An Arresting Life: Incidents and Accidents from Three Decades as a Cop and Secret Service Agent

By Kevin A. Rice

Written by a former cop and Secret Service agent, An Arresting Life catapults readers into the real world experiences of these professions. Told as a series of short anecdotes, the book is filled with real life incidents that will either make you laugh or make you cry but each story will ultimately make you appreciate what these public servants do for us on a daily basis. Written in a truly self-effacing style, the author will place you in unbelievable situations around the country and around the world. Buy this book and you will know what it is like to strap on a badge and gun and police your community and to protect our nation's leaders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098390600

Book preview

cover.jpg

An Arresting Life

Incidents and Accidents from a 30-Year Career as a Cop and Secret Service Agent

Kevin A. Rice

ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-09839-059-4

ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-09839-060-0

© 2021. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Policeman

Introduction

Section 1 — Orlando Police Department Stories

Police Department Stories

Field Training Stories

Phase 4 FTO Stories

Now It’s My Turn

Alert Tones

Check the Well-Being Calls and Death Notifications

Man’s Inhumanity to Man

A Day in the Life

The Best Police Assignment I Ever Had

Section 2 — Secret Service Stories

Protection Stories

Criminal Cases

Conclusion

About the Author

My Law Enforcement Career

APPENDIX

Acknowledgements

This book is partially dedicated to all of the cops and agents that I have had the pleasure to have worked with. I pray that I represented you all well in this book. Thank you for your service and for your friendship. Thanks go out to Tom Grant and Gene Sveum for being there when I needed help the most. Thanks to Phil Carlson for your friendship and mentorship. To Keith, Alan, Mark and Aaron, thanks for being in the band. But mostly, this book is written in honor of my father, Walter V. Rice, a career peace officer and an outstanding parent. He was a cop’s cop and a selfless public servant. I miss him greatly and I hope that I have made him proud.

Policeman

A policeman is a composite of what all men are, a mingling of a saint and sinner, dust and deity.

Gulled statistics wave the fan over the stinkers, underscore instances of dishonesty and brutality because they are new. What they really mean is that they are exceptional, unusual, not commonplace.

Buried under the frost is this fact: Less than one-half of one percent of policemen misfit the uniform. That’s a better average than you’d find among clergy!

What is a policeman made of? He, of all men, is once the most needed and the most unwanted. He’s a strangely nameless creature who is sir to his face and fuzz to his back.

He must be such a diplomat that he can settle differences between individuals so that each will think he won. But . . . if the policeman is neat, he’s conceited; if he’s careless, he’s a bum. If he’s pleasant, he’s flirting; if not, he’s a grouch.

He must make an instant decision which would require months for a lawyer to make.

But . . . if he hurries, he’s careless; if he’s deliberate, he’s lazy. He must be first to an accident and infallible with his diagnosis. He must be able to start breathing, stop bleeding, tie splints and, above all, be sure the victim goes home without a limp. Or expect to be sued.

The police officer must know every gun, draw on the run, and hit where it doesn’t hurt. He must be able to whip two men twice his size and half his age without damaging his uniform and without being brutal. If you hit him, he’s a coward. If he hits you, he’s a bully.

A policeman must know everything—and not tell. He must know where all the sin is and not partake.

A policeman must, from a single strand of hair, be able to describe the crime, the weapon and the criminal—and tell you where the criminal is hiding.

But . . . if he catches the criminal, he’s lucky; if he doesn’t, he’s a dunce. If he gets promoted, he has political pull; if he doesn’t, he’s a dullard. The policeman must chase a bum lead to a dead-end, stake out ten nights to tag one witness who saw it happen—but refuses to remember.

The policeman must be a minister, a social worker, a diplomat, a tough guy and a gentleman.

And, of course, he’d have to be genius . . . for he will have to feed a family on a policeman’s salary.

Paul Harvey

"My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me."

Jim Valvano

Introduction

Cops tell the best stories. I should know, my dad was a cop, a great cop. My father was a New York City patrolman and detective, and if cops in general make the greatest storytellers, then NYPD cops are in the Storytelling Hall of Fame. My old man spent 20 years in that famed department working in violent and poor neighborhoods during portions of his career and rubbing elbows with the rich, famous and powerful in Manhattan during other portions. Upon retiring from the NYPD, my father was hired by the New York State Attorney General to investigate the Attica prison riot in upstate New York. When that investigation concluded, he, like almost all other NYPD cops, moved to Florida. (I think it is a law or something that all retired NYPD cops have to relocate to Florida.) Still feeling the need to give back, my dad spent the last ten years of his life back in uniform as a deputy sheriff for a small agency on the west coast of Florida.

