I AM STILL FAST!!

For those of you who don’t know, I retired after working as a police officer for 35 years.

My wife and I raised a large family, and policing pays adequately but doesn’t create millionaires! This “fact” required me to work overtime and outside jobs whenever I could.

I was a hard worker and some of my supervisors rewarded that by telling me about opportunities to earn more money. One such supervisor, who I still talk to on Facebook, told me about an opportunity to work security at “Cellular Field” (The home of the Chicago White Sox). I was a life-long Cub fan (The Sox cross-town rivals), but this was a chance to get paid for watching professional baseball! I have never been able to get enough of baseball and jumped at the chance.  Until I was in high school, I had dreams of playing professional ball but, in the interest of honesty, they weren’t very realistic.

It was not the perfect part-time job. On days we were scheduled, about 5 or 6 of us would jump in a car right after our dayshift at our suburban department ended and carpool into Chicago. It was about an hour drive, much longer if traffic was bad- which it usually was. We had to pay for any food or snacks we wanted at the field. We also had to pitch in to pay for parking. Then, when the game was over, we cleared the park and the area around it. After working a patrol shift, and the game, we made the long drive home. It was a long shift and not really worth it, unless you loved baseball, and I did!

The good side was. It wasn’t a difficult job. There were quite a few people working every game day. The “force” consisted mostly of officers from The Illinois State Police, The Chicago Police and the Cook County Sheriff’s Department. Then my guys and some other suburban departments were thrown in as a stop gap for any day where the main force may be called to deal with an unrelated problem on the Northside of Chicago, but the Sox were still able to play.

I was loving the chance to work for the Sox. We were called to intervene when small fights would start, or fans needed other assistance. Our purpose wasn’t to arrest anyone, although we all had the authority to do so, if it became necessary.

My job was uneventful for the first several dates I worked. Then came the day I needed to earn my money.

I was working fairly far away from the field when we were called to an incident with a fan who had jumped the fence- the one infraction the management did encourage arrests on, although that rule was, somewhat, flexible.

“ I’m the taller security guy wearing the hat.

I felt I was close enough to the field to be able to assist on an arrest if it was necessary but had no expectation of getting there first. I decided that I would start jogging in that direction until I could determine whether I should “step it up” or “disregard.” I was always very fast and was not surprised that, even jogging, I was passing several other officers as I made my way towards the incident.

When I got to the wall I saw the offender on the grass, but no other officers on the field. I jumped the wall (At a higher point than was safe) and started full out running toward him. Another officer, a Chicago cop who was always stationed in the bullpen, had come onto the field as I scaled the wall. I caught up to him and ran with him for a few steps before I pushed ahead and tackled the offender. As I started to handcuff him the bullpen officer, who was only a few feet behind me, knelt down next to me to assist.

While we were cuffing the trespasser I asked the other cop, who does the paper on this? He smiled and almost laughed as he was handing me the offender’s other hand. Then he replied, “The guy who catches him!” By now there were about 4 or 5 other officers around us. They were officers I know I had passed. They were veteran officers who knew they should get there fast, but not too fast.

I was the uninformed rookie who had just learned a lesson!

So maybe the early bird gets the worm, but in this case, he also gets the paperwork!

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. 

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