One Department

by Thomas A. Young

  During the pursuit, he radioed for backup, saying on the radio that the motorcyclists were “messing with him.” Finally they all came to another intersection where another patrol car was waiting. One of the bikes stopped for that car, and the other one stopped for Officer White’s car. The rider of that bike was Michael McCloskey.

  McCloskey didn’t consider this to be much more than any regular stop, but from White’s perspective, this was anything but. By not stopping, and by “messing with him,” McCloskey had disrespected his authority and made himself eligible for special attention. White got out of his car with his gun drawn. He had an excuse for that, because while McCloskey had done nothing threatening, his refusal to stop right away made him a “possible” threat. Then McCloskey made the mistake that would be the end of life as he knew it. That mistake wasn’t to make a move that was threatening, it was to make a move that was remotely construable as threatening. He took his right hand off his handlebar and rested it on his hip. That was all. Officer White fired and paralyzed Michael McCloskey from the waist down for life.

  Unlike the vast bulk of such cases however, this was one in which some measure of justice was doled out. The dash cam video from White’s patrol car was damning, as was the unusually truthful testimony of the other officer at the scene. Thomas White was sentenced to ten years. While that was a substantial improvement over the norm however, most people would still prefer to be in his shoes than those of the man he shot.

  Six days after that shooting, back in Washington State near the town of Granite Falls, a 44-year-old former Boeing employee by the name of Daniel Wasilchen was enjoying an afternoon on his property with his stepfather and another friend. During the visit, a weed-abatement official by the name of H.R. Gohrman came onto his property, and insisted on spraying some noxious weeds at that time. Wasilchen however, had more important things to do, was perfectly content to take care of his own weeds, plus he wasn’t convinced the spraying would be safe for his dogs. He directed Gohrman to leave the premises three times. Gohrman was enraged and screamed in the property owner’s face that he’d better listen to him. Finally Wasilchen grabbed the petty tyrant’s shoulders and shoved him off the premises, threatening to escort him out at gunpoint if he didn’t leave his property.

  Since there was no cellphone coverage there, Gohrman drove to where he could get a signal so he could call sheriff’s deputies. After contacting them, he offered to lead them back to Wasilchen’s place. During this time, Wasilchen’s companions left the scene, leaving him there alone.

  While the patrol car parked on the road, Gohrman pulled back into the driveway. Upon seeing his car return, Wasilchen went inside, retrieved his handgun and came out with it. To his credit, the deputy tried to talk him into putting it down, but at that point the property owner had been provoked too far and wasn’t doing so, though he also never attempted to fire. Daniel Wasilchen was then gunned down in his own driveway, over a situation started over some weeds. Disrespecting the authority of any public servant, even a weed abatement official, will earn you a good hefty dose of special attention.

  * * *

  June, 2009

  The wedding went off without a hitch. Vincent was Randy’s best man, and Alicia and a couple other girls they knew from Bourbon Street were Elena’s bridesmaids. It was a modest ceremony, but the turnout wasn’t bad.

  Randy and Elena went to Long Beach, on the Washington coast, for their weeklong honeymoon. This had always been one of Randy’s favorite places to go relax. There were miles and miles of beach that you could drive down, provided you didn’t get stuck in the sand, and you could always find a quiet spot to set up camp for the day. They took Randy’s motor home for the trip, and after finding a good spot on the beach, they hardly ever came out of it. It was very likely the greatest week of both of their lives.

  But soon after they got home, the honeymoon was over.

  * * *

  On June 10th of 2009, the city of Everett saw perhaps its most egregious officer involved shooting ever. On that night, 51-year-old Niles Meservey left the Chuck Wagon Inn and went to his Corvette. He was an alcoholic and was pretty sloshed at the time, so concerned employees in the bar called police. They had no expectation anyone would die as a result. No one ever does.

  Several patrol cars arrived and boxed in the Corvette. Among the drivers of those patrol cars was Troy Meade, an 11-year veteran of the force. He confronted Meservey, who wouldn’t get out, and during the course of that discussion, he told Meservey, “I don’t know why the fuck I’m trying to save your dumb ass.”

