The Conclusion.

The conclusion to this story I will keep simple. Because of my actions I endured a grueling investigation into the shooting by the New Mexico State Police. I was exonerated after a drug informant testified that the cab of the vehicle I chased and subsequently shot was filled with cocaine being removed from a stash house in Columbus, because the drug cartels knew that I knew where their stash houses were located.

When they sped up far enough ahead of me to do so they threw the drugs out of the window of the vehicle and into the borrow pit out of my sight and later recovered the drugs before they were found by law enforcement. He also stated that their intent had been to kill me, but were frightened off by the firing of the submachine gun.

I endured a full scale investigation by the FBI in which I was charged with fifteen individual civil rights violations lodged against me at the behest of a local attorney tied to the drug trade. It took me five years of my life to clear my name, the conclusion of which was the pain of facing a trial of my peers in Federal District Court, in which I was acquitted of all charges.

The Chase after the Mexican Adventure.

Later at about ten o'clock that night as I sat in a chair in the living room of our home in Columbus, I had just completed the police report of our adventures in Palomas when I began to hear tires squealing on the road pavement near my home. I decided to make one more pass through town to let all the little bad boys know I was there, and so I told my wife I'd be back in a little while and entered my patrol car to do so. School street is a street in Columbus that runs east and west in front of the Columbus Grade school, and as I was patroling east bound on that street I saw a pickup truck traveling west bound on the same roadway with it's high beams on. I used my high beams to indicate to the driver to dim his lights, but I did not do so.

This is sometimes an indication that a driver is intoxicated, and so I turned around in the street and began to pursue the vehicle with the intent of stopping the driver to determine if he was intoxicated. When I turned on my emergency lights, suddenly the pickup accellerated it's speed, ran a stop sign at the the intersection of School Street and Highway 111 that runs between Deming< New Mexico and Columbus and then began traveling north bound on Highway 111. By this time I knew that the driver was attempting to elude me, so I called the Sheriff's dispatcher in Deming to let them know I was in pursuit of a pickup traveling north bound. I accellerated my vehicle until I was immediately behind the pickup and pacing it at speeds in excess of 100 mph.

The vehicle continued traveling north at this high rate of speed for approximately five miles without slowing, until suddenly the driver began to decellerate and slowly pull to the side of the road. I quickly stopped at a safe distance behind the truck and got out of my vehicle with my 9mm submachine gun in hand. At this point I will stop and back up a bit to explain some things that had happened during that day that I did not mention. There was an open contract on my head place there by the drug cartels, and the man who warned me of it stated that it was $25,000.00 in cash for the man who killed me. During the ambush in Mexico that I described earlier, the assailant had screamed at me during the confrontation that they were going to kill me that day, and warned me that I was a dead man, etc. etc.

Threats on my life were common in Columbus, but to be on the safe side I had ordered a Colt selective fire carbine to give me an advantage in a gunfight in which my adversaries had the advantage of numbers over me. I left the vehicle with the submachine in hand, believing that what may be happening was an attempt to lure me out of town to kill me. I could see the driver of the vehicle clearly, he was gunning the engine of his truck and trying to see me in his rear view mirror; but I had positioned my high powered spot light in the rear window of his truck to prevent him seeing me as I walked up.

I also noticed the top of another person's head that I could see protruding an inch or so above the lower edge of the rear window. It was my feeling then that it was possible that the passenger would come out of his door with a gun and so I kept an eye on him as I walked up behind the vehicle. Suddenly the driver of the truck threw it into reverse and gunned the engine towards me. I rotated away from the left rear edge of the truck bed as it went past me backwards barely missing me. I made a mental decision to not kill the driver which I could have easily done and instead I fired a full auto burst from the submachine gun towards the tires of the vehicle, hoping to disable it.

When I opened up with the machine gun the driver threw the vehicle in drive and surged forward. I had five round left in the 22 round magazine in the carbine and finished it off by blowing the glass out of the rear window as the truck sped away. I returned to my vehicle and attempted to continue pursit of the vehicle, but I realized that I had a large bump on a front tire, that was making a lot of noise; so I reduced my speed but continued fast enough to keep the fleeing vehicle's taillights in sight. I chased the vehicle along the straight roadway for approximately fifteen mile, until I saw it turn west on Waterloo Road,(I don't know if the name of this road was significant to me, or the bad guys), a dirt road. The dust from the chased vehicle obscured my vision to the point I couldn't see it, and then the vehicle turned off it's headlights. I continued carefully down this road until I saw the vehicle's brakelights come on which allowed me to see that the vehicle took a 90 degree turn to the right.

I continued to follow behind it until I heard crashing sounds ahead and then saw a large dust cloud billow up in front of me. When the dust cloud dissipated I found that the truck had gone off of the roadway and crashed into a dry dirt water tank used for watering livestock. I carefully approached the vehicle that was stuck up to the axles in sand with both doors open. It became apparent to me that the occupants of the vehicle had left the area, but to be careful I returned to my vehicle and called for assistance from Sheriff's Deputies I knew to be in the area. When they arrived along with several Border Patrolmen we tracked both men out through the desert until we lost their track in the rocks.

I decided to leave the area and return home after I made arrangements to have the suspect vehicle towed by a wrecker service. Border Patrol conducted a massive search of the area for the suspects with a helicopter, but they were unsuccessful in finding them.

Gunfight Part 3

My opinion of Mexican police has never been very high, but occasionally I have met officers of the highest caliber that were the equal of US law enforcement officers in every sense of the word. I found that this day the Chihuahua State Police we were dealing with were of this caliber, and I believe that if they had not been with us that day I would not be here to write this story.

As our little convoy headed west out of Palomas on the poorly maintained dirt road and just at the location I expected, we ran into a roadblock consisting of five or six vehicles placed across the roadway blocking our progress. Standing outside of these vehicles were approximately twenty men, armed with all many of weapons, from AK-47s and shotguns, to pistols of every make and model; all pointed as us in the vehicles. There were three State Police Officers in the front vehicle, and three in the back and almost instantly when they became aware of the roadblock, all six were out of their vehicles pointing Galil automatic rifles at our assailants and advancing at them screaming for them to drop their weapons.

The sight of those deadly intimidating weapons in the hands of men who had obviously been trained to use them had the desired affect. Almost immediately our assailants turned away from us in a panic with weapons still in hand, but running back to their vehicles. They all entered the vehicles and fled away from our position. My Customs friend and I breathed a sigh of relief as we sat there knowing full well how close to death we were. What amazed us both was that no rounds were fired by anyone. This was a true "Mexican stand off" if there ever was one, and all it would have taken was for one person to panic and start firing and the war would have begun in earnest. When it became obvious that the immediate threat was over the State Police Officers wasted no time and the convoy resumed its travel towards the Commandancia.

We were tense until we extracted the prisoners from the vehicle and deposited them in the State Police Commandancia which was only an old farm house converted to a shabby group of offices containing a fax machine and telephone and some office furniture. The entire time we were at the Commandancia there was an armed and alert guard posted at each doorway, while we addressed the cumbersome legal documents of the Spanish legal system that were foreign to us as US law men. I had to sign a document that stated that I had examined the bodies of each prisoner and certified that they had not been tortured while in Mexican custody.

They obviously had been tortured, but when interrogated by me; they both denied it happening. They just wanted out of Mexico and would have signed any document I asked them to sign. Four hours later we had satisfied the demands of Mexican justice and the prisoners were released into our custody. I refrained from interrogating the prisoners about where the stash houses were located in Columbus while in the presence of the State Police Officers, fearing that the drug cartels may have had a plant there in the room at the Commandancia.

As soon as we were across the US/Mexican border, we went to my office where we fed our prisoners a can of Coke and quizzed them on where the stash houses were located in my town. They readily I did so, ecstatically happy to be once again in the US, even though they were facing burglary charges. I then thanked my Customs friend for his help and wished him a safe trip home, while I transported my prisoners to the County Jail in Deming. This is only the beginning of this story and the best is yet to come.

Gunfight Part 2

Later that evening I placed calls into the Office of the District Attorney to let him know that I intended to travel into Mexico the next day. He advised me to mirandize both suspects before questioning them even though they were in Mexico, to satisfy the legal requirements of the U.S. I then called a friend in Customs who is of the adventurous sort and asked him to accompany me into Mexico to help me take custody of the prisoners, and to help me fight my way out in case the whole thing fell apart, which happens occasionally when dealing with any Mexican officials.

It has always been a crap shot when dealing with any officials in Mexico, it is always about money. It was always imperative for me to determine which of the drug cartels a particular law enforcement agency was working for at the time, before you dealt with them in any way. For instance the Chiuahua State Police, I knew were taking money from the Sanchez drug family, and I knew the Federales were working for the Sandoval drug family. This meant that I could "probably" trust the Chiuahua State Police, because they hated the Sandoval family which meant they were not cooperating with the Federales. In fact there had recently been a shooting between the two agencies in which many shots were fired, but no one was hit..... all over money.

Confusing I know! I also called and asked the Palomas Municipal Police Chief to have the two burglary suspects and the evidence seized by them prepared to be transported from Mexico to the U.S. as soon as possible the next morning. He agreed to do so, but he stated that he would have to transfer the suspects to the Chihuahua State Police, so that they could prepare and process the necessary paperwork to release the suspects to me. This made me very curious and a little apprehensive because the State Police Commandancia was located about five miles west of Palomas, and just a half mile south of the Border fence.

This meant that there was a real possibility that we could be ambushed either going to, or coming from the Commandancia. As I laid awake thinking of all of the possibilities that might happen the next day, suddenly a light bulb went off in my head and I knew that we were going to be ambushed when we transported the prisoners to the Commandancia; and it would probably be in the most vulnerable location as we traveled on our route there.

