Trooper Down! (3 page)

“Hell,” he mutters, jerking the seat belt forward. “I don't know if I can get this thing around you or not!”

“My arms is cut in two, sir.”

“No they're not.”

“Yeah, they are, sir.”

The belt finally snaps into place and Reece returns to the driver's seat, where he radios in his position. He will ask the telecommunicator to verify Farmer's license and check the vehicle registration. Then he'll inform them he has a 10-55 (intoxicated driver) in custody.

“Turn around and face me now,” he instructs Farmer. “I'm gonna give you a little test. See the black tip of this pen?”

Farmer nods, his head bobbing unsteadily.

“Follow it with your eyes.”

The man tries, but can't seem to focus.

A slight edge creeps into Reece's voice.

“Can you not do it?” he says.

“Sir, I'm nervous.”

“Well this isn't too hard to do—to look at a pen. Don't move your head. Keep your head still.”

Farmer squirms and the cuffs bite deeper into his wrists.

“Sit still,” Reece says, “and it won't hurt so bad. Now tell me how many beers you've had today.”

“One or two,” says Farmer.

Reece eyes him warily.

“One or two beers won't make a man your size stagger around.”

“I ain't lying.”

“Had any liquor or drugs?”

“Nope,” says Farmer, “I ain't that kind of guy.”

Reece shakes his head and puts the cruiser in gear. He has yet to meet a drunk driver who's had more than “one or two beers.”

“Where are you taking me?” Farmer wants to know.

“To the breathalyzer room at the courthouse.”

“Well, can't you please uncuff me first?”

“No, I can't,” says the trooper. “You might reach over and grab the steering wheel.”

“I won't do nothin'. I promise.”

Reece tells him to sit back and relax. They'll be at the courthouse in five minutes. At the entrance to the booking room, the officer unbuckles his holster and steps into a cubicle to deposit his gun. Twelve years earlier, in this same building, North Carolina troopers Dean Arledge and Lawrence Canipe were killed in the breathalyzer room when a drunk driver grabbed Canipe's pistol and shot both men in the back. As a result, law enforcement officers are now required to put their weapons aside while administering breathalyzer tests.

Inside the booking room, Reece starts the paperwork while a sheriff's deputy frisks Farmer. Behind them is the “drunk tank,” a grimy, concrete enclosure designed to hold up to twenty or thirty inebriated adults. Three men, all in various stages of intoxication, are sitting on a wooden bench against the wall. One has been protesting his innocence all night: he wasn't driving the car in which he was found, he says, he was walking alongside it.

“Yeah, and doing about eighty miles an hour at the time,” says the trooper who arrested him. “You must have a great set of legs.”

Farmer is spread-eagled against the counter, ready for the routine search that is part of every arrest. With the cuffs removed, he seems faintly bored, as though he's done this several times before.

“Take your shoes off,” the deputy tells him. “Now your socks. Turn them inside out. That's right. Now put 'em back on.” His brown leather wallet, a set of keys, and seventy dollars in small bills are on the counter.

A few minutes later, Reece, who's been busy with paperwork since he and Farmer arrived, escorts him down the hall. In the breathalyzer room, no larger than a bedroom, are three desks, five folding chairs, and—at the moment—eight people. Half are waiting their turn at the breathalyzer machines. The other half are troopers. Two of the officers are sergeants who routinely administer drunk driving tests.

Inside the small, windowless room it is hot and stuffy. Reece pulls up a chair and loosens his tie before turning to Farmer.

“Welcome to the circus,” he says. “Grab a seat 'cause it looks like we're gonna be here a while.”

On weeknights, it takes up to an hour to process one drunk driver. Fridays and Saturdays are worse.

In a corner of the room is a heavyset woman wearing tight black pants and a low-cut top, exposing parts of her considerable breasts.

“So what are the charges?” she asks the trooper seated before her.

“Lots of stuff,” he says, smiling. “But first we've gotta get the basics. How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Color eyes?”

“I don't know,” she says, leaning forward. “Look for yourself.”

Every trooper in the room grins.

“Occupation?”

“None right now,” she says.

“Ever been arrested before?”

