This is an excerpt from my memoir, Officer Banfield — the honest story of my years as a corrections and police officer, hitting bottom in alcoholism, and the long road to recovery.
He was a big fella too and I was pretty nice with him.
I said, "What are you doing? What's going on? We got a call. Do you know anything about that? The call says they looked a lot like you looked."
I think we even got the guy that made the call to discreetly come identify him or something like that. We ended up arresting him without any trouble and it turned out once we ran his information that they had been looking for him a long time for a lot of burglaries on campus.
I think that was probably my best arrest in terms of campus history. I think the drunk driving ones might have saved some lives, but that one in terms of the campus history he had had warrants out, they had been looking for him for a while, I got him and I was feeling really good about that because I went the extra mile.
I didn't just say, "Well, I'll take a look around," then walk out like a lot of officers do. I went the extra mile, got the arrest, felt really good about myself, there was no violence or anything, tasering or hands-on like there were in some other arrests. It went really smoothly and I was feeling good
about myself.
It was about 5:30 or 6:00, the shift was ending soon, and I was thinking,
"Yeah, about to go on night shift. A really good arrest on my day shift."
I was looking at a weekend where I could totally go on tilt. The epic long weekend from day shift to night shift where I could go hard Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then not have to be to work Monday. Those were usually some of my most tilted weekends where I would get just ridiculously hammered all weekend and do lots of dumb stuff like have parties, etcetera.
They called me on the radio. I don't remember exactly what my call sign was at the time. They changed them up. It might have been like "Bravo 3" or something.
"Bravo 3 report to headquarters."
I thought, "Okay, alright. It's looking good. I'm going to get congratulated.
They want to give me a pat on the back for this amazing arrest I made today."
I came rolling up.
Some of the officers who used to be really friendly with me, who loved me, who were happy to see me, who always talked to me, I had noticed over that day shift a few times that some of them seemed a little unhappy with me.
They didn't seem happy to have me around. They seemed like they didn't like me and I thought that was kind of weird. I didn't think much of it because I was thinking about myself the whole time.
So, I came up to the station thinking, "Yeah, I'm going to get like a medal
or something for this arrest."
I was hanging out right in front of the conference room where there was just like a desk out there, and then there was this big huge fancy conference room. I was standing around and I saw one of the guys come up to talk to me.
He asked, "Hey, what's up? You know, you're here for headquarters.
Look, Banfield, we need to have a talk."
I said, "Okay, what's up?"
Then, the conference room door opened and it started shitting brass like the major, the captain, just shits brass. These officers came rolling out all of a sudden from the conference room, then the sergeant who was my boy hanging out, he came rolling up on me, several other officers seemingly jumped out of nowhere.
Six or eight officers jumped me at the same time and all took a hold of me.
Now, thank God I didn't make any sudden moves.
They all jumped me. They all grabbed a hold of me at the same time. It scared the shit out of me, and they took all my weapons off. They took both my guns, they took my knives off, they took my taser, took my baton. They held me and just took all my equipment off.
I think they left something like the pepper spray and I thought about using that, but I realized the pepper spray was more likely to screw me over than them, and then I would be looking at some serious time too for fooling around with that.
So, they took all my guns and all my weapons off and they escorted me
in the conference room. They sat me down and they said, "We need to have a talk right now about what you're going to do here in your future here."
I said, "Okay, let's talk."
They said, "Now, listen. Here are some things we've got. We got this complaint on you a while back that you had been talking to a girl on Facebook that you met on a call one day and she got scared. She was asking if you could come see her at like 2:00 in the morning, if you could meet her downstairs at her dorm. She was probably a freshman or sophomore."
I remember that night. I was drunk and lonely and I was on Facebook and I had added that girl as a friend one day after meeting her on a call, and she had accepted my friend request. I then started talking to her because she had been online, and then I remember I had wanted to just go to bed.
I was just going crazy and reckless, in that self-destructive place where I felt like I had nothing to lose, telling myself to keep talking to her and see if she would come over.
I tried to see if she would let me come over and meet her downstairs, and like come back to my place, but she got scared and I guess she complained, but they never told me about that, although apparently, we had some mutual friends in common on Facebook.
I remember my friends asking me out at the bar one night about it, but I didn't remember her name. I had all kinds of things like this with all kinds of girls. Why would I remember the one particular girl's name?
They sat me down and they talked about that little complaint. They also
said, "Jerry, we ordered you not to talk to the dispatchers anymore and you've been talking. You called her."
Then, they brought up the drama and the gossip. They talked about our Hilton Head trip and they said, "You know, she talked to us about that and she told us some things that have disturbed us. She said that she thought you were trying to rape her."
I said, "Are you fucking kidding me? We had sex before. There was no shot of rape. I did not even think of that. It's ridiculous."
They said, "Well, Jerry we think you're harassing her."
I said, "She's harassing me," which seems kind of ridiculous today.
They then said, "Jerry, I don't know what we can do with you now at the police department with all this stuff, and we're thinking about these harassment charges and things like that. Now, what are you going to do about this stuff?"