Before dawn I was on the telephone to my Customs friend and I told him of my fears about possibly being ambushed while transporting the prisoners, I even gave him a chance to back out of going with me on this possible suicide run. True to his character he chose to go with me, stating the age old Grito, "I don't want to live forever." It is against the law for Americans to possess firearms in Mexico, that includes law enforcement. My Customs friend and I decided to carry a concealed pistol on our persons, both of us feeling that if we were armed we could possibly fight our way out, but unarmed we would certainly be assassinated by our enemies if attacked.

I have never relished spending even one day in a Mexicn prison, but the possibility of doing so was real if we were caught with the concealed weapons. My Customs friend met me at my office at about 7:00 that morning and we drove his unmarked Customs vehicle across the U.S./Mexican border into the wild bordertown of Palomas, Chuhuahua, Mexico. We were met at the Municipal jail by the Chief of Police and were taken to the location of our two prisoners. When we arrived the guards were in an uproar, earlier that morning someone had tried to assassinate our prisoners and had sprayed the entire jail with automatic rifle fire, not knowing where our prisoners were kept. No one was killed, but a guard was hit by bullet fragments and had been hospitalized. Our prisoners were frightened out of their wits, but were unharmed by the bullets fired into the prison.

For those of you unfamiliar with the jail system in Mexico, let me tell you that it is jail in the truest sense. The jail system only provides you with the barest of necessities. The jail in Palomas was a rectangulat shaped building about 100 feet long, by 12 feet wide. The two longest sides of the rectangle were iron bars the full 100 feet. Both barred sides being open to the elements. The rectangle was divided into about ten individual cells with thick adobe walls between each cell. The floor of each cell was bare concrete, there were no bunks, no water facilities, the bathroom facilities consisted of an old bucket, which when we arrived was full of excrement and the whole establishment had a vile smell about it.

It was a cold day, the temperature being about 35-36 degrees celsius and when I walked up to the bars of my suspect's cell I found them huddled together on a flattened card board box, with no blanket to cover them shivering so hard their teeth were chattering. They were both without shoes, their shoes had been stolen by the guards; but they still had their stockings. In Mexicn jail if you have no one to take care of you, family or friends outside of jail, you might very well starve to death. They usually serve a grule of dubious content once a day and many times you must pay the jailor to feed you that. I decided to let them know I was there, and so stated in a loud voice,"Hey, you boys wanta go home?"

Both of them shot up off the floor when they heard my voice. They both approached the cell door crying like little children and treating me like a long lost relative. This was amusing to me because the contact that I had had with them before this was just the opposite. They had gone from street tough bad boys, to crying, whimpering little children overnight, facing the fact that they might have to spend the rest of their lives in a larger jail with not more creature comforts than this one. Both of them bore visible signs of bruising to their faces and necks, probably administered by a rubber hose. They had not had any water or food for over twenty four hours.

The prevailing wind was blowing right through the cell bars at about ten miles an hour and their tongues were swollen and dehydrated to the point that they could barely talk. On top of all of this someone had tried to kill them a few hours earlier. The mean old cop had suddenly become their savior in every sense of the word. It was all I could do to keep both of them from trying to hug me through the jail bars, and it was hard to make out what they were saying through he blubbering and crying.

Both of them stated to me that they had done the burglary of the Aduana Officer's home and that they would sign any confession as long as I got them out of jail and out of Mexico. We waited anxiously for about thirty minutes for the State Police to arrive, on constant watch that no one from the cartels were able to sneak up and finish the job they had attempted when they tried to kill the two earlier.

We then formed a convoy of three vehicles, a State Police vehicle in front, the Customs Suburban with the prisoners and us in the middle and a State Police vehicle in the rear with the intent of convoying the prisoners to the State Police Comandancia.

Gunfight Part 1

I awakened that morning with a knot in my stomach and the feeling that doom surrounded me. I shook the feeling off initially but as the day wore on I KNEW that trouble was in store for me ahead. Sure enough later that day I received a call from a Mexican Aduana Officer (combination immigration/customs officer) who wanted to speak to me in person about a problem he had. I told him to meet me at my office where we could talk in private. He agreed to meet me there, and fifteen minutes later he entered my office, I greeted him cordially and invited him to sit down.

He took a seat in a chair and by his mannerisms I could tell he was distressed by something and he was having a difficult time telling me. I decided to wait until he felt ready to talk and so I ignored him while shuffling papers on my desk. After a short time he told me, "Everyone tells me that I can trust you, someone has burglarized my house and taken some of my property!" I kept silent until he went on, and he continued with," Well, there may be a little problem because there was some money taken also, a lot of money!" I finally figured out what his problem was, he was afraid that I would turn him over to U.S. Customs because he had crossed the border with more than $10,000 in cash in his possession without declaring the money to American authorities.

The Mexican Aduana had special permission to live in the United States, claiming that there was no available housing for them in Palomas, Mexico and because the Mexican people hated them because they were so corrupt, they literally feared for their lives in Mexico. The Aduana made the equivalent of about $3.60 an hour on their jobs and so to make up the difference they charged truck loads of equipment and produce and items of all kinds to cross the border into Mexico. I have seen a truck driver pay as much as $10,000.00 to cross a load of farm equipment from the U.S. into Mexico. Most Aduana were rich from the "mordida" (the bite) that they illegally extracted from almost anyone transporting good and equipment into Mexico.

This particular Aduana Officer was the nephew of the Aduana Commandante in Juarez, Mexico and it was well know that he could do no wrong, because of his relation to the "Boss" in Juarez. This man was born in east Los Angeles and had given up his American citizenship to gain the Aduana job. I knew of one occasion where he was reprimanded by his immediate supervisor at the Mexican Port of Entry at Palomas and two days later the supervisor was transferred. I finally extracted from him that $65,000.00 in cash (mordida) was stolen from him, some antique heirloom gold jewelry worth more than the cash and a 9mm pistol.

I assured him that I was not a federal agent and so I didn't care about the cash and he uttered a sigh of relief. He was also quite worried about the 9mm pistol because it was an issued duty weapon and if it was not found he would be in trouble. He and I then returned to his home and I began a forensic investigation of the crime scene there. The perpetrators of this burglary had broken a window into his bedroom while he was working and helped themselves to the valuables inside, most of it being located in a briefcase in plain sight.

While I was in the middle of the investigation I received a telephone call from the Commandante De Policia Municipal, Palomas, Mexico. He told me that he had two suspects in the burglary I was then investigating in jail in Palomas as we spoke. He also said that they had been caught with some of the gold jewelry belonging to the Aduana Officer, trying to trade it for sex in a local brothel in Palomas. He told me their names and I knew them well. They were local "mulas", the ones that the cartels hired to physically pack the drugs across the U.S./Mexican and then take it to stash houses in my little town.

This was great news to me and now I just hoped that I could get to them before the drug cartel killed them, fearing that they might snitch off the stash houses to me in return for gaining their freedom from the Mexican authorities.

La Ley De Fuga

One day I was sitting in a Mexican food restaurant owned by a friend, while enjoying a plate of the best red chile enchiladas known to mankind, incapable of being reproduced in any other locale; when in through the door walks a U.S. Border Patrolman who seemed almost in tears.

He sat at my table and told me that earlier he and several of his fellow Agents were standing near the Mexican/US gate at the U.S. Port of Entry Columbus talking with one another when suddenly a man wearing only a pair of pants ran screaming through the Border gate from the Mexican side and crossing over into the United State side. Hot on his heels were about twenty men, Mexican "Aduana", the equivalent of United States Customs Officers chasing him.

The man ran right into the arms of the Border Patrolmen standing there and began crying, thinking that he was now safe from his tormentors. The Aduana chasing him were grateful to the Border Patrolmen thinking they had caught him for them. A big heated argument began when the Customs Port Director showed up and stated that the Border Patrol had to let the man go because he was now on U.S. soil. The Port Director stood unbudging in his official pronunciamento and so finally the Border Patrolmen who were more than willing to let the Aduana have him back acquiesced and let the man walk away.

Needless to say the Mexican Aduana were livid with rage. They began to mutter that there would be no help from them in the future and that no U.S. lawmen would be safe in Mexican from now on, and other dire threats that they were fully capable of completing. The history behind this situation is that myself and all the Border vegetable soup gang Agencies had gathered together and decided that we would work diligently to befriend any and all Mexican officials in the hopes that by befriending them we could accomplish more when we needed information, finding suspects or missing property in Mexico.

For several years we put on dinners for they and their families, we supplied them with hard to find and much needed police equipment and did other things for them to help them and we made a great deal of progress in doing so. It seems as though this one incident was going to smash all that we had worked for in our relationship with our Mexican brothers.

After my Border Patrol friend was through with his story, I asked him where the man was at that time. He told me that he was walking down the highway between the Mexican Border and the Village of Columbus with a big smile on his face and not a seeming care in the world. I entered my vehicle and began driving towards Mexico on the highway looking for the man. I soon found him and so I stopped in the middle of the road, rolled down my window and asked him if he wanted a ride. He said, "Yeah, don't mind if I do." He walked up to my car and I stood there with the door open, he suddenly realized that it was a patrol vehicle with a cage in the back and he tried to resist, so I shoved him in the back and closed the door behind him.

The Columbus Port of Entry is a Federal facility located within the Columbus Village limits that was part of my jurisdiction. I returned this wanted man to the U.S./Mexican Port of Entry Gate and released him to the custody of the Mexican officials waiting there, and good relations with Mexican was restored. My investigation found that this man was part of a large narcotics smuggling group out of the L.A. area, and that the reason he was wanted in Mexico was because he was caught passing large amounts of counterfeit Mexican and American currency there. This man had failed to show up on U.S. official's radar as a suspect yet, and he wasn't wanted in the U.S., but there was a vast amount of intelligence on him and he was known as a bad actor.

A crook in Mexico is a crook in the U.S. I gained the undying animosity of the Customs Port Director when he tried to berate me for not following his orders, I simply told him that his Port of Entry was situated within my jurisdiction and his orders did not apply to me.

There is a post script to this story in that the man I returned to the Mexican officials was shot and killed while trying to escape a second time,"La Ley De Fuga". Justice was served. I fully suspect that there are those who may disapprove of this story, but please keep in mind that this area of the United States is a hard, uncivilized place, filled by hard men whose law is the gun.

