Recollections of a Small Town Cop

By John White

Policing in the latter half of the 20th Century was an undertaking not for the faint of heart. This book relates the experiences of the author as a police officer in a small southern town and the people he met and worked with during that time. Some names have been changed or omitted but the facts of the events are portrayed to be best of the author’s memory. Take a walk in the shoes of a small town cop and see the world from his unique point of view.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John White
• Release date: Jun 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370166954

John White

Retired Assoc. Professor of Criminal Justice, Martin Methodist College, Pulaski, TN Retired police officer, 30 yr.s service Ph. D. in Public Administration, Tennessee State University Co-founder of the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Officers Assoc.

Book preview

Introduction

A few years ago I attended a seminar on suicide prevention. The room was packed with all sorts of mental health and related public safety professionals. At a break, on the first day of the seminar, a young woman who obviously was a radio dispatcher with a local E-911 organization approached me. She made some small talk and then seemed to address the real reason she had wanted to speak to me. She wanted to know about my past. She worded it gently enough, but it was plain from her pointed interest that she found me conspicuously different than the rest of the ‘helping professionals’ in attendance.

I was a cop for 30 years, I told her frankly.

She blinked, and involuntarily took a step backwards.

Uh, most people I know (she stressed the word people as if it naturally incorporated only those valiant lads of law enforcement) would have said officer…or something like that. She blinked again.

I was a just a cop, I shrugged and she wandered off as if addled by my reply.

I thought about that encounter for some time, after the seminar naturally, because we were there to learn better ways to help people with suicidal thoughts and not review our previous careers; but later I thought about how she had acted and my lack, at least in her opinion, of regard for my most honorable profession. I had not intended on shocking the woman, and I certainly had not intended to demean a profession in whose service I’d spent the better part of my adult life. But that’s how I thought about it. I was a cop, or had been. Just like thousands of other cops, then and now. I remembered the efforts put forth when I first joined a police department in 1969 to elevate the lowly cop to a level of respectability that could be recognized as a profession. When I started in police work as a reserve officer with the Vallejo Police Department in Vallejo, California, police work was looked down upon by most everyone in polite society. To young people cops were pigs and to the financially successful they were regarded as failures. Cops were, and still are to an extent, viewed as dull witted, slow, crass, vulgar, thuggish x-jocks who aren’t much suited for better work. A cop, with any sort of college education, back when I started out in the business, was a rarity. I remember hearing cops make remarks behind an officer’s back, in almost reverent tones I might add, about how he had a college degree. I recall once hearing such a remark about an officer that had actually gone beyond that level of attainment and had attended graduate school! The very idea was incomprehensible. A cop in graduate school! It was unheard of in those days. Today it is rather common to find police officers with college degrees in some agencies, but back then it was a novelty. I remember how impressed I was with the awe and admiration some officers had for that man and vowed then and there to be one of those kind of cops: a cop with an education. I never dreamed how much trouble that would cause me way back then, but it was my dream, and I began working hard toward achieving it.

I have a favorite line I use when describing my academic career; I was able to cram a four year degree into only eleven years! Most people find that humorous, but it’s true. Working fulltime as a police officer for the better part of those years, I worked full shifts as a cop and attended the University of North Alabama in Florence, Alabama, at night or in the afternoons, according to my shifts. It was a long process and sometimes difficult. I remember once having to sleep in my car between classes. I was working 1st shift (5am to 1 pm) patrol and had a class at 2 pm. I got out of class at 3 and did not have another class until 6 pm. I had precious little money at the time, spending most of what I made on my education, but I scraped together enough money to buy a cheap little alarm clock, the wind-up variety. Every Wednesday I’d get out of class at 3, go to my car in the parking lot, climb in and wind-up my little clock. I’d set it on the floor board and sack out on the front seat of the car. The alarm would go off around 5:45pm and I’d hoof it to my class. Every Wednesday, that is, except one. One day I woke up and it was dark. I looked around and the parking lot was almost completely empty. I grabbed my little clock and discovered that at some point I’d knocked it over and in doing so had deactivated the alarm. I drove home glumly in the dark, and a mite sore I might add. I have never developed the ability to get very good sleep on the front seat of an automobile, especially one that is so small I can’t stretch out in it completely.

