Last night, while doing another drive by, I noticed 7 or 8 large Hispanic males hanging around in front of the house drinking beer and hooping it up. Me and a new investigator got out of my car and stood directly across the street hoping to catch a glimpse of my guy. Shorty after we arrived a car pulled up and a female and male, who matched the description of my guy jumped out of the car. They were obviously drunk, staggering drunk.

I asked the new guy what he thought and, being new, wanted to approach the guy and attempt to arrest him. “Not a good idea” I told him, “let’s call the police”. I called San Jose Police dispatch and asked for assistance. The dispatcher told me to drive around the block and wait for an office to arrive. So we pulled around the corner and waited…

About 5 minutes later the female came stumbling around the corner and started checking us out. She wandered back and forth between my car and the corner, we could see she was concerned about our presence. This went on for maybe 5 or 10 minutes before she started yelling for someone. The name she was calling for was the same name as my defendant. Bingo! This is too good to be true. Is he really just going walk right up to us? Where’s the police? The girl was standing on the street corner when my guy comes walking up to her, he was agitateds and was waving his arms in a violent manner, shouting “Fuck off mother fuckers, I’m gonna kick your ass”. We just chuckled and watched as the female grabbed him and kept him him from approaching us. “Let him go”, I thought, “Please let him go so he can deliver himself to us”.

They turned and walked away from us but we could tell he wanted to confront us so I fired up my engine and started driving towards them. As we got close he made a half ass attempt to block my car buy was pulled back by his girlfriend. He was really drunk and really angry; not a big surprise.  As soon as we passed him I stopped the car and jumped out.  “Surprise!” His whole demeanor changed when he realized that he was getting arrested. Mr Badass was now crying like a baby, really.

Suddenly, all the guys that were hanging at his house started running towards us. Uh Oh! We need to get out of here. We shoved the defendant in the car and drove away, slowly. Just slow enough to keep them coming. Baiting them. Waiting for the police.  It worked. 5 or 6 San Jose cops saw the commotion and came flying down the street. Oops. You’re all in trouble now. I’ve never laughed so hard. You should have seen the expression on the punk’s faces. Anyway, it all ended well, no one got hurt and I got my guy.

We left the bay area at 9:30am and figured we would arrive around 2:30pm. With about 100 miles to go I was getting tired of my my partner’s slow pace and told him to let me drive. I don’t want to be up here all day. I want to get back home. I am a much more aggressive driver and am not afraid to drive fast, really fast. As a matter-of-fact I get stopped for speeding a lot and, for some strange reason, rarely get cited. I think it’s because I never argue police and always admit when I am wrong.

I learned a long time ago that if your get stopped for speeding you deserve a ticket and arguing with the police is a waste of time. Just be sincere, admit you were wrong. Tell the truth. If you don’t know how fast you were going then just admit it. Giving a cop attitude will get you nowhere fast. You can always take your chances in court.

About 10 minutes in the driver’s seat I tell my partner that we can get there in an hour. He laughs and tell me “not if the cops have anything to do with it”. There are a ton of highway patrol on this section of highway 80. I have already seen 4. By this time I am going 80 plus and I hear my partner say “there’s another one”. Oops too late, he’s stopped on the side of the road about 300 feet in front of me. Shit, radar!. I jam the brakes on and the front end dips hard as we sail by the cop. He stares at me, we make eye contact. He does not look happy to see me.

We are driving a newer model Chrysler mini van and these things are not made to drive hard. As I jam the breaks on all the shit in the van flies forward. We just start laughing. I get about 200 feet past the officer and he pulls out. I’m done. He pulls me over and asks me “How fast were you going BEFORE you slowed down”. I tell him that I don’t know but am guessing 80 (inside I’m laughing hysterically) . He takes my license and registration and goes back to his cruiser.

After a few minutes he comes back to the car, ticket book in hand and tells me that I was going 90 when the radar went off but was only going to site me for 70 in a 65. Lucky break! I thank him and move on (now driving 65). I’ll do traffic school on line and forget about it. Of course my partner make some lame statement about how he was right.

We finally arrive in Silver Springs and do the usual – check in with local law enforcement and suit up – gun, tasers and cuffs. Silver Springs is basically a desert with homes scattered sparsely about. Not too may trees and very little greenery. Not really my kind of place. I feel lonely and detached from civilization. I don’t like it, it makes me feel anxious. I have lived in big cities my whole life and I would blow my brains out if I lived here. No Starbucks, large malls or people. Yuk! My partner and I start the usual joking around, were now speaking like Jethro from the Beverly Hill Billies. We making fun of everyone and everything we see.