  Meade pulled his Tazer and fired it at Meservey, hitting him in the shoulder. Right after that, his car lurched forward and into a chain link fence. At that point, Meade turned to his partner Steven Klocker and said, “Enough is enough, time to end this.” He drew his weapon and fired eight shots, seven of which struck Meservey. After he got done shooting, he stepped away and started pacing, leaving Klocker to force the door open and pull the man out. After being laid on the ground, Niles Meservey died while reciting the Lord’s prayer.

  Meade would say later that he saw the back-up lights of the Corvette come on, and felt his safety threatened. This was a dubious claim however considering that Meade was one step away from safety behind his own vehicle, no one else was in harm’s way, the car didn’t move more than a foot from the fence, and the fact that Meade fired without even waiting to see what the car would actually do. Meservey “might” have been a threat, and that was all the justification he needed.

  Steven Klocker was an uncommon breed of cop who was not a strict adherent to the code of silence. At Meade’s trial, he would testify that he was “…kind of at a loss. I was wondering what I missed to bring it to that extreme level of application of force.”

  The other witnesses, while not generally holding a favorable view of Meservey’s actions, held a similar opinion of the shooting. A woman named Trisha Tribble would tell a news reporter, “No way his car could have been used as a deadly weapon.”

  The dog and pony show that took place after the killing went in a predictable fashion. At first the prosecutor wasn’t going to charge him with anything. Public outrage compelled him however to file a charge of manslaughter. That prompted another round of public outrage, whereupon Meade was charged with second-degree murder. But he was acquitted. His daughter won a settlement from the city, and Meade was eventually fired. But criminal liability remained out of reach.

  * * *

  Randy first saw the news about the killing of Niles Meservey the morning after it happened, at a newspaper stand next to his job site. The Seattle Times headline simply read “Everett Police Officer Involved In Fatal Shooting.” There was certainly nothing unusual about that these days, but he bought a copy just to check for himself.

  He read it at lunch. The story was sketchy, as initial reports always are. All it really said was that police had responded to a drunk driver in a restaurant parking lot, the driver drove into a fence and knocked a woman down, shots were fired and the man was killed.

  It was later on that the stream of details started coming out, and it was always for the worse.

  * * *

  “The guy said ‘enough is enough, time to end this.’ I swear to God that’s what I read.” It was a few nights later at Bourbon Street, about the time when that particular detail of the shooting had just come out. Vincent was a little more sloshed than he usually allowed himself to get, and he was saying what was on his mind.

  Frank and Alicia stood behind the bar, while on the stools next to Vincent, Randy and Elena measured their responses. This was pretty outrageous news all right, but Vincent’s state of mind worried them more at the moment. He looked like a man to whom the deep end was beginning to look good.

  “How do you know he wasn’t really a threat to people?” Alicia asked. “A Corvette with a drunk driver is a pretty deadly weapon.”

  “He was boxed in. He wasn’t going anywhere,” Randy said.

  “Tell you
what,” Vincent raged on, “it’s a goddamn good thing I wasn’t there. I mighta’ just stopped him.”

  Randy had the sense that this was a moment for treading carefully. “That sounds good on paper, but think about what it means.”

  “Oh, I know, we’ve talked about that. Soon as you point a gun at one cop, every other cop has no choice, they must fire on you. So that means I’d have to shoot not only the murdering cop, but all his buddies too. But you know what? That ain’t my fault, because it’s their policy that made it that way.”

  “I wonder how they’d like it if that was our policy when they aim guns at us,” Elena said.

  Vincent cracked his first smile of the evening. “I like the way you think,” he said. “A taste of their own medicine is just what they need.”

  “But what would you do after that?” Alicia asked. “You think a jury would let you off?”

  “Not a snowball’s chance in the everlasting fires of Hell,” Vincent replied. “Like we’ve said, when you challenge authorita, then authorita will fuck you over however it has to. So what would be the point in surrendering?”

  “Vince, you’re beginning to scare me,” Randy said with a smile.

