The Liquor Talking

Some explanatory text would have been nice, but this might be one of those things where a picture is worth a thousand words. Whatever the case, thanks for the picture. I will treasure it forever.

While writing up the report for the incident, I found myself wondering if there was a book somewhere that lists The Ten Worst Things You Can Say to a Cop and if so, how the twit had managed to obtain a copy.

I was riding a flightline patrol at Ramstein, during an exceptionally pleasant spring evening. Being mid-week and about halfway between paydays, we anticipated a dull evening and were trying to come up with something to maybe liven things up a bit.

As things turned out, we needn’t have troubled.

We were parked in front of one of the aircraft hangers on the north end, listening to the radio chatter and watching people going about the business of putting the flightline to bed for the night. Fuel trucks were going here and there, equipment was being towed around and a couple of guys were strolling about with a clipboard, looking at the various aircraft parked on the open ramp.

Chris thought it might be interesting to go check these guys out. One of Chris’s favorite things to do was to show people a fuzzy picture of his cousin and asking them if they recognized him. The picture was blurry enough to where it could have been just about anyone, but he thought it humorous to think that someone might recognize his cousin for someone they knew and then go warn them that the cops were looking for him.

Yeah, he was kinda strange.

Anyway, while debating if the security of Ramstien would be better served by our hassling these guys or by our sitting in the shade, the personnel door to the hanger flew open. Out jumped a a rather bedraggled, soaking wet female in a flight suit. Hot on her heels were three similarly attired males. She made it about 10 feet before she was tackled by two of the men who then dragged her, kicking and screaming back into the hanger.

As you can imagine, this is the sort of thing that will typically get a cop’s attention. We called it in, confirmed backup was en-route and went inside to investigate.

Within the hanger, was a group of 9 dudes, some of which were holding the female down while others were spraying her with fire extinguishers. We later determined that this was some sort of ritual observed by some air crews to “honor” a person who was leaving for another assignment.

At the time however, it bore a striking resemblance to assault.

Chris ordered them to halt, which to their credit they did and then asked just what the hell was going on here.

The presumed leader of he group had no doubt just finished reading the afore mentioned book and replied with “Mind your own business, bitch!”

Now, someone telling a couple of guys with badges and guns to mind their own business is usually a strong indicator of the presence and consumption of alcoholic beverages. Adding the intensifier “bitch” indicates that alcohol consumption has taken place to the point where the lines of acceptable behavior have become as blurry as the picture of Chris’s cousin.

Indeed, one corner of the hanger contained a makeshift bar with tables, chairs, a barbecue grill and a keg of Germany’s finest brew.

Now, I have been called all kinds of things by all kinds of people and was seasoned enough to recognize that this was more likely just a case of “beer bravery.” Hoping to snap everyone out of it, I cranked up the “Sergeant Tevir” voice and ordered everyone to cease and line up against the wall.

Rather than comply, the leader of the group grabbed up an extinguisher and charged at us, spraying for all he was worth. Just as the fellow got into range, Chris whipped out his can of mace (not the sissy pepper spray you seen nowadays, but real-deal, 1993 vintage, military-grade, tear gas) and sprayed our attacker, square in the face.

Watching their leader fall to the ground screaming while trying to claw his eyes out had a rather chilling effect on the rest of the group who set an Olympic record for lining up against the nearest available wall.

While I attended to their fallen leader, which mostly consisted of handcuffing his dumb ass, Chris separated the “victim” and was questioning her about the doings that were transpiring.

I guided our hero to a conveniently place eye-wash station and managed to give us both a fairly decent wash-down. As a side note, I had to go to the gym, shower and change uniforms from getting CS gas all over me while helping the guy.

Just as I finished nearly drowning the group leader, our backup arrived and we spent the next few hours taking statements and getting all the he-said, she-said sorted out.

Now, I was all for writing this up as a plain-Jane, alcohol-got-the-best-of-someone report and letting the First Sergeants do their thing. I pretty much figured that getting a snoot full of mace, followed by nearly drowning would be punishment sufficient enough to deter behavior of this sort in the future. I know that getting just a little mace on me was enough to make me not want to go out of my way for a face-full of the stuff.

But, no.

According to our Ops Officer, including the word “bitch” in our report warranted the use of an “OBSCENE” cover sheet for our reports.

99.99% of the time, incident reports made their way up the chain of command without a great deal of hubbub. Every commander had some low-level functionary whose job it was to read these and pass on anything of particular interest, but using the “OBSCENE” cover sheet ensured that everyone who came within 3 meters of it would read it and (more often than not) attach comments.

Which had to be replied to, depending on who was making the comment and whether or not they could make things difficult for our commander. Which meant that for the next three weeks, Chris and I were summoned to our commander’s office to “clarify” something in our reports.

The commander of the mace recipient (Major Hablish) was a particular bother. His contention was that we should have indeed minded our own business as if seeing some woman being bodily dragged away by three guys was something fairly common on the flightline. He and our commander (Major Rayburn) played memo-tag daily. Note that the this sent the entire package up our chain of command, then down theirs, back up their’s and down ours. This meant that it crossed our Group Commander’s desk every day, sometimes twice a day, depending on the intra-base mail system.

The Colonel finally had enough and summoned everyone even remotely involved to his conference room. Here he made things uncomfortable for everyone (everyone but us) for an hour or so.

I’ve often wondered if it would’ve been simpler to just shoot the guy. I know by the time the Colonel got done with everyone, I was seriously contemplating it.