Finding Lost Vehicles

In the 1970’s I had a job finding lost vehicles for the Army. Yes, for some reason lots of vehicles were getting lost in and around the military post near Carmel California.

  

My job as an Army CID Agent was to help the individual who lost his or her vehicle fine his or her lost vehicle. The owner would park these vehicles in a public parking lot or private parking space. When the owner came back to where he or she left the vehicle, it would be gone. The owner still had the keys to the missing vehicle and there was nothing to indicate the vehicle had been broken into. No broken glass was found on the ground and no other damaged parts from the vehicle were left behind.

Developing information on the stolen and missing vehicles with information from sources and what I could find out from the owner along with surveillance of the area is how I used to find the missing and stolen vehicles.

Determining if the missing vehicles had been stolen, towed, repossessed, taken by a jealous or mad wife, husband, lover, friend or even wrecked by the owner was not an easy task. In some cases the missing vehicles would be parked in another location by the owner who for got they parked the vehicle in the other location or even destroyed by the owner for the insurance money.

One night while trying to locate one of the many missing vehicles I observed a pickup truck driving down the road with the head lights off. The bed of the pickup was loaded with motor cycles. As I watched the truck drive slowly down the street I saw two men picking parked motor cycles up and placing them into the bed of the truck. I saw only those two men and the man behind the wheel of the truck.

I called the situation into the Military Police. I then waited for assistance to arrive. After several minutes I was getting a little nervous that these possible thieves would finish and drive off before the Military Police arrived.

I never liked making or attempting to make an arrest of anyone without assistance. After what seemed like an hour, but was only several minutes, the thieves who were picking up the motor cycles walked to the truck and got in.

I was out of time and the Military Police were not there.

The men in the truck had not yet seen me sitting in my unmarked police vehicle just up the street from their location. While I was coming up with a plan on what to do my police radio came to life and the MP’s asked for further information on where I was located. This was a good thing since obviously my MP assistance was lost.

The radio noise was low but loud and traveled over the air waves down the street to the men in the truck. The lights on the truck came on and the truck lurched forward. The truck was headed directly at me and was gaining speed. It appeared these nuts were going to try and hit my vehicle so I could not follow them. The bad guys in the truck had the advantage since I did not have my engine on.

I had seen enough TV to know that I could get out of my vehicle and shoot out the tires of the approaching vehicle just like Mike Hammer on TV. Don’t try that since it only works on TV. So I plugged in my blue light which started flashing brightly and placed it on the dash so the bad guys would know I was a cop and not another bad guy.

As I got out of my vehicle, I pulled my issued 38 Caliber Smith & Wesson snub nose 2″ revolver, aimed at the approaching truck and yelled as loud as I could “Halt Police”. You know and I know that yelled statement was not going to make anyone stop, but it sounded good at the time and made me feel good.

My little Smith bucked six times with red, blue, and orange flame coming from the barrel each time. The rounds from the smith hit the engine and the front two tires. The truck, which was almost on top of me, seemed to just stop kind of suddenly. The truck was only ten or so yards from me when it stopped and spun side ways. The truck then tilted and fell on its side spilling the three men who were not wearing their seat belts onto the pavement.

I was happy at this moment but then saw several of the motor cycles from the rear of the truck go air born in my direction. I just managed to jump out of the way as two of the motor cycles hit the pavement where I had been standing.

The pavement was hard and I found my self sliding across it like it was ice. I slid about ten yards to the curb, which stopped me. The slide across the pavement caused me to loose my pistol, which slid into the storm drain. I noticed right away that I had a terrible pain from my left shoulder all the way to my left wrist.

This was not turning out the way I had planed it. Then I heard the approaching sirens and knew all was going to be ok. Just when you think something is going to be ok it can turn out not to be ok. As I looked up the three guys from the truck were walking towards me and they were not happy. They all had guns and their guns were larger than the gun I had just lost down the storm drain.

This was not turning out like it does in the movies. Mike Hammer would never have let himself get in this situation and the police would not have let old Mike down like this by arriving late. Then just like in the movies one of the motor cycles laying on the ground behind the three bad guys exploded and knocked them all down.

Not being crazy like they are in the movies I managed to move quickly away from the area just as the police vehicles arrived. The police were able to get to the three quickly and detain them without further problems.

This entire situation and brush with serious injury could have been avoided if I had not been trying to act like a TV policeman and had acted like the Army CID Agent I was. This one incident taught me to always have a partner with me no matter what and have more people than the bad guys before I tried to arrest them.