DALLAS COP Volume II More Than 400 True Short Stories

By Raymond Paul Dethloff

DALLAS COP Volume II More Than 400 True Short Stories is a compilation of real and actual exciting true police, true crime stories as experienced by the street cop/beat cop author Ray Dethloff, a 26 year veteran with Dallas PD who served Dallas from 1990-2016. Go on a thrilling ride-along and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raymond Dethloff
• Release date: Dec 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798218066192

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Copyright © 2021 by Ray Dethloff. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

This book is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is the intent of the author to provide general knowledge and helpful information on the subjects discussed to assist readers in their quest for greater understanding and utilization of the ideas, thoughts and principles presented. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. While all best efforts have been used in preparing this book, the author makes no representations or warranties of any kind and assumes no liabilities of any kind with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness of use for a particular purpose. The author shall not be held liable or responsible to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage, incidental or consequential, caused or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information contained herein.

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FOREWORD

MORE THAN 400 POLICE STORIES

This book is dedicated to the shocking number of Peace Officers that have died in the line of duty in the history of the United States. Since the first recorded in 1791, the startling total is now 26,032.*

*ODMP Officer Down Memorial Page as of 11/14/2022

FOREWORD

I want to thank you for your interest in reading DALLAS COP VOLUME II based on the presumption that you enjoyed reading DALLAS COP and returned for more. Originally, my thought was to use all of my material for one book, but I soon realized how voluminous that would be, hence the decision for this sequel.

DALLAS COP VOLUME II is teeming with more than 400 true stories, some long and some short. As such, there are far too many stories to be labeled with individual titles. These hundreds of stories are presented randomly, and include several uncanny or rare coincidences and observations, all culled from my career with Dallas PD 1990-2016. You never know what is coming your way next, except what I’m sure will be more enjoyable reading.

--Ray Dethloff--

MORE THAN 400 POLICE STORIES

A teenager was running from the police and hoofed it across a creek and into a field along the tree line. He didn’t know that I had anticipated his direction of travel and was crouched down in the high grass waiting to pounce on him like a big cat stalking his prey. As he was running toward and almost upon me, I sprung into action. He was absolutely startled and turned to evade me. Several steps later I forced him to the ground from behind. He was wet and tired, and I was neither. I had difficulty handcuffing him because his wet and torn shirt kept getting in the way of his wrists. Stymied, I just tore his shirt off of him and cast it aside to complete the arrest, and I delivered him shirtless to the original officer.

I was told after his trial that he testified and was still angry than an officer had ripped his shirt off.

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A sure way for a motorist to get a ticket during a traffic stop? By not even waiting for the officer to close his car door and shout back What’d you stop me for!? That happened several times.

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Early Sunday morning not long after sunrise, I drove code 3 to a shooting. When I arrived and stepped out into the cold, it was eerily quiet. I found a dead male that had been shot in the back of his head lying on the edge of an apartment complex sidewalk with his eyes still open. I looked around for someone, anyone, but no one stirred. As the ambulance and another officer arrived, the sirens had caused a few curious people to step outside or open their front doors to watch. There was no lost love on the deceased victim; I was told that he was out there nearly every day dealing drugs.

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I was working a DWI task force and was assigned to an unfamiliar area of Northwest Dallas. After a DWI arrest, with the arrestee sitting next to me, I had to look in my Dallas MAPSCO (an atlas of maps officers used daily for geographic orientation before there was GPS and computer-aided travel). The drunk prisoner asked me what I was looking for, and I candidly told him that I was needing to find out how to get to the county jail. Oh, I can show you the way was his reply, and he did.

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An 18-year-old male was with a friend when they met up with a couple of guys who were Bloods gang members. Some epithets later, a scuffle began. The 18-year-old pulled the unknown gang member off his friend and held him until his friend could flee. At 12:30 AM, there was a knock on the door of the 18-year-old teenager’s apartment. The mother answered. Outside, partly hidden from view, the gang member inquired Is Kevin there? The annoyed mother said that he was asleep, closed and locked the door, and walked back to her bedroom. She screamed when she heard a loud volley of three pistol shots just outside the front door. When she believed it was safe, she looked outside and saw no one. Her son was still sound asleep, never having heard anything. Had he been a light sleeper and answered the door, he would have in all likelihood been shot to death.

