By Grant McGee
“When you have that perp in your crosshairs it’s better than
sex with a woman.”
He was a county deputy, working a territory that bordered
Mexico. Whenever that fellow crossed my
mind in my mental meanderings that phrase came to mind. To compare being on a SWAT team and having
the perp in your rifle sights as being better than sex, well, I just thought
that was weird.
I met The Deputy when I worked at a border radio station. He and another deputy came in every week to
record their weekly D.A.R.E. program.
D.A.R.E. stood for “Drug Abuse Resistance Education.” It was a program of law enforcement types
going into schools and around towns pointing out the problems, legalities and
dangers of drugs to kids. I originally
thought it got started by Nancy Reagan or someone the administration when
Ronald Reagan was president. The Deputy
straightened me out right quick when we met.
“The great chief of police Daryl Gates started it in Los
Angeles back in ’83,” said The Deputy, “Look at us now.”
As time went on I got to know The Deputy more and more.
I found out he had been put on D.A.R.E. duty, it wasn’t his
decision.
The county sheriff had put The Deputy on D.A.R.E. duty
because The Deputy was a bit of a hot-head.
The Deputy had been a regular duty kind of fellow, regular
shifts and such. Then he asked for and
was assigned SWAT duty along with his regular work.
“When that phone rang,” The Deputy told me one time, “I got
an immediate adrenaline rush.”
It was during that conversation The Deputy uttered his
famous line: “When you have that perp in
your crosshairs it’s better than sex with a woman.”
There was a part of me that wondered why he specified “with
a woman.” I pondered that point but let
it go.
The Deputy didn’t hide his dislike of the local Hispanic
population.
I first realized this when The Deputy came in one week to
record his radio show. His partner hadn’t
arrived yet so he and I were kicking back in the studio shooting the breeze.
“What have you been doing lately?” asked The Deputy.
“I’m waiting for my house deal to clear so I can move out of
my apartment and into my home,” I said. “I’ve
been doing some writing. I wrote a poem
called ‘Looking into Mexico’ ‘cos I can sit out at my groovy pad and see Mexico
in the distance. I wrote it thinking
about what different people see when they look into Mexico.”
“The Romantic thinks of encounters with lovely senoritas,” I
continued, “The Artist thinks of new scenes, The Businessman thinks of
opportunity, The Mexican thinks of home, stuff like that. What do you think of
when you look toward Mexico?” I asked.
“I see thousands of wetbacks waiting for dark so they can run
illegally into my country,” snapped The Deputy.
“Ah,” I said. Then his
buddy showed up to start the recording session.
I was glad.
It was The Deputy’s unbridled dislike of folks of Mexican
heritage that almost cost him his job and got him assigned to the D.A.R.E.
program. It was obvious the sheriff must’ve
thought his hot-headed deputy couldn’t do much public relations damage there.
The Deputy told me the story. He was working night shift when he pulled a
car over for a busted tail-light.
“There was three Mexicans in there,” he said. “I asked for driver’s license and all that
shit and the driver gives me this lame-ass excuse that he forgot his driver’s
license at home. And you know, I’ve just
had enough of illegals shit and I don’t know, I guess this dude was the straw
that broke the camel’s back because he started arguing with me that he was
American and if I could just let him go to get his license and all this shit
and I just yelled ‘YOU AIN’T GOING NOWHERE’ and I reached into his car, grabbed
his keys and chucked them into the field across the road.”
“So I called for backup,” The Deputy went on, “and I’m
running the plates and it turns out the sumbitch was telling the truth. The other two in the car had American ID
too. Well the dude who arrived for
backup wasn’t a friend of mine and when he finds out I’ve chucked the guy’s
keys in the weeds he calls the sheriff.
So here we all are, about four cars now, six deputies, the driver and
his pals, we have a regular disco party with all the lights going and the
sheriff arrives.”
“'YOU DID WHAT?'” The Deputy went on with his story. “The sheriff is yelling at me. ’IN MY OFFICE, FIRST THING TOMORROW MORNING. Right now YOU and YOU ALONE get out there and
find those keys.’ It took me about a
half-hour but I finally found them. It
turns out the driver was related to some big politico that the sheriff
knew. Then I found myself on the
D.A.R.E. program.”
The Deputy never lost his fondness for getting things in his
crosshairs. The last time I saw him he
was wearing a t-shirt. On the front was
a drawing of a prairie dog in rifle crosshairs.
On the back was the same crosshairs but the top half of the prairie dog
was gone.
“What’s that about?” I asked him, pointing at the front of
his shirt.
“You like it?” asked The Deputy. “I got it last time I went shooting up in
Dalhart.”
“Oh hey,” I said, “I know where that is. Up in the Texas Panhandle. Home of XIT Days, it’s like a Cowboy
Woodstock.”
“Yeah,” said The Deputy, “You can pay to go up there and
shoot prairie dogs.”
The Deputy raised his arms like he was holding a rifle and
squinted like he was looking in a scope, “Get it in your crosshairs and BLAM.”
The Deputy jerked back like he had actually fired a rifle.
“Nothing but a bloody stump left of that prairie dog,” he
said.
“Is THAT better than sex with a woman?” I asked with a
smile.
The Deputy slowly put down his conceptual rifle and gave me
a sideways glance through squinted eyes.
He wasn’t smiling.
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