Almost A Gun Fight

I’m trying to type this while riding on a bus; we’ll see how it goes. I think God was looking out for me. I never had to shoot anyone, but I came real close one night.

I was working first shift, 1200 midnight through 8:00 am.  That entire evening we were responding to burglary calls at businesses all over the city. The alarms were set off by the burglar, however he was always gone by the time we got there, When an alarm went off at a pawn shop I drove to that call probably a bit faster than I should have, I wanted to get this guy. I pulled up to the front of the store and a second officer came through the alley to the rear of the store. As we both pulled up the suspect was running out of the rear of the store and shooting at the officer in the rear. 

I slammed my car transmission into Park and chose to pull my Ruger 357 from my holster opposed to fiddling with getting the shotgun out.  I didn’t want to take a fraction of a second longer than necessary.At that point he was running directly at me. My gun was raised, he was in my sights and I was in the process of pulling back the trigger with my right index finger and the hammer had almost struck the primer that would send a bullet immediately out the barrel and hopefully into the approaching suspect. At that split second the suspect tripped forward falling on his face with the gun skittering across the cement as it fell pout of his hand.  I needed to release the trigger and let the hammer down oh so gently so not to cause the primer to ignite and cause a bullet to fire. I was successful in getting the hammer back to safe position than ran toward where the suspect lay and keep my gun pointed at him while the other officer handcuffed and searched him.

Once we approached the suspect it was obvious that he tripped on a swollen and raised strip of tar between two large slabs of cement. All the action from the time I drove up to the front of the store and the suspect was down and under control was only seconds and to make the situation a bit more volatile I was breathing heavy, my adrenaline was racing through my body, and it was July and over 100 degrees.  I was very thankful I was able to handle the situation without sending a half jacketed hollow point bullet someplace where it didn’t belong.  

My words of wisdom today are; we don’t really pay our police officers for what they do every day, even though they do a lot of good and helpful services for the public. We pay them for the skills, the knowledge and the temperament that is needed in critical, challenging and crisis situations. As a society, do we pay our police enough? 

Until later,

Sally S