My hat goes off

I saw this link on Facebook and I'll admit, I'm a sappy person at times. *Sigh* no cure for it either I hear. http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/911song/ Okay there were a few points when I held my breath. It reminded me of when one of our booking officers (who wasn't carrying a gun) was coming off duty and went into the main lobby to help a motorist out front and a guy came in with a knife and demanded the officer shoot him. The booking officer couldn't get away really, guy was by the front door and the door he came out of locks from this side after 17:00. Since the officer never came out this way, only doing so today to help the motorist, he didn't know that.

The poor front desk commissionaire, who is safe behind the glass is frantically dialing our dispatch center for back up as this guy is pacing now. They showed us the video surveillance in our block training. You can see the booking officer, opening up his jacket to show that he doesn't have a gun. Now the suspect is pacing even more and starting to cut his own wrists and eventually has our officer cornered. I think while watching the video in block training, no one breathed. I know I didn't and I even knew how it ended. I could remember thinking, not him, not my charming, flirting, sarcastic, loving, caring, french booking officer. (not that I wanted it to be anyone cause I would have been able to come up with almost as many verbs to describe them)

There is a bit of a time delay cause even though we have officers in the building even ... we were told this, "there's a guy with a knife trying to kill the booking officer. OH MY GOD!" Where do you think we went? Booking. Our guys fly in and .... there's no one there. Well one booking officer who is a little confused at the sudden flood of blue and guns.

So then we call back and ouuu front door. Race of blue and guns to the front door. I can't imagine what is going through the officers head as they burst through a door with their guns while they know one of their own is in peril. But to have to do it twice in 10 mins. You see in the camera the guns first, they make it first, just the guns and they are wavering a bit, then you see the arms and the suspect pretty much raise the knife at them. He's so wired and suicidal, death by cop, not the way I'd want to go out.

One officer tries to taser him but it doesn't work. It's failed. Fuck. We're told that another officer was less then milliseconds from pulling his trigger when another officer burst in and used his taser which worked and took the guy down. My poor french guy is still in the corner and they get him out. They get the suspect a paramedic and that is the end of that. I started to breath about 5 minutes later.

So that's what that video, the link I shared, reminded me of. So needless to say I didn't breathe while watching it, but felt the same relief at the end. Kudos to all that go into the danger when everyone else is running the other way. My hat goes off!