My dad spent many of his days in the NYPD assisting the Secret Service with visits of presidents and vice-presidents to NYC. Growing up, I saw pictures of my dad with these government leaders and listened to him speak highly of the Secret Service and the agents that he worked with. It is therefore no surprise that my lifelong dream would be to work for the very agency that my father spoke so glowingly about.

Throughout my life, I listened to dozens—no, hundreds—of my father’s police stories. Many brought laughter; some brought tears, but they all brought satisfaction to the listener. To me, the author of this book, his stories always increased the admiration and respect I felt for my father, both as a man and as a public servant. It is no wonder then that my two brothers, a cousin and I all followed in his footsteps and became law enforcement officers.

My dad has been gone for 25 years now. I miss his stories more and more with every passing day. As time passes, his stories fade a little more from my memory. I would give anything to have him back here for a day. I would sit him down in front of a camera and ask him hundreds of questions in an attempt to capture for eternity his life protecting and serving.

As I said before, cops are fantastic storytellers, followed closely by firefighter/EMTs, dispatchers and military personnel. That is because in all of those professions, these public servants see the world at its best and at its worst. They see human foibles and imperfections on a daily basis. Part of the way that these public servants handle the stress of their chosen professions is to vent to each other. They love to regale each other with stories of their calls and love to make each other laugh. It is one of the few acceptable ways that these professionals have to vent their stress.

As I look back on my own 30-year law enforcement career, coupled with the thoughts of my dad’s vanishing legacy, I hear my wife’s voice. You should write a book, she has said on dozens of occasions. Another favorite of hers is, "You should write this stuff down.. If I didn’t know her better, I would worry that her calls for me to document my law enforcement experiences was a desire to shut me up so she wouldn’t have to hear my stories for the umpteenth time.

So, that is what I set out to do with this book. Write down some highlights of a law enforcement career that spanned three decades, a career that allowed me to see the world, make a decent living and make friends with some of the finest people in the world. My career in law enforcement was a long, varied and satisfying one. I hope that it exposed me to incidents that you will find interesting, humorous and intriguing.

As a police officer, I got to see man’s inhumanity to man up close and personal. I got to witness things that an author or playwright would never write, because no one would believe them. I saw very funny things and I saw heartache and misery. As a Secret Service agent, I was blessed to work for one of the most storied and prestigious law enforcement agencies in the world. I was able to claim a front row seat to watch history unfold in my presence. In one instance that appears later in the book, another agent and I were placed in a position that probably literally changed the history of this great nation and maybe the world. That is pretty heady stuff for a kid from Commack, Long Island.

My goal in writing this book was threefold. First, I wanted to entertain the reader, whether you are looking for a laugh, looking to experience what it is like to be a cop or to hear about some of the not-so-secret side of being a federal agent protecting our nation’s leaders. Secondly, I wished to tell the truth about how blessed I was to spend a life in law enforcement. Lastly, I wanted to pay respect to the thousands of cops and agents out there who selflessly serve their fellow citizens every day. They are my heroes, and to a person each cop and agent has hundreds of their own stories.

If you like the stories in this book, find a law enforcement officer and thank them for their service. After thanking them, ask them an open-ended question like tell me about the funniest call you ever responded to or what one experience are you most proud about in your career, and then sit back and enjoy because you are about to hear a story that is better than anything you will find on TV or at the movies. At the end of that tale, you will be entertained but more importantly you will be thankful that these heroes live and work among us.

Every cop has great stories. Here are some of mine.

"Cops, more than firefighters, EMTs or other public safety employees almost always get the first glance of the human condition at its worst, most lethal moments; nobody calls a cop with good news."

—Mike Barnicle

Section 1 — Orlando Police Department Stories

1

Police Department Stories

The Police Academy

Police academies are equal parts college campus and military boot camp.

Strike that.

Police academies are equal parts college campus, military boot camp and afternoon soap opera. My experience at police academy was no different.

We had our share of inter-agency squabbles. We had the 18-year recruit, fresh from high school who had been hired by a small rural department, and we had the 45-year-old military vet looking to transition to the civilian world. We had college educated bookworms and we had muscular jocks. We actually had one of our recruits (he literally looked like he posed for the recruiting posters) impregnate one of our attractive instructors. We experienced injuries, broken bones, failed tests and failed marriages. In short, it was a truly generic police academy experience. All academies are the same. Just ask any cop and they will tell you the same thing. As any police officer discusses their time at the academy, the conversation will be bittersweet, because they loved the experience and they hated the experience simultaneously. Police officers usually make life-long friends at the academy but upon reflection they hated the mind games and the continuous judgment and criticism. They enjoyed the camaraderie but hated the Groundhog Day experience.

When I look back at my time at the police academy, I loved every minute of it and I hated every minute of it. I was never in the military but I wonder if vets feel the same way about boot camp.

