As some of you are aware, I'm a police officer with 20+ years working the road. The other night the units in the zone next to me were dispatched to a domestic dispute.
As they were headed to the call our dispatcher advised that the 21 year old son had left the house and was intoxicated. I started looking for the suspect vehicle.
A short while later I was dispatched to a single vehicle crash called in by a cell phone auto-call. A single vehicle crash at night, unless they hit a deer, is almost always a DUI. I put two and two together; 1030 on Sunday night, single vehicle crash, drunk driver leaving a call site, I bet it's the suspect from the domestic. Since we don't know if there are any injuries I crank up the lights and siren and head for the crash site.
As I pull up I see a figure walking out of the woods.
With a gun to his head.
It took me a second to realize what I was looking at. I drew my gun and spent the next four minutes convincing this 21-year-old man not to kill himself and to not make me kill him. It felt much longer than four minutes, but I've watched the video, that's all it was. Four minutes that felt like eternity.
He had his trigger finger along the frame when he first walked out of the woods, but two or three times I thought he was going to pull the trigger because he would move his finger onto the trigger. He moved the gun from his temple to pointing at the ground a couple of times. When he did so he waved it vaguely towards me bringing me up to a higher, (like I could get any higher), alert.
I've been a hostage negotiator for nine years and this was, by far, my worst negotiation. I was totally unprepared and just talked as fast as I could.
My partner showed up about two minutes into the negotiation. I watched his body camera recording today and had to laugh. When I put the young man in handcuffs I stepped back from him, look up, let out a massive breath I'd been holding, and crossed myself. I'm not Catholic, but it seemed appropriate.
It was quite unexpected.
