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.
What I would usually do, I would find a really good spot to park. I would find a spot to park where I had outstanding visibility, and then I could see. I would find these spots where I would be in a perfect position to initiate a traffic stop and I could sit there for hours without having to move and just wait for it.
It felt kind of like a video game to me because you had to be sitting there paying full attention. If you weren't paying full attention, you could very easily miss something. For some of these drunk driving or traffic stops, if
you weren't ready to go like literally having the car within drive with your foot on the brake, ready to smash the gas and immediately go wherever you needed to go, it would be too late. The drunk could be driving too fast, and you would never be able to catch them.
Here are some of the spots I liked to sit.
There was a construction spot. There was a road closed. It was the one next to Main Street. I think it was Sumter and Blossom Street. The road was closed down there. There was a light where you could sit that had a construction barrier where no traffic could come behind you.
So what I did, sneaky as fuck, I would sit right behind the construction barrier, so I could see the light. I could see the intersection, and then if people ran the red light, I would come hauling ass out of there and there was no way you could see me going up to it because it was perfect cover.
Now the downside is, I couldn't see people until they were point blank on me. What I preferred to do was sit somewhere like Assembly and Blossom Street up the hill. This way I had a huge visibility. If someone was fucking up coming north on Blossom Street, I could see it from a mile away.
I could see Assembly Street, if they were coming up north towards Blossom, I could see that from a mile away. I could also see Blossom Street for a good distance. There was heavy traffic in those areas and if someone was coming southbound on Assembly Street, they would have to drive right by me.
So what I did was just park in one of the parallel parking spots with my lights off and I would just sit there, foot on the brake and be ready to go, and that's how I got a lot of my DUIs.
One night, the last DUI I got, I was sitting in that exact spot, sitting on
the hill up north on Assembly Street, just north of Blossom looking southbound.
I saw a dude, he was literally falling off his car. He slid around the turn.
"Jerry, these policing stories suck. They're not even that good."
He was literally falling off his car, he had gotten one taillight off. I guess he had just smashed something, drove over something right before this.
He slid around the corner going eastbound on Blossom Street, slid over and turned right on Assembly and I was ready to go. Immediately, I floored the gas, put the blue lights on, I was all over this shit.
I got him at the Kangaroo gas station and a city cop pulled in right next to me.
He asked, "Yo, dude, I'll help you out."
I said, "I'm good."
I told him something like, "You got real policing work to do. This is as good as my nights going to get, man."
He said, "All right. Cool. I got another call. I'll go."
I said, "All right. Thanks for looking out, man."
So, this guy got out of the car and he was wasted. There was a girl in the car with him. They had just been beating the shit out of each other too.
He said, "Yeah, I just hit something with my car."
I said, "I can see that. There's still literally debris falling off your car from
whatever you just hit."
I guess he was in town from Texas or something, and he was wasted. I said, "Look, you're drunk man. I'm going to put you under arrest."
It was just him and me, and the girl at this point. The city officer had another call.
I said, "Look, we can do this nice. You can just put your hands behind your back or we can do this not nice and I am going to tase you. Which one would you like?"
He said, "All right."
So, he turned around, put his hands behind his back and the girl started mouthing off.
I said, "Look, right now you can get a ride home with your friend. You can call a cab. I don't care. Whatever you want. I will leave you at this gas station. It is fine. I don't give a shit. But if you keep mouthing off to me, you're going to be disorderly, and you're going to be going to jail with his ass. Do you want to go to jail with him? No? All right. Well, let's be quiet.
Let me arrest him and you can worry about bailing him out then. How about that?"
So, she settled down.
She was getting a little loud and she settled down.
I took him to jail and he blew something good, way over the legal limit.
No problems with him and he actually would go to court a few days later for this, whenever the court date was scheduled, he actually pleaded guilty.
As a USCPD officer, I didn't normally feel like the city and the county
officers respected me that much, but the most respect I ever got was having a drunk driving arrest pleading guilty in the ordinary traffic court.
You got some looks.
The county officers would be looking over like, "Nice."
Or looking over at him like, "Damn. Dumb ass."
The worst thing you could do is just plead guilty to a DUI because all you needed to do pretty much was to pay an attorney and you could get out of it.
So, he pleaded guilty to the DUI.
That was my last DUI conviction.
"Jerry, that story sucked ass. So, you're saying it was a totally ordinary DUI with nothing exciting."
Yeah, that's pretty much as exciting as life got at USCPD.
Now sometimes we did get our guns out.
One night, we got a burglary call that there were people walking around in this building trying to steal stuff on campus.
Where was it?
It was down by the football practice area or something like that. So we went in hard.
Our whole squad went down there. Sergeant, for some reason, I don't know if he wanted to just train us or something, we went in hard.
He said, "All right. We're going to do this tactically. Everyone, get your
gun out. Everyone, we are going to unholster our weapons and keep them up, fingers off the trigger and we are going to go in and clear the building."
He was a real police officer. He had been working for like 20 years. He taught us how to do this thing.
So, we went in.
We went through the building, checked it, and there was no one in there, of course.
Another night, we did the same kind of thing on the movie theater. There was a movie theater on campus called, "The Long Street Theater."