My police academy memories are many but I offer these short stories as representative of my time there.

My First Day

My first day at the academy (the literal beginning of a successful 30-year career) was all around pretty bad. To start with, I got up at 3:30 a.m., drove the 30 minutes or so, driving past downtown Orlando and the Merita bread bakery whose stacks were belching out the most beautiful smells imaginable on an empty stomach. As I made my way down Interstate 4, it started to rain, actually raining fairly hard. Now, living in Florida, I was used to rain, but on my first day, I was driving a piece of crap used car that I had just bought because a drunk 88-year-old woman had recently totaled my beloved Ford Mustang. As I made my way towards the traffic light outside the academy, the thing I feared the most happened. My crap-mobile had an issue with the carburetor that only occurred on rainy days. As I waited on the left turn arrow, water got into the carburetor and the car stalled out.

So, on my first morning I made a great impression on my new instructors and classmates by pushing my bland, cream-colored Mercury into a parking space. Of course, I got soaking wet. I tried hard to convince myself that the start of this day was not an omen of bad things to come.

I reported to the classroom, where I sat among 30 to 40 other police recruits. I am pretty sure I was the only one that had to push his mode of transportation into the parking lot that morning. We made nervous small talk among ourselves until the instructors entered the classroom, set an initial unwelcome tone and ordered us to change out into the workout clothes we had all been ordered to bring with us.

We were given a few minutes to change out and report to the quarter-mile track outside to take our first physical fitness assessment, which consisted of a 1.5-mile run for time, sit-ups, pushups and pull-ups. I was 21 years old and felt fairly physically fit. I was mildly confident that although I wouldn’t be the fastest, I would be in the top third. That thought was a fleeting one because once the run started, I immediately found out that several of my new classmates had attended Division I universities on either track or cross-country scholarships. Again, as I was lapped by a few track stars about five minutes into the run, I was wondering about the omen thing.

After we took our physical fitness assessment, one of our instructors stated that it made no sense to waste the fact that were all dressed in our physical training (PT) clothes, so he suggested we go for a little run. Unfortunately for us, our police academy was also home to a fire academy. On the grounds of our campus, the fire academy housed a four-story building with an external staircase. I would find out later on that the fire trainees would set this building on fire a dozen times during their training. Today, though, on my first day at the academy, the building was vacant and not engulfed in flames. Instead, I heard our PT and defensive tactics instructor (more about him shortly) scream something that initially made no sense to me. He shouted, Two steps on the way up, every step on the way down. Then it made sense; we were being told to run the staircase on the fire tower and to make it more fun and exciting why not take two steps at a time as we ran up the stairs and then ensure we hit each step on the way down? We ran up and we ran down.

For a long time.

For a very long time.

Then I heard one of my colleagues ask a very relevant question. How long are we gonna do this?

The response by the defensive tactics instructor: Until someone throws up.

Luckily, we only climbed up and down those stupid stairs for another 10 or 15 more minutes when one of our bigger classmates grabbed a railing and expelled his morning raisin bran from the third-floor landing onto the parking lot below.

A man of his word, the defensive tactics instructor, let’s call him Austin Powers, stopped the run immediately. The introduction of vomit into the mix was enough to stop the running immediately but did not stop the misery. Instead, our PT instructor assembled us into the parking lot for some calisthenics. When I say that our defensive tactics instructor was a man of his word, it is with irony, as you see later in this chapter when I describe the ignominious ending of this instructor’s career in law enforcement.

Vehicle Extraction

I learned a valuable lesson in the police academy. Never volunteer for anything.

About halfway through the academy, our PT instructor, maintaining his man of mystery status, walked into our gym and announced, I need someone to go get their car and drive it outside the gym doors. As I mentioned, I drove a huge piece of crap to the academy for the first part of the training, but after multiple occurrences of the car breaking down and with a few real paychecks under my belt, I had just purchased a brand-new car. I was proud of the car and without even knowing it, my hand sprang up when he asked for a volunteer. The instructor, of course, picked me and ordered me to bring my car around. As I pulled my shiny new dark blue Dodge into a parking space just outside our gym, I saw that my classmates had all assembled outside. I parked and began to exit the driver’s seat when I heard Instructor Powers loudly bellow, Stay in the car, Rice.