After a brief misunderstanding about the address we locate the house. It’s a small house located on a street that is mixed with trailers, house and sheds. All the houses are spread out by a hundred feet or so. It’s odd because there is a section of new homes mixed in the run down double wides. The area is very dusty and the wind is starting to pick up.

The guy we are looking for is older, older then most of our defendants. He is wanted out of Santa Clara County for assault with a deadly weapon. He apparently stabbed someone and decided he didn’t like going to court. We have tried on several occasions to get him back into court but he won’t return anyone’s calls. Now it’s time for us to take him back to court.

There are no cars in the driveway and as we pull up we can hear dogs barking in the back of the house. We decide to just knock the door and hope someone answers. While at the door I can hear a television blaring in the house. We knock but no one answers. Now what? We drove all they way up here and I don’t want to sit in this town for one more minute. I push my partner to make a decision, “what do you want to do? It’s your case”.

I decide to help him out and take the file from him. The first thing I do is try to call the defendant directly. He does not answer his cell phone. I call the wife at work and am told that she cannot take calls unless it’s an emergency. I finally convince the lady on the phone to find her. A few seconds later the wife answers the phone and I can immediately tell that she isn’t going to help us. I tell her that her husband needs to call me now and that we are not going to leave her until we talk to him. She assures me that she will call right back. Yea sure.

We’ve now been her for over an hour and we still have nothing. I am getting extremely impatient, I want to leave now. My partner is starting to get irritated with me, I think he’s a bit frustrated too. All he wants to do is kick the door and search the house. Me being the more rational half of the partnership explains why that’s a bad idea. He is about 10 years younger then me and is far more impatient.

At the end of the road I see a sheriffs deputy stopped, talking on a cell phone. I drive toward him and suggest to my partner to go talk to him. We spend about 10 minutes explaining out situation and he decides to help us. Luckily, the warrant is in the national system which makes it legal for him to help. It turns out that he is a lieutenant who used to work as a cop in a southern California city. He radios a couple more deputies to our location and instructs us to wait in our car. He wants to take over which is fine with me.

We wait an hour for the additional deputies to arrive and by now I am ready to explode. What the fuck is taking so long? The county aint that big. When the deputies arrive, one male and one female, they briefly talk to the lieutenant who appears to be briefing them. The two deputies go to the front of the house while the lieutenant sits in his car at the rear of the house. He parks on a hill side so he can see into the backyard.

We are now simply observers and watch as the 2 deputies go to the front door. They knock and wait. After a few minutes they start wandering around the house. Then back to the front door. Then we see them walk to the garage door and start messing with the keypad. What? Are they trying to break into this guys house? We start laughing. Suddenly they both walk to the front door again with guns drawn. What is going on? They have now been trying to get into the house for 20 minutes. I have never seen this before, these guys were really trying to help us.

After a few more minutes the deputies go back to the garage door and start messing with the keypad again. The must be trying to guess the code! All of a sudden the garage door opens up and they both draw their weapons again, they seem startled. We are really confused about what is going on. Did they just break into this house? Both deputies go into the garage and disappear. We wait again. This house is not very big so it shouldn’t take long to search it.

Ten more minutes go by and the deputies emerge empty handed. Shit! He’s not there. What a waste of time. We watch as the lieutenant drives around the front and follows the deputies into the house. Another 10 minutes and the female deputy emerges with out defendant. YES!

We find out that the lieutenant had called the defendant’s wife at work and she told him that the defendant was in the house. She provided the code to the garage so the deputies didn’t have to kick the front door in. It was even more amazing that the deputies stacked additional charges for ubstructing justice. These deputies were awsome and went performed way above our expectations. They took him into thier custody and we got to drive back home with out a prisioner. It turned out to be a good day…

Lucky for me my partner has a spare Glock 9mm (I carry a .40) and a matching holster. That’s nice except he’s right handed and I’m left handed and I’m need work on my off hand shooting. Let’s hope I don’t have to defend myself.

Our first stop is the Monterey County Court House. This is the other reason I hate working in Salinas. Monterey County requires that we have a certified copy of the bail bond when we surrender a fugitive in their jail. So we have to visit the courthouse and get a copy of the bond.

Our first stop after court is a shack located in the east part of Salinas. We set up surveillance with a good view of the house. Intel tells us that the fugitive is staying here with his girlfriend without the knowledge of her parents. He sneaks in at night and leaves in the morning before her parents wake. We see to Hispanic males arrive in a white car, enter the residence and leave again.

