At times of crisis, we cops fall back on our years of training, the learning that over time has become second nature to the professionals we have become. Before I was ten years old I knew I wanted to be a trooper. I had grown up in rural western Pennsylvania in a small village called Spring Church. It was rare that we would see police at all, but occasionally I would spot a Pennsylvania state trooper ride past the house.
I was in awe of the troopers, with their highly pressed uniforms, their breeches flared at the sides and tucked into polished black boots. They wore their flat-brim hats tilted forward over their eyes, the strap hitting their chins just beneath their lips. Then there was the gun: huge Smith & Wesson revolvers hung in holsters on their belts. To a young boy, they looked like cannons. And the troopers themselves seemed to be ten feet tall.
The few troopers I had met rarely smiled, but they were always kind and friendly at the same time. To a third grader at Sunnyside Elementary School, they were the good guys—the heroes. Who wouldn’t want to be a trooper? I pretty much made up my mind then that I was going to be a trooper, even if I had to go to Alaska to do it.
After graduating from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in December 1981, I was accepted into the Maryland State Police Academy and started my training in Pikesville, Maryland, in July 1982. At that time, the MSP still had a very robust, forward-looking Criminal Intelligence Division consisting of sworn troopers and civilian analysts. They tracked all kinds of groups, from organized crime to the Ku Klux Klan to motorcycle gangs.
In December of 1982 I graduated from the Maryland State Police Academy, fulfilling a lifelong dream. But there was little time to celebrate my finally becoming a trooper; I was sent immediately to Calvert County to work in uniform at the Prince Frederick Barrack. Prince Frederick was a full-service MSP barrack. And because the Calvert County sheriff’s department was so small (their officers went home at midnight), we also served as the police for the county.
The Prince Frederick Barrack was a great place to learn to be a cop, but living in Calvert County sucked if you were a young, single trooper. About the only things there in those days were the Patuxent Naval Air Station and the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant. There were no movie theaters, and only one shopping center—at least it included a grocery store, a gym, and a couple of other stores. There was one McDonald’s and three High’s Dairy stores that closed at midnight. When you worked night patrol at Prince Frederick, you made sure you were on the road early enough to get to one of the High’s stores before it closed. Otherwise, it was a long night without coffee, sodas, or snacks.
My living arrangements did little to improve the dating scene. I was taken in by two senior troopers—Vonzell Ward and Joe Pruitt—who occupied a very large house all by themselves. The price was right—free. In fact, it was free for all of us. It was common in those days for absentee landowners in Calvert County to get troopers to live on their properties rent free in exchange for the comfort of knowing that there was a marked state police car, otherwise known as a “roller,” parked out front. The three of us lived in a modern, two-story, five-bedroom home that had been built on the foundation of a turn-of-the-century manor.
Vonzell and Joe were great roommates, but also great tutors. They taught me about respect for the community, respect for the job, respect for other troopers. From these guys I learned that the MSP was a family. Every trooper, on the road or otherwise, would be there for me if needed. And I was expected to be there for them in return—an obligation that continued even through a trooper’s death. The Death Relief Fund was a sacred part of being a Maryland state trooper. Every time a current or retired trooper died, every other trooper would contribute five dollars to the fund. This was a way for the surviving family to immediately receive cash to deal with all the things that go along with the death of a loved one.
The Death Relief Fund was simple in the abstract, but more complicated in day-to-day troopering. Upon completing my field training, I had to make one last check ride with my corporal before I was cut loose. Corporal Dave Cameron was not one to suffer fools. After spending about six hours driving him around, making traffic stops, and handling every call for service that came over the radio, I had just completed a traffic stop. When I got back in the car, Corporal Cameron didn’t look happy. He stared at me for what seemed an eternity. “Give me five dollars,” he finally said.
“Sir?”
“Give me five goddamn dollars right now. I want a refund.”
Confused, I stared back. I didn’t know what to say.
“If you keep making traffic stops the way you’re doing them, you’re gonna get killed. I don’t want to have to pay five dollars because you’re fucking stupid, Boot.”
I reached for my wallet and produced the five dollars. I had only about eight dollars to my name at the time, but there was no way in hell I was going to refuse. Cameron snatched the bill out of my hand and shoved it in his pocket. “We ask for troopers,” he muttered, “and they send us dumb fucking kids who’ll get themselves killed before the shine is off their damn boots.”
At the academy we were taught how to safely make a traffic stop, which entailed watching the people in the stopped car while keeping an eye on the traffic coming up behind you. It was no secret that some people got a kick out of swerving close enough to the trooper to knock the Stetson off his or her head, and of course there were drunk drivers who were attracted to the police lights and would drive off the road and smack into the police car.
What they didn’t teach us was how to do all these things if we were left-handed. Corporal Cameron was left-handed, same as me, and he had to learn this outside the academy. That day he passed those lessons on to me. They involved parking at an offset angle to protect myself—and the other driver—from oncoming traffic; that angle also gave me a place behind the engine block to take cover if the stopped driver decided to pull a weapon on me. Finally, I learned to sidle up to the stopped car with my right side to the driver’s window—and then to turn and position myself by his rearview mirror, with my gun side toward his car.
These were lessons I never forgot, and they probably saved my life more times than I realize. Also, Corporal Cameron helped me understand the fine balance between doing the job with respect for others while never forgetting that at any time someone might try to kill me. The job was dangerous, a sobering lesson. Yet despite that, it was a job that fit me perfectly.