Trooper Down! Page 11

  One night an elderly lady from South Carolina came speeding through the intersection in a Buick, left the road, and crashed her car through the window of a real estate office. She wasn’t hurt, but there was considerable damage to her vehicle and to the building.

  The trooper who investigated the accident asked her point blank, “Lady, did you not see those flashing red lights when you came up the highway?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Then why didn’t you stop?”

  “Well,” she said, “I thought it was a railroad crossing and I wanted to beat the train!”

  *

  I was patrolling the Cherokee Indian Reservation one night when I arrested a drunk driver and put him in the back seat of my car. I had a Cherokee police officer with me in the front. We were talking to each other when I noticed the drunk driver trying to open the car door. He had been mouthy ever since I had picked him up and was mumbling something about “getting out of here.”

  “Go ahead and get out,” I told him, jokingly. We were traveling about 35 mph at the time.

  Sure enough, the door opened and he started to jump out. I slammed on the brakes, and when I did he fell out of the car and rolled into a ditch. I stopped, backed the car up, and put my headlights on him. There he was in the ditch, handcuffed, not moving. I thought he was dead.

  I got on the radio and called for an ambulance. Then I walked over to check on him. He was addled, but otherwise seemed okay. We felt kind of sorry for him, in the ditch, in the cold, so the Cherokee police officer took off his coat and covered him up.

  By the time the ambulance got him to the hospital he was mouthing off again, threatening us. They stripped him down, took his wet clothes away, and made him put on a hospital gown—one of those skimpy things that open in the back. We were told to step outside in the hall and wait for the doctor. As the physician was telling us about the man’s condition, the guy climbed out a window and escaped.

  We never caught up with him, but I would like to have seen him running down the road in that hospital gown.

  *

  I seldom believe any of the reasons people give for speeding, but once I stopped a little old lady who was so sincere I couldn’t help but think she was telling the truth.

  “Sonny, do you know why I was going so fast?” she said.

  “No ma’am, I don’t.”

  “My husband put high-test gas in this car for the first time,” she said, “and I’ve never driven on high-test gas before.”

  I gave her a ticket, but her explanation made more sense to me than all those excuses we hear about going to the bathroom.

  *

  I was in Burke County one night on my way home when I got behind a Mustang II weaving across the road.

  I flipped on the blue light but the car kept going. Turned on the siren, but the car kept going. So I radioed Asheville and told them I was about to engage in a pursuit down Salem Road and if possible, send me some assistance.

  The car finally stopped and I made my approach. About the time I got to the rear window, I heard a woman calling, “Rape! Rape!” I put my hand on my holster and unsnapped it, wondering, “What have we got here?”

  I tapped the glass on the driver’s side, shined my flashlight into the car, and told the guy to step out with his hands in plain view. Beside him was a naked woman.

  The man got out and I patted him down to make sure he had no weapons. Meanwhile, the woman climbed out of the car on the passenger side and started walking down the road. She was the ugliest female I’d ever seen in my life—weighed about four hundred pounds—with rolls and rolls of fat and a huge scar running down her side.

  I said, “Woman! Get back in the car and get some clothes on!”

  I led the man back to my patrol car, advised him of his rights, and sat him down in the front seat. I looked back and there was the lady walking down the middle of the road again.

  “Woman!” I yelled. “Get in the goddamn car and get some clothes on!” I met her at the driver’s side of the car and cussed her till she followed my instructions.

  Then I went back to the patrol car, climbed in, and looked at the guy.

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  He said, “Fella, you won’t believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  “I’m drunk.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  “I don’t have any idea who that woman is,” he said. “I was coming through town and stopped at a red light beside the courthouse when she jumped out from behind a bush and got into my car.”

  “When did she take her clothes off?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “she didn’t have any on when she got in the car.”

  “Well, damn, I would have locked the door if I’d seen that coming,” I told him.

  “I was too drunk to think that fast, officer.”

  By this time, the woman had started to get out of the car again. I rolled the window down in the patrol car and stuck my head out.

  “Woman, don’t you get out of that car till you get some clothes on!”

  “I ain’t got no clothes!” she screamed.

  “Stay in the goddamn car then!”

  The fella convinced me he was telling the truth. I mean, hell, who wouldn’t believe him after getting a look at her? Then I got to thinking, “What’s the story here?” I knew there was a mental hospital nearby. I figured she must have escaped, walked into town, and was trying to catch a ride with the first person who came along.

  I had an obligation to do something about it but I wasn’t sure what. I did not want her in my patrol car. So I got on the radio again and called the telecommunicator in Asheville.

  “Did you get in touch with the Burke County sheriffs department?” I asked. They said yes.

  “Then how about sending someone down here. I’ve got a woman who says she walked away from Broughton Hospital and would like a ride back.” (At this point, I was making up the details.)

  A short time later, a deputy pulled up beside my car.

  “Whadda ya need, Mac?” he said.

  I told him I had a guy under arrest for drunk driving and was ready to take him to jail.

  “But there’s a lady in the car up ahead who needs a ride back to Broughton. Would you mind taking her?”