  “I ain’t at that point, not yet anyhow,” Vince said. “But think about that, the choice you’d have to face after doing what you had to in order to save someone like Meservey. You could either do the blaze-of-glory thing and go out makin’ a statement they’ll never forget, or live out your life as their favorite zoo animal, wishin’ you’d done it when you had the chance. What would you pick?”

  Randy shook his head. “Don’t know. Tough question.”

  “I know it is, and it’s a disgrace that we even have to talk about this. But the old days when they just beat people up are over, now they’re gunnin’ people down right and left. We have to start thinkin’ about what we’re gonna do when they come to us with their guns out.”

  Randy cracked a smile at that point. “Old buddy, I have been.” Vincent saw the twinkle in his eyes and knew what it meant. It was time to go shooting again.

  * * *

  The back end of Randy’s truck faced into the gravel pit, and thirty feet behind it sat two large boxes. Each box had two silhouette targets poking up behind them. “Okay, felony stop scenario number one,” Randy called out from next to the truck, then he climbed inside and closed the door. Vincent and Elena watched from a nice safe distance. “Vincent, go,” he shouted.

  “All right, throw your keys out of the vehicle,” Vincent yelled, doing the voiceover work for one of the imaginary cops behind the truck. The keys landed on the ground with a jingle. “Put your hands outside,” Vince went on, and Randy put his empty hands out the window. “Now get out, and walk back to the sound of my voice.” Randy did as instructed. He got out, kept his hands up, and slowly walked backward. Elena and Vincent watched, and when Randy had made it just past the back corner of the truck, everything became a blur.

  He pivoted on his right foot, put his head down and bolted to the right, drawing from his fanny pack and firing in less than a second. At a full sprint, he fired a burst of three rounds at each vehicle. Then he turned on a dime, and sprinted the other direction while firing a slightly more well-aimed burst. Some of the rounds went into the silhouettes, some into the vehicles. When his first clip ran empty, the next one was already in his hand. He swapped them out, then dropped to the ground on his side and fired a few rounds underneath each vehicle. Then he stood back up and approached more slowly, firing about one round a second straight into the boxes.

  When his second clip ran empty, he swapped them out, then moved in close on the left vehicle while crouched low, held the gun up and fired a few rounds down into it. Then he stood and moved quickly around the left side, finishing off the targets behind that vehicle. With that done, he sprinted to the second vehicle, dropped and fired a few rounds underneath, then stood and finished off those targets in the same fashion.

  The slide locked back. He turned back to Elena and Vincent and blew the smoke off the barrel, which was a trick in itself considering how hard he was breathing. Elena clapped her hands and said “Hooray, you just saved me!” Vincent took note that Randy wasn’t soft in the middle anymore, now he was looking downright lean and mean. The “psycho girlfriend weight-loss plan” was exactly what he had needed.

  Vincent nodded with approval at his shooting, as Randy said, “I’ve still got one clip left too,”

  “Very nice,” Vincent said. “What sort of methodology you got goin’ on there?”

  “Well, the first priority is to get a few rounds off in their direction. They’re trained to go for cover first, and that’s what most people are inclined to do anyhow when they’re being shot at. Then, the zig-zag lateral sprint makes me harder to hit, but with practice I can still hit targets while doing it. It also gets me into better positions to nail them, or at least keep some suppressive fire on them. Then as I work my way closer, I drop down and blast a couple of ankles from underneath the vehicle, if I’m able to. If they fall, I drill them in the head right then. After that, I use slow suppressive fire to get in close, and then I can do my last magazine swap and finish off whatever’s left.

  “How come you stay in the open while they’re behind cover?” Elena asked.

  “If they’re behind cover, and I’m keeping their heads down with suppressive fire, they’re stuck in one place while I’m free to move and shoot,” he replied. “There is another way I could do this though.”

  Randy went back to the truck, put his last loaded clip into the gun and holstered it. He got into the driver seat, then climbed out with his hands up like before. Only this time, he grabbed the door of the truck and used it to pull himself forward and bolt in front of the truck. There, he quickly drew and fired two rounds around the front corner. Then he dropped down and fired a few rounds underneath the truck. He got up, moved to his left and ran around the passenger side, charging out to attack in the same manner as before.

