End of Shift

The night shift briefing was underway when dispatch interrupted.

Shots fired just down the street from the police station. The address was well known to me. It was the house where Tyrone Moton lived and had been steadily infesting his community with crack cocaine sales for a year or so.

I was the first to arrive on scene. The front door was standing open, and just inside Tyrone was writhing on the floor, blood gushing from a bullet wound in the back of his head.

I didn’t clear the house or verify if the shooter was still there. Instead I went to Tyrone and knelt on the floor, applying pressure to his wound with one hand with my sidearm in the other in case the shooter came back or was still in the house.

In a few minutes paramedics arrived ahead of my fellow officers.

One took over saving Tyrone’s life, freeing me up to search the rest of the house to ensure no active threat was on the premises.

I remember having to grip my Beretta and Streamlight more firmly than usual because my hands and arms were slick from finger tips to elbows with Tyrone’s blood. The knees of my pants were soaked in it as well.

I cleared the house and radioed in for my back up to search the outside vicinity for suspects and evidence. Then I stood by as paramedics stabilized Tyrone and moved him to the ambulance.

I secured the crime scene and after CID arrived to take over evidence collection and investigation I went to the hospital to see if Tyrone was still alive.

Somehow he survived. He recovered with moderate permanent brain damage but was able to function physically.

Tyrone never saw his assailant. He had been attacked from behind. With some of his brain matter on the outside of his skull and blood spurting from the wound, the only person he remembered and associated with his traumatic near-death experience was me: the cop who showed up and acted immediately to save his life.

But he didn’t understand that. In his now scrambled brain, he thought that I was the person who shot him. He knew me well, because I had arrested him multiple times for crimes ranging from crack dealing to aggravated assault.

But from then on anytime Tyrone told the story of how he came to be disabled he would tell people that he was shot in the head by a dirty cop, Officer Timothy Frazier.

And some people believed him.

Long after I left law enforcement I would still get a call from law enforcement officials to warn me that Tyrone Moton had called the local department and threatened to kill Officer Frazier for shooting him.

I never considered those as credible threats and never considered pressing charges. After all, Tyrone truly believed I shot him, and he was physically and mentally incapable of carrying out his threat.

I was, however, a bit more hyper vigilant for a few days after each of those threats in case any of Tyrone’s family or friends might decide to do the job for him.

This is just one story from my eight year career as a cop. It’s one of many that a lot of my family and friends have never heard.

It’s one I decided to tell on social media now because those who should be asking their family and friends who are current and former law officers about their views and experience will not.

Instead they are joining the popular movement and assuming there’s a massive amount of systemic racism in law enforcement. It’s easy to be “courageous and take a stand” when popular opinion is on your side.

It takes true grit to tell the truth when the truth is unpopular.

The other officers serving with me would have done what I did and made every effort they reasonably could to save Tyrone’s life.

They go far beyond protecting just the innocent.