The Lust For The Bust

For starters, get your mind out of the gutter.

Moving on…

Capful Of Feathers

The most important rule on the midnight shift (second only to studying SOPs after 3:00 a.m.) is to back each other up on every call and motor vehicle stop. There’s no need to wait for a request for backup, you just go.

When I worked in a smallish town, the big push for us on midnights was DWI and drug arrests. These arrests were the proverbial feathers in the cap. We chased taillights, headlights, and yellow line violations ad nauseam, not simply to write tickets, but to hear the immortal words, Nice pinch, kid. Our shift was a fairly young crew and very proactive.

One night I heard a neighboring route car call off on a stop so I headed in that direction. This officer was no rookie. He had been on the street for a couple of years, he was young and aggressive, smart, and a genuine, honest guy. He had a wife, a young son, and a bright future. It took me a few minutes to get there, but when I did, I was horrified by what I saw. My heart dropped into my stomach.

Nightmare On A Dark Street

I had come from the opposite direction that their cars were facing, so I had do drive by and flip around in order to pull up behind his cruiser.  As I drove by I saw the driver of the car he had stopped leaning against the hood of his cruiser.  The guy’s arms were folded, he was staring over at the open driver’s door of his car and the rear end of the officer who was bent over inside the car digging around like a kid in a box of Legos.  The officer and this other guy were alone on a dark street in the middle of the night. The officer’s back and firearm were completely exposed and unguarded. This was an officer safety nightmare full of all the horrible things that could happen.

I got out of my cruiser and began to walk over as an argument raged in my head of how I should handle this — should I say something or not? The officer I was backing up had finished searching the front seats and opened the back doors to complete his search. I stood by with the driver and waited for him to finish. When it was all said and done he came up empty and kicked the driver loose. What was he looking for? Weed.

Confrontation isn’t my gift, but it wouldn’t be in his best interest if I kept my mouth shut simply to avoid one. So I told him what I saw when I pulled up, what I felt, and why it was so dangerous. He heard what I had to say and realized that he had indeed gotten the lust for the bust and made a dumb decision. To his credit, he had a great attitude, was teachable, and chalked it up as a humbling experience and a lesson learned.

Unsafe Things

When faced with life or death encounters research has shown that the human body involuntarily goes into self-preservation mode. During this process, commonly referred to by the nerds as fight or flight, the blood leaves our extremities for our vital organs and we can lose hearing, our fine motor skills, and our peripheral vision. We become fixated on the threat to the exclusion of everything else. But, we have also learned that through realistic, tactical training we can mitigate these effects and work through them and in spite of them.

In my opinion, something very similar happens to us when we want to make the big arrest or make the next big bust. We can become caught up in the moment and so focused (the lust) on the outcome (the bust) that we exclude the means, the methods, and the tactics to get us there and then do dumb, unsafe things. This is what I call the lust for the bust.

The question, then, is how do we mitigate it? Here are a couple principles to go by:

Fools Rush In

Principle No. 1

When you search, don’t search alone. Ever. There’s no high-profile arrest, giant bag of dope, or any other piece of contraband that is worth your life. 99.723 times out of 100 you will have time to wait for backup. I understand the fact that exigent circumstances will happen and we will have to risk our own life to save someone else, but those will be few and far between. The next time you think you’re about to catch the big one and have visions of grandeur, awards, or some semblance of fame twinkling in your eye, slow down, take a breath, and ask yourself if searching alone is worth your life.

Let me help you with that: it’s not.

Handcuffs Are Your Friend

Principle No. 2

Pick your battles, use common sense, and handcuff whenever possible.  Never let someone have freedom of movement while you give them your back and your attention is on the search. You will be setting yourself up for serious failure. Handcuffs are not final, they can always come off later. Regardless of what happens down the road in court, do what is safe so you can go home to your family at the end of the night.

Maybe you work in a small town or you’re a trooper working in the middle of nowhere and backup is not an option, then what? Your safety still comes first. Know the laws in your state — including case law — when it comes to consent searches, searches based on reasonable suspicion, and searches incident to arrest. Know when you can handcuff someone, what to do with them while they are in handcuffs, and how to articulate why you did what you did, i.e. lack of backup, officer safety concerns, etc.

Friday Night Patdown

Principle No. 3

If have enough reason to pull someone out and handcuff them for your safety, then you sure as heck have enough to pat them down for weapons.  Good ol’  Terry v. Ohio lays it out for you and there’s probably some additional case law to brush up on in your state.  When you search, be thorough.  A poor search may be worse than a non-search.

The Infinite Game

If you can’t get backup or handcuff and restrict the movement of your suspects, and no one’s life is in imminent danger, then don’t go a-searchin’. It is not worth your life. This job is an infinite game of cat and mouse. Sometimes we win, sometimes they win. If you use sound tactics, apply common sense, and recognize and resist the lust for the bust, then you get to continue to play.

__________________________

– Have you had the lust for the bust?
– How did it play out?
– What was it for?
– Was it worth your life?
__________________________

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