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We used to have frequent calls to a probation office to arrest and transport those who had violated their probation. The one time that I didn’t arrest someone there for a probation violation was when I arrested someone for APOWW, or Apprehension of person without warrant. This man had been on probation because he had stabbed his sister with a knife. Now he told his probation officer and the Psychologist that he had been having a dream every morning that he woke up with a knife in his hand, and then went to stab his sister. We told him that to be successful with his probation he needed proper medication to erase these thoughts. He agreed. We handcuffed him and began our trip to the psych ward for his mental evaluation.

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I did a favor for a nervous angst-filled woman by writing an Incident Report in case she ended up murdered so the assigned Homicide Unit detective would at least know a motive. To make extra money, she had been selling baggies of powder cocaine to drug users. That’s what the buyers thought, anyway; they were really baggies of baby powder.

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Early in my career, there had been a grazing pasture where an owner kept several miniature ponies at what is now LBJ Freeway and Plano Road. A suspect would come around in the late evening because he really liked ponies. Really, really liked ponies. Somehow, he realized that the miniature ponies were just the right height for bestiality. He was discovered in the act many times by the owners because there were many calls out there. He was always gone upon arrival by officers, except for one night when he was actually seen in the act and caught by an officer after a short foot chase. Several of us who had taken calls out there had to go and take a look at the weirdo as he sat in the back of the police car, and his face was illuminated by multiple intersecting beams from our flashlights.

D.A.’s in the USA will generally take a Cruelty to Animals charge for this repulsive act.

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After being out with her friends Saturday night, a girl returned to her apartment early Sunday morning. As she was distracted by going into her purse and getting her apartment key, a suspect grabbed her from behind just as she was about to unlock her door. He held a knife to her throat and told her to Go inside and Shut Up! The girl had the presence of mind to rebuff his demand, and said that she didn’t want to go inside because her little sister was asleep. The suspect then took her back to her car and had her drive him around to several ATM’s to get some of her cash. This ill-fated plan was thwarted by the area ATM’s computer network being down that morning, and no cash withdrawals could be made. The suspect had her drive back to her complex, then got her out of the car and took her through a hole in the fence that led to an adjacent apartment complex, naively his own. The suspect brought her inside his apartment. At knifepoint and sometimes at gunpoint, he forced her to perform oral sex and have intercourse with him.

In the hour around dawn while he was sleeping, she slipped out of his apartment unnoticed and called police. She believed that he was probably still inside his apartment, as it was still early Sunday morning. Some time had elapsed, and in case the suspect didn’t come to the door, we wanted to be able to make an arrest. We drove to south Dallas and had an on-call Judge sign a personal and evidentiary search warrant from his home. We drove back and obtained a master key from the management office which had just opened. We surrounded his apartment, gained access, and arrested the naked, sleeping scumbag. The suspect didn’t have any chance to get his pistol or knife, or to flee. The rape victim had told us that he had spoken of leaving town that morning, and that he had boasted of murdering a woman in California and of being on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. We did not confirm that.

Normally, most arrestees plead out, but this defendant waited to plead out just minutes before his trial was set to begin. He accepted 20 years without parole for admitting guilt on three counts of Aggravated Sexual Assault.

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A woman took her son to school and was home in 20 minutes. The man that lived with her wanted to continue an argument that he had started with her before she left, and told her that she took too long and asked her where else she went. The woman didn’t like being interrogated and pestered and told him that she was tired of this shit! She knew from previous experience that he would be violent, but she still told him that she was calling the police. The man pulled the phone cord from the wall and exclaimed You ain’t calling nobody! then pulled the screaming woman to the floor by her hair. He straddled her and punched her in the mouth giving her a bloodied, swollen lower lip. She managed to fend off and block 4 or 5 more punches, and then squirmed enough beneath him to slip away.

