In this episode I fly solo recalling one of the more disturbing accident scenes I responded to. Things also get a little political as I discuss Beto O’Rourke’s thoughts on police.
this is things police see first anaccounts with your oast Steve gold heyguys it’s Steve welcome to the podcastthank you for joining me I have to behonest with you I ate I ate like a latelate lunchit was biscuits and gravy something I’veonly indulged in a couple times in mylife but it was like a tranq dart to myjugular I just have not been able to getgoing all day so it’s actually prettylate Sunday I wasn’t able to getsomebody to interview I knew I had to domy podcast on my own I’ve just beentrying to drag my ass off the couch toget this time because I really amfeeling slow also Southern CaliforniaI’m about to complain about SouthernCalifornia and I understand a lot of youare gonna say I should go F myselfbecause it’s beautiful herebut it’s been real hot and it’s stillhot I mean it’s it’s the end ofSeptember and it’s still really hot hereand I guess that’s pretty normal but mybuddies here do tell me that it’s beenone of the hotter summers they’ve everhad and it just makes it it’s like for aginger for Virginia man and his palefamily it makes it difficult to enjoythe day in the middle of the day likethere’s stuff going on car shows andthings like that but it’s um you knowit’s like ninety or a hundred it’s justkind of miserable be outside so I cannotwait until this weather at CaliforniaSouthern Cal feel the fall through thewinter and spring is amazing you justhave to put up with a little bit of heatbut yeah it’s just been this heats beenhard to get overso anyways in this episode I’m gonnatell you about the most stressful callone of most rustle calls I went on as apolice officer and I’m going to complainjust a little bit about politics I’m nota huge political guy the last year ortwo I’ve been trying to learn more andeducate myself more about politicsmostly because it’s aggravating to seehow the media portrays the police andthat kind of brings you down a rabbithole of just looking into politics whichare kind of gross and the thing that’sreally been bothering meis this guy bait Oh O’Rourke from Texashe’s trying to unseat Ted Cruz and youknow Ted Cruz is pretty unlikable so hehas a good shot at it I don’t reallyeven know much about Ted Cruz I I’massuming I’m pretty conservative guy I’mRichard independent but I’m realconservative and I’m guessing I probablyaligned in most most most things withTed Cruz but he is pretty unlikable Iremember last time using the spotlighthe was just kind of you know kind ofhard to like but this guy bado is ayoung guy he’s full of energy kind ofreminds me of Obama a little bit youknow energy wise and youthfulness wise Iwas never a big fan of Obama either butthis guy right out of the shoot is justcrapping all over police and it’s it’sso sad to see that to me to see I’m sohopeful that there’ll be like ageneration of younger politicians thatwill be like a different style they’llbe like more likeable more honest theywon’t be playing politics as usual youknow but that’s this guy right off thebat is he that’s exactly what he’s doinghe says trashing please it’s almostunbelievable to me here let me just readyou what he just told Prairie View AUniversity this is a statement that hesaid he said talking about criminaljustice reform let’s talk about wherethis problem started when contractorsneeded labor they would talk to locallaw enforcement and would arrestafrican-americans for idling for pettycrimes frivolous offenses thosecontractors would describe the number ofbodies that they needed in lawenforcement would provide those bodiesand when they look at their manes andgraveyards they see evidence of musclesliterally torn from the bone peoplebeing worked to death in these convictchain gangs people became comics slowlyby the color of their skin in a systemthat was radically unjust following whatwe thought was the end of the injusticeat the end of the civil war so uglytimes no question there but then hecontinues that injustice to many morehere than I know firsthand continues topersist todaysystem of suspending somebody’s solelybased on the color of his skin searchingfor that person’s really basically closeskin and stopping that person shootingthat person based on solely in the colorof skin throwing a book at that personsolely based on the color of skin he’sand then he calls law enforcement thenew Jim Crow this is so over-the-top andso just wrong it’s false falseinformation and he’s saying this toyoung developing minds college kidscampuses nowadays are already so farleft and they have such a wrong