Can I Get Directions?

It never ceases to amaze me how lost people will accost an officer for directions no matter what he is doing. Take last Thursday for example. A coworker and I had a car stopped on Glenwood Avenue, right in front of Crabtree Valley Mall, when we discovered one of the vehicle occupants had a warrant for his arrest. The driver's license was suspended. We had to deal with this in the middle of rush hour traffic, two packed adjacent lanes full of rubber-necking "lookies" who almost always cause accidents because they forget you actually have to look where you're going.

So we take out the passenger, handcuff and search him, and we're walking him back to my partner's car. The driver is still behind the wheel and I'm trying to keep an eye on him just in case he decides to murder us and free his amigo. Now, it was at this point in time a car stops behind mine, in the middle of the lane with no lights on or anything, practically begging to be rear-ended. The driver, an elderly man, gets out (without so much as looking back at the traffic passing him no more than three feet to his left at 45 MPH) and screams up to us, "Officers, can you tell me where Glenwood Manor is?"

I immediately yell to him, "Sir, we don't have time. Get back into your car and move out of the travel lane."

"But I need to know where I'm going," he begins. I cut him off. "Get in your car and leave."

He furrows his brow and purses his lips. Then he squeals his tires and tears off down the road, shaking his gnarled fist at me.

We continue with the arrest and search of the car as if the buffoon had never stopped. It always amazes me that people are so concerned with their own little business they don't even care about our survival. Making an arrest is a dangerous time, especially in traffic, where so much can go wrong. But how dare I not tell the criminal, "Hey, don't do anything right now. I gotta give this old guy directions."

It reminds me of an incident many years ago on Hammond Road. I had five Hispanic individuals stopped on the roadside after someone reported one of them had a pistol. Four were sitting down and I was searching one with my back to the road. All of a sudden I heard squealing tires, as if someone was braking to avoid slamming into the car in front of them. I tried not to look, focusing on the men, just in case one of them actually had a gun. The screeching stopped and was replaced by some jackass screaming, "Officer! Officer!" I had no choice but to look. I could only assume at this point someone had to be dying. Maybe some sort of medical trauma I'd have to deal with, so I turned around.

What I see is a middle aged black man driving an SUV. He calmly asks, "Is there a Walmart around here?" It was all I could do to keep myself from raising my middle finger.