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The suspect was not at the location despite my quick arrival. The woman had difficulty breathing because she was crying and hyper-ventilating so badly, wheezing and needing to take deep breaths. She needed several minutes to calm herself so that she could speak to me for the report.

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A mother called police because her 36-year-old son had been drinking and would not leave her house to go home. We found him lying on a bed naked wearing nothing but pantyhose. shook him awake and told him to put on some clothes. He said that he wasn’t leaving, and when asked why told us that he was suicidal and needed to be taken somewhere. He still refused to get dressed, and said he needed to take a shit before we left. We agreed to let him do that, but we wouldn’t let him close the bath room door so he could lock it and hurt himself. After a couple of minutes of him repeatedly trying to close the door and telling us that he couldn’t go with us watching him, we hoisted him off the toilet and again told him to put on some clothes. Again, he refused. Impatient, we handcuffed him while he was still nude. His mother pinned a pink towel around his waist. He said that he was tired of building houses and tired of life. We placed him in the squad car wearing the pink towel, pantyhose, lipstick, and red toenail polish, and took him to Parkland Mental Hospital.

He told us that he had attempted suicide on three previous occasions.

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A female bicyclist complained to me about a loud, disgusting man that had rode beside her on a bike

and made lewd sexual comments while drinking alcohol from his water bottle. A week later, I spotted him at the lake on his bicycle and had him stop for me. He told my partner that he could open a water bottle. He must’ve thought that we would think it to be grape juice, but it was iced wine, and I poured it out.

He received a ticket for alcohol in the park and was never seen again.

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A Target store had cash registers on both ends of the store. Many times someone exited on the wrong side, and when they could not find their car called 911 to report that their car had been stolen. They are embarrassed and apologetic when I lead them out the other end and their car magically reappeared in the other parking lot.

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Several seconds after driving through an intersection, my partner looked in the rear-view mirror and exclaimed There’s a van rolling over behind us! Yeah, right was my reply as I looked over my shoulder… to see exactly that! We circled back and found that the woman ran the red light and swerved to miss an oncoming vehicle and lost control, leading to multiple rollovers. She was unhurt because of her seatbelt but went to the hospital for possible whiplash

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Before an inebriated male could drive home from a Wal-Mart, a witness flagged me down about him. He was easy to find. Staggering around the parking lot with his keys in one hand checking the door locks of cars that looked like his own, he was wearing slippers and had a big box of cheerios tucked under his other arm. He went to Detox.

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Normally, the police car that you drove for your shift had enough gas in the tank because the previous shift officer would top it off at shift’s end. One time apparently neither one of the officers on the previous two shifts had refueled, and I didn’t notice. As I was driving down Central Expressway with a prisoner on my way to jail, my car started sputtering. I’d driven cars that hesitated and sputtered some before, but not like this. I then noticed the illuminated orange low fuel dummy light. Conveniently, the next exit had a 7-11 on the corner and I dropped a few dollars of my own money for gas. I did not fill out a reimbursement form for petty cash; that would’ve required an explanation.

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Neighbors noticed some late night activity at a house and notified police, mistakenly thinking it might be a drug house. Our Deployment (undercover) officers watched the unusual activity and discovered that suspects were bringing furniture and other property into the house. The officers obtained a search warrant to investigate the property. The house was full of stolen property from literally dozens of unsolved burglaries, with much of the furniture stacked inside.

This was the only time in my career that I spent much of my day loading and inventorying stolen property brought from the house to a police rented box truck. Some of the burglary victims showed up at the house having seen it on the news, and many of them had gathered to watch. Several spotted some of their property and spoke with an on-site detective, and some spoke with a news media reporter when a news team arrived.