ideaabout law enforcement what’s reallygoing on and this guy’s starting likethis this is how he’s starting talkingto these kids and then he he’s sayingit’s the same it’s basically this isstill what’s happening essentially Iit’s disgusting I hate it I reallyreally dislike this guy and then on theDallas shooting he commented and thefirst thing he does in the town hallmeeting talking about the the Dallasit’s a female officer that went into thewrong apartment and shot a black guy inhis own apartment which is horrific andterrible obviously he immediately bringsrace into it he’s he’s like alluding tothe guy being black having something todo with it which again is kind of grossit’s it’s not helping bringing thatstarting that way starting off in thatfoot with these situations is nothelpful at all it’s it’s it’s only gonnacreate a bigger divide between policeand the black community another quote hesaid was black man unarmed blackteenagers unarmed and black childrenunarmed are being killed at afrightening level right now includingmembers of law enforcementaccountability and without injusticewithout justice also not true like 95percent and that’s not true yes blackmen are being shot at a high rate whichis terrible but there is there’sstatistical reasons and situationalreasons why that is happening if youbring that stuff up you’re racist I’vetried to bring it up before I foolishlybrought it up on Facebook once andyou’re just racist right away I mean I’mfriends with some black officers andchatted with them about it and theygreen a black neighborhoodhigher crime they grew up in the innercity they get higher crime area they’lltell me you know growing up theyrecognize the problem in their communityand they need programs to help fix thatthey’ve seen black men that they werefriends with be stopped over and overand over again by police when they’vedone nothing wrong so how is that blackperson supposed to grow up respectingthe police how’s that person supposed togrow up and not have a problem with thepolice that’s a huge issue that’s aproblem that’s something that needs tobe worked on can’t any of these youngsuper smart use that term you looselypoliticians come up with a better planthan just blaming the police outrightjust shooting people just becausethey’re black do they think that’sreally what’s happening there’s a lot ofproblems in those communities therereally is and doesn’t have to do thecolor of their skin it has to do withthe place they have in society there’sbroken families single moms there’s kidsraising kids people aren’t graduatinghigh school poverty there’s gangsthought of these young kids are lookingfor something to fit into so they’rejoining gangs tons of issues someoneneeds to be really smart and andcampaign on fixing that that would besomething everybody could get behind butjust saying that police are our desuiting black people because they’reblack is not helpful and like I saidit’s not gonna help solve any of theseissues then the other hilarious thingkind of that happened when I wasresearching o’rourke a little bit is ifyou google crews like Google and allthese companies are very far left nowand you can find the information youwant but they’re initially it will giveyou lefty stuff right away that’s kindof what it pulls up and it was just kindof gross you if you try to Google TedCruz a person came up was that he waslike the first three or four headlinesyou can do it yourself were Ted Cruzdoesn’t think that Dallas officer was atfault for shooting that manthis apartment something like that kindof like saying Ted Cruz was blindlydefending the officer and saying therewas no fault which isn’t and then youread the article and it says no what hewas saying was let’s not rush tojudgment on these stories until we getmore information that’s what he wassaying but the headlinesAldus scream Ted Cruz super racistssomehow this guy in his own apartmenthad it coming in Ted Cruz’s opinionthat’s just and that’s another thingthat just it’s just so broken right nowI don’t know how that’s gonna get fixedbut I don’t know that that’s beenfrustrating me I just wanted to put itout there see what you guys think allright let’s get down to my story nowthis call I went on was easily probablythe most disturbing call I would justoverall as a scenario unraveled moststressful that I responded to now thenight this happened this involves afatal crash with a with a young personthe night it happened it was April I’mso still pretty chilly on Cape Cod I wasalready on a call for someone forbreaking and entering so someone kickedin the door stolen a bunch of stuff Iwas there with the county in the smallerdepartments in