I took the spiral staircase downstairs to our dispatch center shortly before midnight last Monday. I had deemed it to be time for bed a half-hour or so earlier and needed to file the day's reports.

The dispatcher told me that the police had a foot pursuit going although I'm not sure she knew their exact location. I went out to the apparatus bay to grab my bunker pants and noticed the blue strobe lights through the glass doors in front of the rigs. The police were looking for the bad guy right across the street.

I grabbed a radio from one of the trucks and flipped on the police channel to listen. They weren't saying much, so I walked outside in front of the station to watch. They had a couple of officers on foot, the K-9 officer was looking for a scent to follow and another officer was making laps in his patrol car. The bad guy was nowhere to be scene.

All of a sudden, a shadow appeared on the roof of the building across the street. At first, I wasn't exactly sure who it was... but I had a bad feeling about it.

I yelled, "Who's on the roof!?!"

The dark shadow on the roof stopped dead in his tracks. The police on the ground began to scramble. I knew I had their man.

I could have used my radio, but anyone who has ever met me knows that my voice can be loud & powerful. As I walked toward the building, I alerted the officers by yelling, "The roof! The roof!"

"You there! On the roof! Stop! Don't move!"

I guess it's a good thing the guy didn't have a gun, because I certainly didn't have one to shoot back with. But I had my voice... and that seemed to be enough. He stopped as I had requested. He began to climb down to the ground just as the officers rounded the corner with their guns drawn and the K-9 ready for attack.

The whole thing was a unique experience for me. Bad guys... police and guns... K-9 dogs in attack mode... It was all quite surreal.

It was especially so if you consider what we had been watching in the living quarters prior to me coming downstairs...

COPS.

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