Deputy
Page 3
By the time I got him back to my Sheriff's car, some backup units had arrived. I transported my arrest to Geneseo to the Sheriff's Office where he submitted to a breathalyzer, the result being a .17. At that time in NY .10 was the legal limit. I had the desk call the local justice and had him meet me at the Avon town hall so I could arraign my prisoner. Years later when I got to California, I would be working in a system with a bail schedule which is already set, and there was no arraignment prior to transporting to a custody facility, but in New York these were justice courts where you arraigned all arrests, and if bail could not be met, the Judge issued a commitment to the jail. The Judge was usually not a judge in the truest sense. They were justices who heard misdemeanor and traffic cases. In this case on this night, the justice was a local dairy farmer by trade, and being a justice was the side job. Several times I had to transport my prisoner to the farm and have the justice arraign my prisoner at the dairy farm. Some of these justices had offices at their home to conduct arraignments.
When I walked into the court section of the town hall, my prisoner's mother was already there. The Judge (town justice, but we called them Judge) released my prisoner on his own recognizance and gave him a court date. I had a fit and let the Judge know that I was pissed off and that this drunk that ran from me should have bail set, and he should be locked up. My prisoner, by the way, was not cooperative and kind of a wingnut. In my opinion, his mother was not going to be able to take control of him in his current condition. The Judge told me bail was not punishment but meant to secure his appearance in court, and since his mother was present and willing to take responsibility for her son, the best decision was to release him to his mother. I was a 23-year-old hard ass who basically felt that if you’re driving drunk and then you lead the police on a chase and then you flee on foot, you should have your ass kicked at least, and then definitely be locked up. The Judge let me know that I was not the Judge.
I left the town hall and drove to the Star Diner right in the Village of Avon to have breakfast. By now it was 4 am, and I was hungry. I ordered my usual five eggs over easy with toast and coffee. The waitress said to me, "I heard you arrested Crazy." I told her I didn't know that was his nickname, but it sure fits. I guess because I was mad about the judge not sending Crazy to jail I stayed in the diner longer than normal. Instead of finishing my breakfast and leaving, I stayed in the booth by the door, having a couple more cups of coffee and starting my police report. I was probably in the diner for about 45 minutes. When the waitress brought my check, she looked out the front window and said, "There's Crazy's truck, and his mom is out there too."
I walked outside, and Crazy's mom was pounding on the driver's window of a pickup truck parked parallel to the front of the diner. "You better not let him drive," I said, getting into my police car. I drove back down to the town hall and got on a payphone in front of the building and called the Judge at his house. I was yelling at him, "You let that Crazy go, you know where he is now? He is in a pickup in front of the Star Diner with his mom pounding on his truck window. He obviously drove there—he could have killed someone, and you're the one who let him out." Before I could finish my tirade, to my dismay I saw Crazy drive right past me, looking at me with a crazy look. I just hung up on the Judge and jumped in my police car and gave chase of Crazy. Surprisingly, Crazy pulled over right away.
When I approached the driver's door, he was pounding on the steering with both fists yelling, "You mother fucker I will kill you!" He ignored my commands and kept yelling and pounding on the steering wheel. I went back to the police car and radioed for back up. It was now past 5 am. All the village police cars had gone off duty, and my nearest Sheriff unit was 20 minutes away. But an off duty New York State Trooper who had a take home car heard my call for back up on his home monitor. He lived just down the street from where I was and was just getting up to start his shift. He responded, and when Crazy saw the two of us, he exited the truck, and I arrested him for Driving While Intoxicated for the second time of the same day. The trooper said he would stay with the truck until a Sheriff's unit arrived to handle the towing of the truck.
I transported my prisoner back to the Sheriff's Office for a second breathalyzer test, this time he blew a .10. While I was at the station processing my arrest, my assisting unit radioed to advise me that he found a loaded 12 gauge shotgun under the seat of the pickup truck, so I added the charge of carrying a loaded shotgun in a vehicle. Yes, we went back to the same old judge for another arraignment. This time there was to be no release without bail, and if I remember right, the bail was quite high. Off to jail went Crazy. That was the last I thought or heard of Crazy for about two weeks.