Back to Columbus

The reason I began writing about my Chief of Police tenure in Columbus, NM was so that I could tell of the evil I found there, and how cleverly it was hidden. I have a gift of sorts that may be best described by the words of my wife. She says, "T" if there is a snake in the wood pile you will always find it, others may look for it for days, but you will always find it." Meaning I guess that I have a nose for trouble, and will always find it, that is still with me today after I have not been a lawman for eight years.

When I first took the job in Columbus I knew that the first people who would attempt to befriend me were the crooks. Within days of taking the job three men began to camp out at my jail the first thing every day until I was forced to tell them that I had work to do and they left. They continued from that day forward trying to assist me in one way or another until I caught each of them in a little swindle that I cited them for and was able to distance myself from them.

When I arrived at Columbus I found that my office conditions were not the best in the world. In 1913 the then Village fathers had paid the grand total of $700.00 dollars to construct a solid reinforced 20x40 foot rectangular shaped concrete jail to hold the malcreant element of that time. The north or front facing side of the building had two small 14"x18" steel bar protected windows located about eight feet from the ground and a steel door made out of 3/8" steel sheet with a hasp for a padlock to secure it. The interior of the jail was filthy and I spent several days cleaning out the packrat nests and black widows from the interior before I could begin to furnish it with office furniture.

The interior of the building also had a steel cage with two holding cells used to temporarily hold prisoners before transport to the county facility in Deming. It had been used at one time to house a mountain lion that had been captured by someone, and it had housed many a drunk cowpoke in it time. It was now my home and the troubles I witnessed there are part of it's history.

The Dusenberg incident.

This event took place after I had been Chief in Columbus for about a year and to be truthful I was at the end of my patience with the many elements in the Village who took great delight in taking pot shots at me.

Columbus was not large enough to have it's own paper, but we did have a reporter in town who wrote a Columbus column for the Deming Headlight in Deming, NM. Each week the ongoing problems in the Village of Columbus with the "loose cannon" Police Chief filled this column, and if that were not enough the "Letter to the editor" column was filled with every type of rumor, opinion or consclusion that could be imagined.

I have a saying, "Like water off a ducks back", meaning this type of criticism I let roll off of my back like water off of a duck's back. I did not normally let it affect me. On the day this particular incident took place I was seated in the Village Office doing paperwork when the town clown slammed breathlessly through the front door with news. He said, "Chief, Dusenberg is up at the American Legion Coffee Shop tellin' everyone there what a no good sorry SOB you are and that he is going to run you out of town."

Now normally this kind of information given by this man would have no affect on me, but because my tolerance to BS level was low that day, I asked him to tell me just what he said. He told me this man was really raking me over the coals to a large group of townspeople and that I'd better do something about it. If this sounds a little bit like the script from a Grade B movie, you would be correct; but this really happened.

My rage began to grow as I thought about how many times I had had to listen to this man's ranting at Village Council meetings and did not respond, and the more I thought about it the more angry I became until I walked outside to the car, got in and drove the few short blocks to the American Legion building.

I walked into the building through a side door and when I entered Mr. Dusenberg was engaged in a long tirade against me and the twenty five or so people there were listening to him in rapture. No one noticed me for a short moment as I listened and so I walked over to his location and sat across from him at his table. He turned and looked at me finally and stopped his tirade in mid sentence. He began choking and his face became red as though he might have choked on something, so I handed him a glass of water to help him out.

After he had gained his composure again, I told him, "Mr. Dusenberg I am tired of hearing about you cussing me behind my back and so I have come here to allow you to say what you have to say to my face." Mr. Dusenberg with an extremely red face, had nothing further to say. I then said to him, "Mr. Dusenberg I have given you a chance to speak and you haven't, so it's my turn. I am not telling people about you to your back, what I have to say is to your face and in front of your friends. You sir, are a contemptable liar and I will not allow you to lie about me behind my back without consequences again!" I gave him a chance to speak but he didn't seem capable of doing so, so I rose to leave when he spoke to me in a very rattled voice saying, "If you didn't have that badge I'd kick your **s, I took the badge off and slammed it on the table, then he said, "If you didn't have that gun, I'd kick your **s. I then made an incredible blunder and pulled the pistol out of it's holster and slammed it on the table in front of me.

He then said, "If you didn't have those glasses on I'd kick you **s. When I did this he smacked me open handed across the face with his hand. I am a hardened man who has taken part in many fist fights and this man possessed no chance against me in a fight, but when he struck me with his hand I experienced a strange occurence. I saw the entire event happening from the time he struck me until it was over, all seeming to happen in an instant. I saw that when I punched him I would kill him with the punch and I even experienced the horror of seeing him lying on the floor in front of me blood rushing from his mouth.

Several witnesses reported that after Dusenberg struck me I had a dazed look come over my face and then I just simply dropped my hands to my side as he struck me several hard blows to the face. It was over very quickly and I grabbed my gun and badge and left as fast as possible. I was not affected in the least by his blows, but the vision was so detailed and complete that I was much shaken that I had allowed myself to be placed in this position so easily.

I knew that Dusenberg's life had been saved. I endured an independant investigation by a detective from the Luna County Sheriff's Office, a good friend but one who was totally unbiased in the investigation. No charges were filed against me and I refused to file against Dusenberg when the investigation determined that he had struck me first in the fracas. Mr. Dusenberg was vindicated and became a celebrity of sorts for having put down the Chief in a spectacular fashion.

I left knowing that a much more terrible ending was diverted by the hand of God. I have worked diligently since that time to not be affected by the emotion of the moment, but to always think things through before acting.

Attacked!

I did not move my family to Columbus until early 1989 when I found a piece of property for sell that suited the needs of my large family. As it was I did not place all of my hopes in the Chief job, because I knew how fickle small town politics can be. I always tried to have an escape route ready in case the job back fired and we needed to leave.

We had just gotten situated in the new abode when one night I received a radio call from my wife. I placed an FM band police radio in my home for emergency situations and had instructed my wife that if she needed me in an emergency to call me on the radio. She said that someone had shot several times into our home with a gun of some kind and the rounds did not strike anyone, but the culprits were stopped on the roadway in front of the house as we spoke.

I was just a few blocks away from her when I received the call and so I blasted back home as soon as possible hoping to catch whomever had fired at my family. By the time I arrived back home they were leaving the area, but I was able to get a description of the car they left in. I screeched to a halt in my driveway and went into the house to check on my family. There was no harm done to anyone and so I hurried back to my car after leaving terse orders to lock the doors, stay concealed in a safe area and keep their guns close at hand.

I returned to my car and followed in the direction I had seen the vehicle leave and a short distance away from my home I saw the taillights of the car I had seen at my home parked in front of my police office. While I watched I saw a man leave the vehicle and shoot a round into the electric meter situated on the front of the building. I caught up with the vehicle and began to follow it. The occupants were soon aware that a police vehicle was following them and thus began a short but quick pursuit south bound to a group of home situated on the southern limits of the Village of Columbus.

When the vehicle came to a halt near one of the homes in the group, the driver of the car exited his vehicle and began shouting towards the houses in a loud voice. By the time I exited my vehicle fully fifty men and females of all age groups from young adults to the elderly, came rushing out of the group of homes and began screaming insults in Spanish at me and advancing on my position. I had never dealt with a situation like this before, but enraged that anyone would have the audacity to attack my home I retrieved a 12 gauge shotgun from my car fully intent on using it if necessary.

The driver of the car I had chased to this location was a large, brash, bully of a man who seemed to have no fear of the law, and with this large extended group of people behind him he was very combative, mouthy and arrogant. When he saw I was hesitant to move towards him as the group of people behind him grew closer, he attacked me empty handed. I fired a load of 12 gauge buckshot into an area between he and the group of advancing people that caused he and the group to stop. I told the members of the advancing group that if they did not back off many people would get hurt and that the driver of the car was the only one I wanted. Suddenly from behind me I heard the engines of racing cars coming towards me and turning briefly to look I saw the Cavalry arriving. Two U.S. Border Patrol Agents and a Sheriff's Lieutenant friend of mine had heard the shotgun round go off from a distance and fearing it might be me in trouble had responded towards the direction of the sound.

They saw my emergency lights and drove directly towards them. Now this group was facing four armed law enforcement officials instead of just me and much of their zeal to have at me was reduced. The big brash blow hard was still cussing me and my heritage in Spanish, but I took a moment to update the new arrivals about what had transpired. I asked them to keep the family off of my back while I dealt with the loud mouth. I approached him and told him he was under arrest for attacking my home and pointing the shotgun directly at him ordered him to his knees.

When he complied, I then slung the safe shotgun and tried to cuff him, but he began to resisit and then he grabbed me around the knees trying to force me off of my feet onto the ground. I retrieved the shotgun which had a steel skeleton type stock and struck him on the head several time knocking him unconscious. I then drug him to my car and shoved him into the back seat while the three other men kept the family away. We then retreated to the relative safety of my office and assessed the situation.

We removed my arrestee who was still unconscious from my car and taking him inside placed him in a holding cell. I then attended to the wounds of his head and found that it would take numerous stitches to close the gashes in his head from the blow and so I made the decision to take him to the hospital in Deming to have them treated before taking him to jail. My friend the Sheriff's Lieutenant and the Border Patrolmen, decided to go back to the scene of the brawl and try to find out what had caused all of this to happen by speaking with the family.

I called my wife to let her know that I had one of the culprits involved in attacking our home in custody and that I was taking him to jail in Deming. She was much relieved and was able to get the children back to bed along with herself. Border Patrol Agents in marked units parked in front of my home for the next few nights, bless their hearts; I can't say enough about the relief that gave me knowing that they were there to protect my family.

