If you’re a small-town cop in America, especially if you have a spouse and kids, chances are slim that you can afford even the sparsest existence on your police salary alone. You may even be living below the poverty line and qualify for food stamps. Either both spouses have to work and you have to pay for childcare, or if you agree one spouse should stay home to raise the kids, then you have to work multiple jobs just to scrape by.
Early in my police career in Kerrville, Texas my wife and I agreed I would work multiple jobs so she could stay home with the babies. I worked as a bouncer in a couple of bars, as kitchen help in a hotel restaurant, and as a wrecker driver and service station attendant at a full-service gas station at Highway 16 and Interstate 10.
On one of my days off, I was waiting on cars – pumping gas, washing windshields, checking oil and tires, etc. A car pulled into the pumps with a middle-aged woman driving and a frail, elderly woman in the passenger seat. I gathered that the driver was a nurse or caregiver for the elderly woman who was her patient.
After I had cleaned the windshield, the driver popped the hood for me to check the oil. It was right in the middle of the safe zone and I showed the dipstick to the driver. The old lady passenger said, “add some oil to top it off.” I explained that at most, it would only take a half a quart and didn’t really need any at this time, besides which we only sold oil by the quart can. The old lady grew agitated and demanded I top it off, so I did.
When I went to collect for the gas and oil, the old lady refused to pay for the oil and became angry. I tried to explain that once she told me to add the oil, she would have to pay for it.
She told the driver to leave and not pay for anything. I got in front of the car and shouted to another attendant to call the police.
Then the old lady ordered the driver, “RUN OVER THAT SON OF A BITCH!”
The driver gunned the engine and accelerated bouncing me over the hood as she did so. I rolled off the hood, avoiding injury, as the car took the entrance ramp to I-10 east toward San Antonio. A marked unit arrived a minute later. I gave him a description and license number and he hit I-10 east in pursuit.
Dispatch notified DPS Highway Patrol and the Sheriff’s Office and Police in Kerr County and in Kendall County to our east. DPS Highway Patrol in Kendall County put a unit on I-10 eastbound. The car never passed the DPS Unit, who met the Kerrville PD unit a short time later. Did the officers simply fail to identify the car? Did it turn off the interstate to take back roads?
The case was never resolved. I had other cases I generated off duty on part time jobs, including arrests and drugs, but that old lady was one of the most bizarre pieces of work I ever encountered.
Here’s a “Hat’s Off” to all the police officers working at low pay departments and trying to make ends meet with off-duty jobS. It’s not an easy life, but it is rewarding in other ways.