I had just started my midnight shift when I got a call on the Sheriff's radio.
"101 to 111."
101—holy shit, that was the call number for the Sheriff himself. The previous Sheriff had the call sign of 100. He died in office of a heart attack, so they retired that call sign. The new Sheriff, Dick Kane, became 101. So 101 called me on the radio and told me to meet him at his house. This was highly unusual. I was thinking, What did I do now? Everyone else in the county heard the call on the radio and were probably wondering the same thing.
I got to the Sheriff's house, and he said, "Remember that guy in Avon you arrested for DWI, and he had the shotgun under the front seat?"
I said, "Crazy? Yeah, I remember. He is a real asshole."
"Well, a jail informant told one of the detectives he was in a cell with Crazy, and Crazy told him he had been arrested for drunk driving and when he was released, he went home and got his shotgun with the intent of shooting the deputy that arrested him. He loaded his shotgun and drove to the Star Diner because he knew that's where the deputies would go to eat. When he got to the diner, he saw the Sheriff's car, so he parked parallel to the front so when the deputy came out he could shoot him as he walked out the door. But the deputy was in the diner so long he fell asleep. When he woke up, his mother was pounding on his truck window. When he saw the Sheriff's car gone, he went driving into town looking for the deputy, but got pulled over and couldn't get the drop on him. So, Crazy got out of jail today, and I wanted to make sure somebody told you about this so you would be careful."
I thanked the Sheriff and told him not to worry; I would be careful. Now it all fell together why Crazy was outside the Star Diner, and his mom was pounding on the window. Crazy ended up taking a plea deal and did some time. I can't remember where or for how long. I continued to work in that area from time to time, but never saw Crazy again. This is one of a few times, but for the grace of God, I was not killed. Sometimes I think to myself, Wow, that was crazy. Pun intended.
DRIVING TOO FAST TO GET SHOT
I WAS DIRECTED by the dispatcher to drive into the Rochester Police Department and pick up a prisoner at the lockup and transport him back to the Livingston County Jail. It’s 30 miles from the Sheriff’s Office to the Rochester Police Department. I was in the town of Avon when I got the call patrolling for an arrest. It was about 3 am, prime time for making an arrest or for getting into a chase. This kind of call pissed me off, it took me out of the game.
I picked up my prisoner from the Rochester jail and was headed back to Geneseo to drop him off at our jail. I was screaming south on Route 15 approaching Livingston County. I was doing about 90 when I saw a man hitchhiking along the right shoulder of the road. I always stopped to check out hitchhikers. Often they were wanted felons, had just committed a crime, possessed weapons or were under the influence of drugs. As soon as my headlights hit the hitchhiker his big round face looked weird. I jumped on the brakes hard so I could stop and check him out. I knew I shouldn’t with a prisoner in the back, but I was rogue. I was going so fast by the time I got slowed to make a stop I was a hundred yards past the hitchhiker. I remember saying fuck it, and got right back on the accelerator and continued south on Route 15. My prisoner said, “That was a weird looking fucker.”
I dropped off my prisoner and went into th
e dispatch office to shoot the shit with the desk. I told them I had passed a mongoloid looking guy on Route 15 but couldn’t stop to check him out.
Later in the afternoon, one of our detectives came to my house. He asked me if I remembered driving by a guy hitchhiking about 3 am on Route 15. He then showed me a six pack (a group of similar looking mug type pictures used in identifying suspects). I picked out the guy right away. The hitchhiker had down’s syndrome. At the time of the incident, it was common to use the term mongoloid. The history dates back to when Mongolia was discovered and people with down’s syndrome were incorrectly thought to look like people from Mongolia. It has since become a politically incorrect term.
