Cooper By The Gross (All 144 Cooper Stories In One Volume)

by Bill Bernico

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  We pulled up to the curb at Lexington and Lillian Way and spotted a man sitting on the porch waiting for us to arrive. It was Ricky Vogel, all right. He was dressed in grease-spotted jeans, a strapped tee shirt, a wife beater shirt, as we used to call it, and black engineer boots. All that was missing to make his ensemble complete was the black leather jacket and a motorcycle cap with the white visor.

  It looked as though he knew that his wife had called the police and he was almost eager to meet us. I knew this could only mean trouble. Phil and I walked up the sidewalk toward Ricky. When we got within fifteen feet, he leapt off the porch right in front of us. He was waving a large kitchen knife in our faces.

  “Come on,” he taunted. “You want some of this?” He waved the knife some more, still advancing on us.

  I drew my service revolver and pointed it at Ricky. Ricky showed no signs of concern and just kept coming. I took a few steps back. “Halt,” I called out but with no results.

  Phil pulled his nightstick out and tried hitting Vogel in the forearm, hoping to knock the knife out of his hand. Ricky just kept dodging my swing, all the while still focusing on getting at me.

  I backed up even further and finally turned and ran between the house, toward the back yard, where I turned again to face Ricky. Ricky showed no sign of relenting, but just kept coming at me, slashing at me with wide swipes of the knife. I took another step back and tripped on a garden hose. I went down hard on my back.

  Ricky loomed over me with the knife and something inside told me that I was all out of options. I shot upwards from a lying position, striking Ricky Vogel in the heart. Ricky fell right on top of me, dead as they come. His wound bled all over my new uniform. I squirmed out from under Ricky and stood, quickly backing away. I looked down at the dead man and then over at Phil. Phil must have known this was going to be a hard one for me. He’d been there himself and his first shooting had taken a toll on him.

  Phil nudged Ricky with his nightstick but he didn’t move a muscle. Phil knelt and took the knife out of Ricky’s hand and threw it aside. Phil walked over to where I stood, my service revolver still aimed straight ahead of me. Phil slowly grabbed my gun and tried to pull it out of my hand. I held tight until Phil pried my fingers from the grip.

  “It was a justified shooting,” Phil assured me. “You gave him every chance to drop the knife and come along peacefully. This outcome was his doing.”

  The pained look on my face told Phil that I might be in shock. He shook my shoulders and made me look at him.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Phil said. “Ricky brought this on himself.”

  Phil grabbed the radio that was strapped to his belt and called the precinct. He told them to send an ambulance and a field supervisor. Phil relayed the afternoon’s events to the supervisor and filled out the necessary reports. I rode back to the precinct with the supervisor.

  Phil met up with me again in the squad room. I was trying to fill out my own report but kept staring off into space. When Phil entered the room, I looked up at him and then back down at my report and then back at Phil. Phil walked over and put his hand on my shoulder. That was apparently all it took for me to break down completely. I cried and quickly turned away from Phil, embarrassed. The captain had relived me of duty for the rest of the day and Phil continued with the patrol on his own.

  The next morning at roll call Phil noticed that I was still absent. The duty sergeant had paired Phil up with Dan Huggins, a three-year veteran. During our lunch break that day Phil called in to the captain to check on me. He told Phil that I hadn’t come in again today. Phil told the sergeant that he’d check in on me during his rounds.

  During his lunch break, Phil stopped by my house and rang the bell at my front door. I invited him in and asked him to sit. I told him that I thought I was coming around to the realization that I did what I could to avoid shooting Ricky Vogel and that I did what was necessary to keep from getting killed myself. I told Phil that I’d be back at work the next day but that it might take me just a little longer to get back to my old self again.

  Death affected some guys like that and I wasn’t the first, nor would I be the last to have an event like that prey on my mind. Cops, after all, are human, too.

  Phil and I were paired together for the next few days and we were falling into a comfortable groove as we got to know each other. Late that afternoon as we were patrolling the fringes of our precinct a call came into the station. Dispatch had been informed that there was a man in his house and that he’d fired a shotgun inside the residence.

