quality.  Breaking Bad takes place about the time I retired from the Albuquerque Police Department.  By then meth labs didn’t need a bunch of weird chemistry glassware in the basement of a laundry service, an RV, or even a backyard shed.  All you needed was a couple of Big Gulp^® cups connected by plastic tubes to refine the Sudafed^® you stole from a drug store.    

I was a street cop for twenty years in the city where Breaking Bad was set.  After the first few episodes, my wife and kids wouldn’t let me watch it with them.  “That’s nowhere near there; it would have taken a lot longer.”  “Moving an ATM is not that easy.” “All by himself?  No backup?  And he didn’t call the hospital?”  “Why didn’t the police get called?”  Based on my police experience, I had a nitpick or two for every episode.

Except for the finale, where my medical training came in.  “That’s not a fatal wound,” I said.