A couple hours go by so we decide to make contact. Just as we’re walking to the door the white car reappears. Two parolee looking guys approach us and we identify ourselves. They tell us that they are related to the fugitive and don’t know where he is located. Another male comes to the front door and identifies himself as the father of the fugitive’s daughter.

He assures us that the fugitive is not there and allows us to search the house. Nothing. We chat for a bit and leave. As we we are leaving the father flags us down around the corner and basically rats the fugitive out. He give us a location the check nearby. Nothing.

On to another case in Salinas. This one is more straight forward. We just need to check and address but don’t believe the fugitive is there. Knock, knock… We hear people in the house and most of the windows are open. Knock, knock. Nothing. This goes on for 5 or 10 minutes. Finally, an Hispanic male answers the door and speaks very little English. Surprise.

After and awkward attempt to communicate he tells us the fugitive no longer lives there and allows us to search. This is a typical house in Salinas, all the bedrooms have been converted to little houses. There are maybe 6 different, unrelated people living in the house and all of them are here illegally.

One of our biggest problems is that illegal immigrants get arrested here, bail out and then go back home to Mexico. This is a common problem and because of this they hardest people to find. I also see a lot of them using social security numbers that don’t belong to them. We have a database system that we use to locate people by social security number. There have been occasions when I run a number and 20 or 30 Hispanic people are using the same number. I have even had people tell me they will just change their name and social security number and no one will find them. Very frustrating. This is another reason why I hate working in Salinas.

On to Seaside and we talk to another Spanish speaker. He told us that the fugitive is his brother and that he has not seen him in a month. He also doesn’t seem to care that he’s going to have to pay $15,000 for the bond if we don’t find him. He shrugs it off indicating that he isn’t going to pay it anyway.

Now were in Watsonville looking for one of my fugitives. We already have reason to believe that he’s gone back to Mexico but we need to talk to his employer and check his address. His employer says the fugitive has been working there for 8 years and up and quit last month. He tells me that they are all like family but does not know why he quit. Funny, the guys been there 8 years, you’re like family but you didn’t bother to find out why he quit?

At his house it’s the same thing – empty. It looks like they packed it up and split. This case is going to take some work. It’s been a week since I’ve arrested anyone and I’m getting frustrated.

There are not too many choices for parking so we’re closer to the house than we would like. There are lots of people in the neighborhood and an old man paces back and forth in front of the house. You can tell he is trying to figure us out.

The neighbors pull up, I think I’ll ask them if they know the fugitive. Nope, they’ve never seen him. Not sure I believe them because she just looked at the photo and immediately said no. It’s also an indication they may be lying when they don’t ask you who he is or what he did. Most people will ask, most people are nosy and want the details. I would ask.

We decide to make contact at the house and see what they say. Knock, knock… Your adrenaline always gets going a bit when you knock on someone’s door. You never know who’s going to answer or what’s going to happen when the door opens. Is the fugitive just going to run out and start fighting, do they have a gun, how many people are inside and the bigger question – do they have big dogs? You always have to be planning for the worst. You have to be watching all around you.

It’s also difficult when there’s only two people, someone has to watch the side yard in case the fugitive decides to jump the fence and someone has to be at the door when they answer. So I watch the side yard and try to peek though the fence until someone answers the door. Dogs are barking and it smells like sewage. I am trying to watch both the yard and my partner. It’s tricky.

The large Hispanic woman opens the door and I can hear my partner ask for the fugitive. She tell us that she is the his sister and has not seen him in 9 months. 2 small children are also standing at the door. My partner asks if we can search the house. She refuses. Sometimes this is an indication that the fugitive is in the house. However, after talking with her we decide that she’s telling the truth. I want to search. I love searching houses. I love finding people hiding under beds or in closets. Most people are not that creative when it comes to hiding.

On to Dad’s house in South San Jose. This is a nicer neighborhood and were not too concerned about being discreet. Again, we make contact at the front door and talk to yet another sister who confirms the other sister’s story about him disappearing 9 months ago. I get the feeling that none of his siblings likes him too much. He sounds like a dirt bag. He thinks he’s a gang banger and pedal dope.

I always get disappointed when we hit a wall. There’s nothing more exciting then getting a solid lead and you know your close. After all we do this because we like hunting people. We like outsmarting people who think they can hide forever. I love the surprised look on their face when you tell them their under arrest. Were done with this case for the day.