Today, we hosted a reception for Master Police Officer Mike Powell who officially retired from the Shawnee Police Department on March 21, 2011 after thirty-one years of faithful service. For the last twenty-six years, Mike was a police canine officer. Mike is a highly regarded police canine and handler trainer, and held executive board officer positions on the National Police Canine Association and the Kansas Police Dog Association. Mike and his dogs throughout the years have conducted tracks for dangerous persons and searches for drugs and weapons for just about every law enforcement agency in the Kansas City Metro area. Mike’s retirement reception was filled with family, friends, co-workers, professional acquaintances, and well-wishers. He will really be missed.
Now here is a little "behind the scenes" entertainment I promised in my first post. As Chief, my job is to host these types of receptions while mostly being solemn and respectful. The problem is in this case I worked with Mike for the past twenty-five years, so I know what kind of character he is. By character I mean he was a lot of fun to work with. So at his reception today I spun a little yarn about Mike. It’s was about how dogs and their owners often look and act alike.
This incident took place back in the early 1990’s. The time was about 11 pm so it was dark out. Mitch Brim just got off work as the evening shift supervisor and I was working as the evening shift detective. Mitch and I were riding home together in Mitch’s truck that night because we shared rides because we both lived about an hour south of here back in those days. We just left the QuikTrip on Nieman where Mitch purchased his “driving home snack” of a half-quart of milk and a sleeve of cookies, when I got a page from dispatch stating there had been a robbery at a sandwich shop on 75th Street.
I was on-call that night because I was the evening shift detective and I knew Mitch was game if it involved chasing a bad guy, so we drove to the scene to see if there was anything we could do. We arrived only a few minutes after the first responding patrol units. The officers were going about their jobs of interviewing the victim clerk and beginning to look around the area for the suspect.
I remember Mike showing up not to long after we did and he was doing what he does best, mostly standing around looking for trouble, when a guy matching the suspect’s description comes running out of the front door of a bar located close to the sandwich shop and started heading west across the parking lots back towards the shop. It turns out that the officers checking behind the businesses found the back door to the bar open so they walked in and seated at the bar was a guy matching the suspect description. So naturally, when he saw the officers, the guy took off out the front door.
Officers came out the same door giving chase, when I saw Mike Powell out of the corner of my eye starting to run at an angle to intersect this guy. If anybody has seen a patrol dog chase down a bad guy, it’s the same way. If the bad guy is running, they take an angle approach to intersect. So this is where the story gets interesting “with all due respect.”
As Mike was running I see him go down onto all fours and start gaining ground on the guy. I had to rub my eyes because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Then as Mike catches up with the guy, he takes him down to the ground just like a patrol dog would, you know like knock them down and then looking for someplace to get a bite on. I remember Mitch and I were the first officers to catch up because they were running direcly towards us. As I approach the two, Mike biting this guy on the lower leg and all I hear is “GRRRRRRR.” I yell, “Losa, Losa,” and for those of you who don’t speak Belgium,” Losa” is a patrol dog command that means OUT, or quit biting.
So, Mike’s not outing after a couple of more times of me yelling at him, so I grab him by the collar and pull him off the guy and now I can hear what he has been saying to the guy as he had his leg in his mouth. Do you want to know what he was saying over and over?
Classic Mike Powell, “Please sir, stop resisting,” over and over again. So professional all the time, what can I say. So I gave him a couple “Zoza Bra’s”, translation again for non-Belgium speakers – “Good Boy, Good Boy”, then scratched him behind the ear and his leg went like that (shaking my leg) and I threw him a piece of PVC pipe to chew on. That’s all it takes to make Mike happy.
Now, I may have taken a little writer’s liberty with some of the facts in this story, and by saying that I know my college creative writing teacher would be proud. The problem is about 90% of this story is true, and most fun is no one knows which ten percent isn’t but me.
No comments:
Post a Comment