Crash 2

I've experienced my second patrol-car collision in a year.

This time, I was not the driver. I was riding as passenger in a two-man unit when an urgent call for help was put out on the radio by a squadmate. He was surrounded by a hostile group of people and needed help ASAP. He was in obvious distress and we were close by. These situations can turn deadly in a heartbeat and invoked a sense of urgency for my partner and me.

The only problem was we didn't know where he was. Every time he tried to announce his location over the radio, the background noise drowned out his voice. We knew we were within a block or so of him so we raced up and down the streets looking for his patrol car.

Finally, he was able to clearly provide his location inside the courtyard of a nearby apartment complex. We could hear the panic in his voice and imagined the worse. We drove down the street and turned into the parking lot of the complex. Our patrol car turned too wide and collided into a parked car. We immediately jumped out and ran through the complex looking for our squadmate. It was dark as we ran through the various twists and turns inside the complex. We found our squadmate kneeling on an arrested subject with dozens of angry family members shouting and threatening.

Nobody was injured and several other units arrived to control the scene. It was the longest two minutes of my life hearing our fellow officer in trouble while we tried frantically to find him.