One Department

by Thomas A. Young

Elio Carrion was one of the good guys, and he’d just been gunned down by one of his own.

  * * *

  The rifle cracked, and it hit its mark. Or it came pretty close, anyhow. “About three inches high and to the left,” Vincent told Randy as he looked through the spotting scope. It was a Saturday, six days after they’d watched the video of the Elio Carrion shooting together at Bourbon Street. And it was fricking cold out again.

  They were at the rifle range up north a little ways in the town of Granite Falls. Randy would have preferred to be shooting at one of his mountain road shooting pits, but it was February and they were all snowed in. But the range they were at wasn’t too much of a hassle, as long you went on a day when it wasn’t crowded, which it happened to be on this day. Or as long as you didn’t mind stopping and clearing your rifle every time you were in the middle of shooting a group and someone flipped the red lights on so they could walk out and check their target, which on days when it was crowded was often. And so long as you didn’t mind being limited to one hundred yards, which Randy did. It took at least three hundred yards of distance to get him excited. But other than that…

  “Hurry up, finish your group ‘fore someone hits that light again,” Vincent bristled at him. Randy fired off the last three shots of his five-shot group, a little faster than he’d have liked to, but Vincent had made the right call. The light came on just as the last shot went out. “Let’s go mark our targets while we got the chance.” They started the hike down the range to mark their hits.

  “I saw some more news on that Elio Carrion case,” Randy said. “You know the guy who took that video?”

  “Yep,” Vincent replied.

  “He showed the cops that video right afterward and gave it to them. But he made a copy and it’s a damn good thing, because they were stalking him hard after that to try and seize any copies he might have. They actually tried to make that thing disappear.”

  “Not surprised. Code of silence on a slightly higher level, is all it is.” They arrived at the targets, and used a pen to circle their hits. There were two targets posted side-by-side, one for each of them. Both their groups were a little high and to the left of the bullseyes. Randy’s group was about two inches, Vincent’s was a half-inch smaller. “Lookey there,” he said with a smile.

  “You made me shoot faster is the only reason,” Randy replied. They started the walk back to the shooting bench. “Think what it must have been like in his shoes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he had this cop standing over him who intended to shoot him. No matter whether he attacked, complied, or whatever else he chose, the cop meant to shoot him no matter what. Even if he’d known that in advance, what could he do?”

  “Lyin’ on the ground unarmed? Nothin’, that’s what. If he dies and there’s no video, it’s the cop’s word against nobody’s word.” They walked on a little further.

  “Let’s assume you have a right to protect yourself, even in a case like that,” Randy said. “What would it take?”

  “Well first off, don’t give them an excuse to disarm you.”

  “The law on Terry stops says they can frisk and disarm you for any stop. Once he’s done that, if he means to shoot you anyways, then it’s over.” They were approaching the line of shooting benches, as everyone else down the line waited for them to get back. Most everyone else was only shooting out to fifty yards max, and didn’t have as far to walk.

  “Seems like plenty of people manage to shoot cops in traffic stops, so how do they do it then?”

  Randy thought about it for a moment. “The people who pull that off usually get out of their cars shooting before the cop has a chance to get ready. Or they pull out a hidden gun and shoot first. Someone like you or me or Elio Carrion isn’t going to attack someone like that, we would only react to an attack that’s already started, and that puts us at a big disadvantage.” They arrived back at the benches, and whoever had flipped the red lights on turned them back off. Down the line, the shooting resumed. “So think about that situation. You’re confronted by a cop who’s out of control, and you think he means to attack you. Maybe just with a flashlight or a Taser, but then again maybe he means to shoot you. Realistically, what are your options?”

  “Realistically? To survive you’d have to go preemptive, deal with him before he’s got the drop on you.”

  “Deal with him how?”

  “Well, you could draw your gun, tell him this detention is over and he better leave before you arrest him, by whatever force is necessary. Or you could take him down, with or without a weapon and disarm him.” Randy had the sense that Vincent had given this some thought already.