The pursuit of an education was an arduous path that passed through a couple of wives and a lot of fatigued travel, but eventually I not only obtained a B.S. degree but a master's degree, and finally a Ph. D. I had attained my dream but, as far too many dreams in life are want to do, the dream turned into a nightmare. I discovered that a truly educated cop was not admired by a good number of people, especially those in elected positions. Instead of being supportive of a well- educated cop, I found such cops were outright despised by a many people. Ironically, my much treasured education became the downfall of my cherished profession. I was eventually forced out of the life I had so loved by rabid jealousy, envious resentment, and threatened vanities.

But once I had been a cop, and during those years I had experienced life in ways that most people can only dream of experiencing. The following stories are representative of those years and the fascinating people I met along the way.

Many years ago I remember watching an officer of the LAPD conduct a television interview concerning a case they were working at the time. I don’t recall anything about the case, but I’ll never forget the officer’s reference to small police agencies as podunk police departments. The arrogance of such a remark is far too typical of the attitude too many police officers in larger police departments have about their fellow officers in smaller agencies. Because a department has a certain number of officers or consists of a large geographical area that does not indicate the quality of crimes committed, only the probable quantity but it in no way is indicative of the quality of the officers involved. It has been my experience that the size of an agency in no way is indicative of the expertise of its personnel. I’ve seen highly skilled, excellent officers in small departments and equally unskilled, incompetent officers in large departments.

Too much of the knowledge of the average citizen about the criminal justice

system is gained from the news and entertainment media. Both are woefully inaccurate and also inadequate as educational sources because each have other, self-serving agendas. Sadly this tends to cause the average citizen to mentally associate police excellence with large police departments and bumbling incompetence with small departments. Nothing could be further from the truth. Police work is police work, and it does not matter if it occurs in a small town or a large city: crime is crime, and police are police. The following recollections originate in a small town, relatively speaking, but it in no way signifies that the crimes are small, nor the people who experienced them. The following recollections are told as closely as possible to the actual facts. Conversations have been reconstructed as closely as possible to the actual words spoken. There are a few instances where names have been changed, but this was not done in an attempt to change the essence of the story being told, only to refrain from embarrassing family members who may still be alive and were not associated with the events depicted. Out of respect for them I felt it better to alter a name than cause them undue embarrassment, but in all instances I have stuck to the facts of the story and have tried to tell it as accurately as humanly possible.

In that regard this book is a document honoring all those with whom I worked and with whom I was associated. It was my great fortune to have worked with some of the best cops I’ve ever known or, for that matter, ever heard of. In their own ways they were heroes, long before anyone else thought they were, and during a time when we were thought of as a whole lot less than heroes. I hope you enjoy these retellings of my experiences half as much as I did living them.

Judge Lee and the Irate Lady

Early in my career with the Pulaski Police Department there was a General Sessions Court Judge named Thompson who, although he was young, contracted cancer and died in office. The man selected to replace him was a flamboyant fellow named (and this is absolutely true) Robert E. Lee, Jr. All his friends called him Bobby Lee, but from that day forward most everybody in the county called him Judge Lee.

I’m here to tell you, Judge Lee was one colorful fellow. During WWII he had been a top turret gunner on an A-20 bomber, commonly called a Havoc. In his later years, as his hearing grew progressively worse, he would complain that it was from firing those twin fifty calibers forward at approaching enemy aircraft. He said that firing backwards took the sound away, but firing forward was a noisy business.

