In the words of Forrest Gump’s mom, “Rooming houses are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” Okay, so she didn’t say that, but if she had been a police officer, she might have.
The Ten Percent Rule
Every town, every city, every sector has that house or that apartment that is home to the frequent fliers — the ones who take rides to jail so frequently they know where to sit, which doors to use, and have a coffee mug with their name on it waiting for them on the Booking counter. They’re the very definition of the 10% Rule which simply states that 10% of the population causes 90% of the problems.
Rooming houses are certainly no exception, and in fact, are home to many of the frequent fliers, at least where I work. And because they’re always in a constant state of change with people coming and going, you never know who you’re going to encounter. Rooming houses are an ever-changing, always evolving, demented landscape of the who’s who of the city. Responding to a call at a rooming house is like spinning the proverbial Wheel of Misfortune.
Hot Call
The building I had been dispatched to was certainly on the frequent flier list. It not only posed the problem of the clientele who were rarely pleasant and always different, but it had a confusing layout with unmarked apartment doors, narrow hallways, and obscure connecting rooms. This one in particular was essentially a two-story maze built inside an early 1900’s home that had at some point in its dark past been converted into a rooming house. The white clapboards were warped and rotten, the first and second floor porches were crooked and broken, and it offered a steady stream of drug users and felons mixed in with the occasional low-income person just trying to get by.
The 911 caller said that a woman had been dragged by her hair into one of the rooms and was screaming for help somewhere on the second floor. An abduction in progress is a hot call to be sure. I drove Code 3 over there and, after parking my cruiser and approaching on foot, I could hear the screams from outside on the sidewalk. The early morning air carried her voice , interrupted only by the beginning of the commuter traffic in the distance. I entered the building and followed my ears, trying to pinpoint which apartment the screams were coming from.
No Time To Wait
The sound of the woman’s cries for help led me to a small, steep staircase that was joined at the top by a narrow hallway, only about arms-length in width. I zeroed in on the apartment door and it randomly occurred to me that if I was going to have to kick the door open then that narrow hallway was certainly going to be a problem for my long legs. This thought, as it turned out, was dabbling in the prophetic.
I banged on the door and announced that it was the police, but instead of getting an answer from that room, the door opposite and behind me is the one that opened. The person inside pointed at the door across the hall and said, “She’s in there!” The clump of long, brown hair and the torn t-shirt lying at the foot of the door confirmed that all signs pointed to this being the right room. It was at about that time that I heard her scream for help again along with something to the effect of, He’s trying to kill me! so there was no time to wait. My partner had just arrived on scene and soon joined me on the second floor. As he came up the stairs and entered the hall to my right I made the decision it was time to kick in the door.
Open Sesame
I looked at the person who had opened their door for me and said, “Excuse me a second,” nudged them further inside and then backed myself into their room to give me more space to work. I grabbed a hold of each side of the door frame, heaved myself forward, and simultaneously delivered a front kick with everything I had into the door across the hall where the woman was screaming for help.
The first kick split the door above the knob but didn’t give way. Immediately I pulled my leg back and drove a second kick into the same spot. This time the door burst open with a satisfying cracking sound and a shower of splintering wood. The door swung on its hinges from left to right and wedged itself open on the uneven floor giving me a full view into the room. Immediately inside and to the left of the doorway I saw a shirtless man on top of a woman engaged in a frantic struggle.
Down And Out
The woman was on her back, bent over backward atop a crappy old futon, trying to fend off her boyfriend’s attack. My partner and I stepped inside and muckled onto him, dragged him off of her and down to the floor, where we put him in handcuffs. A third officer arrived and helped us drag him out into the hallway where he continued to fight and run his mouth. He tried getting away and going back into the room where his girlfriend was curled up in the fetal position. Still fighting us, he tried kicking my partner in the groin but he was quickly repelled with a stiff-arm and bounced off the hallway wall. We brought him back down to the floor and a short time later our Wagon arrived to haul him off to jail where he belonged.
The woman suffered only minor injuries and was, unfortunately, reluctant to cooperate with us and the investigation, which is so often the case with domestics. At least she was free from him for the time being; hopefully the prosecutor and a good judge could throw the book at him. This guy was not only a real loser, but a real maniac.
The Exception To The Rule
From the time I arrived to the time I kicked the apartment door in was probably about a minute. Things happen fast in this job and so our decision making has to be just as fast. There wasn’t time to get permission from a supervisor or wait for a third officer, and there certainly wasn’t time to apply for a search warrant. When people’s lives are in danger it is up to us to gather the facts, draw logical conclusions, and then take action. It’s what makes this job so dangerous, so liability-heavy, and so dang exciting.
The truth is we don’t run around kicking in doors because we feel like it, despite what the woke liberals and the internet trolls might say or think. There are exceptions to the 4th Amendment for a reason, and this case was precisely why those exceptions exist.
__________________________
- How well-versed are you in the 4th Amendment and its exceptions?
- Are you able to quickly, accurately, and legally apply case law?
- How are your breaching skills?
- Are you a safe and effective breacher?
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