  “Sure,” he said, “I’ll be glad to.”

  He put his car in reverse, backed up to the Mustang, took one look at that 400-pound naked woman, and let out the worst cussing I ever heard—just as I was driving away.

  He transported the woman to Broughton, but it took them all night to figure out she wasn’t one of their patients. Nobody knew where she came from and I made a point of never finding out.

  *

  A disturbed man used to call our communications center in Currituck County. They’d hang up on him, but he’d always call back.

  He’d tell them, “Aliens are bombarding my residence with radioactivity. I’ve covered all the windows and storm doors in rny house with tinfoil. And I’ve completely wrapped my body in it. What else should I do?”

  The trooper who investigated the case told him that Saran Wrap would repel radioactivity waves even better, so the man said he would try that too.

  I guess it worked because he finally stopped calling us.

  *

  We get a lot of strange calls from the public. Some drunk will dial our number, say he’s Johnny Cash, and to prove it, sing “Folsom Prison Blues” over the phone. Or people tell us they’re getting radio signals from their refrigerators and want to know if UFOs have landed.

  It gets worse after midnight. That’s when the real nuts come out.

  *

  I was coming down U.S. 70 when I saw a car sitting in the middle of the road. A lady stood beside it and the hood was up. I assumed she was having car trouble. So I pulled in beside her and asked if she needed any help.

  “There’s someone under my car,” she said.

  “You mean you’ve run over somebody?” />
  “No, no,” she said. “There’s someone under my car. Can’t you see his legs sticking out?”

  I backed up, parked the cruiser behind her, and walked up to where she was standing.

  “Where?” I said. I couldn’t see a thing except the concrete pavement under the car.

  “He’s right there. Don’t you see him?”

  “No, I really don’t. Let me get my glasses,”

  I thought if I stalled for time, I could figure out what was going on. I went back to the patrol car and picked up the radio. But I didn’t know what to tell the station. So I gave them the woman’s name and license number and asked them to run a check on her.

  Meanwhile, she got back in the car and started to leave. She hadn’t committed a crime that I was aware of, but I thought she was too crazy to be driving. I went after her on foot, reached into her car, and grabbed the keys.

  “You sit right here,” I told her.

  When I returned to the patrol car, the radio station notified me that her license had been revoked.

  By now, she had left her car again and was walking towards the woods. I ran after her, got her by the arms, and handcuffed her. Then I took her to jail. On the way, she told me her car was controlled by demons and the town where she lived was possessed.

  “Yeah, lady,” I said. “It’s possessed with people like you.”

  She stayed in jail for a couple of days, then was sent to a mental hospital. A few days later, she was released.

  When I talked to the hospital officials, they explained they couldn’t keep her because even though she was crazy, she wasn’t “crazy-crazy.” In other words, she wasn’t certifiably nuts and no one would sign a statement to that effect.

  Except me. I knew how crazy she was.

  *

  I clocked a white station wagon at eighty miles per hour, pursued it, and noted a woman driving. When I turned on the blue light, I got no response. Turned on the siren. No response. I pulled in right behind her and she swerved all over the road.

  Suddenly I saw a large, black head come up from the back seat and move from side to side.

  I thought, “This woman has been kidnapped and there’s a man in the back going berserk!”

  Finally, she pulled over and stopped. Needless to say, I approached the car with great caution.

  Before I could reach her, she jumped out and ran back toward me. I pulled my gun because I thought the next person coming out of the car would be the perpetrator of this terrible crime.

  “Officer!” the woman cried. “You’ve upset my chimp!”

  It seems the animal was sound asleep in the back seat until it heard the siren on my patrol car. Then it went crazy and started biting her on the neck, nearly causing her to run off the road.

  I walked up and looked in the window. If you want to see something fierce, try eyeballing an angry chimpanzee.

  And you know what? I forgot all about giving her a ticket.

  *

  We had a terrible snowstorm in Haywood County one year, with roads blocked for up to fourteen hours. I came across two ladies stranded on the interstate, pulled in behind them, and got out to see if they needed help.

  “I really need to go to the bathroom,” said one.

  “Ma’am, I’m afraid there’s no rest room around here,” I told her. “Why don’t you bail out over the guardrail?”

  As I drove off, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw her get out of the car, step over the guardrail—and disappear!

  That’s when I remembered there was a twenty-foot drop over the railing, hidden by a mound of snow.

  I stopped the cruiser, jumped out, and ran back to see if she was all right. As I shined the flashlight over the bank, I spotted her hanging onto a tree, pulling herself upward inch by inch.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  “I’m just fine, officer,” she said, reaching the top of the bank.

  “In fact, now that I’m soaking wet, I feel a whole lot better.”

  6. “Call Me Ma’am”

  “I’ll pull a car over and the guy will say, ‘What’d you stop me for, man?’ Sometimes it doesn’t bother me, but if I’m in a bad mood, it’ll fly all over me and I’ll come back with, ‘Call me Ma’am!’" —Female trooper

  In North Carolina, meeting up with a female highway patrol officer can seem like a strange encounter all its own. At present, the state has fewer than twelve women troopers. That’s less than 1 percent of its entire work force. As a result, it takes a special kind of woman to overcome professional barriers and succeed in this still male-dominated career field.