It was only at that point that I even wondered what the hell I just volunteered for. I didn’t have to wonder very long because at that moment Instructor Powers announced to the assembled group, Class, today let’s discuss vehicle extractions. At that point, Instructor Powers advised my classmates that sometimes you will need to arrest someone you have pulled over who refuses to get out of his/her vehicle. Powers continued, So, class let’s say you order a driver out of his car and he refuses. At that point I again tried to exit the car and Powers looked at me and commanded me, Stay where you are and grab that steering wheel and don’t let go. Two seconds later, our PT and defensive tactics instructor, a career SWAT team member and US Army vet, struck me in the left ear with the palm of his hand so quickly and so violently, that I involuntarily let go of the steering wheel. Within a second of doing that, Powers turned my head and within another second he pulled me out of the open car window and allowed me to fall onto the pavement below, handcuffing me once I landed.

My head was spinning and I was completely disoriented as I lay there on my stomach, handcuffed, with my ears ringing.

Instructor Powers released the handcuffs, ordered me back in the car and then conducted a technique where he raked my knuckles as I attempted to hold onto the steering wheel. Again, within seconds I was on the pavement getting handcuffed. I guess I am not very good at resisting arrest. This process got repeated a few more times. I was dazed, disoriented and pretty nauseous. The only thing I saw and heard were my classmates enjoying my pain and embarrassment.

Lesson learned. No more volunteering!

Neck Restraint Exercise

So, for as long as I have been in law enforcement, most agencies have forbidden the carotid neck restraint as an acceptable use of force technique. In short, the technique allows an officer to use a type of wrestling hold to apply pressure to a suspect’s carotid artery in their neck. The goal with the technique is to stop blood flow to a violent offender’s brain so that they pass out temporarily so that the offender can be handcuffed. When I attended the academy there had been some high-profile cases where police officers had employed the technique and the offenders had died as a result. My academy had decided to not teach the technique, but that didn’t stop our notorious defensive tactics instructor. Officer Powers decided that the technique was still a valuable tool and that we should be exposed to it. So, one afternoon, he divided the class into cops and offenders and then taught us the technique. We were told to employ the technique against each other and we were not evaluated as having been successful until our offender passed out, or tapped out just before passing out. Our instructor let it subtly be known that real cops would allow themselves to pass out and that he would look disapprovingly at anyone who tapped out. Of course, at 22 years old, under peer pressure I allowed my fellow student to stop all oxygen traveling to my brain until I passed out. The Kevin that is writing this now would have seen this for the malarkey it was and tapped out fairly quickly.

As we performed these restraints on each other, and student after student passed out and (luckily) came to, our defensive tactics instructor appeared happy and smiling.

It just added to his mystique and our fear of him.

More Austin Powers Stories

I told you about our defensive tactics instructor’s treatment of me during the vehicle extraction exercise, the neck restraint exercise and the first day of class. There are several other stories I could tell. I could tell you about the time in class that he allowed multiple students to kick him in the groin to show us how tough he was. I watched four or five of my classmates kick our instructor in the nuts. I assumed he was wearing a cup but each student that kicked him stated that he was not. So, as you can imagine by now, we all feared him but simultaneously quietly respected his abilities. He walked around like the cock of the walk (pun intended) and we all knew not to test him or mess with him. We could tell he had a huge ego, but if he could back up his bravado, which we all thought he could, it was better to let the sleeping dog lie. With all his foibles, he was charismatic and it was hard to dislike him.

One day during a physical conditioning class, Powers abruptly announced to the class, For tomorrow’s PT class make sure you wear old shoes, and then he exited the gym. So, we were left to figure out the reasoning behind this cryptic statement. The next day we found out. He decided to take us on an hour-long run. Why the old shoes, you ask? We found that out within five minutes of the start of the run. It seems that Powers found a creek that was fairly shallow and ran for a pretty long stretch. So, Powers thought it was a great idea to have us run in the stream for almost an hour. Powers smiled the entire time he ran with us. In Florida, running in creeks with obligatory snakes and potentially, alligators in the water is not a move that a sane person would make.

To add to his international man of mystery status to the class, there would be days that Instructor Powers would walk into class and make a statement that he would be missing some class dates. He would subtly intimate that his Army Reserve unit was being activated for a special mission. It sounded legitimate to us, because he never oversold it. Anyway, he would miss a few days and when he came back, he would be suntanned and would hint that he and his unit had spent some time in Central America, South America or some other exotic locale. Just about the point that you would feel like throwing the bullshit flag, he would do something spectacular in class and you would start to say to yourself, OK, I can see him in some type of Special Ops reserve unit.

Shortly after our police academy graduation, we learned that the agency that employed instructor Austin Powers had terminated him and had charged him with theft and fraud. From what I heard, during the times that Powers stated he was being activated for military service, he actually was flying out west and going snow skiing.

I guess I should have listened to my bullshit detector.

Major Trauma Triage Story

About a third of the way through the academy, after hours and hours of first aid training, my classmates and I were scheduled to participate in a practical exam where we would be placed as a whole group into a major trauma incident. The practical exercise was