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We had a call about two teenage males spray painting graffiti on a business. We saw two colors of spray paint on the wall and set out to locate the delinquents. We spotted them sitting on a bus bench with the same-colored spray paint cans in the grass next to them. I believe this was the only time that I had ever arrested suspects for Graffiti, which had just become a charge separate from Criminal Mischief.

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Things were typically slow at 9pm, the beginning of a shift for a Violent Crime Task Force on a Friday or Saturday night. I sometimes started my shift by slowly driving through the parking lot of an under 21 club. Human nature being what it is, many people under 21 would sit in their car and drink alcohol before they went into the club, since they couldn’t be served. I wrote many Minor in Possession tickets and Consumption of Alcohol by a Minor tickets there.

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I stopped an elderly woman for a minor traffic violation and discovered from talking to her that she was lost and trying to get home. She’d been driving the same way home from church for decades, but this day she had to take a detour because of road construction. She had been meandering around for 5 hours looking for a recognizable street. I called another officer to assist me. We were an hour away from her house. I drove her in her car, and followed the other police cruiser. She was very grateful, and we phoned a relative upon entering her home to express our concerns.

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I was leaving the County Courts building one morning and had to pass a long line of citizens waiting outside for the slow process of being searched and having their property x-rayed on a conveyor belt. One young man got my attention- -and concern-- when he raised his voice and said "Officer! Remember

me?" I thought that could mean trouble, but he actually thanked me for arresting him for theft several months earlier. He said it scared him straight, and he was now a reborn Christian and a law-abiding citizen. We shook hands, and I wished him continued success.

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Heading to a disturbance call, I had a vehicle take a fast turn in front of me and drove in two lanes before he settled on one. I drove alongside of him and saw him drinking from a 12 oz. can of Coors light beer. I pulled him over. The suspect’s breath smelled of alcohol, he had slurred speech, blood shot eyes and had slow movements. He admitted to having had two beers but I was unconvinced by his obvious lie and he was arrested for DWI.

His father came to claim the vehicle and it was released to him. When I asked if the father knew why his son was being arrested, he replied I guess because he’s drunk. This comment was placed in the Arrest Report to assist the D.A.’s office with his son’s prosecution. At the jail the arrestee told the Intoxilyzer Operator that he had consumed 12 cans of beer, and his BAC (Blood alcohol content) tested at over three times the legal limit.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon.

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A female motorist was so thankful of my having given her a verbal warning instead of a citation that she stepped out of her car and tightly hugged me. There were passing motorists, and though I allowed her to do this there was not a reciprocal embrace during the hug. Still, it was a nice gesture.

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I was assigned to work the Texas State Fair and a little 5-year-old girl had been missing for over an hour. I sought her during my foot patrol and luckily spotted the little girl run past me from the same direction. I thought that the reason why she was missing for so long was because she was running, and by the time fair goers realized that she was alone, she was well past them. I ran up to her and called down to her Hi, are you lost? She looked up at me and immediately recognized me as a police officer and nodded yes. She stopped running, and I told her that she was going to be fine because I would bring her back to her mommy and daddy. She grabbed hold of my fore-finger and we began the long trek back through the crowd to the Lost Kids Corral amid many female sighs of Awww. How cute!

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Most of the lost children at the State Fair are located by police officers or by fair goers and reunited with their parents within twenty minutes. One autistic boy had been missing for two hours. I made a special effort to scan the crowds from my chair lift, which was about twenty feet in the air. He was a labeled a Critical Missing Person because of his mental incapacitation. The police would not stop actively looking for him until he was found. I sighted him and quickly lowered my chair lift to intercept him before I lost him in the swarming throngs of people. I succeeded and began the walk to rejoin him with his parents. Unlike the little girl mentioned above, I felt awkward holding hands with this autistic boy; he was twelve-years-old, but nearly as tall as me (6 ft 3).

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After leaving the county jail one night having incarcerated a DWI arrest, I was blocks away and found another DWI. Her car was subsequently towed. She had never been arrested before and was nervous and frightened about being in the county jail. She was un-handcuffed and searched