Just call me Superman

A long time ago in a …; no, that’s how Star Wars starts; finally got to see the last one after it came out on DVD. I used to train rookie police officers on night shift. They had finished their first three weeks, mostly getting used to wearing a blue uniform on day shift. I would drive for the first week until they had proven some kind of ability on the job.

On the second week I had one rookie in the driver seat when we got behind a really good DWI suspect. It was a classic low speed chase; what, never heard of a low speed chase?
The vehicle was westbound on a Kempwood, two lanes in both directions divided by an esplanade. Have you ever watched a very young person roll a bowling ball down the lane, wandering and weaving a slow meander until it either falls into the gutter or barely has enough momentum to knock over a pin at the far end of the lane? That should give you and idea of what I call a low speed chase; wish I had that on DVD. We had our emergency lights on with an occasional blast of the siren; nothing was working as his car casually rebounded from one curb line to the other at 3 – 4 miles an hour.

It was an industrial section of road where for a couple of miles there wasn’t much he could have hit; however, not far ahead it would run through a residential neighborhood once he past Bingle. Nothing was working to get him pulled over, nothing that was in the book of standard operating procedures.

I decided to get out of the police vehicle and run along side the driver’s window where I could rap on it to get his attention. It wasn’t all that hard to keep pace and I would have paid good money to have a picture of that fellow’s face when he looked over and saw a cop running along side his car. You have to remember that he was so plastered that he thought he was bustin’ on down the road as the idea crossed his mind that Superman had dressed up in a blue uniform and was bustin’ it down the road on foot. He pulled over and was wide eyed as he addressed me, “Sir, uh, Officer, you must be really fast.”

My rookie wasn’t sure if we’d broken any rules along the way as he asked if that happened often. We looked inside the suspect’s vehicle and it was littered with empty whiskey bottles. Once we were downtown the suspect refused to blow; a shame, I’d like to have seen how high his would have gone. Actually I’m just a mild mannered blogger, working in Metropolis.