Ramblings of a Quiet Rebel: 2019

I reread this recently and decided I needed to put it on my blog. My motivation is not self aggrandizement but it struck me how well my nephew captured the moments.
Gus Drake

March 7, 2003

English 101

Valentine

The Man Behind the Badge

               My uncle is not a man to be trifled with.  Some people

hate him.  Some see him as their savior and friend.  Others see him as an executioner at a hanging.  We’ve all gone through it.  You see those flashing lights or hear the siren and wonder what’s going on.  Sometimes you’re on the latter end and you’re sitting there in your car.  You just got pulled over and you’re thinking, “Oh crap.  I’m

screwed.”  The guy that walks up to your car is my uncle.  His

name is Sergeant Clair Walker.  He’s been a Boise policeman for 14years.  Serving four of those years as a police sergeant.  He’s a

Fleet Commander and a certified Trainer.  He’s a man of with the

height of 6’5”, average build, crisp gray hair, and a smile that he

flashes when he’s happy.

               He’s a man of confidence and character.  He has an almost fearful air about him that commands respect and at the same time

offers security.  He didn’t begin his career as a cop though.  He

started Twin Falls in a camera and stereo equipment store.  He was highly underpaid because he was a great salesman.  He made his

employer a lot of money.  Eventually he got a job selling life

insurance and hated it.  He only lasted about two months.  He

thought he’d try his hand as a car salesman so he went to a car

dealership in Twin.  He had no experience, no knowledge of the

business.  He was sitting in the room with the interviewers when

one of them stopped, looked at him, and said, “You’re Hal Walker’s boy aren’t ya?”  He said that he was and they told him that he

could start tomorrow.  Apparently this man had been in Junior

Chamber of Commerce with my Grandpa and didn’t particularly

like him.  He respected him though and that’s what counted.  My

Uncle was successful as a car salesman but that’s really not what he wanted to do.  He happen to sell the Chief of police a car and they started talking and he offered him a job as an officer.  He did that

for about three years.  It took him about that long to realize that

Twin was really a dead place so he moved on.  He had the

opportunity to go back to school where he studied law and was

almost a judge.  He knew then that he really wanted to get into law enforcement.  He was hired here in Boise and has been here ever

since.

               He was successful as a young cop.  He took more people

to jail than anybody else.  He didn’t let anybody get away with

anything.  When he brought someone in he brought them in on

everything.  The deputies down at the jail called him the trashman

and would tease him about what kind of trash he’d bring in on any given day.  When someone got taken in by him the other cops

referred to the guy as ‘Walkerized’.  From there he moved on to

train various cops and the cops said that after the trainee was done he was ‘Clairified’.  Everyone loves my Uncle. He knows everyone on the police force and everyone loves him.  Everyone knows him mostly because of his involvement.  He loves to be active in things and likes to see results.  He uses his authority and to make life

better for the line cop.  He doesn’t do anything unless it’s going to benefit the average cop.  He makes sure they get the best training

and make sure that they are well supplied.  The Chief of Police is

trying to put him in as captain but he told him that he was just

having too much funny as Sergeant.

               I had the opportunity to ride with him in his car on a

couple of occasions.

              One night it was really slow.  He was just cruising around and listening to the radio to hear of any crazy event so he could

show me some excitement.  I was just happy to be in the police car, riding in the front seat, and with my uncle. He would talk on his

radio, run license plates, and analyze his surroundings.  After an

almost uneventful evening he stopped to get gas.  With the gas he

got a free car wash so he decided to run the car through the wash.  When the wash was done he pulled out.  All of a sudden he flips

the lights and siren on and just peels out onto the ride.  I’m thinking “Finally!  I’m gonna see some excitement!  Maybe it’s a murder in progress, attempted rape, fistfight.  Maybe there’s some drug deals going down that we have to break up.”  He’s pushing 70, 80, and

my curiosity peaks.  So I ask him where were going in such a hurry.  He looks at me with a shrug and say, “Nowhere...Just drying the

car.”

               On the second occasion he picked me up in his

customized car.  As a Sergeant he can have almost any car he wants so it’s customized to his needs.  On the outside it’s a normal police car.  Upon close inspection you see a Harley Decal on the hood of

the trunk and the words ‘Field Commander’ printed on the side.

Inside the car is filled with the sound of numbers, codes, and

interesting conversations between the dispatchers and the officers.  My uncle has a computer mounted between the seats so he can run plates and receive instant messages and other communications.

Behind us is this glass divider and a shot gun mounted above.

Between the seats are the siren, radio, and other complicated

wiring.  I look my uncle over.  He has 2 cell phones, a radio, and a computer.  At one point he was driving, talking on his cell phone,

typing on his computer, and looking at the other cell phone to see

who was calling on that one.  He was in his element.  With a little

coaxing he starts into a few different stories.

