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For seven years I served as chaplain for the Middletown Ohio Police Department. Theoretically the job would include counseling members of the Department in times of personal crisis, but my duties as pastor of St. John’s Parish in Middletown kept me from becoming really close to any of the officers, and they seldom approached me for advice. I decided early on that I could do the most good for those men and women by praying for them daily.
To get to know the officers, I was requested to ride along as a passenger some few hours a week. My best time for riding on patrol with the officers was late Friday night. A new shift went on duty at 11 pm, and in the squad room, I would be assigned to an officer who did not have a partner. We would patrol a section of the city assigned to us and await a radio call that someone was in need. On Friday nights, this could mean one call in three hours. Or it could mean a dozen calls.
The most frightening call was a raid on a crack house in a poor neighborhood. The police were sure that drugs were being sold there, and in addition there was a report that an escaped murderer might be present at the house at the time we planned to raid it.
The raid took place at 1 am. Four police cars arrived and about eight officers approached the house, which was completely dark. I was instructed to stay in the patrol car, so I watched as two officers wielded an old car axle, which they used as a ram to knock down the front door. There was no shooting. I watched as the officers searched the house, occasionally shining their flashlights out the windows. After a few minutes, I went into the house.
The occupants, four men, were lying quietly on the floor, hands cuffed behind their backs. They had been completely surprised by the police raiders. No weapons were found, excepting a supply of base-ball bats in every room –they made good weapons and were legal. Several hundred dollars were confiscated. No drugs. And no murderer.
The most intriguing experience I had with the police was the night we were called to investigate a prowler. There had been several burglaries on the street where we were called, and the police were hoping to get lucky and catch the burglar in the act.
We arrived, parked the patrol car, and the officer and I began walking quietly from back yard to back yard. In the distance, a dog was barking. I soon lost my nerve! We were very vulnerable if a man with a weapon were waiting for us in the dark. I decided to stop in one of the yards and wait for the officer to finish his search. With my black clothes, I might even be invisible to someone trying to escape. I took my position next to a child’s swing set and raised my arm to hide my face.
I was standing in a backyard by myself in the middle of the night in a neighborhood that had had several recent burglaries! I was wearing black clothes. In the distance, a dog was barking.
Suddenly a yard light came on! A door opened and a man came out into the yard. I froze!
The man had a flashlight. He shined the beam in the direction of the barking dog and slowly panned the whole area –including me!
He did not see me! Clearly his attention was on the other yards and possibly on hiding places like trees, storage sheds, or the spaces between the houses. The dog had stopped barking.
After a minute or two, the man went back into the house. That was my chance to go back to the police car and wait for my partner to return. Like a dummy, I didn’t take it. I stayed where I was.
The dog began barking again. The man with the flashlight came back out to investigate again! With my arm before my face, I had been unable to see whether he was carrying a gun, so this time I did not raise my arm, and he saw me!
“Are you the police?” the man asked. He was probably scared to death!
In a situation like that, there is only one answer to the question! “Yes!” I said.
The man didn’t know what to say next. Finally he asked,
“Do you have some kind of identification?”
I was wearing my police chaplain’s badge. “Yes, I do!” I answered and began walking toward him so that he could see it.
“You better hold it right there!” he said. “Don’t come any closer!” I still could not tell whether he had a gun or not, so I stopped. He shined his light on my badge for a long time. Finally he decided that I was okay and apologized.
“We’ve had a few burglaries in this area,” he explained. “I heard the dog and thought there might be somebody out here.” Of course I explained to him why I was there in his backyard in the middle of the night.
If the man had had a gun, the story might have had a different ending!
We didn’t catch the burglar.
The most interesting traffic stop I saw was a drunk who came around the curve at a high rate of speed just as Officer Tim Riggs and I were approaching from the opposite direction. The street was University Boulevard in Middletown. A divided four-laner.
The driver was so badly out of control that he could not steer. His front wheel hit the curb on the inside lane, and the card did a 180-degree spin. The back wheels hit the island curb at an intersection, and the car came to a dead halt.
Officer Riggs quickly did a U-turn and stopped his cruiser bumper-to-bumper with the other car, trapping it. At this point, the driver’s vision focused a little, and he decided it was time to escape. He drove forward and bumped into the front of the police cruiser! In that brief moment, Tim had jumped out and over (somehow!) and pulled the drunk driver out of his car. Chase over!
Some of the officers I rode with were women. I remember as a boy, when women officers were first coming on the scene, that some people questioned the ability of a woman to serve as a police officer. By the time I became a chaplain, the question had been settled. Women with a badge are just as capable as men with a badge.
One of the first experiences I had with a woman officer was the night a man phoned the police dispatcher asking for help. A pit bull dog was loose in his neighborhood and had chased him. The caller was safe in his house, but the dog was right outside on his porch! The dispatcher sent an officer to his assistance. I was riding with a supervising officer, so we responded too.
When we arrived, we found that the officer was already there and had made friends with the dog, who was observing us peacefully from the backseat of the officer’s cruiser!
The officer was a woman. She was a lot braver than I would have been!
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