The detective told me that prior to my driving by him he had been hitchhiking on Route 15 in Henrietta (just outside of Rochester NY), and a woman picked him up. He shot the woman in the face with a handgun, pushed her out of the car and took her car. The car stopped running, so he got out and started hitchhiking again, and a short time later we drove past him. When they picked him up still hitchhiking later that morning, he had the gun in his possession with one bullet left in it. He said the guy admitted shooting the woman and stated, “If that cop that started to stop had tried to arrest me, I was going to shoot him too.”
Full disclosure, I have to humbly admit during these early years—during this incident and the crazy shotgun incident—I was not at all the epitome of officer safety. It was no credit to my tactics that I had survived some harrowing encounters up to this point in my police career. Looking back, I’m sure God or his angels were looking out for me. I wasn’t even wearing a bulletproof vest at this point. This incident with the mongoloid hitchhiker got my attention because I knew at the time my intention was to quickly stop with my prisoner and talk to the hitchhiker through the passenger window and make my initial inquiry as to what he was doing. About the laziest, poorest and most dangerous way of making a contact. Another day through my own ignorance and lack of tactics could have gotten myself killed. But, a chance friendship was about to change that in a big way.
THE AMAZING DAVE FASANO
IT WAS ABOUT 3 am on a Sunday morning. I was in the Village of Geneseo just driving out of the Sheriff's Office parking lot at 4 Court Street when I heard on the radio a call for back up from a Leroy Police Officer. Leroy was a small village 23 miles away from Geneseo in a neighboring county, so I didn't pay too much attention. When the second or third back up request came out where the officer reported that he was holding burglary suspects at gunpoint and no one was answering, fuck that, I got on the radio and advised I was responding. A part of me thought that out of embarrassment closer units would start responding before I could get there.
I was rolling hard, lights and siren were both on and I was driving much faster than would be considered reasonable. These were two-lane roads in rural Livingston County at 3 am with little or no traffic. Between the small villages of Avon and Caledonia and Leroy, I was able to hit 100 plus miles per hour most of the way. No other units ever did respond. I was the only backup car to arrive. I'm sure it was longer, but it seemed like I made it in five minutes.
As I arrived on Route 5 a mile or two east of the Village of Leroy, I saw the car stop. The car was facing east on the shoulder with the Leroy Police Car just behind it offset with rotating lights flashing. Car keys were in the middle of the street, and several males were lying face down with their arms outstretched. I heard the officer’s voice from the vehicle loudspeaker barking commands to the other occupants of the car. I did a U-turn and parked behind the Leroy Police Car which had both front car doors open. I walked up to the passenger side door and leaned in to talk to the officer. The police car was empty. Then a voice from behind a tree about 10 yards south of the police car said, "I'm over here, handcuff those guys while I cover you." I was thinking, What the fuck? I just heard you barking commands from the front loudspeaker of your patrol car.
This was my introduction to my lifelong friend, the amazing Dave Fasano. I was really interested in this whole takedown scenario. Dave later asked me, "Haven't you been to a street survival seminar by Calibre Press?" I said no, and he said he would take care of that. Dave had conducted a felony stop not by the book, but beyond the book into ninja street survival tactics. Dave explained how he had opened both doors so the suspects would believe there were two officers. He switched his radio to broadcast over the car's loudspeaker, so when he issued commands it would sound as if he was using the cars PA system and not safely away from the car on his handheld radio. If the suspects had started shooting into the police car, they would be shooting into an empty car, and it would not have ended good for them.
Dave and I are the best of friends to this day. I think I had a special place in Dave's heart from day one because he knew I went balls out to back him up coming from such a great distance. We were of similar mindsets. Some might describe us as crazy fuckers.
