Officer Safety 101: Show Me Your Hands

Hands kill — not mean words, bad attitudes, or angry eyes — the hands. This is why we care about where the hands are, what they are holding, and what they are doing. If we can’t see them there should be alarm bells going off in our head. It’s Officer Safety 101.

Domestics are a dime a dozen. We’ve all been to countless calls for domestic disturbances even if you haven’t been on the job for all that long. They are some of the most annoying calls we go to because they are often problems that are the result of years of booze and bad decisions. But statistically they are one of the most dangerous types of call we will respond to.

The Spread Eagle

There was a motel in town that we affectionately nicknamed The Spread Eagle Motel, which I don’t think bears further explanation. It was situated along one of the main roads in and out of town. It was a one level, white clapboard and brick sided building with an office on one end and all the rooms stretching side by side down the length of the other. Each motel room had one door and one window that faced the dilapidated parking lot full of cracks and crab grass. The aged yellow and black motel sign stood atop a pair of rusty poles high in the air attracting its clientele like a bug light attracts mosquitoes. And vacancy? There was always vacancy. No one stayed very long.

One midnight shift another officer and I were dispatched there for a domestic disturbance — yelling, arguing, and the sound of things getting knocked around. Apparently someone’s idea of a romantic evening was not ending well. Because it was a motel with a proverbial revolving door and ever-changing stream of occupants, we had no idea who we would be dealing with when we arrived.

Prince Charming

When I pulled up I tactically extinguished my headlights and parked off to one side and approached on foot. I zeroed in on the motel room as soon as I saw a woman standing outside the door. I debriefed her and got the short story that it was just a verbal argument. I guess Prince Charming wasn’t on his A-game. When the backup officer arrived, I passed her off to him and made my way to the motel room door and pushed it open since it was still ajar from when the woman had walked out.

The ceiling light was on and I could see that it was a dated, tiny room with a double bed that barely fit, a dresser, and a bathroom. The guy was lying on his side, turned away from me, his body obscured by a rumpled mess of faded sheets and a comforter style not seen since 1973. His head was buried in a pillow and I couldn’t see his hands because they were tucked underneath the pillow. All I could see of his person was the back of his head and his bare left shoulder.

Officer Safety 101

I stood bladed in the doorway, offset to one side, using the doorpost as cover when I addressed him. (Not to toot my own horn, but that was super tactical). Since the only person I knew of who slept with a pillow under their gun was Chuck Norris, everyone else could potentially have a gun under their pillow. This guy was no Chuck Norris, so if there was  a gun under that guy’s pillow, I certainly wasn’t taking any chances. I called out to him, told him it was the police, and told him to show me his hands — Officer Safety 101.

He didn’t respond right away so I told him again to show me his hands. He half-turned his upper body toward me and pulled his left hand out from under the pillow and casually raised it with a bent arm in the air. But his right hand was still concealed under the pillow, and now he had me in his line of sight. His initial pause, and now the half-compliance, had those alarm bells going off in my head. Feeling the situation intensify I moved my right hand toward my gun and the safety catches of my holster as I ordered him a third time to show me his hands. The internal sense of urgency came out in the tone and volume of my third, and what I hoped to be final, command. Show me your hands!

Lying In Wait — Literally

Prince Charming seemed alarmed as he rolled the rest of the way over, now on his back, exposing his bare chest that was followed by a fleshy nub just below his right shoulder. Frustrated, annoyed, and a little scared, he replied, “I am showing you my hands! I only have one!”

I did not see that coming.

Honestly, I felt a little awkward now that I had been caught off guard and the wind had been taken out of my sails. I wasn’t sure if I should apologize to the one-armed man, keep going with the authoritative approach and just pretend that that didn’t just happen, or just leave.

Long story short, he wasn’t lying in wait to kill me. His only crime was a series of bad choices that led him to a cheap room at The Spread Eagle Motel. As for me, well, I left there ready to expect the unexpected.

__________________________

– Are you diligent about watching the hands?
– Have you ever let it slide? What happened?
– Have you become complacent at domestics?
– How can you mentally prepare for the unexpected?
__________________________

Thanks for reading! Do you have a story that you think we could learn from and that you’d like to share with Johnny Tactical nation? Fill out the contact form and include your name, rank, and department, or email it to [email protected] and follow these guidelines:

– It must be a firsthand account
– True
– Have a lesson, principle, or tactic to apply
– Cleaned of names, dates, and places
– Include your call sign

If your story is selected and published in our blog you’ll get the credit using your call sign and we’ll send you a free Johnny Tactical morale patch.