  “How do you see that working out?” Randy asked.

  “Not so good,” Vincent replied. “Soon as you make one move along those lines, they can kill you and get away with it. You’d have to plan on coming out on top the first time, getting away from the scene before his buddies show up and destroy your evidence, and having solid proof of what happened. I mean really solid too, because even if they don’t kill you, they’ll fuck you over however they have to. That’s what happens to people who challenge ‘authorita’.” Randy spent a moment dwelling on that, then Vincent pointed at his M1A. “So we gonna yak all day or shoot this thing again?”

  “Sure, you go first,” Randy said. Vince sat down, put the clip back in.

  “This is a good distance gun, but what if you need it up close? Like if you got ambushed?” Vincent asked.

  “It’s got a see-thru mount,” Randy replied. The rifle had a scope mount that sat a little high so you could just see through the regular iron sights underneath. But the view was somewhat obscured by the mount.

  “That’s better than nothin’, but you ever tried to get a bead on something fast with that setup?”

  “Yeah, and it doesn’t work so good. But it’s unfortunately all I’ve got.”

  Vincent smiled. “I’ve got something at home to show you. It’s a set of scope rings with sights mounted on the top. Not much good past fifty yards, but for right up close it’s just what the doctor ordered.” Vincent dialed the scope down a few clicks, then a few to the right. Then he took out a screwdriver to adjust the second reticle of the dual-reticle system.

  “What kind of mix-ups have you had with cops?” Randy inquired.

  “Worst of them all. Over by Spokane, I used to be one.”

  “You? I don’t believe it.” Randy shook his head. “How’d that work out?”

  “Didn’t make it the first year.”

  “Why not?”

  Vincent put his screwdriver down, chambered a round in the rifle. There was a moment of quiet as people down the line paused in their shooting. He looked out over the top of the scope, down the distance of the range, as memories came back to haunt him. Then he answered Randy’s question. “I won’t do the things they expect a man to do.”

  * * *

  It just so happened that Spokane was about to make the news again. While Elio Carrion’s case had been a pretty egregious one, the police in that area were apparently not to be outdone.

  It was March 18th of 2006, less that two months after that previous incident, when two young women pulled up to a drive-through ATM in Spokane. As the girl in the drivers seat was withdrawing money, they noticed a strange man approach where they were and then stop some distance away. He had very long blond hair and wore something of a goofy expression. His name was Otto Zehm, and he was a developmentally disabled 37-year-old man who worked as a janitor, though he was unemployed at that moment. He made them nervous, so the girl who was driving took her ATM card back and they pulled away from the machine. From another spot nearby, they watched as the man walked up to the ATM and began pushing buttons. After a short time of doing that, he walked away and headed down the street.

  The girls suspected that he might have withdrawn money on their account, so they began following him in their car while they called 911. And as young women are prone to do, they embellish
ed their story of what happened. Substantially. They told the dispatcher that he had tried to get in their car, which was proven untrue when the bank surveillance video was released, and showed that he had never approached the ATM until they had pulled away. They also told police that he had their money, and their ATM card, both also untrue. But everything they said was dutifully relayed to officers on patrol.

  As this was happening, Otto walked into a Zip Trip convenience store as he did frequently, to buy a soda pop and a candy bar. The story that police would tell after the incident was that Officer Karl Thompson contacted Zehm inside the store. Zehm was holding a two-liter soda bottle that Thompson was afraid was going to be used as a weapon. Zehm refused repeated commands to put the bottle down, then became combative and lunged at Office Thompson, who was then forced to strike him with a baton to subdue him. The official version was backed by police officials and the county prosecutor, who viewed the security camera videos and then (unsurprisingly) ordered it sealed due to the “ongoing investigation.”