His plane, which the crew named the Reluctant Dragon, was shot down over Normandy on June 22, 1944. The crew decided to ride the plane down instead of parachuting out. The pilot spotted an open field and glided it to earth. When Bobby Lee crawled out of his turret gun he walked out to the tip of the wing and was confronted by a G.I. with an M1 rifle whom he immediately recognized as being a Giles County, Tennessee, boy. The G.I. informed him that they had taken the field from the Germans only minutes before Bobby Lee's plane cruised in for a landing. No matter what, Bobby Lee always seemed to land on his feet.

After the war Bobby Lee went to college on the G.I bill and then to law school. Thus, when Judge Thompson passed away, Lee was qualified to take over the judgeship of the General Session and Juvenile Court of Giles County, Tennessee. Judge Lee took to the office like a duck to water. He seemed right in his element in the job, and some of the more memorable recollections I have of court took place under his judgeship. Chief of those memories is the case I call The Irate Lady.

To set the scene one must first understand the setup of Judge Lee’s courtroom. It was not the fancy, open spaced affair that one would normally associate with such a judicial environment. The old General Sessions Court of those days, the 1970’s, was a narrow room with a central table running most of its length from which the prosecutor (who sat on one side) and the defense (who sat on the other) conducted cases. Chairs were stationed against the walls around the room where witnesses, police officers, lingering lawyers and others sat while court was conducted. The space was cramped, and anyone wanting to walk around had to negotiate a gauntlet of knees being moved out of the way to allow them to pass. The scene reminded me of the old football practice where running backs (something I had no real danger of ever becoming) would run through a makeshift arrangement of tires simulating opposing linemen.

The judge’s bench, as it existed in those days, was a chest high barrier at the east end of the room covering most of the floor space there except with just enough room for a witness box to the judge’s right and a door beyond that leading back into the cubby hole that served as his office. The judge sat higher than anyone in the room, and the witness box, in which I spent many a long hour, was just below that. There was a door to the north of the room, at a right angle to the one leading back into the judge’s office that led into the Circuit Court Clerk’s office. Another door was situated at the west end of the room leading out into the corridor outside. Both the clerk’s door and the door opening out into the hallway had frosted glass in them.

The courtroom was usually packed on General Session days, resembling more of a circus atmosphere than a courtroom. People were packed shoulder to shoulder so tight you couldn’t sweat, which was something you really needed to do because in the summer time the only air conditioner, when it worked, was back in the judge’s office and did nothing whatever to relieve the stifling heat in the courtroom. A small door had been cut in the paneling separating the judge’s office from the courtroom through which he could enter the judge’s bench from his office. Once in the judge’s bench Lee had very little maneuvering room. There was hardly enough space to allow his high backed chair behind the bench. Lee usually had his reference books stacked to his left so he had a clear view of the courtroom. Defendants, cops, and lawyers could stand before his bench, be just below face level with him and have the bench top about mid-chest.

One day there were a couple of middle-aged black women (I use black as a racial descriptive because that was used longer in my life than others. ) waiting patiently along the north wall seating. The ladies had sat respectfully all morning as defendants were processed in the milling turmoil of the crowded room. As cases were heard by the court and the room began clearing out, the judge noticed the women and asked if they had business with the court.

The women rose and walked to the front of the judge’s bench together. The more vocal of the two told the judge that she had been assaulted by her husband and she wanted to get a warrant for his arrest. Judge Lee asked her several questions and determined that there existed no articulable evidence to substantiate the issuance of a warrant. Hearing this, the woman became loud and persistent, claiming that her husband had cut her and that she wanted, and deserved, a warrant. Judge Lee, remaining calm as usual, pointed out to the woman that he did not see any evidence of any such injury and that was why he would not sign a warrant.

You wanna see where he cut me? the woman indignantly blurted out.

A very bad feeling came upon me when she said that. I don’t know if it was the way she said it or what, but a little voice in my head started warning the judge not to take her up on the invitation. Of course Judge Lee was not aware of the little voice inside my head, and he stuck to the letter of the law. Yes, he said, he’d have to see the injury before he could issue a warrant.