My prisoner was treated at the hospital, he received many stitches to close the wounds I gave him, and then he was booked into the Luna County Jail. As soon as I had him booked I found that my Lieutenant friend had traveled to Deming after his investigation and so we met at a diner to talk. He told me that when they had returned to the scene of the altercation they found an elderly man who was willing to talk to them and the man explained that the entire family had recently moved to Columbus from the interior of Mexico. He said that their family import/export business had prospered to the point that they had enough money to emigrate legally into the U.S.

He further explained that in Mexico the police are weak and easily overcome with threats, or bought off with money. It seems that I had arrested one of the younger sons of the clan for DUI and had taken him to jail and so the family had reasoned that if they intimidated me by attacking my family I would cave in and let the boy off of the hook. He further stated that the entire family was surprised at my reaction and he guessed that the police in the U.S. were different than the police in Mexico.

I traveled back home that night much fatigued from the exertions of the night. I slept about four hours and then returned to Deming to retrieve my prisoner to be taken befor the Columbus Municipal Judge that morning. When I picked him up he looked terrible, but he had a much more humble attitude than he had the night before. He surprised me when he went before the judge, and he plead guilty to the charges of disorderly conduct, discharging a firearm within the city limits and the Judge charged him to pay restitution for the power meter that was shot out at my jail. He apologized profusely to me for the trouble he had caused.

You are probably asking yourself why I didn't throw the book at him and charge him with multiple felony charges which I could have done. The reason is I was trying to make a friend of he and and his family and not make an enemy. Hate the sin, but not the sinner. Some of his family showed up for court and immediately paid his fines. I took the time and using an interpreter so I would not be misunderstood(my Spanish is not good at times) I patiently explained to he and his family members present that things in the U.S. are handled differently than they are in Mexico. The law is here to protect them and I assured them that they could still call at any time and I would come to help them.

I also told them that I would not seek prosecution of the others involved, it would stop with Mr. Big Mouth who by the way was the essential leader of the group; if they agreed to not attack me or my family in the future. I received a solemn promise it would never happen again. My ex-prisoner and the family there in attendance almost wrung my arm off at the shoulder, thanking me profusely for being lenient on them and walked from the Municipal Court with big grins on their faces swearing that they would always support me. From that day until I left Columbus they were my loyal friends and I even enjoyed a meal or two with them in friendship.

Columbus P.D.

In May of 1988 I was hired by the Village of Columbus, New Mexico to start the Columbus Police Department. Columbus is the Village that was raided by Pancho Villa in 1916, and in the battle which ensued, over 25 civilians living in the town were killed by Pancho Villa's troops.

The American Army Troops stationed nearby fought back the attack and drove the raiders away, and subsequently General Blackjack Pershing led a punitive expedition into Mexico seeking Villa and his men, but never came close to catching him.

Columbus is located three miles north of the U.S./Mexican border, and the City of Palomas, Chihuahua, Mexico is located on the Mexican side. This is a very rugged area of the country and still to this day the law in Mexico is the gun. Two drug families dominate the drug traffic from Mexico into the U.S., the Sandoval and the Sanchez families. Smuggling has been an active livelihood for many Mexicans in northern Chihuahua for over one hundred and twenty five years. Before drugs became popular in the U.S. they smuggled illegal liquor during prohibition, and before that it was carnauba wax and anything else that would gain a profit from sale in the U.S.

The two families I mentioned were working overtime in their smuggling operations long before I arrived in Columbus. I was hired by the Village Council and Mayor over seventeen highly qualified candidates for the job, to basically clean up the unlawful element who had free rein in the Village.

A warrior's dream! I finally had the chance to start a police department and pretty much run it the way I saw fit. I knew I had taken on a big job, but it would be many months later before I found out the true extent of what I had gotten myself in to. I left my family safely forty miles away in Deming, New Mexico while I played bachelor and took the opportunity to size up the situation before I brought my family to live in Columbus permanently.

I started the new department funded by federal and state grant money to begin with, hoping that the Village tax base was sufficient to hire a few more officers to help me do the job at a later date. It soon became obvious though, that the vision of the Village Council was merely a pipe dream and it would be years before they could garner enough tax income to hire additional officers. So I became a Chief in title only, but the job had to be done and so I took on not only the responsibility of starting a new department, but enforcing the law as well.

I worked during the daylight hours doing all of the necessary things required of starting a department and fielding complaints from the Village residents, and my night time hours patrolling the Village limits attempting to stop the many hard cases from breaking our local ondinances. Many time working twenty hour days, seven days a week.

The first of many confrontations that happened to me during this "honeymoon" period happened one night when I found two brothers engaged in a knock down drag out fight under a street light on one of the streets in town. When I attempted to break up their fight they both turned on me and I was forced to defend myself. I had one brother cuffed and was attempting to cuff the other brother and hold the one I had cuffed on the ground. While I was attempting to accomplish this I heard screaming coming from up the street and heard someone say, "That cop has our friends on the ground up the street, let's kill him!" Not the best words to hear while you are attempting to arrest two strong young men even in the best of conditions.

I heard many foot steps running up the street along with screamed threats against my life and I knew a large group of angry people were headed towards me. I finally got the second brother cuffed and under control and then I pulled my handgun and began screaming at whomever was running towards me to stop. Still they came on and when the first one entered the light of the street lamp we were under, I fired a round from my sidearm that I am sure came very close to his ear, but missing him on purpose. He hit the ground on his face in front of my position, crying and begging for his life; where I was able to intimidate him into staying on the ground.

The round I fired had it's desired affect and all the others retreated from my position post haste. I cuffed the third suspect and placed them all in my Patrol car and eventually transported all three to the jail in Deming where they were booked for disorderly conduct and felony stupid in public, (No such statute, but there should be). This first encounter was a preamble to what was to come later, and the evil in this town almost cost me my life.

The beginnings of Columbus P.D.

During the history of Columbus there had always been a Village government, but never a Village police force. Law enforcement responsibility had been provided by the Luna County Sheriff's Office that consisted of a resident deputy who lived in Columbus, but Columbus was such a rough little town that the drug trade elelment usually ran the deputy off, or bought him off which had happened on more than one occasion.

Columbus had always been a thorn in the side of law enforcement, a problem child in the county. Village citizens were insistant that the rampant lawless be stopped and so finally the Village Council decided it was time to develop it's own police department. Assitance in doing so was gladly provided by the then Sheriff Fred Gifford who was more than willing to solve one of his biggest headaches. Gifford helped write the initial grant proposals that provided the funding to allow a Chief to be hired and a Patrol vehicle to be purchased.

The Village government is comprised of a Mayor who can vote in a tie, and six council members. The Mayor of the Village at that time was Ramon Garcia, a Columbus native who in my opinion was one of the greatest people I knew. The council consisted of an artist, a homemaker, a spinster, a liberal intellectual (her words), a merchant (with thinly concealed ties with the drug runners). and an older rock solid retired man. When the Village Council hired me the vote was four to two in favor, with the opposing vote being the merchant/drug dealer and the liberal intellectual. So we began the period of our association I call the honeymoon phase in which I was given carte blanche to form, and operate my little one man police department.

Having dealt with small town mentalitiy before, I knew that during this phase I would have to move fast to accomplish building the department before we fell out of love with each other (inevitable),when the first clouds of evil rose on the horizon because of my desire to enforce the law where there had been no law before.

I did not take the job to be a baby kisser, or a Barney Fife. I came to Columbus to make a difference in the lawless conditions prevalent there, and to take a chunk out of the backside of the drug trade who controlled the area under the guise of a benevolent shadow government.

Yeah, I know how "Captain America" this statement sounds, but I admit to being a bit foolish when it comes to my ideals and Columbus would become a great test of my moral fiber and character.

Evil Shows its Head.

The population of the Village of Columbus itself was quite small when I took over the law enforcement duties, being less than three thousand in the town itself. It was comprised of about fifty per cent retired people from other parts of the country who had come there for the pleasant winter weather, the romance of the Mexican Border and the cheap prescription drugs available in pharmacias in Palomas.

Twenty five per cent were hard working honest family people, who pretty much were too busy with their lives to be concerned with law enforcement, and twenty five per cent of the people who derived an income directly, or indirectly from the illegal drug trade. You would think that my problems would stem from the twenty five per cent of the population who were involved in the illegal importation of drugs into this country. They created many problems, but the real problem for me came from the retired people who comprised fifty per cent of the population.

Many of this portion of the population were very vocal about how the Village should be run, and took an active role in the Village government. I believe that our weekly Village council meetings were the greatest entertainment in town. The small Village offices were filled to overflowing every council meeting, and I couldn't take a step without it being scrutinized in every coffee shop in town. Their involvement in what I did was all right, but I soon found that the drug importation crowd had spent years previous to my arrival, befriending the retirees in love with Mexico.

This group came into direct oppostion to me in my attempts to put a dent in the drug trafficing taking place all around them. These retired people were not drug users, they had simply been duped into believing that their good friends in Mexico could not be involved in such nefarious enterprises. The Palomas night life was filled with happy retirees blissfully unaware that people were dying all around them, embroiled in an underground drug territory turf war being being fought by the two powerful drug families over who would control drug trafficing in this area of northern Chihuhua.

As I stated earlier most of this part of the population were from somewhere else in the country. In my opinion most of them had never had the opportunity to have a voice in government in the areas from which they originated and so now they believed their voices mattered and they were going to be heard.

The first problem I encountered in my new job came when a citizen's group attended a council meeting and demanded that I lock my guns up in a safe, reasoning that I could then return back to the safe and retrieve them when I needed them in my law enforcement duties. Believe it or not this proposal almost passed the council until I put a stop to it by threatening to quit my job if it passed. Their reasoning was that it worked well in England where the "Bobbies" didn't normally carry guns and they genuinely believed it would work in Columbus on the frontier with Mexico.

This mentality will sound ridiculous to most people of common sense, but I believe that their intentions were good and wouldn't it have been great if I could have implemented such a program, sadly; as long as there are predators on the earth there will be men needed who are willing to wield weapons and risk their lives in the defense of those either unwilling, or unable to defend their peaceful lives.

