The Day The Ceiling Gave Birth

Sometimes people hide from the police in the attic. Sometimes the police don’t find them. Other times those people are found, won’t come out, get gassed, panic, and fall through the ceiling. This is one of those times.

Totally Average

The neighborhood was average, really. It wasn’t shady or seedy or particularly crime ridden. Normal people lived there. People who had jobs and paid their mortgages, mowed their lawns, walked their dogs, washed their cars, and rented inflatable castles for their kids’ birthday parties. They were regular people.

But some families have a black sheep, a kid who can’t seem to get out of his own way, a kid who’s been in trouble with the law since the day he was born. And then twenty-some-odd years later that kid-turned-adult finds himself wanted for various drug and weapon offenses and decides to go into hiding at mom and dad’s house situated in an average neighborhood full of regular people.

Kind And Gentle

Our plain-clothes unit had tracked him down and surveilled the address while the avengers assembled – – namely, the SWAT team. The house itself was a single-story, ranch style home with a basement and an attic crawl space. Like the neighboring houses on both sides of the street, it sat on a postage stamp size lot all nestled closely together. This very usual neighborhood was about to have a very unusual day.

After suiting up in our black tactical uniforms and getting the briefing, myself and the other members of the SWAT team piled into the Bearcat and rumbled down to the front lawn of the suspect address. With perimeter units in place we began the kind and gentle process of calling him out. It began with phone calls to the bad guy, but when they went unanswered, transitioned to the Bearcat’s PA system. As always, we gave him ample opportunity to decide that his little game of hide and seek was over, to admit that we had found him, and to just come out, but no. I guess he was hoping that we would just go away.

Dangerous Places

So, things progressed. And by things, of course, I mean tactics. Using robots, dogs, cameras, mirrors, and SWAT officers we made entry into the house and cleared it room by room, piece by piece, until only the attic crawl space remained. Our surveillance and intel was solid, so we knew that’s where he must be.

Attics and crawl spaces create their own special kind of challenges for law enforcement. We can’t just stick our heads up there to have a look around because we could get our faces blown off, and oftentimes it’s not safe or prudent to send a dog, either. Mirrors and cameras have their own limitations since you can only see so much and often puts the user in a bad spot. Suffice to say that attics are dangerous places and pose a significant risk to officer safety. Thankfully, we have another tool.

Let Me Introduce You To My Little Friend

That tool comes in a silver can with blue lettering, has a pin and a spoon, and pumps out a massive, joy stealing off-white cloud of non-lethal pain and misery that reaches into every nook, cranny, crack, and crevice with vaporous, demonic fingers. People who don’t know any better call it Tear Gas, essentially putting it on the same level as a chopped onion. This stuff does a whole lot more than bring a tear to your eye, believe me, I know. Its actual name is CS Gas, and only slightly less well known as 2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile. Like its government name, it’s a real punch in the mouth.

Part of our team took up positions on the main floor while others maintained the perimeter and worked on introducing our little friend into the attic. We donned our gas masks in anticipation of the all-enveloping nature of the cloud of pain. Several minutes later I heard the spoon pop somewhere behind me followed by the unmistakable loud hiss of the flameless tri-chamber CS gas grenade. As the smoldering can was thrust into the attic the hissing sound became muffled, deadened by the drywall and insulation between us, telling me the can had successfully made it into the attic. I stared at the kitchen ceiling and waited.

Coming Through

The first indication we were on the right track was the sound of a shuffling body above us, then some intermittent coughing. Much like a game of Whac-A-Mole we knew he was coming out, we just didn’t know where. We did our best to figure out exactly where he was by zeroing in on the sounds which became more and more pronounced with every passing second. Then, the sounds above us turned to absolute panic. There was a coughing and gagging accompanied by a rapid scratching and scrambling sound, like rats fleeing a sinking ship. It wouldn’t be long now.

Me and a couple other officers stood in the kitchen, watching the ceiling since it sounded like he was right above us. Then, like an unborn baby pressing against the walls of its mother’s womb, the ceiling began to flex and bulge downward. The drywall cracked and split as it bore his full weight. We began giving orders for him to show us his hands expecting him to pop through at any moment. But, unfortunately for him, he got hung up on the clear plastic sheeting used as a vapor barrier between the kitchen ceiling and the attic. The drywall fell away revealing his face and body pressed against the clear plastic, like a baby in the amniotic sack.

A Baby Rhino?

With a large piece of drywall cleared away, the suspect’s entire body was now visible, suspended by the plastic sheeting, still pressed hard against it like a child squishing his face against the glass of a car window. He was frantically struggling to get out when he punctured the plastic and thrust an arm through, reaching down and out of the attic trying to get away from the horrible effects of the gas. It was like the scene in Ace Ventura when Jim Carrey was birthed by the mechanical rhinoceros — Must… have… air…! Had the ceiling been gray and had a tail, it would have been almost an exact reenactment.

In dramatic fashion our bad guy came through the straining plastic, arms, face, and legs. With a little tug from us he came straight down to the kitchen floor like a floppy newborn baby — only bigger and uglier. We quickly secured him in handcuffs there on the linoleum floor and then helped him to his feet. While escorting him out of the house all he kept saying was that he thought he was going to die and blamed us for his situation. I just shook my head and offered him some words of wisdom as we walked side by side.

We had our bad guy and his parents had a man-sized hole in their kitchen ceiling. The lesson for today is CS gas is horrible so you should probably just come out.

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