  Elizabeth (“Dee”) Parton is one of those unusual people. At twenty-seven, she is North Carolina’s most senior female officer, having joined the patrol in 1981 as one of the first women cadets in the state. A handful of women before her had tried to become troopers, but failed. Dee not only made it through patrol school with flying colors, but along the way gained the respect and admiration of her fellow officers.

  “The whole time I worked here, I wondered how she’d be if we needed her,” said Trooper Rick Terry, stationed in Madison County. “Then one night I pulled a car over at the county line and got the driver out. I informed him he was under arrest and searched him. As I looked up, I saw the passenger coming out of the car towards me. I didn’t have the first man handcuffed and was attempting to get the second man back into the car without turning loose of the driver. At that point, I didn’t know what was going to happen. Both guys were drunk.

  “Then Dee came by in her patrol car, saw that I needed help and said, ‘I'll take care of him, G-153.’” And she escorted the passenger back to the car and made him get in. That one incident gave me a lot of respect for her because I know that in a tight spot, she’ll at least try to help. And that’s the main thing.”

  At five feet five, Dee is slender but sturdy, with light brown hair and a no-nonsense approach to life. Growing up as a tomboy in the small town of Waynesville, North Carolina, she was naturally athletic, and played sports through high school before attending East Tennessee State University, where she earned a degree in criminal justice.

  “I knew I wanted to go into law enforcement, but at the time North Carolina didn’t have any female troopers,” she said. “So I realized it was going to be a big challenge.”

  And a challenge it was.

  “We were up at five-thirty every morning doing push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, and a four-mile run. If you failed one academic test in a major subject or two minor tests, they sent you home. Two girls flunked out because of that. The remaining girl went through school for ten weeks, then failed the firearms test because she couldn’t hold onto the gun.”

  That made Dee the sole woman among thirty-seven male cadets.

  “The guys could have given me a hard time,” she said. “But they were basically good to me. I’d help them study, then we’d go out and get a drink or sit around and talk. It was like having thirty-seven brothers. There was still an underlying feeling that women didn’t belong on the patrol, but I wasn’t treated any different from any other cadet.”

  Her first—and current—duty station was Buncombe County, where she immediately gained the distinction of being the only female trooper in the western part of the state. Since so few women were in the highway patrol, the only uniforms available were those designed for men.

  “I’d tuck my shirt in and the pocket would go down into my belt. Then the neck would hang out. I was in the patrol office one day and a major looked at me and said, “You got any more shirts?” I told him no. “Well, I want you to go right now and order something that fits,” he said. She now wears tailor-made shirts and a bulletproof vest adapted to female curves. Everything else about her uniform is standard, including the heavy-soled lace-up shoes, black socks, gray pants, and campaign-style hat.

  Public reaction to a woman highway patrol officer ranged from unspoken acceptance to disbelief.

  “The first day on the job I arrested a man for drunk
driving. I put him in the back seat and his response to my questions was, ‘Yes, sir, no, sir,’ until I finally said, ‘You might want to take another look, mister. I’m not a sir. I’m a ma’am.’

  “‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ he said. ‘In that case, can I kiss you? I ain’t never seen a female patrolman before!’ And he started coming over the front seat. My training officer, sitting beside me, burst out laughing. He was enjoying every minute of it.

  “Another time, I arrested a sixty-year-old man for drunk driving and he drew back his arm like he was going to strike me. I said, ‘Buddy, I don’t think you want to hit a police officer.’

  “‘I wouldn’t hit you,’ he said. ‘You’re a lady. Besides, you might shoot me.’”

  It’s Dee’s opinion that female officers have an easier time on the road than male troopers because of men’s more aggressive natures.

  “A drunk starts cussing a man and it’s instinct that he wants to fight back,” she said. “But I don’t have any macho image to protect, so if there’s any way I can avoid a fight, I’m gonna do it.”

  Which doesn’t mean she hasn’t faced life-threatening situations on patrol.

  “One night I had a guy draw a sawed-off shotgun at me. Then he changed his mind and threw it down on the ground. When I picked it up I noticed it had a shell in the chamber. It didn’t bother me too much at the time, but later I thought, instead of throwing that gun down, he could have killed me! That’s when I got scared.”

  Like other troopers, Dee works swing shifts, rotating days, nights, and weekends. The erratic hours, plus the fact that she’s a female highway patrol officer, puts a damper on her social life. She has never been married.

  “When men find out I’m a trooper, they say ‘You? You mean, you are? Boy, you must be tough.’

  “I’ve tried dating people in law enforcement,” she said, “but the only thing we do is talk about our jobs.” In the future she hopes to marry and start a family, but says she’ll choose “a banker, lawyer, or construction worker,” rather than a cop.

  For now, Dee wants to complete her master’s degree in sociology and climb the promotional ladder in the highway patrol. It’s a good career, she maintains, despite its ups and downs.