  “Car nine,” dispatch said. “Shots fired. Sixty-seven fifty-five Yucca Avenue. Code three.”

  “Car nine, copy that,” Phil said, jotting the information on his pad. “Let’s roll,” he said.

  Our sergeant, Dan Hollister, who was at the precinct when the call came in, decided to answer the call himself and hurried to the scene in an unmarked car. He pulled up to the house right behind our patrol car. When he emerged from his car, he was carrying a 12-guage shotgun.

  “You two take the back, I’ll cover the front door,” Hollister barked.

  Before we got two steps toward the house another black and white pulled up, its lights revolving. Two more patrolmen got out and hurried up to where the captain was standing. Hollister turned to the two officers and gestured toward Phil and me.

  “They’ll cover the back door,” Hollister said. “Harper, you and Fuller come with me.”

  Phil and I hurried around to the back of the house and were waiting when we heard the first shot coming from the front of the house. We followed orders and held our positions. Sergeant Hollister had taken cover behind the patrol car, but Harper and Fuller, who had started toward the house were now directly under the street light.

  A booming voice came from somewhere overhead. “Drop the guns or I’ll kill you both,” it said.

  It was the assailant from inside the house. He had gone upstairs and had stepped out onto the porch with his shotgun. He was looking down onto the two officers. Harper quickly darted around to the side of the house but Fuller, the less experienced officer, dropped his gun and raised his hands.

  The assailant yelled down to the cop with the raised hands, “Tell your buddy to come out, too, or I’m gonna kill you.”

  As if on cue, Harper darted back out long enough to take a shot at the man with the shotgun. The man hurried back into the house. Fuller scooped up his revolver and ran for cover.

  Dispatch called Sergeant Hollister with additional information on the assailant, one Fred Draper, forty-seven and the father of three. He’d been despondent over losing his job and had been drinking for most of the day. By the time police arrived on the scene, he’d had more than his share of alcohol. Couple that with a shotgun and you’ve got a cop’s worst nightmare.

  Hollister told us that Draper’s family had tried to get him to lay the shotgun down and surrender peacefully. Draper had other ideas. He’d barricaded himself in the bathroom with his shotgun. His sister walked past the bathroom door and Draper got spooked. He fired one shot through the door but just missed blowing a hole through her as well.

  Draper came back out of the bathroom and sneaked out the back door. Officers crawled on their hand and knees through neighborhood gardens looking for Draper. Sergeant Hollister had remained in the front of the house and was waiting when officers flushed Draper out into the street. Draper came running right toward Hollister.

  “Drop the shotgun,” Hollister yelled, pointing his own shotgun at Draper.

  Draper had no intention of surrendering and raised his own shotgun. Hollister fired once, hitting Draper. The main part of the shotgun blast hit Draper’s lower right forearm, tearing most of the flesh off. Draper’s shotgun dropped and skittered across the cement. Draper dropped to the ground, holding his shattered arm. He immediately lost consciousness and lay there bleeding.

  I hurried around to the front of the house and spotted Draper on
the ground. I knelt down to get a better look just as Hollister walked over. He looked down at Draper.

  “Where’d I hit him?” he said in his matter-of-fact tone.

  “Right forearm,” I said. “Most of it’s missing.”

  “Huh,” Hollister said. “I thought I’d done better than that.” And with that, Hollister returned to his squad car, laid shotgun on the back seat and drove back to the precinct. He was a tough one, a no nonsense cop who’d seen it all and done it all and to him this was just another day on the job.

  Draper was taken to the hospital where doctors operated on his arm. Afterwards his other wrist had been handcuffed to his bed frame and uniformed guards sat outside his room twenty-four hours a day for the next week and a half. During that time I’d taken my turn standing guard outside his room and as long as I live, I’ll never forget what an awful smell came from that wound where he had been shot. The nurses were burning sulfur candles in the room and yet that smell was just something terrible. I could hardly sit there without feeling sick to my stomach.