Lone Wolf and friends.

This period of my life as the lone police officer in Columbus, New Mexico is a difficult period to write about, simply because there is so much to write about. I think that it may be easier to just hit the high spots of the many incidents I was involved in, rather than writing long detailed stories.

In a regular police department it is of benefit to have other officers around you as a support group while you deal with the difficulties of day to day police work. I did not have that luxury being the only officer, although I cannot say enough about the U.S. Border Patrol and Customs Investigators and Luna County Sheriff's Office Deputies who backed me up on many occasions when I found myself overcome by the numerically superior opposition I faced daily.

Within six months of taking over the job my aggresive enforcement style caused a polorization to take place in the Village. I was either greatly loved for the cleaning up of the bad element in the Village, or greatly hated by at least five seperate and distinct opposition groups for the same reason. My support group was easily defined, it consisted mainly of old time Columbus residents who were simply ecstatic that I was cleaning up the bad element and making Columbus a safer place to live.

One of my most loyal supporters was Edward Carson, the great nephew of the famous Army scout Kit Carson who gained fame fighting renegade Navajos during the early pioneer days of New Mexico. Ed and his wife Margaret Epps Carson had lived through the Pancho Villa raid as young children. Ed was eighty eight years old when I knew him and Margaret was ninety three and to show the grit and gumption both of them possessed, the day Ed found out that he was dying of terminal cancer I found him walking towards the Village offices with a shotgun in his hand, intent on shooting a man who had made himself a thorn in my side.

I made the mistake of telling Ed and Margaret about the problems the man was causing me and Ed and Margeret had together decided to, "Shoot the SOB for all the trouble he was causing, what have I got to lose?" I was able to dissuade Ed from his mission after convincing him that shooting the man would do more to hurt me than help me. I did keep a close eye on him after that because I was not totally convinced that he might not try it again.

Another character I had on my side was Michael Bayer, perhaps one of the greatest men it has ever been my pleasure to know on this earth. Mike was the son of an immigrant Austrian father who had been a member of Franz Joseph's personal body guard in the old country and a horseman of great reknown. Mike walked from his home in rural Pennsylvania to Philadelphia in 1932 to apply for entrance into the United States Cavalry, along with 5,000 other men seeking to fill five hundred openings in the Cavalry, Mike was one of the top candidates selected.

He rose to the rank of Lieutenant in the Cavalry and was a personal friend of George Patton. At the beginning of Worl War II Mike was selected by General Patton to lead his armored recon unit. He landed at Normandy and fought his way across Europe and took part in the liberation of the Nazi death camps in Germany. He finished his Army career as the commander of the Constabulary charged with protecting the Austrian/Hungarian Border until his retirement in the fifties.

Forgive me for honoring these two good men in word, but because of their love and support I was able survive the most difficult job of my life and as I write this my eyes are filled with tears of gratitude to have been able to call both men my friends.

Dangerous French Fries

In my rookie year on the Wyoming Highway Patrol I found that I was the only one of my graduating patrol class who had not made a vehicle drug arrest, so I was intent upon making one before the end of that year.

I had made a speeding stop on a two lane road leading into Rock Springs, Wyoming from the north and as was policy I was forced to take the offending party to the nearest post office box and cause them to post a bond for the offense, by sending cash money in an envelope sealed by the offending party and then dropped into the post office box.

I was in the process of escorting the speeder to the nearest post office box and they were following behind me. As I traveled down the road I saw a pickup parked on the east side of the highway in the borrow pit of the highway, facing the highway with a driver behind the wheel.

Before I reached the pickup's position, another pickup pulled off of the highway that had been traveling north bound and pulled up with it's driver side window next to the driver's side window of the first pickup. As I passed their location I saw the driver of the second pickup pass an opaque sack of an unknown substance to the first driver. Then the driver of the second pickup left the location north bound back on the highway in a big hurry. I just knew that I had observed a drug transaction as it happened.

I immediately turned my patrol car around, ignoring the people I was escorting to the mailbox and pulled behind the pickup still parked in the borrow pit of the highway. I exited my patrol car and placed my hand on the butt of my pistol in a menacing way, cautiously approached the driver of the pickup from the rear.

When I was but a few feet behind him I said, "All right....hand it over, I saw what your friend passed to you." He looked at me strangely and responded, "Sure", and handed me a partially eaten sack of Burger King french fries. I took them and I know my jaw dropped wide open, just staring at the sack and I had nothing further to say. The driver then said, "If you're real hungry, you can have the burger too.", with a big grin on his face.

I was so embarrassed that I simply handed the fries back to him and walked back to my car, where I remember that I was so small I had to jump to reach the door jam of my car to get in. This experience taught me to be cautious when judging.

The Saddest Song.

In the fall of 1967 I was attending electronics school at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama after attending combat training at Camp Horno, Camp Pendleton, California. The Detachment Commander assigned me to the burial detail because I played the trumpet and could play taps. The Marine burial detail was responsible to provide pall bearers, honor guard and firing squads at the funerals of Marine and Navy personnel who had been killed in Viet Nam.

We covered the states of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Northern Florida and during my nine months at Huntsville we buried over thirty Marines. On one cold fall day we were assigned to conduct the funeral of a young Marine who had been killed in Viet Nam at a cemetary located in the country just north of the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The location of the cemetary was in a beautiful small bowl shaped valley surrounded by rolling hills. The trees were showing their fall colors and if not for the sadness surrounding the funeral of this brave young Marine it would have been a beautiful day.

Part of the burial squad arrived early to the funeral location and while we awaited the arrival of the burial detail officer we had a chance to tour a Confederate cemetary that was located on a hill side above the modern cemetary in which they would later bury the Marine. While we inspected the grave stones of these warrior who fell so long ago during the Civil War, a sad and foreboding feeling fell over me and I truly felt the spirits of these fallen dead who seemed to be standing all around us. No one spoke of it, but the entire squad seemed to be uncomfortable and we left the old cemetary quickly.

While we spoke to each other while walking back off of the hillside, it was discovered that the surrounding hills created a unique echo. The sound of one's voice reverberated for several second through the hillsides surrounding the cemetary, so it was decided that I would play taps while located above the grave site on the hillside to add impact to the sound of taps being played for the funeral. The service was conducted for the young Marine and in a hghly professional manner that can only be conducted correctly by the Marine Corps.

The flag that covered the Marine's coffin was folded by the Marine pall bearers and presented by the burial detail officer to the grieving mother of the fallen Marine, who was forced to stand during the service because there was no seating provided for the guests. There was quiet crying coming from the women standing next to the stoic faces of their husbands at the sight of the presentation of the flag. Next came the 21 gun salute given by the firing squad and I could here the noise of crying increasing in intensity coming from the crowd of guests. After the 21 gun salute it was my turn to play taps and a phenomenon took place the likes of which I had never
seen before, and have never seen since.

The first strong clear notes of the trumpet sounded through the hillsides, Daa...Daa...Daaaaaa, and as I continued; those first notes were repeated by the echo that reverberated along the hillsides seemingly for infiniti and the most amazing sound I have ever heard was being conducted by the echo that would be difficult to duplicate. The trumpet sounded so sweet and clear that it seemed as though someone else was playing it. Immediately after the notes of taps was heard by the crowd, a wail came up from the crowd that is difficult to describe. It was the saddest, most heart breaking sound I have ever heard come out of the mouth of a human and it seemed that every female in the group wailed in unison.

Then just as suddenly at least one hundred people fell to the ground as though their legs had been cut out from under them. The fallen were comprised of mostly women and a few men and if possible the wailing intensified. The crowd of at least two hundred people turned into pandemonium as those who had fallen were assisted by those still standing. When I finished playing taps I ran down the hill and after stowing away my trumpet assisted my companions who were busy helping those who had fallen.

Eventually the wailing calmed down, people regained control of their emotions and order prevailed once again. Several women including the mother of the deceased were carried away by ambulance to the hospital. After the last guest left the area over the next thirty minutes, we gathered up our equipment and seemingly could not get enough distance between that cemetary and us quickly enough.

Everyone in the burial detail stated that this experience would always rank high on their lists of strange occurences and that they had to look at me on the hill side to assure themselves that I was actually me playing taps and not someone else. In all of the funerals in which I participated after this funeral took place no one fell down when taps was played, and I have never since heard wailing such as the wailing I heard during that funeral again. Truly a strange thing happened that day.

Mississippi Funeral.

One of the strangest funerals I have ever attended was one that took place in a rural black Baptist Church in southeast Mississippi in the winter of 1967. This was the winter before the asassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and there was great racial tension throughout the south.

I was a member of a Marine Corp Honor detail from the Marine Schools Detachment at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama, and we buried fallen Marine and Naval personnel at locations throughout Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. We had one black Marine on our pall bearer detail and the rest of us were white. We entered this small church and as was tradition we were seated in the front pew nearest a side exit door and when we entered the church, the hatred that the congregation of that church felt for us was so thick it could be cut with a knife. Each and every face I beheld seemed to reflect animosity towards us to degree that I had to restrain myself to not run from the church and leave the area.

With traditional Marine stoicism each of us in the detail sat in the pew in an erect position facing straight ahead during the funeral services, while we were forced to endure one of the most hate filled, prejudicial sermons that it has ever been my displeasure to endure.

The sermon started off fairly mild, but towards the last of the sermon it was obvious that the preacher was fanning the racial hatred fires amongst the congregation to the point that we all feared that we might be physically attacked. Women in the congregation began screaming and throwing their purses in the air and then fell to the floor of the church in a swoon. Men shook their fists at us and made mock charges towards where we were seated, all the while we were forced to stay seated and act as though nothing was wrong. The preacher never said much about the deceased, but seemed more concerned about scorning the government for his death. This seemed odd because we were told that he had died as the result of injuries sustained in a civilian vehicle on a roadway in Hawaii. The government was burying this Marine at it's expense.

