Curbchek Read online

  CurbCheK

  Praise for CurbCheK

  “Curbchek chronicles the experiences of a Police Officer as he transitions from a new boot with challenging life experiences to a salty veteran who has been baptized into the dark side of reality by countless hours on the street.

  Follow along as the writer lives the terror and small triumphs that every cop has to face, not only through the course of a career, but also through each and every shift. We could all relate to each scene, contact, and scenario that he faced in the book. If you are reading this as a Police Officer, you will find your head nodding along in agreement with the thoughts and place yourself in each situation, as you have been there yourself.”

  - Justin, Website Administrator of www.officerresource.com & Police Officer"

  “A gritty, fascinating read, and I recommend it to anyone.”

  - http://kates-reads.blogspot.com

  “Exciting, scary, sad, and sometimes darn right funny.”

  - http://www.allbooksreviewint.com

  “From the minute I picked up Curbchek, I couldn't put it down.”

  - Melissa Clemons

  “Truly loved this book very much. Well done!”

  - Janine (goodreads.com)

  “It's a breath of fresh air…a whole new perspective.”

  - Dan Welch

  “I've told EVERYONE I know to buy it! I was getting a little lazy. Your book reminded me that people see the uniform, not the patch on the shoulder. You reminded me to be careful; thanks for that. I'll be first in line to buy your next book.”

  - D. Garcia

  “Your book was awesome. The way it was written was real. You told it how it was, and it should make people realize what cops have to go through.”

  - Ryan Waters

  At times laughing out loud, other times holding back my

  tears.

  - Lisa Meiners (goodreads.com)

  This book is amazing; I mean really amazing.

  - Aimeekay (goodreads.com)

  Curbchek is a realistic, no bullshit portrayal. A fast and entertaining read; not for the faint of heart.

  - National Police Wives Association/facebook

  I highly recommend this book.

  - Law Enforcement WTF Moments/facebook

  “Honestly, I stayed up until 1 a.m. reading. I don't do that. I am really enjoying this book.”

  - Linda Love

  The characters are great; the writing is gritty, realistic, and readable. A well-written book with brutal scenes.

  - http://www.bookstackreviews.com

  CurbCheK

  Zach Fortier

  CURBCHEK

  2011 ZACH FORTIER

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information and retrieval systems without written permission of the author.

  This book is based on true events, however, it has been fictionalized, and all persons appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  .

  Published by CreateSpace

  7290 Investment Drive

  North Charleston, SC 29418

  www.curbchek.com

  ISBN 978-1-46623-197-9

  Preface

  The reality is that any good street cop, the guy you praise and pin medals on, is damaged - really damaged. The shit you see, it’s battlefield intensity, urban warfare. Make no mistake about it: every cop who works the street - really works the street - knows this fact. Once you cross over into this twisted way of being, social niceties and folkways seem really stupid and pointless; it feels as if the façade the rest of the world lives with and accepts is shattered forever. You realize that the difference between the feeling of safety most people have in their day-to-day lives and the reality of the real world is only one thing: perception. Your perception has changed permanently, and in any scenario violence and the breakdown of the façade are moments away. The reality is that the façade is incredibly thin, but we choose to live in it.

  Curbchek:

  “Placing an unconscious or immobile individual’s head against a curb with their mouth open, then stomping on or kicking them in the head.”

  “When a driver inadvertently hits or runs into a curb.”

  Chapter 1

  Is There a Problem, Officer?

  The population is up to three-quarter million, but it’s still a place where it’s fairly easy to spot something out of place.

  I was the south car that night, having returned to my old hometown - where I never intended to return.

  I wonder how the taxpayers might feel if they knew that only three cars patrolled the entire unincorporated area of the county, all that space between the city and towns, the wide open patches between the islands of civilization. That’s three cars and a sergeant, and maybe a K-9 unit - if we’re lucky.

  I was conducting extra patrols that homeowners or businesses had requested. Most guys pencil-whipped this shit, but I was a little more obsessive about it. Seemed like we should check them; if there ever were a problem, I would’ve regretted not checking.

  I checked this shopping unit complex every day I worked the south side. It was a photo supply business near the mouth of the canyon, and it was reporting break-ins. Nothing had ever been there before – but then one night I found a truck parked back behind the complex.

  It was hidden, so the driver had to be trying to shield it from anyone’s view on the street. Tucked back-in behind the building and in some trees, it gave me the creeps.

