John was crazy. Psychotic. Combative. Big and strong and fearless. Every cop on Kerrville PD in the 1970s knew that if you stopped John, you were in for a fight.
One time on deep night shift, I spotted a slow-moving vehicle weaving from curb to curb. There was no other traffic on the street and I began following at a comfortable distance while I ran a check on the license plate. It came back to John, who had a history of DUIs.
I didn’t want to get in a fight, but I knew I had to stop him. I activated the red lights on the squad car, tapped the siren, and after a block or so, he pulled over.
I approached the driver’s door. The window was down. As was my practice, I leaned in close before speaking so that when he responded, I could smell his breath.
“Good evening, sir,” I began. “The reason I pulled you over is that I noticed you were weaving some and I wanted to make sure you are okay. May I see you driver’s license and proof of insurance please?”
He was muttering as he got his wallet and removed his driver’s license, then reached over to the glove box for his insurance card. I could smell the odor of deep alveolar alcohol and made the decision to get him out of the car for a sobriety test.
I took the driver’s license and insurance card he offered, then opened the driver’s door and asked him to step out of the vehicle. As he did, his balance was so bad that I had to steady him to prevent him from falling over. I anticipated that he would fight and knew I had to be quick, so I asked him to put his hands on top of the car. I quickly frisked him, then told him he was under arrest for DUI.
He immediately spun around while drawing back his right fist to hit me and screamed “I ain’t goin’ to jail!”
But I was a step ahead of him. I already had the little can of mace out of its belt holster and I gave him a squirt in the face. He straightened up, arms tight at his side, and went stiff as a board – not the response I had expected. I managed to wrestle his hands behind his back and get the handcuffs on.
His eyes were squeezed shut tight with the burning of the tear gas distracting him from fighting. I led him to the patrol car and opened the back door. He wouldn’t sit and I had to load him into the back seat while he was still straightened out stiff. Once he was safely in the back seat, I called for a tow truck to impound his car.
After I had booked him into a jail cell, he lay on his bunk stomping his feet against the metal wall of the cell with a rhythmic thud, thud, thud for hours.
The next morning when another officer was booking him out of jail, John was compliant, but silent. He only responded to questions with grunts. But as officer released him and John walked out the door, John uttered the only coherent sentence from the time I stopped him until his release.
“I’m going to go up on top of the hospital and throw oranges at you all,” he said. John did not respond further and we were left wondering, what did he mean by oranges?
Whatever it was, he never retaliated and, to the best of my knowledge, none of the other officers had occasion to stop John again while I was still at Kerrville PD.