Finally after an hour of enduring this harangue by the preacher, mostly directed at us, he ended the service with prayer. Instantly we were on our feet, the pall bearers grabbed the casket and removed the body from the church to the back of a waiting hearse and we then set out towards the nearby cemetary, vastly releaved to have made it outside of the church with our lives.

The area around the cemetary was grown up in brush to the point that we could not see the actual grave site. The pall bearers were forced to carry the body through the heavy brush, down into the bottom of a deep ravine where they lost the casket and it rolled to the bottom, they re-covered the casket with the flag and then pulled it up the other side pf the ravine where they were able to reach the grave site located a short distance away from the ravine's edge.

The funeral director told the pall bearers in an unfriendly fashion to place the casket on the lowering device, and when they did so he tripped the switch and the casket began to be lowered into the open grave before the American flag could be removed. One Marine went down to his knees in the moist soil surrounding the grave and managed to grab the flag before it was soiled, and pull it up out of the grave. The pall bearers then folded the flag neatly and presented it to the funeral director who then unceremoniously threw it into the back of the hearse in a surly manner.

Without further ceremony the funeral director and his crew started shoveling dirt over the casket and filling in the grave, there was no grave side service and I do not know if the boy's mother ever received the flag that she was due. We all literally fled the area, climbed back down through the ravine and back to our waiting vehicles and left the area as quickly as possible, vastly relieved to have lived through the ordeal. The entire trip back to Hunstville we discussed the hatred that we all felt that was directed towards, us and marveled that we were able to survive it. Dr. King was assassinated the following spring and that is another story.

The Bond of Family.

I have written previous about my great grandfather Thomas Franklin who was a family doctor who practised medicine in my tiny home town for over fifty years. "The Doctor" was a pillar in the community, and was dearly loved by all who knew him. He was gruff and abrupt, but also kind and generous to a fault and during his life time brought over three thousand children into the world. Granddaddy and my grandfather his son were partners in a drug store in which was located Grandaddy's medical office, ******** and an early x-ray unit.

My grandfather operated the x-ray machine for his father, and the machine was one of the first to be used in the state. This partnership worked well together and my grandfather Roy told me many times that his father had always been his best friend. Grandaddy died of cancer in 1958 when I was ten and I remember watching the hearse leave Grandaddy's home on the way to the church for the funeral, sad that Grandaddy was gone, but in loyalty to my grandfather stayed at home with him during the funeral, because Grandpa refused to go to his father's funeral. I don't think Grandpa wanted anyone to see him break down in public over the death of his father.

Many years later and just a few years before Grandpa died I had occasion to visit with him and he told me about a dream, or a vision that he had received about his father. Grandpa told me that during the dream he was seated in a beautiful garden, he described it as a "Greek garden" because he said that there were marble seats to sit on and "Doric" columns were scattered throughout the garden. He stated that the garden was very beautiful and that the colors of the plants, trees and flowers in the garden were astonishingly bright and were different than any he had ever seen.

Grandpa said that he was seated on one of the marble benches in an alcove of sorts quite confused by where he was at, and contemplating why he was there. He stated that as he sat there, suddenly his father showed up from out of no where. Grandpa said that Grandaddy was much younger than he appeared when he was alive, but that he was dressed in a dark business suit which was how he dressed in life. Grandpa said that he was thrilled to see his father and that he stood up and walked towards him and when they met, they greeted each other warmly; both glad to be together. Grandpa asked his father, "Dad what are you doing here?

Granddaddy responded, "I've come to tell you to stop grieving over my death and to help you get on with your life.! Grandpa had never admitted to grieving over the death of his father to me before, but while telling me the story he admitted that he had felt very despondent at times after Granddady died. Grandpa went on to say that he and Grandaddy had a good conversation and Grandpa said that he had the feeling that his father had had to travel a great distance to be with him there in the garden.

One of the questions he asked his father was whether or not people who had died could hear us talking on earth. Grandaddy told him, "Of course we can hear you, but why in the hell would anyone want to hear what you say! Your voices sound very coarse and gravely to us and who wants to listen to that?" Grandpa further stated that Grandaddy explained a lot of things to him, and answered many of his questions, but that sadly he could not remember all of the conversation they had.

Grandpa said that it seemed as though they were together talking for a long time. Grandpa told me that when he woke up from the dream, that he felt very re-newed by their conversation and that he had lost the sense of despondency he had felt before the communication, and of course it gave him hope that there was life after death. I was very touched that my grandfather told me this very personal story, and it is the only time I can remember him crying, as he cried the whole time he talked to me.

Pioneer Woman.

The winter of 1979 found my family living in a single wide trailer located on 18 acres of rocky waterless desert ground near the little town of Farson, Wyoming. We experienced a series of unfortunate events that brought us to our knees and almost caused us to move back to a warmer climate.

Over a period of weeks our washing machine quit, the electric dryer quit, the hot water heater quit and the submersible pump in the well quit and we had no water. The temperture hovered around 30 degrees below zero celsius for much of the winter and not having water, or the ability to wash clothing was a severe strain when we had two children still in diapers. This was in the day when disposable diapers were not prevalent and it wasn't too long until the soiled diapers began to mound up. I was able to fix the water well, and fix or buy used appliances over the next few weeks, but I soon found that I had another problem.

The house was heated by propane gas and the first gas bill I received was in the amount of $300.00, which was one third of my monthly pay check. Frantically I searched the area and found a neighbor who had a free standing coal fired stove and who was willing to let me borrow it until I could buy one of my own. When the stove was unstalled it did a good job of heating the house and I paid $300.00 for enough coal to last through the winter. The free standing coal stove had one problem, it was necessary to check the coal when it was poured into the coal hopper for rock, or hard objects, because when they fed into the auger that fed the fire, they would sometimes cause the auger to seize up and the auger shear pin would break that stopped the coal from feeding into the fire pot. When this happened the house would usually fill with smoke. It then was necessary for me to remove all of the coal in the coal hopper and then fix the auger pin so the stove would work. This usually happened late at night, or at the most inopertune times and it was a messy difficult job to perform.

During this difficult winter I was a member of the Wyoming Highway Patrol Special Services Squad, a unit consisting of twenty two Patrolmen scattered throughout the state who were trained and equiped to quell riots, or perform unususal law enforcement duties anywhere in the state when called to do so by the Wyoming Governor. At nine o'clock one cold night we were preparing our children for bed when I received a call from the Cheyenne dispatcher advising me that the Special Services Squad had been called out by the governor to travel to Douglas, Wyoming to help quell a riot at the Wheatland Power Plant.

She further explained that I was to be in Douglas by 2:00 o'clock the next morning. Douglas was 271 miles away and would normally take 7 hours to drive, but I was being ordered to drive it in five hours over a treacherous mountain pass and in the middle of a blinding Wyoming snow storm on slick icy roads. I kissed my worried wife and kids good bye, loaded my gear in my Patrol car and took off towards Douglas with little to no visibility and driving in excess of one hundred miles per hour.

I traveled over the always treacherous South Pass and breathed a sigh of relief when I made it to Lander, Wyoming in record time. The road from there to Douglas would be easy compared to what I had just endured over South Pass, but the snow became worse if that was possible and visibility was almost nill. Just as I entered Shoshone, Wyoming I met another Patrolman Mike M. who pulled onto the roadway right in front of me. I called him on the radio and told him that the poor visibility was slowing me down, and he returned with "Don't worry "T" just follow my taillights and we'll make it just fine."

The next one hundred and fifty miles my speedometer never went below 100 miles per hour as I followed my friend Mike towards Douglas. We drove into the parking lot of the National Gurd Armory in Douglas just as the clock struck 2:00 a.m. It took my nerves several hours to relax from one of the most harrowing trips I have ever made. The riot turned out to be nothing but bluff and we were released to return home three days later and I was glad to be headed home to my poor little family, not knowing how they had fared the snow storm that had knocked out the telephone lines in the area.

There was three feet of fresh snow on our half mile long driveway from the main road to the house, and I arrived back home at about 8:00 p.m. When I opened the door to the house which took some doing because the door was frozen shut, I saw one of the most heart rending scenes it has ever been my misfortune to see. My wife was seated in front of the free standing coal stove wrapped in a comforter, holding a large spoon filled with coal in front of her; sound asleep. She had cordoned off the living room of the trailer using every blanket she could find in the house to lessen the space to heat, and all of our children were asleep on the floor around her.

I...broke down....and cried. The stove auger pin had sheared shortly after I left to Douglas and she didn't know how to fix it, they were stuck without any heat in the house. My dear wife kept the fire going by spooning coal onto the fire. She had not slept for over forty hours when I got home. I tenderly put her to bed and quickly fixed the stove and heat was restored. What can I say about my dear wife, she is the granddaughter of pioneers

Double Fatality.

The first double fatality I worked as a rooky Patrolman happened in the fall just before it got cold. Two young boys about fourteen years old were riding a small motorcycle together on a two lane paved road near Farson late one night. They crossed the opposite lane of travel in front of a five axle tractor trailer, the driver never saw them and they both were killed when the truck ran over them. I arrived at the scene shortly after the collision took place to find the poor truck driver beside himself with grief that he had killed the two boys.

A cursory look at the scene of the collision showed me that it had not been his fault, but the driver was almost beyond consolation in his giref. The county coroner arrived at the scene and between he and I it was concluded that the driver was not at fault and subsequently no charges were filed against him. Luckily I did not have to remove the bodies from the scene, but before I could go home that night I had to travel to the mortuary in Rock Springs and there examine the bodies of the two boys. When I arrived at the mortuary, the mortician Pete V. was embalming them which was a traumatic sight for me. I had seen embalmings previously, but these two boys were both blond headed as was my son and about the same age.

When I was shown the damage to their bodies and took a few pictures I left and made the long sad trek back to my home in Farson. I arrived home, went into my son's room and hugged him for a long time while he slept, thankful that he was alive and well and hurting deeply for the parents of the boys that were killed. Deaths of children such as these were the most difficult thing to deal with as a Patrolman and it was never an easy thing with which to live.