Massachusetts you caneither take your own photographs andfingerprints or you rely on the countyand we used to have the county come outand do finger prints and photographs soI’m there with a crime scene guy fromthe Sheriff’s Departmentso we’re chatting processing the sceneand over the radio comes David unitsthat’s what they called us NBC whichmeans motor vehicle crash at route 6 andpoints and then the dispatcher comes onright after saying that says it lookslike it’s going to be a fatal so thefact that the fact that that call camein and she knew right away that I wasgoing to be a fatal accident that’s badlike so I already know okay this isgonna be like a gnarly crash so the areacame in at then I’m thinking alrightit’s a four lane undivided highway thatgoes through the center of townHoyts restaurant not a restaurant it’slike um it’s like asnack stand slash mini-golf thingstarted like in the 50s and just kind ofhung on it’s been their seasonal onlyopening the summers there’s a littlemini golf course there’s like an icecream place and then there’s a littlegame barn running parallel to thehighway and it drops to get in there yougo off the four-lane headed north andthere’s a little off ramp that goes downjust to the parking lot and it dropsdown about ten or fifteen feet so it’skind of been a little sunken hollow downthere so I’m trying to in my mind as Irace there I’m thinking how did thiscrash like what could have happened likeeasy explanation they hit a pole gotejected maybe they rolled over and gotejected and then I think the dispatchalso said it was on one car involved sosomehow this person crashed so bad bythemselves that they that they were deadand also it’s probably about 1 a.m. nowso it’s about the time the bars closedas they pull up on the scene I can lookdown into the hollow or poises andthere’s a the car it’s a convertibleMiata and I can see down there thatthere’s a female operator still in thecar it’s parked perfectly in the parkingspot on the side of points right betweenthe lines lights are still on and I canhear the radio blaring from the highwaybefore I even get down there My partneris already down there my buddy’s alreadydown there and he’s talking with twopeople a husband and wife middle-agedcouple now when I when I pull down therethe the wife he’s talking to iscompletely green just like just ashengreen kind of just she looks very sickher husband’s kind of propping her upand my partner’s kind of just taking astatement from them I think they hadjust seen the crash and they pulled overso I go over to my buddy and I go whathappened what’s going on and now I lookup and I hadn’t seen it before and I cansee the guardrail is flattened by theentrance of points and this car is agood 30 or 40 feet from where itleft the road so this Miata had left theroad started to spiral now the thepassengers strapped in with her seatbeltso it started a spiral and as itspiraled and dropped down into thedepression the passengers head it’s awhite female but I think twenty fourtwenty five years old just like likenicked the tar and stayed seated in thein the car and the car came to restperfectly in a parking spot so wefigured all this out later so I said Isent my partner like I’m gonna go take alook I said it’s obviously I can tell bythe way he’s acting and not attending toher that just he said yeah she’s she’sdone so I go over therethe music’s blaring and this is a thingthat happens to me a little bit in inscenarios where I’m it’s a little bit ofhigh stress I mean his pump and get inthere I kind of don’t for some reason Idon’t remember this song I thought Iwould never forget the song I know itwas a Shania Twain song and my buddywill remember if I asked him that songsblaring I remember someone across thestreet on the highway and the other sidealways had a real smelly wood stovegoing so that that odor is permeatingthe air like that odor every time Ismell it now it kind of brings me backthat night cuz that that smoke was kindof dipping down onto the scene the wholetime now when I walk over the femaledriver is her back is arched over theseat although her seatbelts kind ofstill around by her waist kind ofholding her in and she her back is comearched over the seat kind of like uh Igo reversed like a crab was a crab walkyeah like a crab walk over the back andI’ll never forget the steam was stillcoming out of her mouth was like itlooked like I remember thinking itlooked like her her soul leaving herbody has just floated floated up I meanthey had this had just happened and thatwas floating up and then on her head onthe near the top of her head her skullhad been knocked off and there was justa big just a big