Читать книгу Street Cop - David Spell - Страница 9

4

Church Burglar

I was working another winter’s night in 1985. It was after midnight and was very cold. There was nothing going on. The police radio was silent. There was little traffic on the road. It was a good night to drink coffee and maybe read the newspaper. It was not to be. The police radio crackled to life and dispatched me and Officer Georgia to a Burglary in Progress at a nearby church. Officer Georgia had been one of my academy mates.

I was close by and was on scene within five minutes. I pulled into the lower parking lot of the Lake Lucerne Baptist Church with my lights off. I intended to park and walk around the church until I found the point of entry. As I got out of my police car and started walking, I could hear voices and yelling coming from the upper parking lot. I ran up there and saw a group of people standing in a circle around four men fighting with another man who was on the ground. Actually, they weren’t really fighting him. They were holding him down and punching him every time he tried to get up. One of the punchers was yelling at the man they were holding down and said, “You sacrilegious piece of . . .” The rest was covered by the rest of the crowd chiming in. Someone in the crowd saw me and pointed at the man who was being held down and said, “He’s the one, Officer. He’s the one who was breaking into the church.” This group of people that had apprehended the man were incensed that this fellow had tried to burglarize a place of worship.

One of the onlookers told me that they had all been at the bar directly across the street from the church. They were all drinking and having a good time when they heard several loud crashes and glass breaking across the street at the Baptist Church. They looked out and saw the man they were restraining smash out the light fixture near the front door and then try to force the door open. The witnesses called the police and waited, maintaining a visual on the burglar. The witnesses saw me pull into the lower parking lot, but so did the suspect. He slipped around the far side of the building and might have escaped had not these concerned citizens jumped into action.

Several of them ran across Highway 78 and tackled him so he could not get away. My police car was now parked about one hundred yards away, almost on the other side of the building. The burglar was still resisting as the four men held him down. Rather than try and walk him all the way around to my car, it would be much easier to bring my police car up to the upper parking lot.

I said, “Hey, can you guys hold him for a couple more minutes while I go get my police car?”

One of them replied, “No problem, Officer. He’s not going anywhere.”

By the time I got back with my police car, the suspect had had enough. He was no longer resisting and said, “Please, just take me to jail.” I handcuffed him and secured him in my car. I noticed a marble vase lying next to where the burglar had been lying.

One of the witnesses handed me another one and said, “He had this one in his jacket.” These marble vases were the kind like you might find flowers in at a cemetery. The weighed a couple of pounds apiece. The suspect also had a plastic beer pitcher that said, “Oliver’s” on it. Oliver’s was another bar about half a mile up the street.

Officer Georgia had arrived and had checked the outside of the church. She found a screen pried off in the back and some other lights broken out. One of the pastors was called out. After checking the building, he told us that it did not look like the man had managed to get inside. The front door had also been damaged but no entry had been made. The pastor told me he had never seen those two marble vases before. They had not come from the church.

I attempted to interview the suspect. That was a waste of time. He was very intoxicated and nothing he said made any sense. He did seem grateful, though, that I had rescued him from the mob that wanted to pummel him for trying to break into a church. I asked Officer Georgia if she would check the businesses up Hwy 78 back towards Oliver’s Bar and see if she could find any other evidence of criminal activity. Within just a few minutes, she returned and told me that our guy had been at the monument company just up from the church. This company made tombstones, memorial plaques and other items, like vases, out of marble. It was obvious that was where he had gotten the vases. The one-man crime spree had also done a substantial amount of damage at the monument company, smashing a number of marble accessories in the parking lot and knocking some of the larger tombstones over.

We were finally able to piece together that this guy had been at Oliver’s most of the evening and had had quite a bit to drink. He either did not have a car or was just smart enough not to drive. He lived about a mile away and was walking home. He decided to stop by the monument company to smash some stuff and steal some vases. When he got to the church, he decided that he needed to get inside. Maybe he needed a place to pray, but I doubt it. He was probably hoping to find something else to steal or vandalize. For his trouble, he was charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor. This was a wonderful instance of citizens being willing to get involved and not allow a criminal to escape.