Remembering Uncle Dave.

I met Uncle Dave the first day he became our new Division Sergeant, when he surprised me in the middle of losing my temper with a combative prisoner whom I had just arrested. I was reading chapter and verse to this prisoner who had just punched me in the mouth and I unloaded on him, throwing the proverbial hissy fit screaming and hollering so violently that I was covering the poor guy in spit.

Uncle Dave walked in in the middle of this spectacle and needless to say I was extremely embarrassed that he had seen that side of me on his first day on the job. To my delight Uncle Dave did not berate me then for my inappropriate actions with the prisoner, but he did introduce himself and shake my hand. Uncle Dave was already a legend on the Patrol and he was especially well known for his dry sense of humor. Uncle Dave was about 6'2" tall and as skinny as a rail. He had a hawk nose and wore a mustache that was just beginning to show signs of gray in it after many years a police officer. Uncle Dave was a cowboy and he spoke with a slow western drawl that reminded me so much of the old timers I had grown up with in New Mexico.

Uncle Dave had been tapped by the Western Zone Commander V.J. O'Laughlin to come to Rock Springs and reign in the ten out of control Patrolman in Division E, of which I was one. Our previous Sergeant was trying to make a name for himself and climb the ladder of rank within the Patrol, and he had goaded us and prodded us into increasing our activity (writing citations and making arrests) until we were getting a lot of complaints from the citizens of the state about our excessive activity. Uncle Dave was sent to calm us down.

Gary B. our previous Sergeant was nick named Adolf because we considered him a task master who would write us up over the smallest infractions of his rules. One of these rules was that we take no more than fifteen minute coffee breaks twice a day. The first time we went to coffee with Uncle Dave, we all jumped up to leave at the end of fifteen minutes and he almost shouted, "Sit down!", you don't leave until I leave." We sat in the coffee shop for two hours that day and we were so nervous about staying past the limit, that it took us days to finally relax and enjoy our much deserved coffee breaks.

One day Uncle Dave called me into his office for a little talk, and while we were sitting there chit chatting he said this in his western drawl, "Say T I noticed the other day that you have a bit of a temper", he of course was refering to the hissy fit he had seen me throw with the prisoner. I kind of sensed that this talk was coming and trying to prepare for the ass chewing I knew was coming said, "Yeah Sarge, I've got a pretty good temper, but most of the time I can keep it in check." He sat back and grinned at me and said, "Well T I'm gonna help you out with that temper!", and from out of his desk drawer he pulls out about a three pound smooth river rock. He continued, "Don't feel to bad, I used to have a bad temper too, but let me tell you how I got rid of it. When ever I would lose my temper, I would take this rock in my right hand and smack myself real hard in the testicles (he didn't use the word testicles) with it and my temper went away so fast that I couldn't even remember why I lost it......... and now I'm giving it to you!"

He handed the rock to me like someone who was handing a precious heirloom to his son. He never chewed me out, or mentioned the incident he saw me involved in with the prisoner in a negative way; he taught me a lesson in tact, kindness and concern in a humorous way. My immediate reaction was hysterical laughter, so hard that I fell out of my chair and rolled around on the floor in front of his desk until I thought my sides would split.

That was the humor of Uncle Dave and I have used this story many times. Because of his kindness and concern for me, I will never forget him. He's gone now, but I know this much, if Uncle Dave is not in heaven I don't want to be there.

Tire Blowout at 130 miles Per Hour.

In the late spring of 1981 I attended a Patrol meeting at the Division Office located in Rock Springs, Wyoming. The weather was nice and it was late enough that snow would not be a problem and as I left my patrol vehicle on the way into the building I was prompted to look at my rear tires. I had two snow tires mounted on the two rear wheels, and the right rear tire looked a little low in air pressure. I thought then that I should take it into the shop and have the rear tires replaced with new radials while I was in the meeting, but for some reason I forgot about it.

About half way through the meeting I recived a call from the Cheyenne Dispatcher who told me the Fremont County Sheriff's Office was in pursuit of a Chevrolet Corvette that was traveling west bound over South Pass towards my duty station in Farson, Wyoming and that they wanted me to intercept the vehicle at the T-intersection in Farson where the Highway 26 from South Pass interesected Highway 187. The vehicles the Deputies were driving were incapable of keeping up with the high powered Corvette, and they wanted me to stop him. I immediately entered my Patrol vehicle that was a high powered, very fast Ford 460 interceptor that had clocked 160 miles per hour on radar, and was capable of traveling 120 miles per hour all day long.

I was very confident that I would be able to make the intersection in Farson in time before it arrived there and be able to set up a road block to stop the vehicle. So I began my 47 mile trip north bound towards Farson soon traveling in excess of one hundred and thirty miles per hour, in my excitement to make it to the intersection, I completely forgot about the low rear tire that I had noticed earlier. About twenty miles into my trip and as I reached the top of 14 mile hill, the right rear tire blew out.

It is difficult to desribe the noise that was created by a steel belted tire exploding at high speed, it was deafening. I was immediately faced with controlling the vehicle that very easily might drag sideways towards the blown tire and cause the vehicle to roll at this high speed. Thankfully the vehicle held the road better than I expected and all I was able to do was ride out the storm and allow the vehicle to slow on it's own without applying the brakes. The vehicle drifted back and forth across both lanes of travel several times, but thankfully there was no traffic to be concerned about. Finally the vehicle rolled to a stop, but all I could do was sit in my seat and try to reduce my heart beat and my breathing, so that I could advise the dispatcher what had happened over the radio.

As I sat there suddenly a man appeared at my driver's side window and tapped on the glass. Still out of breath and unable yet to communicate well, I rolled the window down and all he said was, "Pop your trunk!" I pushed the trunk release button and unlocked the trunk. Two Wyoming Highway Department personnel had seen my vehicle when the tire blew shortly after I had passed them. They stopped behind me ready to assist. They pulled the jack out of the trunk along with the spare tire and in about five minutes I was ready to go. They told me that the shredded tire had destroyed the paint off of the car, as well as tearing all of the moulding off of the sides over the wheel wheel, and the steel rim on which the tire was mounted was destroyed, but other than that the vehicle looked driveable. (I later found that the tire also tore a chunk of steel out of the wheel well that was six inches wide and ten inches long.)

I quickly thanked them and resumed my high speed attempt to reach the intersection in Farson before the Corvette reached it. About five mile from my destination I saw a vehicle traveling south bound towards me and I began to track his speed as he approached me on my radar, at 107 mile per hour. I was traveling about 140 miles per hour which means our closing speed was approximately 247 miles hour. The driver of the vehicle that turned out to be the Corvette that I was attempting to intercept saw my overhead lights, he increased his speed and when he passed me going the opposite direction he was traveling 150 miles per hour. I was unable to make it in tme to the intersection, so now I would be forced to turn around and pursue the Corvette.

By the time I brought my vehicle's speed down enough to turn around and pursue the Corvette, he was already quickly moving out of my vision south of my location. While I turned and traveled in pursuit of the Corvette once again, I kept my Sergeant apprised of my situation and the situation with the Corvette. When I contacted the sergeant and told him how fast the Corvette was traveling, he and Patrolman Dave L. stopped their vehicles at a location several miles south of him, in a location that would allow the driver of the Corvette to see their patrol vehicles from a long distance away as he approached them, in the hopes that that the driver would stop without trying to run the road block.

They placed their vehicles in such a way on the roadway as to block both lanes of the roadway, denying the speeding vehicle access around them. If the driver of the Corvette didn't stop and chose to try to go around them, he would plummet he and his car off of the roadway and over a fifty foot cliff on each side of the roadway. I heard from the sergeant later who said that he positioned himself in front of his Patrol vehicle with a shotgun in his hands, and when the Corvette came over a rise and saw the two patrol cars blocking the roadway and the Sergeant standing there with the shotgun ready to use on him, he immediately slammed on his brakes.

The Corvette with it's high performance suspension went into a skid in the direction towards the road block, the vehicle completing five 360 degrees circular rotations for a distance of over three hundred feet, before sliding to a stop a few feet short of the two patrol car. I began to slow down far before I had too, not knowing exactly where the Patrolmen had set up the roadblock, and when they came into sight I could see that the suspect driving the vehicle was out of the vehicle and was fighting the Sergeant and the other Patrolman. After coming to a complete stop, I placed my vehicle in park, jumped out and assisted them in subduing the suspect.

While we were struggling with the suspect, unbeknownst to us the Corvette that was still in high gear, lost compression in the hot engine which released the wheels to turn, and gravity from the angle of the roadway caused the car to roll backwards and plunge over the fifty foot enbankment shattering the vehicle on the rock below. The vehicle was totally demolished. The reason he had run from the Deputies was because he had bought new tires for the car, and then had skipped without paying the bill; causing them to pursue him to this end.

In retrospect I am thankful that a merciful God perserved the life of this foolish young man, as well as the life of the man driving the Corvette, and the Sergeant and Patrolman Dave L.

Death of a Child

I have wrestled with whether I should write this story, simply because I will pay an emotional price for doing so. I am no stranger to violent death and I tend to shy away from remembering most of them, simply because I know that the faces of the dead will haunt me for a while afterwards.

Writing this will do nothing good for my PSTD, but perhaps the telling of the story will help cleanse me of the pain of remembering. This particular event happened about a month before 105's shooting in March of 1982, and it was very cold and foggy in Farson and as I recall it happened about two o'clock in the morning. A truck driver who was hauling sacks of drilling mud on a five axle flat bed truck west bound on Highway 26, coming from Lander, Wyoming towards Farson, Wyoming missed seeing the red flashing lights warning that he was approaching a T-intersection with Highway 187. Other drivers who witnessed the tragedy stated later that the driver of the truck was so busy talking on his citizens band radio, that they were not able to warn him about the intersection coming up and so he he drove his heavily laden truck into the intersection at about 55 miles per hour, the speed limit in Wyoming at that time.

