The driver of the vehicle I stopped was 6 inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than me. He was leaning against his car as my sergeant drove off, abandoning me to fight the big guy alone. My “prisoner” was smiling, one gold front tooth sparkling in the sun. I was about to pee my pants and the big ex-con was having fun being arrested!
I had stopped the car for expired out of state plates. When the registration came back, the plates did not even match the vehicle. The big man had unfolded from the driver’s door, not fat big, but muscled big. He leaned back against the car, crossed his arms over his chest, and smiled at me with that shiny gold tooth. He had prison tattoos on his forearms and his biceps screamed prison muscles.
On my first job as a cop in the early 1970s at Kerrville, Texas Police Department, we did not get back up. You handled every traffic stop and every call by yourself. At the time of this traffic stop, I had only been a cop a few months. In those days, we were cut loose on the street before we went to police academy because the department did not want to waste money training you if you didn’t have the right stuff. My only training had been four weeks riding with a “senior officer” who had 18 months experience. Now, I was on my own.
I asked the man for his driver’s license, and as he smiled, he said it was suspended. I told him I was placing him under arrest for suspended license and false registration. His smile got broader and he said simply, “I ain’t goin’ to jail.”
About the time he said he wasn’t going to jail, my sergeant, Sgt. Walter Poppe, was driving by. He slowed and asked, “What you got, Wertheim?”
I told him that I had placed the driver under arrest, but the driver replied he was not going to jail.
“Take him,” Sgt Poppe ordered, and he drove off. The big ex-con and I watched the sergeant drive a block and a half away, past the next intersection where he pulled off into a parking lot. We could see him pick up a pair of binoculars and settle in to watch the fight from his car. That was police training in small town Texas in 1973.
The big man resisted as I grabbed him, turned him around and handcuffed him. He resisted as I walked him back to the squad car and placed him in the back seat. The resistance of this bigger, stronger man was hard for me to overcome but he never actively fought. Good thing. He could have mopped the pavement with my skinny, inexperienced butt. But I got him to jail without either of us getting hurt. Me, alone.
For several years just before I retired from Fort Worth Police Department in 2022, I volunteered at the academy as an actor in role play situations for cadets. I marvel at the training we do today, especially compared to the dearth of training I had fifty years ago. I have seen a lot of changes in my half-century in the criminal justice system. I often reflect that new cops today couldn’t do the job I did back then, but I also know that I couldn’t do the job they have to do today!