Bad Monday!

Most CHL/LEO contacts are positive, how about yours? Bloopers are fun, but no names please, if it will cause a LEO problems!

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theHunter
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Bad Monday!

#1

Post by theHunter »

Ok, this story has a little LEO contact and a little blooper in it. May be a little wordy but I think the whole story needs to be told.

I work in management for a specialized construction company, at around 4:30pm on Monday I received a call from one of my employees that he had pulled up to his house and started taking groceries inside and the next thing he knows the truck is taking off down the alley. Yes he had left the keys laying on the seat. I tell him to report it to the police and tell him I don’t think we have full coverage on the truck so it is probably just a loss and we will not see it again. A couple of hours later the driver remembers we have GPS on this truck, so I log in and locate the truck. Okay, this is where the story starts to sound like the Keystone cops, I call the county sheriff where the truck was reported stolen and the dispatcher immediately puts me on hold, and I throw on some shoes and grab my gun and wife in that order and head to the town the truck is in about 20 miles away. I end up being on hold for around 7 to 8 minutes and the phone starts ringing again, then goes to voice mail. I hang up and call back and dispatcher tries to put me on hold again, I tell the story about the truck being reported stolen and we have it on GPS location and I need to meet a deputy and the dispatcher puts me on hold any way. In the meantime I use my wife’s phone to call a fellow employee that lives close to the area that the truck is located in and ask him if he know which county it is in because I am not getting any help from the reporting county (can’t even get them on the phone). He tells me the area is in the other county, I hang up and call that county and get told I need to talk to the city PD because it is their jurisdiction and he says that he will transfer me. The phone rings once and a recording comes on that says I must first dial a 1 or 0 before dialing that number. I am starting to wonder if this is not my day to have police on my side. I hang up and call the dispatcher for the city PD tell the story and get told they will send an officer to the area and then hangs up. All this time I am still on my wife’s phone with my fellow employee who has decided to help locate truck for the PD to stop.

Fellow employee locates bad guy before I am on location, the bad guy has truck parked in a loading dock area not visible to the parking lot. As he pulls up to truck the bad guy comes out of a door on the loading dock, as he is told to stop where he is the bad guy jumps in truck and backs into my fellow employee’s company truck at a high rate of speed and pulls forward, but so does employee but he is hit multiple times until he finally has bad guy pushed up on loading dock. As I arrive employee who also has a CHL has his gun drawn and yelling for the bad guy to get out of truck. I arrive and immediately call 911 and get my gun and assist by covering bad guy and telling 911 where we are and that we had the bad guy at gun point and that we where CHL holders and that we were in a loading dock area, I assume they will keep on the phone to help guide the officer into our location but nope, click, they hang up. When I tell my fellow employee they hung up he is like really and starts to call 911 himself. I look around to check to make sure my wife is okay and has not gotten out of the truck and in that split second that I turn the bad guy gets up and runs around the opposite side of the trucks and as we give chase he disappears into a field. We retreat back to the trucks to wait on the police. While waiting on PD fellow employee tells me that one reason that he pulled his gun and got the bad guy out of truck was because it looked like he was digging around like he was looking for a weapon and he was also worried that someone else may be in the building that the bad guy came out of. When PD finally arrives about 15 minutes later they call in backup in hopes of locating the bad guy, six officers and a K9. Three hours later no bad guy and we are still waiting on a Sheriff’s deputy to show up from the reporting county in order to work the stolen truck case. The interaction with the officers on location was all positive, they never asked for CHL’s only took statements and apologized for the problems with dispatch and would look into why the 911 operator hung up on me. After it was all said and done I wish the bad guy had gone to jail but at least we got our truck back and no one got hurt.
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jmra
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Re: Bad Monday!

#2

Post by jmra »

Welcome to the forum. I think you just earned the award for longest first post. Glad everything worked out.
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suthdj
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Re: Bad Monday!

#3

Post by suthdj »

which city and which county?
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ShootDontTalk
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Re: Bad Monday!

#4

Post by ShootDontTalk »

Glad everyone is okay. Welcome to the Forum.

I only call administrative lines when I know things cannot go south. Otherwise, I use 911 as by law those calls are recorded. The call center is usually savvy enough to know that putting a 911 call on indefinite hold wil almost always result in a lawsuit and could have catastrophic consequences on the city/county budget. Were I going to pursue a suspected car thief, the situation could go south easily, so I'd use 911 - multiple times if I get disconnected or put on hold.
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joe817
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Re: Bad Monday!

#5

Post by joe817 »

Welcome to the forum Hunter! Glad to have you with us. And sorry you had to go through all that. But glad things worked out ok for you all. Good that both of you were CHL's. And kudos for the responding units that finally showed up.

Thanks for the detailed post! You did well on your first post! :tiphat:
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LSUTiger
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Re: Bad Monday!

