by Gary Hancock
Officer Jill Thompson:
Charlie pay attention don't you go to sleep on me. I am going to tell you why I always want to drive the patrol car. It began when I got old enough to get my license. I told dad that I wanted a Corvette or a Porsche. He looked at me and told me they were just too hot and fast for a first car. For the first time since I was five, I pouted and stomped off to my room. I came out for dinner and when I approached the table I could hear them talking about what to do. Dad looked at me and said, "Between the end of school and your birthday. You will be in a different school. I called around and arranged for you to attend the Skip Barber School of Racing. First the Teen Safety and Survival School, then a One Day Driving School, a One Day High Performance School, a Three Day Racing School and finally a three day Advanced Racing School. I have also scheduled you for what is called an Evasive driving course that is given to police, bodyguards and Secret Service Agents. If you pass. Your choice of car." If you don't pass every single one of them, then I pick the car.
I am sure Daddy thought there was no way I was going to pass them all. Adults that have been driving for years, can't pass the racing classes the first time. But I was motivated and had been slipping around driving my best friend's Mustang GT350 for four months. Mulholland and Laurel Canyon are very crooked and I had been flying down them almost every day after school. I scored so high on the classes. that the instructors told me that I should think about racing for real. But I already knew what I wanted to do in life.
Remember the first day we rode together. You told me that as the older officer you would drive and I just ran to the car and got in. Grumbling you sat in the passenger seat and said, "First screw up, you lose the wheel position." I then put the car in reverse and flew backwards across the parking lot and did one of those 180 turns and headed to the street. I'll never forget. You leaned over and said, "Ok, you drive."
Where is that EMT. I looked at my watch and it had only been five minutes, it seemed like hours. Charlie's breath was getting shorter and shorter and I felt my heart skipping beats as I pressed on his leg trying to stop the red stain on the ground that was just getting bigger and bigger. Then the sound and lights
filled the air around me as hands picked me up and moved me to the side as they began to work on my best friend.
The hospital was just as bad, I couldn't do anything to help. I just sat there and brooded over what had happened. How did we just get fooled so bad? I could see now that it was obviously an ambush. The car had ran a red light in front of us. I turned on the lights and floored the accelerator. We had chased him only one block when he pulled into the alley and jumped out of the car. He had a shooting nest prepared that had a low wall that let him shoot over it only exposing his head and shoulders. I slid the car up next to his and jumped out. Charlie saw the gun first and hit me in the side knocking me to the ground. He was shot in the leg and laid in the open in front of the car. I started firing at the wall and drug him back to the shelter of the squad car. My door was still open and I reached in and used the radio.
My reminiscing was interrupted when the Lieutenant came up and sat next to me. All I could do was apologize for my partner getting shot and just started to babble about what had happened. He sat there till I stopped talking and told me that it was a trap. The guy had gotten away. There was a tunnel behind him that went to the next street and he must have had a car waiting. The Doc. came out and said Charlie had survived the surgery and we would have to wait till tomorrow to see him. Lt. told me that I should go home. I was on desk duty till everything was figured out.
Teddy Brooks:
I left her where she had laughed at me. The wooded area is now a shopping center and I put her where she belonged in the trash dumpster. That is the first but not the last of these inhuman people that made my life so unbearable. When I get through with my mission, all the women will be scared for their lives in this forsaken town,
I was expecting more from the newspapers, but that baby case overshadowed my work and it was put on the third page. I have to do something to make them pay attention to me.
Officer Jill Thompson:
When I got home my dog Katie was happy to see me. At least someone liked me today. I took her for a quick run. I had picked up a 32oz. cup of Egg Noodle soup at the Hunan Cafe on Sunset, I drive right by it everyday when I leave my place on Tanager Way
and go down to the Los Angeles Police Department - Hollywood Station on Wilcox, which is right off Sunset also. The people at the friendly neighborhood type store always greet me like their long lost daughter. I sipped on the soup like it was a drink. I then sat back on the couch and let my mind go into a place I really didn't want it to.
Charlie and I have been partners for four years and a couple of months. He is the only partner I have had. Despite all the objections and arguing by my parents, I got a degree in Criminal Justice at American River College in Sacramento. My father said "She is probably doing this just so she can drive fast." I went through the fourteen week course at the police academy and was placed in Charlie's experience hands for my rookie training. We matched like pieces of that puzzle that would forever be linked to my name.
The streets of the neighborhoods that were in out patrol area were the people that belonged to my family's crowd . Most of the houses and apartments were upper upper class and I found myself explaining who my parents were and that it didn't make any difference to me. I would bust a crook with a silver spoon in his mouth just as quick as a gang banger. I didn't want him to find out that I was really rich from someone else. So I told Charlie about my parents and where they lived. Just don't talk about it with the rest of the guys please, is all I told him.
Our street patrol duties threw us into one of the most publicized cases of the year. The kidnapping and infanticide of movie star Gina Godbolt 's son and heir to her husband the Chocolate King's fortune. This was the story on all the front pages for a month. We were on patrol only two blocks away and were the first unit on the scene. The only clue, that was not released to the public, was a picture of the kid being held up with a graffiti symbol on a wall behind him. It had been left at the front gate just out of range of the security cameras. We had all looked at that picture dozens of times and tried to make sense out of it. The stylized letters just didn't spell anything .