  Ten days later Draper was transferred to the county jail where he awaited trial. My part of the dance was done. Now it was up to prosecutors to put Draper where he couldn’t hurt anyone else.

  Shootings were sometimes necessary and I never took them for granted. Sometimes the cops would be the ones getting shot and we all took that very seriously.

  A week after Sergeant Hollister had shot Fred Draper, Dan and I answered another call from one of the motorcycle cops who also patrolled our precinct. His name was Ronnie Kincaid and I’d worked with him on occasion in the patrol car, but Ronnie was a lone wolf who preferred his motorcycle.

  Ronnie was patrolling Western Avenue in the early morning hours just after the bars had closed. As he rode by one tavern, Ronnie noticed that the side door to the tavern was standing ajar. He got off his motorcycle with his flashlight and checked the door. There was no forced entry on the door. It looked like it was just left unclosed. He didn’t know it, but on the other side of the building two burglars had broken the window and gone inside the tavern and then they had opened this door and left it ajar for a quick getaway.

  Ronnie crept into the tavern, his gun drawn and the only light that shone was the light on a beer sign in the back of the bar. He looked and saw one male subject down on his knees working on something, and in the darkness he thought that this was a cleanup man cleaning the floor. So he walked closer and saw that it was actually a fellow who was bent over trying to open the safe.

  As Ronnie approached the man, he saw another guy go running out of the main room and dart around the corner. Ronnie cocked his gun in the kneeling man’s ear.

  “Don’t move a muscle,” Ronnie said. “Just hold out your hands.”

  The man did as he was told and Ronnie cuffed him.

  “Just lay there on the floor and don’t move,” Ronnie told him. “You understand me?”

  The man nodded in silent agreement.

  Ronnie ran around behind the bar and he shouted to the other guy, whom he couldn’t see around the corner, to come out with his hands up. The man did come out, but he came out running and in a burst of speed ran right up to the bar, jumped up in the air and shot downwards as he leapt over Ronnie.

  Ronnie was hit and fell over onto the floor as both men fled the building, one of them still handcuffed. Ronnie managed to get up and stagger outside to his motorcycle. Phil and I were still patrolling in the squad car when a sudden radio transmission came on and we could hear Ronnie.

  “I’ve been shot,” Ronnie said into his microphone. “Bar, bar.”

  He wasn’t giving us his location and Phil kept asking, “Where are you, Ronnie? Can you give us your location?”

  Ronnie just kept repeating, “Bar, bar.”

  Dan got back on the radio and instructed everybody to stay off the air so he could keep in contact with Ronnie. He told every squad to start checking the bars in their area. Sergeant Hollister was monitoring our broadcasts from the station and ordered a squad to go check the local furniture store that was named Bar Furniture.

  Phil kept pleading with Ronnie to take his time and tell us where he was.

  Ronnie voice was getting weaker but he finally managed to say, “Freddie’s Bar.”

  Once we had his location Phil and I hurried over there. As we pulled up to the curb we could see that Ronnie had the twisted cord of his microphone stretched all the way out. He still had the microphone in his hand, lying with his back up against the garage wall. He was bleeding from his shoulder wound.

  I hurried to Ronnie’s side and pulled the microphone from his fist and laid him down on the asphalt. I looked him over quickly and found the bullet hole in the top of his shoulder and applied pressure to stop the bleeding. Phil called the precinct to send an ambulance and a backup unit.

  I stayed by Ronnie’s side, waiting for the ambulance. I kept talking to the motorcycle cop, trying to keep his mind off his injuries. Ronnie lifted his head and looked down at his crotch. He’d wet his pants and he seemed more embarrassed by the fact that he wet himself than how badly hurt he was.

  We got him to the hospital in time for doctors to stem the bleeding and remove the bullet. It had penetrated the top of his shoulder and traveled down through one lung and was lodged in the wall of his heart. The attending physician told me that the bullet was lodged behind Ronnie’s heart and that surgeons had to go in behind the bullet and seal up that wound in the heart before they could remove it.