  As it happened with the Elio Carrion case however, video would prove to be Officer Thompson’s undoing, as well as that of the officials who had backed his story and then concealed evidence. The video record in this case was finally extracted from officials under threat of lawsuit, and what it showed was Otto Zehm being charged from behind, and then clubbed almost immediately after turning around. Far from “lunging,” he had put his hands up and was backing away. But the soft plastic pop bottle “could” have been a threat, and that served as sufficient justification to club him to the ground anyways. Like Elio Carrion, Otto apparently didn’t understand that when a cop has it in his head that you’ve got it coming, surrender is of limited usefulness.

  Six other officers arrived, and aside from being beaten, Otto was also tazed several times. He was also cuffed, hogtied, and left lying on his stomach, which is typically not done because of the difficulty caused with breathing in that position. Officers also claimed he was spitting as he struggled, so they asked paramedics for a non-rebreather oxygen mask to cover his mouth. Non-rebreather masks are made for use with an oxygen hose attached. With no hose, there is only a dime-sized hole for air to get through. Typically that’s enough for a person who is breathing comfortably, but for a person who has been beaten, tazed, hogtied, and left on his stomach, it might just be one cause of oxygen deprivation too many.

  Three minutes after police put the mask over Otto’s face, they noticed he had stopped breathing. Paramedics attempted resuscitation all the way to the hospital, where he was declared brain-dead. Two days later the rest of him died. And other than to startle a couple of young females, he had done absolutely nothing wrong.

  Randy and Vincent watched this story unfold with a sickening sense of deja vu. It was especially hard for Vincent, having worked there himself. He knew first hand that where rogue police agencies were concerned, those in and around Spokane were some of the worst of the worst.

  Chapter 4

  Elena

  April, 2006

  Elena drove. She drove for her life, for her freedom, for everything she thought she had come here for, and which had turned out to be a lie, but above all she drove to get away from the monsters. Monsters that hurt her, enslaved her, and subjected her to indignities that no human being on Earth should be made to endure. Things that would eat holes in her for a very long time, ugly black holes. She drove fast, but carefully, because there was no one in the world who would help her, but quite a few who would happily escort her back to her prison. No one to trust, no one to call. She had the clothes on her back, which didn’t even include a warm sweater, let alone a jacket. She had fifteen dollars, and a quarter tank of gas, give or take a little. Take, actually. She had the little blue Datsun beater car that currently provided her only thin thread of hope for escape. It was stolen, but at least it wouldn’t be reported as such anytime soon.

  And she had a small but attractive .380 caliber Colt Mustang she had managed to pocket. If they caught up it wouldn’t be enough to save her, but at least she might not die alone. That would be a scene best skipped over though, so she kept her focus on the road in front of her.

  Canada. She’d be safe in Canada. It was possible their tentacles extended that far, but they wouldn’t find her there as long as she was careful.

  She checked her mirrors again. You can never be too sure.

  * * *

  Elena had grown up in Los Angeles, but she had been born many miles further south. Across the national border that lie in that direction in fact, and she didn’t have the requisite paperwork that such a person is supposed to have in this country.

  She could hardly be blamed for that though. Her parents had brought her to California as a small child, on immigrant visas. There they had raised her in East Los Angeles, and then at the appropriate age, Elena began to fall in with bad crowds. It was tough to avoid doing that there, because pretty much the whole neighborhood was bad crowd. She was inducted into the gang called Varrio Nuevos Estrada (or VNE for short) in the traditional way. She had to stand there and take a beating from all the other homegirls, to prove how well she could take it. (Later on she would tell Randy about this. Randy would reply that in every gang movie he’d ever seen, you were supposed to fight back to prove your fighting spirit, and it sounded to him like someone in the gang hierarchy was cutting a few classes at the old school.)

  Elena grew up with what could be described as a shortage of role models. Her parents loved her, and though no one could really control Elena, they did do their best to keep her away from the bad crowds and other assorted kinds of trouble. But when they weren’t busy doing that, they were dealing in illicit substances.

  When Elena was seventeen, she spent some time in juvenile detention for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle; i.e. swiping it. While serving her time, her current boyfriend came to visit and dropped the bomb that her parents had been ratted on for drug dealing and deported. The only reason Elena hadn’t been shipped out with them was because she was locked up and the immigration authorities had missed her.