We did the same thing on that movie theater, except on this night, it was a movie theater so there were props, there were all kinds of shit. It was scary in there when it was dark.
I almost shot a mannequin because there was this sketchy looking mannequin. I got my gun out and I damn near shot the mannequin. It scared the shit out of me.
I was walking around the theater, I turned and there was this fucking like dark figure all of a sudden. I about just pulled the trigger without even thinking.
So, thank God that didn't happen.
Although, that might have been better than the way I did go out, but who knows?
I was about to shoot a mannequin in the Long Street Theater one night. That reminds me of another night.
"Oh, no more off-duty stories."
Another night my friend and I were drinking, and I remember that in
Preston in the dorm room they had an NBA Jam machine in there.
There was an NBA Jam video game in there and as a police officer, they gave you an ID badge that you could scan, and it would open almost any of the scan doors on campus, not just when you were on duty, but 24/7.
So, we got drunk, we were drinking at the Flying Saucer and I said,
"Hey, you want to go play some NBA Jam?"
He said, "Yeah man. When can we do that?"
I said, "Hey, Preston's got one."
He said, "Dude, we can't get in there."
This was Christmas break, so there weren't any students around and I said, "Shit, I got the access. Let's go."
So, we drove over to campus, we parked and we got out. I used my ID
to open the door at like 12 a.m.
Now, this wouldn't have looked irregular unless you checked which shift I was on because police officers normally at USCPD used their IDs to open doors at all hours of the day, of course.
The only way you would know it was irregular was to check which officer was on which shift, then you might be confused to see why Officer Banfield was opening up a dorm room at 12 a.m. or 2 a.m. or whatever it was when he wasn't working.
Well, in this case, it was to go play NBA Jam.
So we slid open the door and we went downstairs in there. We played
the shit out of NBA Jam and we had a good time.
Then, right when we came out, right when we walked out of the door there was a USCPD car driving by. I just had this air about me like I was going to get away with shit too, but I felt like this would look pretty stupid if the dude pulled over, asked what was going on and I got to tell him, "Look, I'm drunk. I wanted to play NBA Jam right now."
Fortunately, whoever the officer was, and I'm sure I knew them, they just drove by and didn't stop or think anything weird of it because to a casual observer, we just looked like maybe a couple of resident advisors coming out of the building to our car.
He or she, whoever was in the car, did not get close enough to see us. So, that was another near miss.
What are some other actual policing stories?
A lot of the craziest stuff would happen at the football games. You would work overtime, and the football games for the police department were an incredible production. You would have all hands on deck. There would usually be a ton of overtime. Almost every officer would work the overtime, and God those things were brutal.
So, if you were on shift on the day of a football game, you would have all these additional football game responsibilities. If you weren't working, you would have overtime.
On the one day, I'm remembering it was a hot ass day in Columbia, South Carolina. I had my bulletproof vest and my gun, my badge, all my stuff on, my long pants and my shirt. It was like 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and I worked like a 16-hour day on this.
"Oh, Jerry. I've done worse than that."
All right.
Well, maybe you have.
I got there something like 8, early ass in the morning at the time.
Now, I woke up at 2:30 in the morning to narrate this book today, and it's
6 a.m. right now, so not even that early.
Well, you get there like eight in the morning, then you work all day.
On this particular night, I got there like eight in the morning, then they were trying to have me work some kind of overtime at like 11 or 12 at night on bike patrol.
I said, "Look, I'm done. I'm going home. I've been here all day and it's about to be all night and that's enough."
So, at these football games, you would get there and show up early, you would secure the stadium, and you would be standing around as a police officer.
Wherever you got assigned was whatever you needed to do.
For example, on one day I was assigned to a certain section of the crowd, so if anything went off in that section of the crowd, I was to respond.
One memorable day, it was the USC vs Georgia game, and I think it was in 2008 because they let me go before most of the season in 2009.
In the 2008 USC vs Georgia game there was a dude, sloppy drunk, screaming, "Fuck USC. Fuck Cocks."
Because it was the USC Gamecocks.
People would say, "Go Cocks," which I thought was great in college.
"Go Cocks!"
I would say, "Go dicks! Go dicks."
I thought I was so cool.
We went up there and we got this call about a belligerent drunk dude in the stands.
The dude was wasted off his ass cussing. There was a Georgia fan in the middle of a sea of USC fans.
"Fuck you. Fuck USC. Georgia's going to win. Fuck USC."
We got up there thinking, "No. Fuck you dude."
I didn't say that, but I got up there, where the dude was ranting and raving.
I said, "Sir, it's time to go. You are disturbing. Well, you can go out of here two ways. We can escort you out of the stadium or we can arrest you, and then you can leave the stadium."
He said, "All right. All right. I'll go, man."
He started getting a little edgy and he said, "All right, you guys don't need to be putting your hands on me."
My other friend and I, we were hard, and you did not want to fuck with us. He was a former military. He was a guy I looked up to. We did not play with you.
This guy started just getting a little bit antsy. We looked at each other and each of us grabbed an arm, pulled the dude's arms backwards over his back way up over his head and I said, "Look, you're going to shut the fuck up now and walk out of here. How about that?"
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