TENSE EXPERIENCES


The following paraphrased comments were given by a man with 40 years of law enforcement experience:

“One of the most tense experiences I had as a cop in the military, happened when I was assigned to Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. My boss said I needed to deliver an urgent message for the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), about five miles from our station. I was supposed to go with another cop but we were short handed, so they sent me alone, through enemy territory at night, in a jeep. I was armed with a 38 caliber pistol and about twenty rounds of ammunition. This was slightly more firepower than a pile of rocks. I just knew that I was going to die and my imagination saw the enemy behind every tree, but I finally arrived back to my post a few hours later, glad that the journey was over.

After I arrived stateside, I was assigned to cop unit that had been receiving complaints that the base pharmacy was being broke into and that various drugs were missing. Four of us were assigned night stakeout at the Pharmacy. Two of us were hidden on the roof of the building and two of us watched from the outside. After about two nights of this, when my partner and I were on the roof, we saw two teenage boys climb a ladder to the Pharmacy rooftop.

They removed the air conditioner vent and then used a water hose that was already on the roof, to lower one teenager down, into the pharmacy while the other boy stayed on top and kept watch. We arrested the boy on the roof easily and after notifying our street unit, they unlocked the door of the pharmacy and arrested the 2nd young man, again, with no resistance. Neither of the boys was armed. We were very surprised by the ingenuity these two boys showed, unfortunately, it should have been put to better use.”