“Yeah, for all kinds of things.”

“What?”

“I said all kinds of stuff.”

The officer looks up sharply, his good humor gone.

“What?” he says impatiently. “You might as well tell us because we can find out anyway.”

“Then go ahead and find out.”

“Anything bad? Ever had any felonies?”

“No.”

“Any drug charges?”

“No.”

She sits back while the officer prepares the breathalyzer test. After blowing into the machine and waiting for the results, she registers .11, one point over the legal limit. A few minutes later, she is on her way to the magistrate's office to post bail.

“Don't we know her from somewhere?” Reece asks when she leaves the room.

“Yeah,” says a sergeant, “she's that hooker who got busted for cutting up a customer. Hurt him pretty bad too.”

“You mean guys actually
pay 
for that?” says another officer.

Reece laughs and looks at his watch. It's nearly 2:00
A.M. 
and he's only brought in one drunk driver tonight. Still, he expects to hit triple figures soon, when he arrests his one hundredth drunk driver for the year. That makes him feel good.

It is Farmer's turn at the breathalyzer and Reece completes the paperwork while the sergeant explains to Farmer that he has the right to refuse the test, the right to call an attorney or to have another witness on hand. Most people waive these rights when they realize the delays will wind up costing them more time and money. Farmer agrees to take the test.

At an adjoining table is a short, slender man, early twenties, wearing glasses, jeans, and a sleeveless black T-shirt. He was at a bar when a friend convinced him to go to a restaurant and bring back some food. On the way, he was stopped by a sharp-eyed trooper and arrested for drunk driving. The breathalyzer shows a .14 score, four points above the North Carolina legal limit. He will automatically lose his driver's license for the next ten days and, if convicted, could have his license suspended for up to a year.

He is shaking his head over the news.

“My wife is gonna hate me for the rest of my life,” he moans. “She's gonna kick my ass. I can't believe I did this.”

No one appears to be listening.

Reece is intent on watching the sergeant complete the first half of Farmer's test.

“I say at least .14,” he predicts.

“Umm, maybe,” the sergeant responds. “With this guy's size, he'd have to drink a case of beer and a pint of liquor before it would even tell on him.”

Farmer looks dejected.

“I've got to quit this drinkin',” he says. “It's killin' me.

“I'd like to stop,” he adds softly.

He scores .13 on the breathalyzer.

“Can you come to court on the twenty-second?” Reece asks him. Farmer nods.

“Then let's talk to the magistrate and get your bail set. As long as you can post bail and get someone to pick you up
who isn't drunk, 
you're free to go.”

“How much is it gonna cost me?” Farmer says.

“That's up to the magistrate,” Reece replies.

Half an hour later, the legalities complete, Farmer is on his way to find a phone.

For Reece, hours away from the end of his shift, the night is still young. So far, everything's been normal . . . even quiet. Yet that is subject to change, and quickly, as every state trooper well knows.

Just ask Louis B. Rector.

“It's always in the back of your mind. You use all the precautions you can, but when you're out on the road alone, you're vulnerable. And there's not much you can do about it.” —
Patrol sergeant

Trooper Louis Bryan Rector almost didn't make it into the highway patrol.

Bom in the small coastal town of Elizabeth City, North Carolina, he tried to join the N.C. State Highway Patrol after high school, but failed to pass the entrance exam. For a while he forgot about his yen to be a trooper, went on to complete college with a degree in drafting and design, and took a job in Suffolk, Virginia, at the Highway Department, drawing road plans.

One day he got a call from a highway patrol sergeant who said that Louis could take the entrance exam again. This time he passed and was accepted at the patrol academy in Chapel Hill.

But it was 1970 and the Vietnam War, like a bad case of flu, was hanging on, spreading its virulence. Several days after Louis found out he could join the patrol, he received notice that he had been drafted into the army. Again, he put his plans for becoming a trooper on hold, and enlisted in the Air Force. He spent the next three and a half years stationed in Las Vegas, Nevada, all the while thinking of the North Carolina Highway Patrol.

“I'm not sure what it was that fascinated me about the highway patrol,” he said later. “I had an uncle who was a trooper in the 1930s and I can remember being very impressed with him as I was growing up. I guess part of it was the uniform, the shiny car, and the prestige.”