hole in her head it wasjustsurreal to see you know Wow because thescene itself she’s parked in a spotright and right parallel with Boyd’s thecar had rolled not the top of her headoff and she’s seated perfectly there’sno blood anywherethere’s no blood inside the car there’snot a drop of blood on her she’s wearinga miniskirt and like a halter top orsomething very very revealing andthere’s just no blood anywhere justanywhere and we’re looking around andit’s dark still and at this point oursupervisors showing up sergeant on thescene actually a good buddy of mineanother good buddy of mine who Iinterviewed on this John Pierpont heshows up he’s a sergeant that night andso he’s checking them out from where thecar left he’s got the flashlight he’swalking towards us and he’s finding allkinds of stuff on the way up to the carand we’re looking around thereflashlights and we can see aboutprobably 10 or 12 feet up the white trimon this red building the white trimabout 10 or 12 feet up by the roof linehas blood spatter on it so it looks likewhen she was spiraling from the highwaydown the depression in her head nickedthe guitar when it came back around itlooks like it threw all the blood andeverything that was in her head up ontothe trims it was all sprayed way way upthere which was bizarre and then thehood of the car was just brain matter itwas like it wasn’t really bloody it wasjust it looked almost like vomit likelike vomit you’d see like in a jokestore it’s all over kind of the hood ofthe car it was just a really reallydisturbing and then sergeant walkedtowards and he goes I got more stuffover here and eventually the medicalexaminer arrived on scene the crimescene guy that was with me startedphotographing everything he was alreadyin town so we just started working thecase and found about half a hemisphereof her brain about 30 feet self fromwhere theover by where the sergeant had pulled inI’m just sitting there on the tar just ahuge piece almost a whole hemisphere ofa brain didn’t even look like he couldcome out of the hole that was in herhead but it did so there’s brain andskull and all that stuff everywhere andit’s it’s just and it’s sad you knowit’s this is a young young person and Ididn’t know it at the time but I haddealt with her before with alcoholrelated issues she had definitely I meanyoung people party believe me I know Ipartied but she definitely had a problemwith alcohol so it all made sense lateryeah the sergeant spots up part of herbrain and the medical examiner comes andhe is I’ll never forget this he wascollecting they collect as much of thebody as they can to put into the to takewith them so he’s looking for somethingflat to use to remove the rest of theher body you know but her the brains andskull and hair and things that were leftall over the tar and he’s just using herCDs heads had spread everywhere and theywere sparkling all over the nightparking lot and he just grabbed one ofher CDs and was using it to scrape upher her brains and whatever else hecould find and put it into a bag youknow and I just remember in that momentthinking if this girl had if she somehowcould have got a premonition that if shejust didn’t drive her car if she justgot in a ride home or hadn’t done thisand someone wouldn’t be using like herCD collection to pick her brains up offthe tar like it just it was really it’sreally disturbing so the scene kind ofquiets down as it does you kind ofadjust to the gore and what’s happeningit’s not so upsetting after in there awhile your journal and starts to comedown and just a natural thing cops gothrough you just kind of just kind ofgetting back to back to you know normalas normal as it can be being there andthen you know josh is afirst on seeing my pal so he isprocessing the scene he’s taking theaccident talking to people and all thatand the sergeant goes hey we needsomeone to go to Truro to donotification to her mother and so I’mlike oh okay yeah I’ll do it and I’vedone notifications before and they’rethey’re awful no one no one likes doingthem obviously so and then the otherthing is somehow we had information thatshe also the moms at home and also hasher like three or four year old son withher so now I’m like super bummed out allover again I’m like oh my gosh I gottago tell this poor woman your daughterdied and also she’s gonna have thisthree or four year old that she’s gonnahave to you know tell doesn’t have a momanymore so this weighs heavy on you youknow I get the info I get the address Ihead up that way and I meet so gratefulto this day that there’s a churroofficer named Scott I won’t say his lastname but he was there and he met me andhe came in you know