I said, "You know what? Fine. I'll just quit. I'll quit."
They said, "Good. That makes things simple. Because if you didn't want to quit we were thinking we'd have to try to fire you and press charges on you for harassment. So, you quitting makes things really simple for us."
Then, they were giving me some of this bullshit about me that she was thinking I was trying to rape her and that was pissing me off because that was not true at all. That was bullshit she just fabricated. Maybe it was going on in her mind, but that was not what I experienced and that was not what I was trying to do.
I got pissed off about that, I started getting defiant and said, "I don't need you and this job and you're all full of shit here anyway. You're taking her
side. You never asked me about any of this shit. You just started talking to her. You've taken her word completely. You never once asked me what happened. You don't give a shit about what I've got to say or my story."
And they said, "Okay, if that's how you want to do things, then we're going to do this. We had a nicer way to do this, but if you want to do things like this, we're going to do it the harder way."
They added, "What we're going to do since you've been like this with us is we're going to help her get a restraining order on you, and we're going to trespass you from this campus so that you can't come back to this campus anymore, unless you've got a very specific reason like if you here for an athletic event or something like that. If you're found on campus for any other reason, you can be arrested and with this restraining order, you will not be able to come anywhere near this police department. If we see you anywhere near this police department, we will have you arrested immediately and consider that you're here as a threat."
I said, "Fine. You know what, I don't give a shit what you're going to do anyway. I'm going to move home with my parents in Mississippi and your little South Carolina stuff doesn't matter because I'm not going to live in the same state as you anyway. I don't need this shit. I'm going to go back to school and be done with you."
I added, "I was thinking of applying to border patrol anyway."
So they said, "Well, we're going to make sure that doesn't happen."
I gave up at that point.
I was still trying to act tough kind of and I was walking out of the police station for the last time with my uniform and you know, with all my equipment taken off, with this walk of shame out of the conference room,
out the back to go get in my car.
They had my sergeant follow me home to make sure I didn't do anything stupid and to come collect my police gear and equipment that I had at home.
I then realized I had several more things so I ended up calling them back twice like, "Look I found these shirts and this other equipment I forgot I had."
So they came back to get that once, and then I said, "I just realized I had some laundry in the dryer. I've got another police shirt."
At this point, I was paranoid that if I didn't give them everything back, that I was going to get in trouble for like keeping police equipment or breach of trust.
I was fucking paranoid and crazy at this point. I was also crying and miserable. The last time they came back, the major and lieutenant came by and they got in there, they came to my apartment and they were in there "he might shoot us through the door" kind of awareness.
I opened the door and they were both like off to the side of the door, not with guns drawn, but like close to that, and I was just crying in a mess. I was apologizing to them. I was saying, "I'm sorry. We don't need any restraining order. I'm going to move out of state. I won't cause any problems for anyone. I'm sorry. I'm done with this."
Then, they took my last shirt, and I had a moment alone. Sitting there in my apartment, I could see two very clear choices in front of me. One was a dark, catastrophic, violent path that I had been fantasizing about in my sickness, the kind of thing that would have destroyed my life and other people's lives. The other was to pour the vodka out, call my parents, tell them the truth, and ask for help. I was full of rage and self-pity, and for a few terrifying minutes I genuinely debated it. Thank God the scared little boy in me won out.
"Jerry, call your parents. It'll be okay."
I called my parents up and I told them what happened. I said, "Dad, they just fired me."
He said, "You're going to drive home right now."
I said, "Dad, I just worked damn near a full shift. I got up at about 5:30 this morning. You live eight hours away in Mississippi."
Dad said, "Jerry, you're going to drive home right now and you're going to move back home with us."
I then said, "Okay, Dad. Okay. I'll do that."
I cried and said, "Thank you. Thank God. Thank you. I'll do that."
And that's what I did.
I packed my shit as fast as I could. I got in the car and I remember stopping at a couple of restaurants on the way home to eat and telling people I just lost my job.
People were so nice to me. They didn't know me and I was so broken up about losing my job. I was so hurt that my whole ego, everything, everything I had been, I was all wrapped up as who I was as a police officer in law enforcement. All of that just got destroyed all at once and I was scared and I thank God my family was there.
I drove home and I got hugs. I took my ass to bed. I woke up the next day and my God I felt good.
"Thank God this law enforcement nightmare is over. No more court cases in the middle of my sleep while I'm on night shift and trying to sleep in a day. No more wondering about if I'm going to get shot at night while I am at work. No more of this crazy shit and strip clubs in this horrible life I've been living. I'm done with that.
Thank God."
I had this giant sense of relief as all the stresses, all the things I had been worried about, so many pending court cases with people I had arrested wondering how the outcome was going to go. All this stuff with the dispatcher, all the drama, all the girls I was dating was all over, and God it felt good.
I said, "Yes, thank you. This is a wonderful day in my life."
I felt this gigantic sense of relief that I was about to enter into a wonderful life and that's exactly what happened, although the alcoholism caught up and proceeded to kick my ass despite having a wonderful perfect life and yet I got a break from it.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.