               “I had a guy...again, most of these are sad and they are

just funny to cops because when you’re a cop you have to have a

sense of humor just to survive, and so a lot of these are like, you

know, we have a lot of morbid humor.  We go to this house and we find this guy dead and he’s sitting in one of these chairs that has

rollers on the front of it so you can roll around.  I guess that’s how he got around; he couldn’t walk anymore so he’d roll around in this chair.  So, he was an alcoholic and he was also a smoker.  What

he’d done is that he’d been drinking so much he had passed out and he was wearing a polyester shirt, and the polyester shirt ignited

from his cigarette.  So, it didn’t really burn him but all the fumes

from the polyester, because it’s oil based, you know, stuff,

asphyxiated him.  Just his shirt was burnt.  His skin was singed just a little bit but just his shirt was burnt.  His shirt actually.... you

know, the fire went out on the shirt but the fumes from the shirt just asphyxiated him, killed him.  He was wearing an Oakland A’s baseball cap on backwards and embroidered on the back it said

‘‘LUCKY’.  (He laughs)  We had a lot of fun with that.  In fact, me and my buddy were cracking so many jokes that the detective that was on scene, who’s been a homicide detective forever and has his skin this thick (he measures out about five inches with his fingers), finally told us to shut up.  He said ‘That’s enough. You guys need

to knock it off.’  Because we were just...I can’t even remember all

the jokes we told because he’s wearing this hat and it was

embroidered ‘LUCKY’, on there.  What was sad is that we found a letter and some pictures from his daughter saying, ‘Until you get

your act together.  I don’t want you to come see your grandchildren.  I don’t want you around’.  You just kind of find humor in funny

places.  Our job...there’s just some things that are really funny.

Now, you see enough dead bodies and you see enough carnage and you see enough people doing really horrible things to other people, it changes you, and unless you are really strong...I mean like my...

I’ve been married for 27 years now and that’s really unusual.

Usually cops have 3 or 4 divorces and the divorce rate is really high.  We actually lose, for every cop that’s killed in the line of duty,

there’s 4 that commit suicide.  So it’s a rough profession it’s not for everybody.  You certainly have to have the right type of personality because it’s definitely not for everyone.  You see it all; you see all

the nasty stuff.  You’re scared all the time you just control it with

training.  You just let the training take over.”

               He talked about fear.  He said, “Anybody who’s not

scared is stupid.”  He went to this house this one night.  A guy was threatening to commit suicide and he had a 44 magnum.  They had a perimeter on the house.  The guy was ex-military. They had the

house surrounded and were trying to talk to him and come up with a plan and all of a sudden they heard this BOOM!!, from the house.  The guy ran out and laid face down on the yard.  In the military, if the military police hear something like that they do a dynamic

entry.  They go in guns raised and everything gets shot up.  The guy must of thought that they were going to do that because he came

running out to the lawn.  He’d shot his computer monitor and just

blew it to hell.  He blew it to pieces and was just a jerk to the

police.

               Another time there was this guy down town.  He was the perfect example of a crazy looking guy.  He had long hair, crazy

face and eyes and everything.  He was wearing a flannel shirt tied

up like a loin cloth and on his feet he had blue and pink moon

boots.  He had this honkin’ knife.  He was downtown just raising

hell.  Two officers were already downtown.  One had her gun

pointed at him and the other had already sprayed him with the OC-

spray but it had no effect on him.  So my uncle pulls out his

expandable baton and when the guy’s attention was turned he just whacks him on this spot on his knee.  There’s a common nerve

mass on your knee that if you get hit on your leg will just buckle.

So he just nails him and the guy goes down.  So he hits him twice

and the guy just throws the knife away and is balling up on the

ground.  He told the cops, “Yeah, I’ve been sitting up on the

mountain just looking at the sun.”  My uncle’s like, “Yeah, we’ll

find you another place to stay.”

               Another story he tells me is about bravery.  “The bravest

thing I’ve ever seen is when out off on Wildwood there’s this curve and a canal right there.  There were these two guys who had been

out drinking and took that corner too fast, rolled, and had landed

themselves upside down in that canal.  The driver was dead but the passenger was alive.  So two of my officers climbed down there to pry the door open to try and get the guy out.  The canal was so

narrow that if the car tipped just a little the door would have shut

trapping them in there. They climbed in there anyway and got the

guy out.  It was a pretty amazing feat.  Many times there are times where you’re thrust into situation where you have to be brave. You engage.  You react.  Those events happen no matter what, but

bravery is when you do something despite that.  Those two guys

didn’t have to climb into that car.  The firemen have all this fancy

equipment that they can use to cut cars apart and pry open doors.

Those guys engaged without thinking about stuff that.  So I think

that’s really bravery.  When you engage instead of reacting.

Especially when you wouldn’t be criticized if you didn’t.”

               He seems amused with his own stories.  He’ll tell a story, smile real big, and then tell the funny part.  He then gets this sad

somber look on his face and tells the background of the story and

it's consequences.  These stories are tragedies and my uncle seems

to just take them in stride.  The sad part about the people is that

they are doing stupid things but have a whole complicated situation that envelops them.  Children, parents, and society as a whole are

affected by these random acts.  Families’ lives are cut short by a

drunk driver.  Kids go fatherless after a murder or a suicide.  Little ones never see their granddaddy after he asphyxiates himself and

dies.  It’s something that he’s faced with everyday. Those sort of

things don’t rattle him.  It’s the ability to control yourself though

you can’t control the things that are going on in the world around

you.  It’s the dignity and composure that shines through that allows him to do what he does.  It’s the respect that he’s earned as he

labors tirelessly to see that you are protected and it’s a burden that

he bears alone.  If you see my uncle though, he’ll razz you about

your backwards baseball cap or even do a little trash talking during basketball.  It’s the part of him that comes out and really lives.  It’s the Clair Walker in the Sergeant Clair Walker and it’s the part of