The First Terrorist Of The Peace River: Sort Of

It was 11: 00 PM on a Saturday Night, I started up the hill in my one ton Ford flat deck with a short fence around the deck to keep from losing stuff. I had my blacksmith equipment, a surgical kit, dental equipment, a chainsaw (in case a tree fell across the road), a saddle, emergency equipment, survival gear, clothing, and extra rations. You could say, I was ready for anything.

I looked at slop shoot nightclub in Chetwynd, there were at least two hundred cars and trucks in the parking lot. I shook my head as I thought of the oil field roughnecks, wagon burners, bush apes, ranchers, loggers, and nare do wells, all together in the bar getting snot slinging drunk. Yes, the bar would close in one hour and all of them would be loose on the blacktop and a hazard to navigation; I was glad I’d be an hour ahead of them and less likely to be involved in one of their accidents. I was just motoring up the big hill East of Chetwynd after several days of work, I was tired and wanted to get home so I could wash the smell of horse from my body after working for several days South of Chetwynd.

I was about half way up the hill, when a car pulled out on the highway from town, it was traveling at a high rate of speed, I pulled over to the far right so it could pass as easily as possible. We were the only ones on the highway, so it should not have been a problem, but the car didn’t pass, it just stayed behind me, a little too close in my opinion.

I put my right side duals in the gravel of the shoulder and began spraying marble and walnut sized gravel with my coarse treaded tires into the grill and windshield of the car that was following just a little too close for comfort. I kept my semi-style mud flaps cut at just the right length for this precise reason. It’s kind of a mean trick, but it will force cars to pass or back off, I usually drive 60,000 miles a year and have no patience for smart asses who have no courtesy on the road.

The car backed off and followed me the rest of the way to the top of the hill. If it was an hour later, I’d have figured they were drunks from the bar, but those guys weren’t likely to leave the watering hole before closing time and there was still an hour of drinking before everyone got religion at 12:01 on Sunday morning.

At the top of the hill, the ominous red lights of a squad car came on behind me. At least they didn’t ask me to park on the steep hill, expecting a loaded truck to hold a stationary position on that hill can be an iffy situation. To myself I said, I must have a light out in the back. When you drive through ice and snow, fast rivers, thousands of miles of gravel and deep mud, wires are always being pulled loose and you often do emergency wiring in the dark. I pulled way off the road into gravel about the size of a man’s head, got out, and walked to the back of the truck and checked out my lights while I waited patiently for the squad car to navigate the tortuous trail I’d laid out, while it occasionally made the peculiar screech that metal makes against rocks; eventually, the squad car worked its tiny tires and low slung chassis through the gravel and parked behind me. My lights were fine; surely they weren’t upset with me for spraying their car with rocks because they were following too close, that was standard procedure in the North, a foolproof system that rarely failed to get someone’s attention.

I was leaning on the truck when the RCMP officer approached me. I knew I wasn’t speeding, my 411 rear end guaranteed that speeding was nearly an impossibility, torque and power enough to rip most trucks in half but race speeds were an impossibility. I saw my first female officer and I was in a state of shock. Not that I have anything against female officers, but I am a fairly rugged man and I wouldn’t want to deal with those drunken savages in that slop shoot down below. I asked what was wrong.

She had a cub cop with her that was quite young and all he carried was a night stick. I thought of the two of them wrestling a few drunks and I had to smile. She told me it was just a routine traffic stop and I became irritated. “In one hour you are going to have two hundred drunks on the road and you want to pull over a guy who has been working all day.” She asked why I got mad so fast and I apologized and said I was tired and still had a lot of miles to drive before I was home. She asked if I had any drugs, alcohol, or guns on the truck. I told her I only drink at home or out on the trail, I had no use for drugs of any type illegal or prescription, and I only carried weapons in the bush, but I did have dynamite. “Dynamite,” she said with a shocked expression.

“Yea, dynamite! It’s in here somewhere.” I started rummaging around in the back of the truck while the cub cop started to pull out his night stick. I looked him in the eye and said, “are you sure you want to do that?”