  Elena was released according to the schedule the judge had ordered. But she was alone now. Wherever her parents had been deported to, she never heard from them again. She had her gangster friends and a few more distant relatives in the area that she could surf around for places to sleep, but no home. She had no realistic way to finish school, and with no citizenship papers she couldn’t legally work. For that matter, without enough documents to even get a state ID card, she couldn’t so much as rent a motel room. It didn’t leave a girl with a whole lot of options.

  She became a sort of a fixture in her neighborhood. To survive, she did whatever odd jobs for cash that she could find. Being that this was the life she’d been raised into, she sometimes sold drugs. And occasionally, she sold herself.

  As the years went by, she came to be pretty well known among the cops in the neighborhood. Often they would stop her on the street and ask how she was. Some of them seemed to show actual concern for her at times. But behind her back, they mostly made fun of her, never considering that she had no way of climbing out of that hole. None of them ever offered to help fix that problem for her either. Cops enjoy having people around who they can feel superior to, and they seemed to like her right where she was.

  So it went for nearly a decade. Now in her mid-twenties, this life was taking its toll. She had what Randy would call “stage one scariness.” At stage one, a person was starting to get the street urchin look, but it was nothing that a shower, a good night’s sleep, and maybe a month in rehab wouldn’t fix. At stage two, the person needed to clean their life up in a big hurry. Stage three was where it became incurable, and all you could do was avoid eye contact with the person and not give them any change. Elena wasn’t anywhere near that point though. Taking its toll though this life was, she still cleaned up pretty dang nice.

  Then in late 2005, at the age of twenty-six, she got her break. One of the guys from her old gang told her about som
e jobs up north, where people were hiring who didn’t care about paperwork issues. Hiring for honest jobs like farm labor and restaurant work, that paid cash and came with accommodations. If she was interested, he’d hook her up with the people who would take her there. He wasn’t lying to her about it either; he had simply gotten the same snow job that she was in for.

  So Elena showed up where she was told. She got in a van with several other girls and they made their trek north to Seattle with the promise of a future. But that story has been told so many times with the same ending that it’s a living wonder of the world anyone still falls for it. They arrived and were introduced to their new pimps.

  Every one of them was beaten senseless. Then they were made to participate in humiliating videos. Some were threatened with having these videos sent to their families. Since Elena had no family left to speak of, she was threatened with being turned in to Immigration. That had the effect they were looking for. These people were horrible, but for her to be returned to Mexico would be an outright death sentence.

  So she stayed in a large but run-down house where the party was nonstop. People came at all hours to buy and use drugs, as well as the women they kept there. Elena’s pimp was named Armando. He had a laptop that was used to post her ads on Craigslist every few hours, and every time a call came in from someone requesting her, she was driven to another job. With the stereo pounding out hip-hop day and night there was not a lot of sleep to be had.

  It took a few months, but the day finally came that she was waiting for. That was the day when the nonstop party life caught up with everybody all at once. It happened around eleven on a Saturday night. They shut off the stereo and everyone just nosedived into a couch or a bed or each other. Elena took a spot on the living room carpet using another girl’s belly for a pillow, and pretended to sleep until it looked safe.

  Then she was up, her mind on business. She put on what few clothes they allowed her to keep, which consisted of one pair of jeans, a thin white shirt and sandals. She snuck into the room where Armando was sleeping and fished his pistol and car keys out of his coat pockets. She looked at the gun, and briefly considered putting him out of his misery right then. But the gun held seven rounds and there would be a lot more people coming after her than that if she did. So she went back to the front door, opened it and was gone. Once outside, she got into Armando’s Datsun parked in the driveway, and peeled out fast. The front door of the house opened again and one of the pimps watched her go, shouting back into the house. She was so scared that she almost crashed several times on the way out. It didn’t help matters either that she hadn’t driven since she was a teenager. But she had to focus and stay ahead of them because this was where the chase really began.