He realized that he was in trouble too late and unable to slow down quickly enough, tried to make the ninety degree left hand turn onto Highway 187 at twice the speed he should have been traveling, causing the truck to overturn. When I arrived at the scene of the wreck our faithful local emergency medical technicians were attending to the driver who received minor injuries, but sadly it was found that the driver had his two year old son with him in the truck and the little boy was killed when the truck overturned.

I witnessed the EMTs remove his little broken body from the wrecked vehicle while others kept the father away from his son as long as possible and then covered the body. When the driver realized that his little son had been killed, he reacted like any father would, screaming at the top of his lung, "What an I going to tell my wife?", and then collapsing. We bundled the man up to keep him warm, and I directed the EMT's to stay with him. Eventually an ambulance arrived to take the little boy to a mortuary in Rock Springs, and I decided that the best thing I could do would be to take the man the 47 miles to the hospital in Rock Springs to be checked out, rather than call another ambulance to come and pick him up.

The man moaned and cried the entire trip to town, and made the statement over and over to me that he was going to kill himself rather than tell his wife what had happened to their son. When we reached Rock Springs the man refused to go to the hospital to be checked out, and so I decided that the man was in need of constant supervison; fearing that he might take his own life in desperation over the death of his son. I made arrangements for a group of men from my church to stay with him throughout the night at a hotel room. I stayed with him while he broke the emotional, tragic news of the death of their son to the boys mother, and leaving him in the capable hands of good men who were willing to stay with him, I then left traveling the fifty mile back to my home in Farson.

I don't remember much of the details of what happened to this man after the wreck that killed his son, but the accident report reflected the reason the wreck happened was because the driver was traveling too fast to negotiate the ninety degree turn, causing the truck to overturn and the heavy momentum of the truck turning over on its side and colliding with the pavement crushing the small boys body.

In 1983 after I left the Wyoming Highway Patrol after the shooting of 105, I was at that time working as a Deputy for the La Paz County Sheriff's Office in Parker, Arizona. I was supoenaed to give my deposition in a civil case in which the driver of the truck who lost his little boy was suing the manufacturer of the truck he was driving claiming the truck was defective which was a direct cause of the accident. I testified against the truck driver and he lost the civil suit against the truck manufacturer.

How soon he forgot the truth of who truly caused the accident. As much as I sympathize with the loss of his son, I could not be party to a lie by which he hoped to benefit monetarily.

Oscar S. Affair.

Oscar S was a three time loser, he had been convicted of three felonies and under the law of the State Of Wyoming he was considered a lifer, one who could not be paroled and would eventually die in prison because he didn't seem to have the ability to live in polite society.

Somehow he gained parole, (I never did find out how it happened) and I came to understand that the prison warden wanted him out of his system because he had caused him a great deal of trouble, and he didn't want him back. For some reason Oscar moved to my little town. The first time I became aware of him is when I was called to break up a fight in the Oregon Trail Saloon and I arrested him for disorderly conduct. It was fortunate that he was very drunk, because I do not think I could have handled him when he was sober.

Spiker only stood about 5'5" tall, but he had a massive frame and he had spent his many years in prison lifting weights and had become just about the strongest man his size I had ever seen. I had the misfortune to have to deal with him on two additional occasions after the one I described, and each time it had taken three to five men including myself to place him under arrest. His strength was unbelieveable. After the third occasion I had to arrest Oscar, I called warden Schillenger at the state pen and asked him to fill me in on Oscar's history.

He told me that during Oscar's past he had been out of prison during one of the few free periods of his life, and that he had been in a fight in Billings, Montana in which someone had beat him in the head with a bumper jack. Oscar's head was severly damaged and he was in a coma in the hospital for a long time. Schillinger stated that the hosptal had once pulled the plug on him thinking that he was dead, but that after removing him from life support he came back to life and was fully conscious.

The only problem he carried with him from the beating he received was that he had difficulty speaking, and he seemed to not feel pain. When you looked into Oscar's eyes the lights were on, but there was no one home. The greatest problem Oscar possessed was that he was a drinker and a partier who seemed to delight in creating problems for me in my little town. I began to realize that I needed to communicate to Spiker in a way he could understand, and so the fourth time I arrested him for disorderly conduct I took him into the basement of the Rock Springs Police Department and handcuffed him to a chair.

I realized that he did not possess a long attention span, and so I began to take my forefinger and tap him on the forehead between the eyes strongly. I tapped and I tapped and I tapped for about thirty minutes until he began to listen. I continued the tapping, but then I told him, Oscar if you give me any more trouble I'm going to shoot you right between the eyes. It took a full hour of this before he broke down and started crying. He blubbered and blubbered and finally told me, "Please, I won't ever cause you any more trouble again, I don't want to die." After I was sure that I had gotten through to him, I wrote him a citation and released him to go his way. Oscar was as good as his word and I never had any occasion to have any dealings with him from that time after. He moved to a town north of Farson, and he had to report to his parole officer in Green River once a week. Rather than drive through my town, the shortest way to Green River; he drove 100 miles out of his way rather than take the chance of having to deal with me. To my knowledge Oscar stayed out of prison and caused no more problems for law enforcement in his life. Those of a more liberal bent may take exception to my methods of handling this person, but it worked, it saved not only Oscar but other law men a lot of grief by not having to deal with him.

The 2nd Teapot Dome Scandal Part 1

In 1978 the Wyoming Highway Patrol staff selected me to man a new duty station located in Farson, Wyoming. It was thought that my large family, along with my ranching background would fit in well with the tough people who inhabited the 17,000 acre, 7,000 foot elevation Farson Valley.

Part of my responsibilties while patrolling the Farson area was to regulate the heavy truck traffic that flowed through it over two major highways that intersected in Farson. Most of these trucks were oil tankers that are used to ship crude oil from the wells scattered through Wyoming to refineries in Salt Lake Cty, Utah and elswhere. This truck traffic was known for being scoff law, and for running trucks loaded with crude oil heavier than the state of Wyoming allowed on its roadways.

When I first moved to the valley I leased a 40 foot truck scale to be used by the Patrol from a farmers association. After a few weeks of running overweight trucks over the scale, and then fining the drivers heavily for the overweights it was soon known to the drivers that there was new law in town, that I was fair, but that I would throw the book at a them for breaking the law if I caught them. I soon found that my tough reputation enforced the law for me, and after the initial break in period I worked my way out of the overweight truck business because the drivers were obeying the law. I also developed a group of truck drivers who would inform me when anything of an unusual nature was happening in the local trucking industry which worked to my advantage.

One day in the spring of 1980 I received a call from a driver who stated that I had a serious problem brewing in the form of a trucking company located out of Salt Lake City, Utah named Clawson OIl Company. The legal weight limit for a five axle tanker tractor rig is 80,000 pounds maximum. My informant driver told me that Clawson Oil drivers were filling their tankers clear up to the portal on the tanks which meant that their loadswere probably weighing over 135,000 pounds, or 55,000 pounds over weight. A weight that would tear up roadways rematurely, loads that I would have to stop.

That day I made it a point to patrol east bound on Highway 28 towards South Pass with the intent of catching one of their drivers coming west bound, so I could stop the driver and check his bill of lading papers to determine for myself whether they were loading illegally, or not. About ten miles east of Farson I suddenly heard two drivers talking on their citizen band radios. Suddenly I saw two oil tankers traveling west bound towards me, so I pulled to the side of the roadway to observe them as they passed me. When they passed I noticed that the rear tractor was painted a bright fire engine red, with a big gold filigree "C" painted on the side of the hood. I deduced that this might be a Clawson truck.

I then turned around and began to follow the trucks and it was then that I could see that the rear oil tanker was so heavily laden that the frame of the trailer was almost touching the trailer axles. I picked up my CB radio microphone and keying the mic tried to reach the drivers, but neither driver would answer me. I then told the rear driver to follow me into the scales in Farson, and that I intended to weigh his truck. Neither driver responded to my cb radio transmission so I just followed along behind them as they traveled west towards Farson.

Before we reached the intersection of Highway 28 and 187 in Farson where they would be required to slow down and stop, I turned on my red lights to indicate to the driver that I wanted him to stop his truck on the edge of the roadway. Instead of pulling his truck to the right hand side of the road as the law requires, he abruptly turned left into the parking lot of a truck stop and stopped his vehicle at a diesel pump. I pulled my patrol car into a position at an angle in front of his tractor so that the driver could not continue forward, and I got out of my car. The driver exited the tractor and then violently slammed the door behind him.

I addressed him asking, "Did you see my red lights?" He returned with, "Yeah, I saw your damned light!" I then told him to get back in his truck and follow me to the scale, or I would arrest him and tow the truck over the scale. He responded by turning to his truck and locking the door and then placing his keys in his pocket. He then says, "Do it yourself!" I told him that he was under arrest and that I wanted him to put both of his hands on the front fender of his truck. He did not comply so I grabbed him and threw him against the truck and the fight was on. We wrestled for several minutes before I gained comtrol of him and placed him in handcuffs. I then restrained him in the front seat of my patrol car.

I then instructed Cheyenne Dispatch to dispatch Macy's large wrecker in Rock Springs, Wyoming 45 miles miles away to respond to Farson to haul the truck over the scales, and in the mean time I had a very angry, very vocal truck driver telling me how much trouble I was in, and that his boss was going to make me pay; using curses that I had not even heard in my tour in the Marine Corps. It took all of an hour and one half for the Macy's wrecker to get there, and in the mean while the truck driver I had under arrest was beginning to feel the pain of the handcuffs behind his back. I warned him not to move around much with the cuffs on or the pain would get worse, but he kept struggling.

The Macy's wrecker hooked up to the Clawson truck and towed it across the scales and I found that the truck weighed 137,500 pounds, 57,000 pound overweight. I instructed the wrecker driver to impound the truck in their yard in Rock Springs, and I then transported the driver to jail in Rock Springs. By the time I arrived at the Rock Springs Police Department the driver who had been in handcuffs for over three hours had a much changed and more conciliatory attitude towards me and the law.