He slid the night stick back in its case and went to the squad car and sat on the seat. I’ve never understood that particular move to this day, maybe he wanted to get on the radio for back up, I really don’t know. There was probably five cops in a thousand square miles and a couple of them were off duty, so calling for back up was a forlorn hope. I picked up a medium sized box by the plastic banding straps that kept it together and swung it over to the police officer and held it out to her. She held out her hands to accept the dynamite and I let go of the box. The 50 pound box took her hands right to the gravel as she desperately tried to keep from dropping the explosives. She laid the box ever so carefully on the gravel and with the utmost care, tore back a cardboard flap and peered in with her flash light. Without looking up, she said, “These are horseshoes.”

I never missed a beat, “I am forever getting dynamite and horseshoes mixed up, sorry about that.” Now, I don’t know anything about dynamite, I have never used it or even seen it, but it was funny on that particular night. Luckily, it is difficult to justify arresting a man for carrying horseshoes in a truck.

I was a much younger man in a different era and in a different country, back then there was still humor to be found in a traffic stop: those days are over, shooting a cop has become a rite of passage for the criminal mind and I think we all should realize the new and added pressure our people behind the badges are feeling.

In a 24 hour period, there were 11 cops shot around the country. Most recently, in St. Petersburg FL, two officers were killed and a US Marshal wounded while trying to serve a warrant. A few hours earlier, an Oregon officer was killed during a “routine” traffic stop. That followed a day when an officer in Indianapolis was shot multiple times and critically wounded during a traffic stop. Four officers were shot when a gunman opened fire in a precinct. In Washington, two more officers were shot in a WalMart parking lot.

Florida officers Tom Baitinger and Jeffrey Yaslowitz were killed Monday when agents tried to arrest 39-year-old Hydra Lacy Jr. on an aggravated battery charge. Police believe Lacy opened fire on the agents, also injuring an U.S. marshal.
Lacy, who was found dead at home following an hour-long standoff, had a long and violent criminal record including a sexual battery conviction.

In Oregon, a gunman is still on the loose after shooting officer Steven Dodds, 45, during a traffic stop Monday. Police say the gunman, driving a 1984 Dodge truck, led police on a chase after the shooting and fired several shots at officers but missed, before being stopped by spike strips and escaping on foot into a wooded area. He is described as armed and extremely dangerous.

Indianapolis Police Chief Paul Ciesielski says he believes 60-year-old Thomas Hardy is the man who shot officer David Moore twice in the face and in his chest and leg during a traffic stop Sunday, critically wounding Moore.
The Indiana Department of Correction says Hardy had a criminal history dating back to at least 1984, when he was sentenced to 13 years in prison on a burglary conviction. He was released on parole in 1990, but has been in and out of prison since then on various charges, including seven sentences for theft, one for cocaine possession and one for misdemeanor battery.

Detectives in Port Orchard, Wash., are investigating why a man ran from deputies and then opened fire in a Walmart parking lot Sunday, sparking a shootout that left him and the woman he apparently was with dead and two officers wounded.
The Kitsap County Sheriff’s deputies were answering a call about a suspicious person at the store. When they located the man and tried talking to him he ran, then opened fire as the officers followed.
Both men were hit and unable to return gunfire, but a female officer arriving on the scene shot and killed the gunman, sheriff’s spokesman Scott Wilson said. Authorities said it wasn’t immediately known who shot the woman, who died later at a Tacoma hospital.

And in Detroit, 38-year-old Lamar D. Moore was fatally shot after opening fire at a police station, wounding the precinct commander, two sergeants and an officer the day before a family spokesman said his brother was to be sentenced in a double-homicide case.

People seem to be resisting the authority that police represent and striking out with guns; unfortunately, the cop who pulls you over has no idea whether you are a aw abiding citizen who made a traffic mistake or a killer who wants to commit another murder. As citizens, we can help by trying to obey the traffic laws and being helpful and polite during traffic stops. It’s a tough job being a cop and there are a lot of people who are using illicit drugs and are on the verge of doing something despicable. I can’t blame a cop for being careful when he approaches my car: I would act in the same manner or with even with more caution. If we obey the law, we are already making the cop’s job easier, because only the criminals will be violating the law; being polite when we slip up, rather than blaming the cop for catching us, will also make his job easier.

Without the rule of law, we will have chaos and with outlaws declaring war on cops we will also have chaos: let’s be better citizens and help make this a better country.