#6

Post by LSUTiger »

Since the only thing at risk at the time of the vehicle's theft was the vehicle/contents (no person), I would have called 911 with the GPS tracking information and let police handle it. At best, I may have even driven to the general vicinity of the vehicle to be close by to recover vehicle/contents once police made an arrest.

I don't think I would have got close enough to risk an encounter with the thief especially at an out of view loading dock. Of course it is tempting to recover your own vehicle when you know where it is and can see it.
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Charlies.Contingency
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Re: Bad Monday!

#7

Post by Charlies.Contingency »

LSUTiger wrote:Since the only thing at risk at the time of the vehicle's theft was the vehicle/contents (no person), I would have called 911 with the GPS tracking information and let police handle it. At best, I may have even driven to the general vicinity of the vehicle to be close by to recover vehicle/contents once police made an arrest.

I don't think I would have got close enough to risk an encounter with the thief especially at an out of view loading dock. Of course it is tempting to recover your own vehicle when you know where it is and can see it.
Agreed, if my truck goes missing, then I see it at a restaurant down the road, I'm going to recover it. It's my property, if somebody tries to stop me from getting in my own truck, that would be of their own demise. My wait time for county is long enough to dig a hole any refill it... I can't count on anybody but myself. :grumble

Good job OP, I am curious as to how much damage was done to both vehicles? And also, what kinda GPS did ya'll have that ya'll were able to find the truck yourselves?

*Also, I would have found reason to draw my weapon, had somebody intentionally assaulted me with a vehicle. If somebody Rams me with obvious intent, you can bet that I feel in danger of my life. More people die each year in the United States involving cars/trucks then guns. Just my opinion.
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theHunter
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Re: Bad Monday!

#8

Post by theHunter »

County that vehicle was stolen from was Ector County, Odessa City PD responded and Midland County was the other county that was involved.

Phone calls to 911 for non emergency purposes is illegal, I called 911 once on location and the situation was already elevated to an emergency due to the bad guy ramming my fellow employee in his truck. I actually called the dispatch for each department, I have worked with the Citizens on Patrol in my city for a number of years and have direct lines into each dispatch in the area.


Since the only thing at risk at the time of the vehicle's theft was the vehicle/contents (no person), I would have called 911 with the GPS tracking information and let police handle it. At best, I may have even driven to the general vicinity of the vehicle to be close by to recover vehicle/contents once police made an arrest.
911 hung up while the situation was in progress and GPS tracking shows location of truck only not actual coordinates.

As a follow up Tuesday I was supposed to have heard from a Investigator by 8:30 to 9am, I did not. When I tried contacting them I was told that they would get around to contacting me at some point. They would not give me a time frame. Since a ladder was missing off of the truck I ran a stop report on the truck and started back tracking to see if we could locate the ladder. At the last place we checked, which was the first place the bad guy stopped, we spotted the ladder. I then called the SO back and told them I had located the ladder and needed a deputy, I was finally transferred to a Sargent which I had tell my whole story to again and he finally sent a couple of deputies out. We recovered ladder but still no bad guy, it was obvious that they knew the bad guy and knew the ladder was stolen. One of the deputies finally did return to our office and recovered all of the stuff that was not ours from the truck so that we could use the truck again.

The GPS tracking system are units that we purchased from US Fleet Tracking and use their online software to monitor.

Thanks for the feedback.
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ShootDontTalk
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Re: Bad Monday!

#9

Post by ShootDontTalk »

theHunter wrote:County that vehicle was stolen from was Ector County, Odessa City PD responded and Midland County was the other county that was involved.

Phone calls to 911 for non emergency purposes is illegal, I called 911 once on location and the situation was already elevated to an emergency due to the bad guy ramming my fellow employee in his truck. I actually called the dispatch for each department, I have worked with the Citizens on Patrol in my city for a number of years and have direct lines into each dispatch in the area.
Calling 911 to report theft of a vehicle and that you are tracking said vehicle with GPS, is not illegal. Any dispatcher that prematurely disconnects a 911 call should have the issue reviewed with the 911 Supervisor.

My point was that "putting on your gun, grabbing your wife, and heading out to track a stolen truck" by definition introduces a gun into the situation. I think you'd be wiser to use 911 for records purposes in case things go south. Telling the dispatcher that you are tracking a stolen vehicle nullifies the issue of legally using the 911 system. Not that I think any of that is really the best thing to do.

Anyway, I'm still glad everything worked out and no one got hurt.
"When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk!
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Deltaboy
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Re: Bad Monday!

#10

Post by Deltaboy »

Sounds like a Bangles song. Just another manic Monday.
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C-dub
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Re: Bad Monday!

#11

Post by C-dub »

Crazy Monday. Hope the rest of the week is quieter and that neither of the vehicles was too badly damaged.

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