If you've been a police officer for any length of time you know there are certain truths to the job. There are slackers on every shift in every police department. Everywhere. Guys who work harder at avoiding calls than actually handling them. We had one guy on night shift, years ago, who we started referring to as ALMO....Always the Last Man Out. On Friday and Saturday nights when the streets were hopping and we had calls backed up due to watch change, this guy would poke around on station until every other officer had signed on as 'in service' and been dispatched to waiting calls befor ..read more

  Well, right now here in north central Ohio we're getting some significant snowfall accompanied by gusty winds, meaning it will be drifting. Since the wind is howling out of the north, that means east/west roads will be subject to some large drifts. Our local Sheriff just declared a Level Three snow emergency, meaning only emergency vehicles are permitted on the roadways The Sheriff, J. Steve Sheldon, has been a good friend since the early 1980s, when I was a pup at Ontario PD and he was a road deputy on midnight shift. We'd often eat lunch together at Denny's at around 0400 hours. Off d ..read more

 "I miss the old days." You'll hear that said by pretty much any retired copper who started out in the sixties, 70s or eighties. Times were simpler then, though the anti-Vietnam war protests were a huge thorn in the sides of big-city police departments in the late 60s to early 70s. Serial killers seemed to abound three of four decades ago, too, something we don't hear about much anymore. I started my journey of wearing a badge and enforcing the law in September of 1979, back when disco was king and country was cool, largely thanks to John Travolta and Debra Winger's 'Urban Cowboy' film. D ..read more

  I haven't made any blog posts for quite a while, I know. To be honest, I think I'd just lost my passion for writing. Until today. It took some terrible, terrible news to get me in front of my laptop in order to tell you about Joe. I first met Joe Wendling in August of 1984, during my first few months at Mansfield PD. He was one of four Wendling brothers to serve the citizens of our city while wearing a badge. One brother, Jim, had already retired from the department before I started, having been shot in the line of duty during a very short gun battle. Jim killed his assailant during the ..read more

  It's been a while since the last post, I know; I've been out of state tending to Mom but will have a couple of new stories very soon ..read more

 Being a student of history, particularly from WW II, I've developed an immense respect for those who fought and sacrificed in that war, a war that was fought on two fronts against three enemies: Germany and, to a lesser extent, Italy in Europe and the Japanese in the Pacific theater. When I was writing the veterans stories for our local newspaper, my favorite subjects to interview were the veterans from the Second World War. That generation of men...they were just a different breed from a bygone age. They are and were, truly, America's Greatest Generation. I mention that in order to tell ..read more

 I'm home alone during the week, save for my usually snoring dog, Roscoe. He's a thirteen-year-old pit bull and also my best buddy in the world; I spend more time with Roskie than I do my bride, who is still among the working class. It can get very quiet most days, especially in winter, when I can't get outside and tend to the flower beds or mow our little slice of heaven. I take great pride in our home and don't consider its upkeep as work. In winter, however, there's only so much to do as I await the arrival of spring. The quiet...well, that is an advantage I didn't see when I first ret ..read more

 Several times across my sixty-four years on this earth I've gotten absolutely sick of an assortment of words and terms, most often because of their repetitiveness and over-saturation in society. Disco comes to mind. Hillary. Star Wars. Global warming, which morphed into climate change. Hanging chads. More recently? Social justice warrior, or SJW. Politically correct.  Now comes Covid 19. Turn on the television or radio and you're guaranteed to hear that word within 15 minutes. It dominates the news and social media, platforms in which everyone is an expert while simultaneously being ..read more

  Merry Christmas! My wife tested positive for Covid 19 yesterday, a day before my son, his girlfriend and our nearly year old granddaughter are scheduled to fly in to Ohio from Florida. They should be on the ground at Rickenbacker in just under two hours. Desiree has family in Crawford county, so their trip won't be a total waste, and this will surely be a Christmas Stacy and I will remember for decades to come. Here's how things unfolded: Wednesday, Stacy commented that she wasn't feeling the greatest, her main issue being a runny nose. Wednesdays are when we usually go see our local gr ..read more

Cops look out for their own kind, right? Not necessarily. The year was 1995; my then-wife and our two sons had traveled to South Carolina on vacation to visit my parents, driving our  SUV. It was about a nine hour trip.  At the time I was assigned to Special Investigations / METRICH, part of a 10-county counter-drug task force. I mention this because, in order to deal with dopers and scumbags, we had to look the part; to say that grooming standards were relaxed in the unit would be a gross understatement. Back then I had hair and had let it grow out, to the extent I sported a po ..read more