I wouldn’t make youdo this by herself so what’s goingtogether and I just really cool them sowe went in together we told the mom andyou know when you tell someone thattheir child has died it doesn’t peoplego into shock almost right away mostpeople you know some people collapse inwail and scream and and react right awaybut a lot of people don’t a lot ofpeople just kind of plunk down in a seatand just kind of like whoa what likethere it’s like it’s too much so she waskind of one of those people and she’slike I got a call I better call my bossno no I can’t be in tomorrowI couldn’t let my boss know so he knowsI’m not coming in like that was herthing and this isn’t the first time I’veseen that either like people get worriedaboutthey’re gonna have to know and I thinkit’s something to fixate on in in thistraumatic moment so we sit with therefor about 45 minutes we help or leave amessage for a boss and and all that andof course you know there it was hermother’s car her mom had the littleconvertible Miata the girl had like asmall SUV that of course mom’s worriedthat well maybe if I hadn’t let her takemy car she could have taken her own carand she would live through it andobviously she’s putting herself throughthe wringer which which is pretty commonand we try to console her that way butyeah that that call was was realdisturbing to meI think cuz of how old she was and laterwe went and interviewed and talked tothe place where she was partying and sowhen some witnesses were like yeah youknow it was like dance night or whateverand she was you know drinking heavilymaybe she was sneaking drinks I don’tknow but um she definitely had a she hada problem with alcohol and was she wasin our neck of the woods I think stayingwith her mom trying to figure it out orthat was kind of a jist the story that Igot but uh man that that stuck with mefor for a while that’s like that I wasthink I mentioned before when I wheneverI dealt with something traumatic likethat I lost a life whatever I alwaysit’s always the first thing I thinkabout the next morning and I rememberthey had a debriefing for it and acounseling session and all this stuffand like everybody was gonna go and thenI had a extra work I had like a detailand I didn’t want to cancel it I wantedthe money I didn’t want to go thedebriefing so I skipped the debriefingand just really dumb like if I can sayanything to you guys out there who werejust starting out and if you get offeredafter a traumatic event and likeeverybody I didn’t think I needed to dothat not a big deal I’m fine I have adetail I don’t want to give the money upthey’re really helpful to sit down in acalm scenario with everybody whowitnessed it everybody who saw what yousaw get some confirmation and there’sprofessional counsellors there who cankind of talk everybody through it andtell you what you might be going throughso I shouldn’t skip that I was there wasalso a plane wreck I went to when I wasa natural resource officer that I alsoskipped the debriefing I kind of historyof doing that maybe just trying to avoidliving through it again or I didn’t wantto talk about it but that’s dumb youshould you should definitely always goto those things and I think people onthe job longer and wiser than me knewthat but you know you can’t force peopleto go so yeah that was one of the mostupsetting calls I went to well on thejob that that highway where I worked thefour-lane under by the highwayunfortunately claims a lot of lives it’sum it’s kind of a dangerous road it’sone of those roads or it’s a it’s it’s abig wide Road and there’s businesses andresidences right off of it so they’velowered the speed limit over the yearsdown to 40 trying to keep people fromcrashing and having fatalities but it’sbeen effective but it still happens apretty fair amount so that’s the podcastfor this week guys just story from mypast and my thoughts on that dingus badoO’Rourke so I don’t write me messagetell me what you think it’s thingsplease see at gmail.com if you wannawant a question answered on air let meknow I can do that or if you have youhave someone that would be a good guessor if you would be a good guest let meknow also and if you haven’t pleasesubscribe on iTunes click rate andreview that’s a big help right now theshow is is doing well it is I think JuneJuly August so I’ll be going on likejust about three and a half monthsbecause I think was mid June I don’tremember three and a half four monthsand there’s a there’s over 20,000listens which is good and it keepsgetting more so I appreciate you guyslistening and I thank you for that and Ihope you have a good week
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
