The theme of my 2014 A-to-Z Blog Challenge is BLUES, PUPUS, and REVIEWS.
Tuesday & Friday - BLUES: Art, Movies, Music,
& Police
1920, Shots Fired, Officer Down is the title of
a book. It is also a radio transmission made in 1994 by that book’s author. At
the time, he was a motorcycle police officer with the Honolulu Police
Department. The officer had made a stop for a possible expired license plate.
The driver was cooperative but admitted he didn’t have his driver’s license
with him.
One
thing led to another.
I’ve
worked on the police end and the dispatch side of a traffic stop. No stop is
handled as routine any more than a domestic call is ever classified as routine.
Sometimes people contest a stop and take the case to court. That’s how the
court system works.
In
the case of the traffic stop in 1994, as revealed by the author in the first
line of the book synopsis, the driver started firing his AK-47 semi-automatic
rifle. That led to the officer’s “Shots Fired” transmission to Dispatch. The
entire story of events leading up to the traffic stop, the drama that played
out, and the aftermath are spellbinding reading.
But
what ultimately captured my attention and brought home the reality of the
situation was one particular fact. The police officer did nothing other than
what he was trained to do in the line of duty. Because he followed procedure,
the stop should have ended with a traffic ticket, proof that any time an officer walks the blue
line, it can lead to a radio transmission of “Shots Fired.”
You
can read more about the book and its author at Amazon.com
Sounds like a very intriguing read. It's amazing the level of danger officers face every single day.
ReplyDelete