  I backed out and re-approached, checking the area for snipers; there were none, of course (I’d just come from a military background, and that was still fresh in my mind). I ran the license plates and checked them against the VIN; it all matched. I ran the car through NCIC, and it wasn’t stolen. I checked the entire complex, and none of the businesses had been broken into. This was weird shit. The vehicle was parked that way for a reason; I just couldn’t figure out why. I had dispatch print the plate and cross-reference the registered owner with warrants, NCIC, and driver’s license; nothing came up. I asked them to print it all out. I kept records of my own at the time to learn from, go back over, and see what I’d missed.

  This was the part of police work that I’d always love: the small window of independence. The military was good for training in tactics, firearms, marksmanship, and the extreme fitness that I still maintain today; however, there was no room for independent thinking or questioning anything. You did what you were told - always. You were never in charge; instead, you always waited for some rear echelon motherfucker - we called them ‘REMFs’ - to make a decision.

  Move before you were told, and you paid dearly. Rank structure was severely ingrained in me. Anyone who outranked you was in charge – which was just the opposite of real police work; on the street, the call was yours and yours alone.

  At first, that was hard for me to get used to. A sergeant would show up, and the military training would kick in and I’d subordinate immediately. Once I realized I could take the call and run with it, that it wasn’t a test to see if I were insubordinate - I was all over it. I loved taking the call. I respected no one’s position in life based on his or her job or money, and I wasn’t intimidated by much, so I’d listen to both sides and make my decisions.

  Anyway, that night I was puzzled. What in the hell was going on?

  I went to dispatch to pick up the printouts, and as I was leaving one of the dispatchers said she just got a call from a lady who wanted a friend of hers checked on. She said the woman claimed that her friend’s ex-husband had been calling her from Wyoming and making threats. The ex was a paranoid schizophrenic, and he sounded l
ike he was off his meds. Her friend had called, and when she answered the phone it was dead. When she called back, there was no answer.

  The last name matched the owner of the truck I’d just checked on – and the truck was from Wyoming. I felt like an ass. There I was, sitting there fumbling around with this truck; meanwhile, this guy was out there.

  I hauled ass down to this missing woman’s mobile home, which was near the mouth of the canyon where I’d come upon the parked truck that was so carefully hidden. The door of the mobile home had been kicked in, so I called for backup and went in, clearing room-by-room, my gun out searching. I checked the entire trailer - which smelled like a damn litter box - and in the only bedroom I found an unmade bed covered in blood. There was no one in the house. I called for techs to process the scene and put out an attempt-to-locate on the woman’s car; it was gone - and she with it.

  I was pissed off. I drove around the immediate area, looking for her car; then, call it intuition or whatever, I decided to park back up on a hill and blacked out (turned out my headlights). I just sat, waiting. I know this sounds weird, but I knew something was going to happen. Call it luck or gut instinct - whatever you want to feel comfortable - but I knew I had to park and wait...something was coming.

  Fifteen minutes later, here comes her car down the dugway.

  I had one light out on my patrol car – which, as it turns out, was excellent strategy and perhaps should be taught at the academy.

  I called in the car and began to follow until backup arrived. When backup showed up, I pulled the car over. We lit it up big time and exited fast with two spotlights, both high beams, and take down lights pointed at the car

  I could see that there were two people, a male driving and a female passenger in the front seat - covered in blood. She kept looking back, scared and bleeding; she looked like hell, but she was alive.

  I walked to the driver, my gun out and pointed right at his head. He said to me, “Is there a problem, officer?” No shit, fuckhead. The woman bleeding next to you is not normal.

  Thinking that this fucker is going to blow her brains out before I get there and get her away from him, I was wound-up, nervous, and edgy. I told him, “Look at the barrel of my gun.”

  He did. I said, “If you take your eyes off of it, move even a little bit, I will blow your fucking brains out. Do you understand?”

  He said, “Yes, sir - but what’s the problem?”

  Seriously, he actually said it again.

  Phil, my backup, had walked up to the other side of the car. He asked, “Have you got him?”

  I said, “Ya.”

  He said, “I’m gonna get her out of there. Be careful; shoot him if he moves.”

  We got her out, and I arrested the guy. I was scared shitless, afraid I’d make a mistake and he’d get over on me and kill her before we could get her out. I had been on the department about a year then, and I had very little experience with this kind of thing.

  She said he’d told her that he was taking her out to kill her. He’d driven past the mobile home while we were processing the scene and was afraid because we were onto him so fast. When I dropped down the hill behind him with one light out, he relaxed.

  She said she remembered his comment: “Cops never have a headlight out.” So he kept driving, calmly looking for a place to pull over somewhere near his truck and kill her, then walk back to his truck.

  He’d broken into her home, pistol-whipped her, and dragged her out to her car by her hair to kill her. I later found out that she was a teacher at one of the elementary schools nearby. She also knew my mother-in-law at the time...weird to see how she lived, and then taught kids? It blew my mind there was cat shit and garbage everywhere inside the trailer, and the filth was incredible.

