Recounting some questionable procedures

I’ve shared some experiences from my years of truck driving, but I’ve not relayed many stories from my law-enforcement years in western Kansas. And, thinking back, there are a quite a few stories I could tell.

I worked for a small department - there were only four full-time deputies and the sheriff - so it was hard to opt out of certain details even if a fellow feared ahead of time they were probably doomed to failure. And it seemed to me our little department was a bit misguided, but then I wasn’t at the helm and my thoughts often didn’t count for too much.

In a county of 900 square miles and less than 6,000 people, I viewed our role as working burglaries, thefts and crimes against people. In fact, my job, in addition to patrolling the 900 square miles alone most nights, was to investigate most of the domestic violence and child abuse cases and work any other crimes reported during my shifts.

The rest of our department, it seemed, was focused almost entirely on drug and narcotics cases. They tended to work day shifts and, like a bunch of boys in their club house, tried to figure out ways to catch the local pot smokers who lived in a couple remote towns.

Anyway, when they somehow - and often by questionable means - managed to obtain search warrants, I was asked to assist just in case we ran into a heavily-armed drugcartel operating in the remote prairies of western Kansas. I kind of dreaded helping with the search warrants, not because I didn’t wish to enforce the laws of Kansas, but because of the plans used to execute the warrants.

In one drug bust during the middle of the day, my job was to transport prisoners. I was told to bring my personal passenger van - the only one like it in the whole county and which everyone knew was mine - and put up sheets in the windows so no one could see who was inside and then wait at this roadside park by the lake until arrests were made and prisoners needed to be transported.

Since the drug bust was a bust, I didn’t have to transport prisoners in my big passenger van. But I wonder what kind of rumors I may have started parked in my van by the lake with bed sheets covering the windows.

Another common occurrence when search warrants were about to be executed was a gathering of all the deputy’s at the courthouse and then a line of about five patrol cars heading out toward one of the small outlying towns. Everybody knew what that meant, and I expect any drug users in the direction our convoy was headed probably knew, too, and long before we ever got there. That could explain why so many search warrants yielded little or nothing.

Oh, and there was this search warrant executed in a little town of about 20 people at 3 a.m. to be sure no one would know we were coming. We gathered on a side road near the town and the sergeant had a plan.

We would all park on one side of an old school house in the center of town and sneak around to the other side of the building by going behind the bushes which grew up against the walls. From there, we would run across the street and hit the front door of the house unannounced and with me in the lead because they figured I was the fastest runner of thebunch. The deputy behind me was handed a sledge hammer just in case I didn’t break down the door with my body.

Anyway, the sergeant didn’t have all his details quite straight. I was told I would be going through a storm door on the porch and then hitting a light hollow front door which opened from the right.

With every dog in the little town barking at a small expedition of sheriff’s deputies sneaking around the old school house in the middle of the night, the order was given to hit the house. Off we ran toward the front door in the black of night. I was surprised when I went through the porch door because there was no porch door, but I found it when I hit the front door. Glass shattered and the storm door crashed. The light, hollow front door turned out to be a heavy, solid wooden door with sturdy hinges on the right. I hadn’t run into it full force because I had gone through hollow wood doors before and just wanted to break the door open and not make a new door in the door. I suppose, too, the storm door I destroyed may have absorbed some of my body’s impact.

The front door didn’t fly open like I had intended and as I prepared to make sure the door went down on my second attempt, deputy number two arrived with the sledge hammer and, instead of hitting the door with the hammer, tried a unique thing. He turned the door knob and we burst in while the occupants inside screamed in fright.

The organizing sergeant, according to his plan, came through the door behind us to help secure the drug user. The drug user wasn’t armed when we came bursting through the door, but that could have changed quickly when the sergeant dropped his .45 on the floor next to the arrestee.

Of course, the whole search was bungled and little was found as I recall - just a pipe with residue.

It’s amazing no one was hurt in the foolish escapade. But that’s what happens when rural cops forget who they are and where they live and try to act like somebody they are not.

Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Decatur Herald and the Gentry Courier-Journal. He may be reached by e-mail at rmoll @ nwaonline .com.

News, Pages 5 on 07/28/2010