Back to main Creative Writings page > They Drop Things Officer O I was working the projects one night, I get a 10-1, officer down. When a call like that goes out, most guys take risks to get there fast. Sometimes when you get four squads all converging at the same intersection, it’s kind of scary. I get there before the ambulance and see this officer on all fours like this, his face covered in blood. He was whacked in the face with a bottle and they took his gun. It was at 340 S. Western, it’s dark there. Pitch black. The Sarge says, we’re missing a gun, do what you have to do to find it. And I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I figured it out. My partner and me are doing a door to door search and they call another 10-1. " They’re fighting with us, squad send every guy you have city wide. Respond to 340 S. Western building." I am on the 11th floor, I look down and police are fighting with the element that lives there and there’s a big crowd taunting them. The crowd was angry and had taken on it’s own persona. I never seen anything like that before. We get out there and all the police were under the building because they drop things on us. They drop bricks, TVs, they drop bleach. They drop stuff. People were taunting us. I was behind this guy and we moved them back. There was no other police in front of me. We had to walk across two courtyards; it was like Black Hawk down, no friendlies anywhere. It made me realize how bad things can get. How close I came that day to being injured. There may have been a little bleep on the news, that an officer was injured, but the rest of this stuff was never on the news. That is common. If somebody dies, maybe it makes the news. I was partnered with this guy Gallagher and we didn’t say anything that day, or the day after. This happened at 10:30. We were there for an hour and a half. I got off at midnight but that night I couldn’t sleep. Until about three, the adrenaline was so huge. And I thought about it later and thought I must be out of my mind. Because I was so close to being injured. That particular day I will always remember.