  As bad as this incident seemed, there was still a silver lining in this dark cloud. The fact that this was a copper-jacketed bullet had been a factor in sparing Ronnie’s life. The doctor stated that if it had been a regular lead bullet without the copper jacket on it, Ronnie probably would have died from the lead poisoning alone.

  As it was, Ronnie still had a lot of problems from that incident. He was sick for a long time and he had quite a few lung problems from that one bullet. The lung that the bullet had penetrated bled quite a bit and overflowed into the other lung and caused him a lot of breathing problems. It was touch and go for him for a while but he did survive.

  Within minutes officers were back on the streets, scouring the neighborhood where Ronnie had been shot. Officers found the two men hiding in an old beer warehouse. One was still wearing Ronnie’s cuffs when he was caught. The other gave up without a fight. Subsequent investigations revealed that the shooter was from East Los Angeles. He was a well-known burglar and thief and had recently been paroled from prison. He’d served sixteen years for shooting a Los Angeles police officer and he was on parole when he shot and almost killed Ronnie. He was sentenced to thirty-five years in the San Quentin. If he ever gets out again, he’ll be in his nineties and a threat to no one ever again.

  Ronnie wasn’t our only victim. During the following three months on patrol another officer, Sy would cross paths with criminals who did not hesitate to shoot first and skip the questions.

  Sy was a great big strong fellow and a very good athlete as a young man. He had worked part time in a tavern as a bouncer. But he was a very gentle guy and a good officer.

  Phil and I were out of town that day. We had been assigned to drive to San Bernardino to pick up a prisoner there and bring him back to stand trial here. We got back with the prisoner late at night and walked into the squad room. Sergeant Hollister told us that Sy had been shot and was in the hospital, fighting for his life.

  Sy had been off duty and was at home painting his garage when his next-door neighbor came running over. She was hysterical and Sy tried to calm her down and find out what the trouble was. She told Sy that her sister’s boyfriend was over at the house and that he was arguing and fighting and slapping her around. She begged Sy for help. He told her to stay put while he went next door to find out what was going on. Sy hurried into his front room and grabbed his snub-nosed .38 and shoved it in his right front pants pocket. He slowly started walking to his neighbor’s house.

  When he came around the cor
ner of the house, a man, presumably the sister’s boyfriend, had a gun out and was pointed it at the girl. She kept backing up from him, edging her way toward Sy. Sy didn’t have time to pull his weapon, so he just reached out and put his arm around the girl and put her behind him.

  He turned to the man and said, “Listen, you don’t want to do this. You’ll get in a lot of trouble.” His words didn’t seem to have any affect of the armed man.

  “Look,” the man said, “I don’t want to shoot you. I want to shoot her. Now get out of the way or I’m going to shoot you, too.”

  Sy figured he could reason with the man and said, “You’re not in serious trouble now, but if you do this, you’re going to be.”

  Without saying another word, the man opened up and emptied his gun on Sy. One of the bullets went right through Sy and hit the girl that he was shielding. Sy fell down and the girl screamed and ran toward Sy’s house. The man with the gun ran to the corner of the house and reloaded his gun.

  Sy was able to get his gun out. It felt heavy under the circumstances but he managed to raise his arm and get one shot off at the man. He came so close to hitting the man. Forensics found out later that the bullet went right through the sleeve of the jacket the man was wearing but didn’t hit him at all, but that’s how close it came.

  The man got his gun reloaded and came back up to Sy and shot him again two or three times as he lay on the ground. Then he fled in an old Chevy or Oldsmobile. That was all the description Sy could give when help arrived.

  The girl who originally came to Sy for help called for help and both police and ambulance hurried to the location. When they got Sy to the hospital he was given the last rites. He’d been shot so many times that doctors gave him almost no chance for survival. His intestines had been penetrated so many times that the doctors had them out, passing them before a light to find all of the perforations.

  Doctors worked around the clock to save Sy. Many times on the operating table Sy was close to death but doctors didn’t give up on him. Twenty-eight hours after surgery had begun, doctors closed him up and wheeled him to the recovery room, where he remained for the next seven weeks. It was touch and go for quite a while, but he did survive.