Maybe once a week, N comes home & when i ask him how his day went, he'll answer "i had a foot chase/car chase/fight today." Bc he loves this stuff, i always smile & say "wow, how cool! tell me what happened!" & he launches into a detailed description of his exploits.
some background about where we live: ypsi is a blue-collar, lower to lower middle class kind of town. we have some nice neighborhoods & areas & probably more than our share of trailor parks & mini-ghettos. some of the scarier parts of town are in what is known locally as "the willow", probably bc of its proximity to the old Ford's plant at willow run. anyways, parts of the willow are nearly completely black. (now before anyone gets up on their racial high-horse, being black has nothing to do with living in the willow or being poor or anything else. N & i also live in a mostly black neighborhood & we really like it here. it just happens to be a fact that the world is not totally integrated. racism still extsts & it exists in ypsi just like anywhere else. sucky, but true.) the willow, especially the black areas of the willow, are notoriously anti-cop, & not entirely without reason. last summer there was a really ugly incident where an african-american man in custody of the local sherriff dept died in the street, allegedly as a result of mistreatment. now, N & the state police had nothing to do with the incident, but bc they are cops, the anti-police attitude affects them as well.
so a couple days ago, N comes home & says he had a foot chase & fight. i ask how it went, here's what he tells me: he was making a traffic stop for bad plates in the willow. the man pulls into a driveway where lots of guys are milling around & tries to pretend like he doesn't know N was tailing him or talking to him. some dialog ensues, & the man gets beliegerant & refuses to follow N to his cruiser, & ultimately takes off on foot. N is pretty quick, so he catches the guy going over a fence & a fight follows. Now, N is a big guy-- 6'3", 200lbs & this man is maybe 5'9" & 160, but N can't control him. he can neutralize the man, but the guy has apparently had fight training, so he's manuevering out of N's holds. They scrap for about 5 minutes, N takes a few hits & finally pins the guy without resorting to his club or mace. he tells me its the 1st time he's ever not been able to totally handle a guy in a fight. (i believe him. i've seen him take down guys with a good 50lbs on him.) Now the general law is that police can stay one step ahead of their attacker. so once the man hit N, N cold have resorted to his weapons using non-deadly force. he chose not to, in part bc he was a white cop alone in a black neighborhood, fighting in the midst of a pretty large group of men, several of whom he's arrested in the past.
at this point in the story, i break with my usual role of confident wife, convinced of her husband's superior abilities, to stop N & say what the hell were you thinking? why didn't you use your club? you have a family to come home to, etc. he points out that it all turned out ok, & several of the guys in the background were actually telling the man to give up, that N was a good cop & he'd be treated fairly. i sigh, thinking, yeah but what if it hadn't turned out that way? & remind myself that i have to trust N's judgement on this stuff & that this is all part of being married to N.
i don't know why i'm relating this story, other than the fact that for the first time in a long time, i was afraid for N while he was telling it to me. generally, i don't let fear for him be a part of our lives. this is his chosen profession, he loves it, & he can't be effective at it if he's worried bc his wife is scared all the time, & i don't want our kids raised in a climate of fear. so it's not that i'm callous or willfully blind to the dangers he faces, i just chose to exist in a world where my husband will come home every night. every so often tho, the worries i hide seep through the cracks.
as an aside-- the man turned out to be high on all kinds of stuff, which is probably why he was so difficult to control.
I totally understand. Justin comes home and does the same. I love to hear his stories and most of them don't bother me at all since I totally trust his judgement, but sometimes the 'what if' creeps in. Its hard to know there are people that hate your husband solely based on his job. You didn't mention anything about N using his Tazer, do they carry them? Fortunately, when Justin has guys that resist arrest he can threaten to use his Tazer and that is enough to make them comply.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, BIG HUGS!!!
N doesn't carry a taser. they can, but it doesnt fit well on his belt, & he chooses not to carry one. there have been a lot of lawsuits in MI over their use & word is they're about to change the laws on their use here. i kind of wish he would carry it, but, in the end its his call & i trust his judgement.
ReplyDeleteWow, I can imagine that it's a scary profession, but it sounds like N is very physically, mentally, and emotionally ready to tackle anything his job throws at him! Which of course you know...but I can totally see when you hear stories like this, the flashes of "I'm your wife, you have 2 kids", BE CAREFUL!!!! Reading a post like this though really makes me stop and think about "the other side"....like, the cop's wife and family kind of thing!
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'm rambling!
I am so glad there are people like N who want to be cops and are good at it, but i am so glad M isnt one of them. I panic when he doesnt come home on time!
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