  His clip ran dry, but he had already demonstrated the rest of that scenario so he rejoined his friends. “I can use my own vehicle for cover like that if the situation calls for it. But if I stayed there, I’d be toast, so I’d have to use it just long enough to make them duck behind cover, and then attack in my mobile fashion.”

  “You know, any tactical instructor would scream bloody murder at you for shooting at a sprint like that,” Vincent said.

  “I know. It’s one of the reasons I prefer to train myself.”

  “Only trouble with these moves is, the felony stop scenario isn’t the one you need to worry about,” Vincent said. “If they’re gonna shoot you in the back, it’s gonna happen with you in the seat and them standin’ right outside.”

  “Yeah, that’s a little tougher. If you have a gun in reach or in view, chances are they’ve already seen it and made sure it won’t save you in time. So you’d have to plan on something dirty.”

  Randy started the truck and pulled it around so the targets were sitting beside the drivers side. Then he loaded a fresh clip. He put his hands on the steering wheel and looked outside as if talking to a cop during a stop. “All right, now he’s going for his gun,” he said. Then Randy quickly grabbed Elena’s .380 off the seat next to him and fired two rounds out the window. He dropped that gun back on the seat, pulled his Glock as he got out, and finished off an imaginary target standing behind the truck.

  “If you can get the first shots off somehow,” he said, “you can make him move for cover behind your vehicle, or his, and give yourself time to get out and attack.”

  “What if you don’t have my gun sitting right there though?” Elena asked.

  “I’d most likely be fucked,” Randy replied. “Besides which, it’s really tough to have a weapon in quick and easy reach without it getting spotted in advance. “Though it is possible I could point an imaginary gun at him and still scare him into jumping back or running for cover, and giving me enough time to grab mine. If it was dark out, it could work.�
��

  “What if you just jumped out of the truck and drew?” Elena asked.

  “That could work, assuming they haven’t taken your weapon already. You’re at a little bit of a disadvantage, but in fact a lot of people have done just that. On the other hand, a lot of people have died trying that too.”

  Vincent thought about all this for a moment. “It’s pretty iffy how well this’d all work, but this is probably about the best you could prepare, short of strapping a ninja to the bottom of your truck to chop his legs off. But tell me, you thought any more about what you’d do afterward?”

  “To tell the truth, I’m not so sure the blaze-of-glory thing would really be necessary, at least as long as you have some recorded proof on hand,” Randy said. “But if it were necessary, then that’s what this is for.”

  Randy reached behind the seat of his truck and pulled out his rifle case. He set it down on the bed of the truck, opened the zipper and took it out. Vincent’s eyes grew wide and he whistled. It was Randy’s old M1A Scout rifle, but it had a few new toys attached.

  Randy had been waiting for the chance to show this off, and he made the most of it. There was now a long piece of Weaver rail attached to the bottom of the stock. Mounted beneath the front end of the rail was a weapon light, and on the back end of the rail was a “grip-pod,” a vertical foregrip that contained a bipod that popped out the bottom when a button was pushed.

  Mounted on the left side was a green laser sight, but it wasn’t like the average one. This one had an output of 200 milliwatts, whereas the average laser sight puts out more like five or ten. “Even at several hundred yards, the guy trying to shoot you can’t hit a target with this thing shining in his face, but I can nail him at will,” Randy explained. “It’s completely unfair, which is exactly how I like it.”

  On the very top of the rifle was another little creation of Randy’s. Vincent had turned him on to some scope rings made by Millett that had pistol-type sights mounted on top of them. They were extremely handy when you had to shoot something up close in a hurry, like if you were being ambushed. But they didn’t make a version with night sights, so Randy had to invent one. He had started with some Leupold super-high dovetail rings, and machined the bottom ends of them so that Glock night sights could be affixed. Then he had mounted these on the ends of the tube of his Shepherd scope, outside of the mounting rings, with the sights pointing up. Once adjusted for windage, he could use these sights to get off quick snap-shots out to fifty yards. He could also hit a man-size target at a hundred yards with more careful aim, though at that distance he’d be using the scope anyhow. The Shepherd scope combined with these sights made his weapon effective from muzzle distance to a thousand yards.