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Monday, September 3, 2012

Barney Fife Comes to Life

     As with most small agencies during the 1980's - law enforcement training was at best - non existent.  You were put in a car with a "seasoned" veteran for a few days and then let loose.  Now the obvious problem with this theory is this, you give a man or woman who knows nothing about law enforcement and you give them a gun, a ticket book and a car and go tell to go to work.  Well such as was the case with me.  Basically it was on the job training and I was training myself, it is a wonder I am still alive!!.  Back in those days, all agencies in Alabama had up to six months to send a person to academy before the agency got into trouble and like most agencies mine was the same.  No fault of their own because they needed people on the street and the fastest way to do that was to teach them the BASICS and let them loose.  Well watch out world because I was set loose with 3 days of training, I had a gun ( with more than 1 bullet ) and not a clue as to what I was doing.
     Now the guys that trained me did the best they could but they knew the drill, get the new guys out as fast as possible and still get their own work done.  I remember the training quite well - in fact like it was yesterday.  Most of the guys that trained me are still around as a matter of fact, some with other agencies but some still with the Lee County Sheriff's Office.  Now I did have one advantage that most people coming in did not have and that was I had been a reserve with the Sheriff's Office for almost a year so I had a little knowledge of what was going on but being out on your own and having someone tell you what to do are TWO ENTIRELY different things.
     Back in those days, the major function of the Sheriff's Office was the service of Civil Papers and outstanding warrants.  That was basically it, we hardly did any law enforcement at all and god forbid you write a ticket!!  If you did you could expect a call from a supervisor in a hurry but we still managed to do some "policing".  As most of you may know all Sheriff's Offices are very political because the Sheriff is an elected official and depending on whether or not you had a proactive sheriff or one that just wanted to be elected determined what kind of office you worked for and when I first started - it was strictly a political office, you didn't do ANYTHING to piss off the voters.  Of course being new, at that point in my career it didn't matter much to me, I just knew I was a DEPUTY SHERIFF and that is all that mattered.
     Well back to my first few months on the road, god I was an idiot.  Everything I knew was from TV, and at that time it was shows like Andy Griffith, Dragnet and TJ Hooker.  God what a learning experience that was!  Barney Fife had come to life in Lee County - god help us all.  I don't know how far this was into my first few months but I do know it was before I went to the academy.  Now not being able to do alot of law enforcement we tended to work more on warrants than anything else because you got to at least use your hand cuffs!  I remember one particular incident that has stayed with me all these years because it showed me that what I had seen on TV was not true and to be honest I was completely blown away by the results.

 
CLICK ON PICTURE TO SEE THE REAL BARNEY FIFE
     We had a particular trailer park in town where students lived and of course at that time, students were our biggest customers as far as bad checks were concerned.  I mean they would write a bad check for $1.30 and then wind up paying over $50 bucks for that damn cheeseburger!!.  Well we had this one guy that we just could not catch, he would run every time we got close, so he became my project, I was going to catch him somehow, someway.  I knew what kind of car he drove, where he parked it, so I knew when he was home.  Well one day and it was early in the morning, I found him at home and I just knew this was going to be my day!  I parked several trailers down from his and walked up to his trailer.  I knocked and announced myself -"Sheriff's Office!" - very official sounding I thought.  Well I could hear running inside the trailer and BOOM out the back door he went.  I had him!!  I simply pulled my gun and told him to stop or I would shoot - wait!!  He didn't stop, he kept running, but how could he do that?  I mean I told him to stop and I had my gun out - pointed right at him and yet he didn't stop!  This wasn't how it worked on TV!  God I was stunned, I had done everything just like they did on TV and it didn't work, what had I done wrong.  I was so shocked I couldn't even run after him, I just stood there and watched him run.  Man I was so dejected that I just went back to my car and sat there, going over it in my head, step by step and what I had done and yet my suspect got away!  I just couldn't figure it out.
     I called one of my fellow deputies and meet him down the road and told him everything that had happened and I thought the guy was going to to piss on himself from laughing so hard.  I still didn't understand and I asked him what was so damn funny?  His simple answer was:  What were you going to do - shoot him in the back for having a bad check?  I said no of course not but he was suppose to stop when I said stop, well that just set him off again.  After he quit laughing at me he quietly explained that just because it happened like that on TV didn't mean it was going to happen out here in the real world.
    Man I was devastated!!  Everything I had seen and learned over the years was a hoax!!  Man did I learn a lesson that day, I realized I was going to need to re-think my outlook or I would never make it.  I couldn't believe what was happening.  I had been lied to all these years, boy was I naive, and I had a gun!  God help us all.  I was going to have to do some growing up and fast or I would be dead or have killed someone all because of some TV shows.
     Well needless to say, I did survive and I learned in a hurry and became a pretty good deputy along the way, at least in my mind - some would disagree but that is for another story.   OH - one last thing, I did finally catch the guy!  It took several more tries but I never pulled my gun again, I caught him by using a partner - another lesson learned.  I got the other deputy to go to the door this time, you see I had learned that the guy always ran the same way each time.  So I just lay and waited for my partner to knock on the door and I just waited for him to come to me, and sure enough here he came, I stepped out behind from behind a tree and gave him my best football tackle, flipped him in the air and had him in cuffs!!!  Man if I had only known that months ago!!  Oh well another bad guy off the street, until the next time he wrote another bad check!!  Be safe out there my friends and until next time......

Jack (Tommy) Carter
www.livethegoodlife.ws
www.southernbellemarketinginc.com

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