Traffic desk, awaiting Nordel’s arrival because Edwards was ready to kill him, but Nordel never showed up for that shift. Or the next shift. He didn’t bother showing up for the whole week. When he finally returned to work, Edward’s fury had subsided. Nordel blamed the incident on the flu and booked off on paid sick leave.
But the most irritating part of Nordel’s personality was his arrogance. Once, when we were standing beside our bikes in Stanley Park, he told us how his class (one of the last classes to have come out of the Vancouver Academy) used to run around the seawall as part of the fitness program and how in those days the academy was a lot tougher than it is now. I looked up and down at his pear-shaped body and offered, “It couldn’t have been that tough. You made it.”
One time four of us were awaiting the arrival of a wagon for a slobbering drunk that Nordel had arrested. As the wagon driver filled out the paperwork, Nordel told us how he had made his big arrest. As he talked, the drunk edged farther and farther away and then finally spun around and ran off down the lane. While Nordel hesitated as if he couldn’t understand how something like this could happen, I said, “Hey Frank, your prisoner is escaping!” Nordel headed off in his riding boots, clompety-clomping after the desperado. And yes, he did catch him.
One weekday I was riding alone in the downtown core at about noon when a call came about a bank robbery a short distance away. Traffic was in gridlock, so I rode my bike up onto the sidewalk and was the first on scene. Over the course of time, bank procedures regarding teller protection, limiting cash on hand and quality surveillance recordings have meant that, these days, a bank is pretty much one of the last places a smart criminal would rob, but in those days there was a real cachet associated with bank robbers. They were at the top of the criminal food chain. In this case, I spoke to the victim, who was still in a state of shock, and I was given suspect details that fit half the men walking in the downtown core. Frustrated, I said, “Okay, what unique thing could you tell me about this guy that, if I walked outside right now, would let me pick him out of the crowd?” The teller thought for a moment, came out of the haze and said, “Oh. Well, he was walking with a really pronounced limp … almost like he needed a cane. And he wouldn’t be walking anyway because he got into a cab right out in front of the bank.” I broadcast the information, and because of the traffic chaos, the suspect was arrested a few blocks away. That really reinforced what I was learning about victims and the information they can provide: never assume that a victim is in shock and can offer only weak information. Always assume the victim has good, accurate information and keep asking until he or she gives it to you.
Welcome to Vancouver
One evening when I was riding alone, I set up radar in Stanley Park, where the only winners of a speeding ticket were motorists caught doubling the limit. Just as I was about to pack up, I looked to the northwest to see the sky quickly turning dark. It was like a blackout curtain was being drawn across the sky from the North Shore Mountains, and I began loading up my gear as quickly as I could. The rain started and it was so heavy that it bounced off the asphalt right back up to my knees. As I was about to get on the Harley, a beautiful Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn pulled in behind me and the driver waved at me through the window. I walked over and spoke to a woman in her sixties, who looked over to her husband in the passenger seat, who appeared to be about forty years older than she was. She was wearing a huge rock on her finger and very expensive clothes. She said, “We’re from California and we’re lost. Can you tell us how to get to the Bayshore Inn?” I figured they were going to get lost in that downpour and said, “No, I can’t. But you can follow me and I’ll take you there.” I turned on the emergency lights and delivered them to the breezeway of the Bayshore Inn as the rain thundered down in a biblical deluge. The doorman at the Bayshore must have thought I was escorting royalty to the hotel and the front desk had forgotten to give him the memo, but I think I left those folks with a pretty good impression of Vancouver.
On another occasion I pulled over a car full of tourists beside the Hudson’s Bay Store on Seymour Street for a minor infraction. The car had California plates and the driver seemed confused as she alternated between fumbling in the glove box for the insurance papers and fumbling in her purse for her driver’s licence. I decided to cut the exercise short because she was taking far too long finding her documents and ultimately I was just going to give her a warning anyway. I asked her name, which she readily provided. The conversation that followed went something like this:
Me: “And Carol, where are you from?”
Carol: “Hwhy?”
Me: “Well, it’s a requirement of Canadian law that you tell me where you are from, so let’s try it again. Where do you live?”
Carol: “Hwhy?”
Me: “Okay, Carol, I think I’ve explained the legal requirements clearly enough. You are required to tell me where you live.”
Carol: “Hwhy?”
Me: “I’m going to give you a few minutes to reconsider your position, then a paddy wagon is going to make an illegal left turn onto Seymour Street—just like you did—then pull up beside us, load you up and take you to jail.”
I left Carol for a few minutes and returned to find that she had started to cry. Finally locating her driver’s licence, she presented it to me. Carol and her passengers were from Honolulu, Hwhy.
Shiny Side Down
I started keeping track of how many times I dropped my bike. The first happened when one of the senior members of the squad had let me borrow his brand new 1980 Kawasaki KZ1000, which was the fastest production bike on the market. This first accident was fairly mundane and involved my dropping the bike while westbound on First Avenue just west of Boundary Road. Nothing spectacular, no injuries. The bike just came out from under me and I was left standing in the middle of the road watching it scraping along on its crash bars as it continued down the road without me. The senior constable was surprisingly understanding.
This Kawasaki 1000 was the fastest production bike model on the road. Ironically, while the Harley had no kick-starter and frequently needed it, the Kawasaki had one but never did.
Number Two happened when I was working alone in Stanley Park and two drug addicts passed me driving an old pickup truck—stolen, of course. A female was driving with a male passenger. I put on the lights and siren and pulled them over just past Brockton Oval on Park Drive. When they pulled over and stopped, I angled my bike away from the curb (just like they taught us at VPD motorcycle school) and started to get off, keeping my eye on the two in the truck. But as soon as the truck stopped, the driver and passenger began trying to switch places—I suppose this was so the male could play the role of gentleman and take the rap for driving the stolen truck. While they were going through this acrobatic manoeuvre, one of them hit the gearshift, putting the truck into reverse. As it slowly rolled over my motorcycle, I stepped away like a matador avoiding the bull. It was evident that the driver had not meant to drive over me, but had the two of them simply driven away at that point, I would have had no way of pursuing. I walked up to the driver’s door, tapped on the window with the barrel of my pistol and said, “Get out.”
Number Three happened when I was in the curb lane eastbound on Robson Street approaching Burrard, and a vehicle in the lane beside me changed lanes right into me. Having pretty fair reflexes, I rode the bike up onto the sidewalk and crashed it into a mailbox. The driver got a ticket. His defence was that I was the one who had an accident, and that it had nothing to do with him.
Number Four occurred as I was southbound on Granville Street near Nelson and heard a commotion—doors slamming, tires squealing—just to the west. I realized a vehicle was rocketing southbound down the lane at a high rate of speed,