  This was my first real hard ass case; not the usual bullshit domestics, not running radar - but what I thought was real police work.

  It was also what I saw as my first failure. I felt that because I was new and stupid, she’d nearly been killed. I was very idealistic then, feeling I could make a difference - which, as it turns out, is a very stupid idea.

  Anyway, after all that, a judge gave him probation because he’d gone off his meds and was mentally ill. His breaking into her home, beating her up, and then taking her out to kill her in his state of mind supposedly didn’t establish any intent to kill.

  He was sent back to Wyoming and asked not to return. The judge made him promise to stay on his meds, and he was free to go;

  I was amazed that he wasn’t forced into a grueling “pinky swear” marathon.

  The next day at work, I found out that in police work if you do something good, the reaction from co-workers can be bizarre; some people hate you, and others envy you. The sergeants I worked for were suddenly jealous of me, threatened by me - making me feel like I was isolated.

  Other cops asked the lamest, most ass-backward questions. “What was that like, kind of a rush?” For me to get my thrills, I’d prefer a woman isn’t getting her head smashed in and living or dying based on my gut feelings.

  I was at a loss; I had no idea what to think.

  Later, when I went to the city force, I found out that prosecutors and the city cops all felt that the sheriff’s office was a joke. I could relate with that; I really didn’t fit in there. I felt like I needed to develop my skills, and if you worked at the county, the frequency of contact with real hardcore criminals was very infrequent. So, after a while I started to look seriously at the city police force; I felt it would be a better fit, giving me what I felt I was missing - but I was wrong...

  Chapter 2

  Inside and Outside Reality

  Two weeks after the Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983, I was sent to Saudi Arabia as part of the military response deployed to stabilize the region.

  You’d think that military training would translate into police work, just as I mistakenly thought when I found myself returning to my hometown years later; my best laid plans, though, quickly turned to shit.

  Even back then, I was a cop, military police. I knew that with my personality and various triggers, it was better for everyone concerned that I be something of an authority figure rather than be subject to authority figures without recourse.

  In 1983, we waited in bunkers for suicide bombers from Iran to try to take out the AWACS stationed in Riyadh. It was the easiest duty I ever had in the military; basically, I was there to keep the AWACS safe while the war was in session.

  I’d dropped into a war zone from our Strategic Air Command (SAC) post. Coming from a base with nuclear capacity aircraft, I found Saudi a welcome relief.

  We were given intelligence that said that small planes loaded with explosives flying under the radar were coming from Iran and to be prepared. This was 18 years before the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

  As soon as I got off the plane, the cops were separated from the rest of the military personnel. This was becoming a pattern: cops set apart from the rest of the population.

  The hotel I was housed in was trenched, and cement barriers were in place all around it. There were machine gunners on the roof, but it was actually a break from SAC. I slept like a baby, sat in bunkers all day in the heat, and drank a ton of water. I watched the local vehicle traffic for any false moves, as well as constantly checked the skies for the prophesied Jihadist’s small planes trying to kamikaze the AWACS; they never came. I became friends with the Arab guards and learned some Arabic, broke bread, and ate lamb and rice. I got along better with them than with some of the MPs who called them “sand niggers” and told me I was shit for befriending them. Fuck that!

  I learned that they hated guys like Saddam and loved Jimmy Carter. They also thought that we Americans were arrogant pieces of shit.

  After a while there, I couldn’t help noticing some validity to their argument. I agreed that you could pick out the Americans in a crowd, all loud, obnoxious, and foulmouthed; it was usually groups of kids 1-3 years out
of high school, showing the world what America was all about. Needless to say, there were times when I was embarrassed of the way my own people acted.

  I had only one real brush with hostility while I was there. One day, I went through the wrong gate and had an Arab guard hold a gun to my head.

  He asked me if I was Islamic.

  I said no.

  He said I would die if I didn’t swear to follow Allah.

  I wasn’t about to show any fear; I was - as I am now – stubborn (stupidly stubborn), so I refused and eventually told him to either get on with it and blow my brains out or let me through. I warned him, though, that if he did shoot me he’d better start praying to Allah - because my MP brothers would torture him before they killed him. We stared hard at each other, and he eventually decided to let me through.

  Being stubborn - and a complete dumb ass - I couldn’t let it end there, so I went back to my bunker and grabbed cold two drinks.

  Then I drove back as fast as possible.

  I was reckless - but obviously U.S. military with subdued decals on the vehicle. I skidded to a halt, got out with M-16 in hand, and walked towards him with a purpose. I stared at him hard for a second, then offered him one of the drinks as I cracked a smile.