It is the prestige that draws most troopers into the North Carolina Highway Patrol.

“In this state, the patrol is like being in the major league of law enforcement,” said one officer. “In the town where I grew up, even people who didn't like cops respected the patrol.”

Louis now believes that, for him, finally being able to join the highway patrol was an act of God, a predetermined fate that would challenge and change him in ways he would never have imagined.

By 1974, he was out of the Air Force, married, and living in Mount Airy, North Carolina. Uncertain about his future, he returned to college for technical courses and says he would have become a professional student had it not been for his wife.

“You can't stay in school for the rest of your life,” she told him. “Get a job.”

Still drawn to law enforcement, Louis became a sheriff's deputy in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he stayed for two years. Then the highway patrol beckoned again. On November 15, 1976, he was officially accepted into the organization and began basic training as a cadet. It was his third try at becoming a trooper.

The course was hard for Louis. At twenty-eight, he was older than most cadets, and he did not fit the mold of the classic hard-nosed, aggressive trooper who “kicks ass and takes names.”

Six feet tall, 175 pounds, he is dark-haired and fair skinned, with warm brown eyes, and a shy smile that masks a strong sense of purpose. A sensitive, soft-spoken man, he gives the mistaken impression that he is more at home with a good book than a .357 Magnum. Yet underneath that mild manner is a steely, stubborn determination to succeed at whatever he sets out to do. And in 1976 he was determined to become a state trooper—with some prodding, that is.

“I was the type who had to be pushed,” he recalled. “The physical training was especially rough. We had to be out of bed at 5:00
A.M. 
and were expected to run up to seven miles a day. There were many mornings when my physical training instructor literally moved me along with his foot.”

Even after Louis graduated from the patrol academy (third from the top in his class) he found his first few weeks as a trooper relentlessly difficult.

“The first night on the job my training officer took me into the patrol office and dumped a huge stack of paperwork on the desk. Then, with no instruction, he said, ‘Here, do it.' I thought, this isn't for me. I wanted to go back to the security of the sheriff's department
where I knew what to do and everybody knew me.”

Throughout this time Louis wanted to quit, and proceeded to tell his sergeant so.

“If you're gonna quit,” replied the officer, “at least wait until you get out of training. That way, I won't look so bad.”

Louis, however, decided to stay, and by the end of the six-week training period he was feeling better. A trooper at last, he was ready, willing, and able to work alone.

March 6, 1984: Louis, thirty-six, was now in his eighth year with the North Carolina Highway Patrol. After completing on-the-job training he was stationed first in Hoke County, a rural community eighteen miles west of Fayetteville, then sent to Burke County in 1979. Once known for its backwoods violence, the region, situated in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, had grown and matured into a respectable, pleasant place to live. By 1984, the county, named for Revolutionary War governor Thomas Burke, was 506 square miles of farmland and furniture factories, with a population of 75,000 and an average per capita income of just over $10,000.

Cutting through the center of Burke County is Interstate 40, a major transportation artery that channels the flow of traffic heading east from Tennessee and states beyond.

During his eight years as a trooper, Louis had distinguished himself as an active, competent officer, having encountered his share of drunk drivers, speeders, violators, accident victims, and other motorists in distress. And, not surprisingly, he'd gotten into a fight or two, once with a 240-pound drunk who had wrapped his arms around Louis, nearly squeezing him to death, and once with an irate driver who, in a fit of temper, pulled a gun.

Though aware that the potential for danger lurked daily in a trooper's job, Louis truly believed nothing serious would ever happen to him on the road. It would always be the other guy, another trooper whose name and face would appear on the six o'clock news. As a result, he was more enforcement-conscious than safety-conscious, a lopsided attitude inadvertently encouraged by highway patrol policy. Since an officer's abilities as a trooper were measured by the number of tickets he wrote weekly and the types of arrests he made, it was imperative that he present himself as an active, aggressive trooper who did his job well (i.e., wrote a lot of tickets). Conscientious
patrolmen like Louis were particularly susceptible to such internal pressures.