Dave and I attended a couple of street survival seminars together. To me, Dave was an amazing street cop and remains an amazing loyal friend to this day. Dave had always wanted to be a police officer. To be a cop in NY, you had to be 20. Dave couldn't wait and took a job as a police officer in Key West Florida at age 18. Dave became a police officer in Key West at age 18, and not working the desk, or in the jail. He started right on the street. Dave worked Key West for two years. Dave is a private guy, and I will leave his stories for him to tell. But you can imagine Key West in the '70s. Night Clubs, Big Drugs, Big Money, Big Crime. Dave had big-time police stories which fed into my growing dream of joining a big city law enforcement agency. A dream that had been growing since I started reading police books about Los Angeles and New York City.
BLEEDING HOUSE
I WAS PATROLLING the north end on a freezing winter night driving through the Village of Caledonia when I got the call to meet the informant of a domestic violence call in Dansville, a village about 30 miles south of where I was in Caledonia. This is one of those nights we were running short, and two of us were splitting the county. My area was Caledonia to the north and Dansville, Nunda to the south. I met the young man who made the call at the Truck Stops of America in Dansville. He said that earlier in the day his girlfriend and her ex-husband had a custody hearing regarding their three your old daughter. Tonight he was visiting his girlfriend in the house that she and her daughter live in located in the Town of Sparta.
The ex-husband showed up at the house, and while in the front foyer, they got involved in a physical struggle. The ex grabbed a handful of shotgun shells from a box on the key table in the foyer. The ex then left the home and started walking up the road to his parents' house. He returned to the front door a few minutes later, holding a shotgun. The informant went on to say that he believed the ex was going to shoot him, so he ran from the back door to the driveway and got into his corvette. As he backed out of the driveway, he heard two shotgun blasts. When he got to a safe location, he saw that the side of his car had been hit with shotgun pellets.
I remember the informant saying to me, "Please, deputy. We have to get to the house. I think he will hurt her. She is not answering the phone, and he might kill her.”
I called the desk and talked to the field sergeant, Kent Waltman. He said he and some backup units would meet me at the house. Sergeant Waltman, Detectives Smith and York, and another backup unit met me at the house in Sparta. This house was out in the middle of nowhere. It was a very cold wintery night and snowing hard. Another deputy and I took cover in the backyard while the detectives and Sergeant Waltman went to the front. I remember being in the backyard for what seemed like a long time. Finally, we were called to the front door.
They had gotten no response by telephone and banging on the door. When I got to the front, the three-year-old girl opened the door. I remember Detective York picking up the little girl and asking her, "Are Mommy and Daddy home?" The little girl shook her head yes but didn't say anything. This was a large A-frame house. I found out later the husband had built it. Detective York
asked the little girl, "Are Mommy and Daddy upstairs?" The little girl again nodded her head yes.
Sergeant Waltman said, "Let's go, we have to go get up there."
Waltman started up the stairs, and Detective York whispered, "Kent, you don't have a vest on."
Waltman turned to York. "I don't need a fucking vest," he said before he started back up the stairs.
We were all in a row: Waltman, Detectives York and Smith, myself and another deputy. We had gone up about three steps when Waltman stopped and put his flashlight on the walls of the stairway. He had felt that the railing was wet. When he turned on his light, we saw blood was dripping down the walls of the stairway from the top floor. Sergeant Waltman continued to the top of the stairs and was first to walk around a corner and out of sight. He quickly returned with his gun back in his holster, and he spoke in a normal tone of voice. "They're both up here."
And they were both in the bathroom. The door was off its hinges. She was shot in the face, laying on her back in the corner between the wall and toilet. His back and shoulders were leaned back against the tub with most of the top of his head gone, and his brain was in the bathtub. After shooting at the boyfriend who was backing out of the driveway in his corvette, the ex-husband had continued into the house and chased his ex-wife up the stairs. She shut and locked the bathroom door. He kicked the door off of its hinges. She cowered in the rear of the bathroom, trying to shield her face with her arms. He shot her in the face at close range, killing her instantly. He then put the gun to the side of his head and blew the top of his head off, and his brain landed in the bathtub. He fell to the floor against the tub with the gun lying on top of him. The blood had poured out of the bathroom and down onto the stairwell.