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Arrested Landing: A Broken Glass Story
And on the dance floor broken glass
And bloody faces slowly pass
The numbered seats in empty rows
It all belongs to me you know-Lyrics from The Who
I’ve met many individuals on the dance floor of policing. Some of them at their worst and some of them at their best. Sometimes their dance ended as a guest of the county, and sometimes it didn’t. I’ve seen things on the dance floor that I wish I could forget and some that bring a smile.
Policing requires a well-developed sense of curiosity, a desire to right the universe when you can, and the desire to ponder the wonder of the things that you have seen.
I have seen videos of aircraft landing on aircraft carriers and being “trapped” on the flight deck. One night I saw a vehicle being “trapped” on the street.
A “trap” is often-used slang for an arrested landing. An aircraft which lands beyond the arresting cables is said to have ” boltered.” Occasionally, the tailhook bounces over one or more of the wires, resulting in a “hook skip bolter.”
My partner and I came across a driver approaching freeway speeds in a 35 zone. We made a U-turn, and turned on the red and blue lights. He increased his speed. When I took a quick look at the speedometer, the needle was on 75 MPH. You hope that pedestrians and other drivers can hear the siren. In an urban area, the sound of the siren bounces off buildings and unless there is a clear line of sight, it can be confusing at intersections for drivers and pedestrians.
Our frequent flyer turned into a large parking lot, but he didn’t see the two bollards and the chain attached to them. The chain wrapped around both front wheels of his vehicle. Both bollards were pulled out of ground. The chain didn’t break free of the bollards, so they bounced off the pavement and smashed into the front end of his vehicle.
The chase ended with an arrested stop, not the hook skip bolter that he needed. We charged him with reckless driving, attempt to elude, reckless endangerment, and criminal mischief for the damage to the parking lot.
I thought of thanking him for adding to my list of wonders. I decided against that, but he joins a long list of individuals that I cannot thank enough for making my life interesting.
Published in Policing
Movie-worthy.
Ah, poetic justice!
You have obviously met far more people than most whose patron saint must be Homer Simpson.
As the bollards were smashing the front end of his vehicle, his prayer for intercession may well have been “Doh!”
After an apparently impressive dance floor performance:
Re-creating that without getting a stunt man killed is the challenge.
Wow! You are an adrenaline junky?