"The First Time a Gun Was Pointed at Me."

Police work is a dangerous job.

Grown men and women running around the city with guns pursuing men, and a few women, who have chosen to prey on people of our communities is fraught with risk.

I honestly don’t know how many times in my career I had run into situations where I pointed my weapon at another cop, or had another copper’s weapon pointed at me. I spent a lot of time running around after criminals and predators on the south and the west sides, and the north side, too, for that matter. Those pursuits being in both uniform and plainclothes.

(Note: for those not familiar with Chicago, there isn’t really an east side, other than a little slice of the city (neighborhood) that hugs our border with Indiana on the far south side.)

When I came out of the Chicago Police Academy on November 19, 1986 (why that date sticks in my mind I have no idea), I remember wondering if I’d ever find myself on the wrong end of a gun being pointed at me. I remember thinking what it would be like facing down that yawning black hole that promised death and/or great bodily harm?

I know . . . I wasn’t too bright back then, some, well, plenty of people would argue I’m still not too sharp today.

How would I react? Would I react?

In the academy, we had some recruits freeze in training when faced with having a gun pointed at them. Some ducked. Some looked to hide.

What would I do?

You couldn’t help but wonder. Post academy, I was self-aware enough to know that I didn’t really know. Sure, we’d been trained and hopefully I would revert to my training and respond accordingly.

But, I asked myself, will you ever really know until it happens?

I imagine there are plenty of Chicago cops who never have had to discover how they would respond. In fact, maybe its most of Chicago’s finest haven’t looked down the barrel of another person’s firearm. I hope that’s the case.

I am in no way casting any aspersions on those officers who haven’t had the experience. It’s not like we go looking for it, I know I didn’t. But I tended to be . . . assertive and worked with aggressive officers who were assigned to districts with the highest violent crime rates and/or trends and shootings. There were always, and still are, shootings.

All of that said, I found out what it felt like and what I would do when faced with having a gun pointed at me. But it wasn’t anything like I’d imagined it would be. Sometimes that’s the trouble with imagining ahead of time. . . Playing the “What if?” game. Regardless, I still highly recommend playing, “What If.” It’s saved my hide many times.


The Beach Watch Party

Which brings me to the indelible memory that’s stuck with me for several decades.

I was still on probation, not long off my field training, when an academy classmate, who worked in a different district than I did, invited me to a watch party. It was spring, and his watch was having a party on the beach in their district, the Twenty-first, which has been shuttered for years now. Watch parties could be rambunctious affairs hosted when the men and women of the watch about to rotate off of afternoon shift for the day shift would get together to blow off some steam. This occurred once every three months.

Billy assured me this was going to be low-key, just a few of the straight afternoon officers that didn’t rotate had decided to get together. They called it a watch party, but he said it wouldn’t be twenty people all together.

Having lived in the city less than a year, and working a lot, I wanted to get out and meet more people. My circle of friends was pretty small and somewhat limited compared to how many I had in Minnesota, where I primarily grew up.

I arrived at the beach, it was dark, and chilly, and so a fire had been built in the sand. I saw Billy and we spoke, but he got pulled away for some reason or another and I found myself alone amongst a group of strangers, cops, but strangers nevertheless.

I had on a jean jacket, but was still a little chilly with the breeze coming off Lake Michigan, so I stepped up to the fire. I was by myself, but people were all around me.


The Confrontation

As I stood there, frankly thinking maybe I’d made a mistake because, other than Bill, I was the youngest person there, someone spoke.

"Who are you?”

It was a guy sitting with his back to a low concrete wall, his arm around a woman’s shoulder, their feet stretched toward the fire.

I looked around, not sure if he was talking to me.

“Yeah,” he said, “you. Who are you?”

Now, I have to admit that I was perhaps a little cocky. I worked in Englewood which was a fast district, full of gung-ho coppers and they had rubbed off on me . . . maybe, a little. I detected an edge to the seated cop’s voice and I found myself getting irritated. Didn’t he know I was a cop?

I guess I wasn’t answering fast enough, because he stood.

“I asked you a question,” he said.

He was short, like five foot seven or eight, and was heavy, carrying most of his weight in a pear shape and his breath was redolent with booze.

“I’m the fuckin’ life guard,” I said, admittedly not helping the situation.

This cop pulled his snubbed nosed revolver from his waistband, and pointed it at my face.

Only a few feet separated us.

I saw the deep darkness of the barrel, the silver colored hollow point tips of the rounds in the adjacent chambers of the one in battery. I saw the hard eyes of the man holding the gun out at arm’s length. He was wearing a jean jacket too.

And I felt the heaviness of my Smith and Wesson .45 caliber semi-automatic, having not purchased an off duty weapon as of yet, weighing down the back of my jeans (How I hate to admit wearing denim over denim, a fashion faux paw to be sure, especially in the big city, maybe not as much in 1987 as now, lol).

But this was a cop pointing a gun at me. And I knew he was a cop. I don’t remember thinking about getting shot. I only wanted to get my hands on this asshole who had the audacity to pull a gun on another officer of the law.

He pulled the hammer back on his snubie.

The ominous click sent a chill up my spine. The revolver was in single-action mode now, and only the slightest pressure on the trigger would cause it to discharge.

“I fucking asked you a question, smart ass. Who. The. Fuck. Are. You?”

Somewhere off to my right, a woman screamed.

Apparently, this little drama had caught her attention. Maybe his companion was used to his behavior, maybe she was shocked, I don’t know, but she’d been quiet.

People started yelling at him to put the gun away. His drunken expression slackened slightly and his hand with the gun slowly lowered.

I was flooded with relief and a boiling anger.

As I started around the fire to break the son of a bitch’s neck, I felt arms circle my waist and Billy was talking to me and trying to hold me back, with little success. I’m Six three, two hundred twenty-five pounds, NFL tight end size.

“It’s not worth it,” Billy said. “He’s not worth your job. You’re on probation.”

Like a beacon cutting through a fog of anger, I managed to take a breath and allowed myself be led away. My blood was boiling.


Years Later

This was many years ago, but the memory dwells inside my skull and occasionally resurfaces. It’s something I’ll never forget.

Be careful what you wonder, because sometimes you get thrown a curve.

I’d had my first experience of having a gun drawn and pointed at me, and by the grace of God I got through it.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be my last, but it was a life-lesson that kept me on the right road.