The Radio Detective

At my guest appearance this year at the annual banquet of the California Rifle and Pistol Association, I took the liberty of telling a real life story about a civilian with a gun and me, when I was a young deputy Sheriff, some forty years ago. I can legitimately say that if it wasn’t for that civilian and his gun, I more than likely would have been prematurely dispatched to re-join my ancestors.

Back then we of course did not have computers, bullet proof vests, cell phones, or even walkie talkies. We had our uniform, a police radio that worked some of the time, depending on whether you were behind a hill or not, a .44 magnum service revolver, and an old Remington twelve gauge shotgun which was dash mounted in our Chevrolet patrol car for quick access. It was our custom to read the incoming teletypes, yes I said teletypes, before going out on our patrol shift. In those years we did not always have a partner either. That was the case with me one warm summer evening in 1965. I had read an LAPD wanted teletype in where four male Caucasians driving a 1962 dark blue Cadillac Sedan Deville were wanted for 187 P.C. and 211 P.C. (Murder and Robbery) The wanted men’s ages were between forty five and fifty and the Cadillac had Oklahoma license plates. They were considered heavily armed and dangerous.

Now I was on patrol some two hundred miles north of Los Angeles and the chance of me spotting that car was zero at best. For some reason however I tore off that teletype and took it with me out on patrol. At about 2330 hours (11:30 PM) I decided to take a back road away from highway 101 and check out some cattle ranch areas in the southern part of my county. I was on Price Canyon Road which runs out east behind Pismo Beach, California. It was a dark night with no moon. I was alone. As I rounded a bend in that country road, I spotted in my headlights, a car that seemed oddly familiar to me. It was traveling unusually slow. The white spot light on my patrol car was mounted CHP style, clear over on the passenger side and I was unable to reach it. I kicked my headlights to bright and could see several subjects in both the front seat and the rear seat of that car. Then my eyes fell on the car’s license plate. The fact that the plates were from Oklahoma made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up. I didn’t need to re-read the teletype; I knew in a heartbeat I had big trouble on my hands.

Now it is a fact that young deputy Sheriffs sometimes don’t use their heads. For some reason, before I actually realized what I was doing, I flipped on my red light and bumped the siren a little. I will be dammed if that Cadillac car didn’t immediately pull to the side of the road. My heart was beating against my chest so hard, I thought I was going to see it suddenly appear before my very eyes. I quickly recognized that I had stepped in it right up to my knees.

I immediately picked up the mic to my radio and called in to the station to tell them where I was and what I was doing. The problem was the damn radio wouldn’t get out from down in that canyon, so nobody knew where I was or what I had done. That was of course except for whoever was in that blue Cadillac Sedan Deville with Oklahoma license plates.

Duty, honor and my own ego prevented me from turning tail and running. To be honest with you though, that thought did momentarily cross my mind. I also caught myself wishing that the Cadillac would have made a run for it.

Well, I had what I believed were the wanted subjects in the LAPD teletype right where I wanted them, except now what was I going to do with them? I opened my door and stepped out of the patrol car. Staying behind the door for cover, I shouted for the occupants of the Cadillac to not move and to stay inside their vehicle. That was one of those times where you hoped your voice sounded much deeper than it probably did. Keeping my eyes glued on the Caddy, I reached back inside the patrol car, grabbed the twelve gauge shotgun and racked in a round, which I hoped for all I was worth, that those people inside that Cadillac heard me do. In the meantime, that old shotgun was getting a bath from the sweat pouring out of my hands.

It is a fact, that from time to time in police work; you will have a conversation with Jesus. I did that night when I said, “Oh Jesus, what have I done?” well, I guess he heard me, because from the opposite direction came a set of headlights. The headlights came to a sudden stop while still some thirty or forty yards away. After what seemed like an eternity, the headlights came on down the road and stopped on the opposite side of the road directly across from where I was standing. It turned out those headlights were on an old nineteen forty seven model Chevrolet pickup truck with a flat bed on the back.

Perched on that flat bed was a border collie. I immediately profiled the vehicle as a local cattle rancher’s truck. I saw the driver’s side door open and the tallest and most long legged, approximately fifty year old cowboy I had ever seen, stepped out with his right hand wrapped around what appeared to be a 30-30 rifle. He moved quickly across the road and around to the passenger side of my patrol car. He opened the passenger side door, pushed his well worn straw hat back on his head, rested that saddle gun on top of the door while aiming it at the blue Caddy and said in a deep reassuring voice, “Go ahead kid, take em down, I’ve got you covered.”

Now I have never been into kissing cowboys. Cowgirls yes but cowboys no. Except that night, I immediately fell in love with that old guy and it’s a good thing he was over on the opposite side of my patrol car.

The rest is history. I did “take em down” and successfully booked the four wanted men in my county jail. A search of the Caddy’s trunk revealed eighteen hand guns wrapped in towels and a dozen or so boxes of ammunition. They each were also armed with .45 caliber automatics. As it tuned out, they were also wanted by the FBI for interstate flight to avoid prosecution for the murders of their own Oklahoma attorney, a bailiff and a judge who was overseeing their trial for robbery in Oklahoma. It seems they had escaped by blowing up the court room where their trial had been taking place. Later when LAPD Robbery Homicide detectives came to take them back to Los Angeles, they did so at gun point. To say these men were bad guys is to severely understate the truth.

The bottom line in all of this is that if it wasn’t for that civilian with his gun, I wouldn’t be here to tell you this story. So the next time you hear a law enforcement officer complain about civilians owning guns send them over to me. I have a story I want to tell them.

Jerry Pearce
The Radio Detective

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 15:53 and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.