A Delta man’s experience of riding along with police

I value my time and experiences with cops and conducting ride-alongs with police officers was particularly rewarding. During a ride-along, you are seated in the back passenger’s seats of a patrol car while the officers conduct their business as usual. It is an experience that is valuable and few people ever get the opportunity to cruise with officers out on their nightly grind, hunting drug traffickers and the like.

At a particular training venue in New Orleans, our commanding officer offered us two nights off for rest and relaxation (R&R) after a solid week of hard training. While most of the brothers opted to partake in the nightlife by bar-hoping in the French Quarter, a few select brothers jumped at the offer to ride along with Nawlin’s finest police officers.

Part of the barter with our commander entailed his demand that we wear our protective body armor while riding with the cops… Our body armor found its way to the trunk of the cop cruiser and never came back out until the night’s adventures were concluded.

The cops did a lot of just random driving through select areas of town and chased down anyone who suddenly ran from them; they were guilty of something, obviously, and fleeing was grounds for pursuit.

Early in the evening, a man on a motorcycle suddenly bolted when he saw us cruise through his hood.

We gave pursuit and were soon enough in a high-speed chase with the dude on his bike. We made several tight turns with him and he found his way onto a long stretch of straight road that he roared down. Since it was dark he did not calculate the rise of the asphalt at a point where train tracks cut across the road. He hit the bump hard and fast and landed his bike down in a skidding wreck.

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There were sparks and a decent decibel screech as man and bike slid together down the straight-away. Before the suspect could make any decent moves we all were out of our car and sprinting to catch him. He undid his helmet chin strap and made a move to pull off his helmet. I was running with my Delta brother Chill-D who articulated between huffs and puffs:

“Geo to Chill-D… where’s the hell is your armor vest?”

“Chill-D… where the hell is yours?”

We chuckled and before the man pulled off his helmet the first cop to reach him laid a solid kick to his helmeted head. Brother Chill-D called out to warn him:

“Ohhh-nooo… you better leave that helmet on if you know what’s best!”

The cops interviewed the cyclist and, once they were satisfied with his story, let him pick up his bike and perform a basic function inspection, much to our surprise. They searched him thoroughly and he was let off. Admitting our surprise that he was let go free, the cops explained that there was just no bang for their buck in that guy, so why waste time with him.

Further cruising through those domiciles and project apartments yielded another runner who was smartly subdued and put at the front leaning rest with his hands against the hood of a cop cruiser, his legs back and feet spread. One of the cops conducted a search on him which produced a small silver pistol that looked like it might have come from a box of Cracker Jacks, or Pete’s Pistol Emporium.

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The officer had a gander at it and immediately slid the pistol across the hood of the car into Chill-D’s eager hands who gave it a function test and quality inspection… finally remarking:

“Oh yeah, he pretty much paid top dollar for sharp edges on that junk.”

A typical Chill-D-ism summed up the firearm find and it was confiscated.

That’s the way the rest of the evening and the night played out. We just drove and chased scumbags who ran from us, obviously guilty of some crime they needed to tell us about. What an evening of pure excitement we had. We loved it, so much so that, rather than choose to hit the bar scene in the French Quarter for one last chance, we chose to ride for a second night with our two police hosts.

It was a well-spent night of excitement courtesy of New Orleans’s finest. “Laissez les bon temps rouler!”

By Almighty God and with Honor,

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Feature Image: HQ Defense Logistics Agency Police Officers, Ofc Fred Nibblins and Capt Mark J. Stefan. (Photo by Nutan Chada, DLA Public Affairs)

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