The woman was wearing one of those scooped neck, peasant type blouses and I noticed that she appeared to be generously endowed under that loose tent. The little voice was screaming by this time, but it was too late.

O.k., she said, plunging one hand deep into her bodice while she pulled down the neck line with the other, Here’s where he done cut me!

Now I’ve seen a few women’s breasts in my time, and a considerable number of them have been what could be classified as prime grand melons, but the one this woman excavated from the yards of cloth of that blouse not only put most women I’ve known to utter shame (no double intention intended here), but it would have qualified as First Place at a state fair watermelon contestant. The brown mammy gland plopped down onto the judge’s bench obscuring most of the desktop in a giggling mound of exaggerated male fantasy. I say plopped because when the mammoth tittie smacked down on the judge’s bench it made an audible thumping sound that could have been heard at the Tax Assessor’s office down the hall. Judge Lee shot his chair backwards from the desk like it was on a rocket slide, stuck both hands out in front of him making a sweeping gesture as if trying to brush the offending mammary gland back into its proper place and started yelling,

Put it back, put it back!

You said you wanted to see, she said, hauling the enormous sphere back off the judge’s bench and plopping it back inside her blouse.

Needless to say, Judge Lee issued the warrant, I suppose, more than anything else, he felt she might be inclined to exhibit more evidence in the event she didn’t think his mind had been made up by that point .Suffice it to say that the woman got one of the fastest warrants I’ve ever seen issued in my career.

I’ve told this story many times and I think few people believe it, but it is true. (It probably doesn’t help my credibility any when I embellish the story at times by describing the breast as being so large the nipple weighed five pounds. Well, the nipple may not have weighed in at that exact poundage but believe me that was one humongous mammary gland.)

Judge Lee and the Marijuana Bust

Back in the late 1970’s there was a local boy by the name of Michael Prier who seemed intent on becoming one of the premiere dope dealers in the county. Prier could, without any flattery intended, grow some of the best sinsemila marijuana ever harvested in this area. We had known about him for a long time, but we’d never been able to bust him in any significant way. Then one night my ace number one informant shot me a hot piece of information: Mike Prier had a considerable amount of marijuana in a house he was renting over on the east side of town.

This informant was the absolute best, for me at least, and his word was a good as gold. So, off I go, and grab the local Sheriff’s investigator, who at that time was a skinny rail of guy named Rick Jernigan. I told Rick what I had and off we went to Judge Lee’s house. Judge Lee had gotten used to me and Rick showing up at his place at all hours of the night, so when we dropped in at the relatively respectful hour of 7 or 8 pm he was pleased. I gave him the warrant I’d drafted, he read it over, swore me to it, with his usual, You do, don't you? To which I always responded I do, and he signed it. As we left he called after us, telling us to let him know when we served it. We said we would and noticed he never took his eyes off the TV show he was watching.

Rushing back to the station we gathered a group of city cops together after scoping out the house, and set out our plan. For those who may not be adept at police operations, raid plans used to be called dream sheets because hardly anything set out in the plan ever happened like it was supposed to; but we did our best to lay out a reasonable assault plan and set off for Prier’s house.

Rick and I, since the warrant was in my name, went to the front door because we had to knock and announce before entry under state law. We sent some officers around to the rear of the house as we pounced on the front porch. I banged on the door and yelled those magic words that thrills every cop’s heart,

Police! Search warrant! at the top of my lungs.

I could see through the glass panel in the door that there was some guy about half stoned sitting in an easy chair in the front room. Just as I finished knocking and announcing, we heard the tell-tale footfalls of someone trying to run out the back and that gave us reason, under the law, to crash the front door, which we promptly did.

The groggy guy in the chair tried to sit up, someone pushed him back in his seat and I ran to the back door. Jerking the back door open I looked around. It was a small back porch, definitely not meant for leisurely sitting on in the afternoon and watching the sun go down, and it definitely didn’t contain Prier. I felt heartsick. We’d lost him again. But, just as I was feeling down, I heard something under my feet and there, lo and behold, was Michael Prier himself, coming out from under a crawl space with an arm full of something silvery.

Freeze, I yelled, (the second best thing cops like to yell) pointing my trusty old .38 revolver down at him as he emerged.

Mike looked up, saw me and uttered the customary reference to defecation that cops are so accustomed to hearing when people are caught in such compromising positions. Rick and I jumped down and separated Mike from the silvery armload he carried and to our astonishment discovered that he was trying to dispose of a double armload of unprocessed sinsemila marijuana. The stuff was so strong you could smell it as soon as the aluminum foil was opened. The plants were still on their stems and all of them were covered with huge buds. It was the bust of the year! Not only did we have Mike Prier, we had Mike Prier holding a felony amount of some of the most potent primo weed any Giles Countian had ever seen. It was a double whammy.

Processing the house we found other evidence, drug paraphernalia and the like, bagged it, tagged it and noted it on the warrant. Then we hauled everybody with a heartbeat in the house down to jail and dutifully called Judge Lee to come to the station.

The judge showed up in short order, dressed as if he was attending a tramps' jamboree, but given the late hour not inappropriate attire. At that time we had an old desk that sat behind the radio panel and in front of a row of filing cabinets in the radio room. Lee settled into a chair at the desk and asked what we had found. I proudly hauled out the aluminum foil wrapped stalks of marijuana and unfolded them for him. The old judge leaned over the pile of reeking plants and examined them with a critical eye. He asked about how much we thought there was and we reported our best guess, based on a quick weighing with a pair of seized scales. He nodded solemnly as he reached over and snapped off a right nice sized cluster of buds. He brought them to his nose and took a sniff. Nodding, as if in appreciation of the quality of the weed, the judge adjusted the copies of the search warrant on the desk and began to fill in the required blanks. I was completely full of myself by that point and didn’t notice the first nibbles until Jernigan nudged me in the ribs. I looked over at him with a what the hell do you want look and saw his face plastered with a wide grin as he did a sideways head jerk toward the judge.

I refocused on Judge Lee and became aware for the first time that the old judge was sitting there contentedly munching on the marijuana buds like one of his cows on the north forty. I couldn’t believe it. He was eating the evidence, or a part thereof to be certain! Sitting right there in front of God and everybody, he was eating my evidence!

I was thunder struck. There were no classes in the police academy that teach you the proper etiquette to employ when you discover a judge consuming your evidence, not to mention the fact that it was contraband to boot. My years of college (by that time) had also been bereft of any such dealings, and all I was left with was a grinning county detective and a grazing judge.

By the time he had completed the search warrant Judge Lee had completely consumed the whole cluster of buds. Now I’m not appropriately trained to guestimate the intoxication capacity of a cluster of sticky THC glutted marijuana buds, but by all rights and common sense I was astounded when Judge Lee rose, handed me the completed warrants, cited me a functional bond, bid me goodnight, told me to have the defendant in court the next morning, and leisurely strolled out the front door.

Lee walked out of that police station as sober as a deacon on Sunday morning on the front pew, not an ounce the worse for wear and not a flicker of recognition that he had just scarfed down enough marijuana to make a hippy happy. Jernigan and I just looked at each other. I mean, what in the hell was there to say anyway?

But if I thought I’d seen it all I was very much mistaken. A few days later there was a preliminary hearing held in Judge Lee’s court on Prier’s case. I was the lead investigator and as such carried the bulk of the prosecution in the case. Prier had gotten one of the more famous lawyers in the area to defend him, an attorney out of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee named Howard Freemon. Mr. Freemon had a reputation as a no holds barred kind of attorney that would do whatever it took to win a case. An old joke that made the rounds about Mr. Freemon was that when you hired him as your attorney he had two fees, one to defend you and another, higher fee, if he had to find witnesses to support your story. As one old hand told it, if you had a case where you arrested a guy out in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night, Howard would show