One of the most dreaded calls to respond to in law enforcement is a suicide call. These calls are dangerous because some people will try to force the police to be aggressive by being disrespectful, defiant and even attack police when they show up. Often they are injured or dead when we arrive. I have been to plenty of such calls and every time the situation has been extremely tense.
One day while working, I was dispatched to a possible suicide attempt in progress. We were told that the parents of a young man had strong reasons to believe that their son was going to commit suicide. Things became a little weird when the next bit of information was given to us. Apparently, the parents feared that their son would commit suicide because they found a knife and a dead chicken underneath his bed.
The parents met me as soon as I arrived on scene. They asked me to speak with their son, Harry, to see what was going on. I walked over to him and asked the obvious question if he was ok. Harry looked as though I asked the most silly question and responded with a “yes”. I then asked a more blunt question; “do you want to hurt yourself or others”?. Harry looked at me even more confused and said “no man”. Finally, I just came out and asked him “Why do you have a dead chicken and knife underneath your bed?” Harry’s face had the look of a person being asked the dumbest question and then he said “oh I’m a witch. That’s for my spell.”
As soon as Harry answered many follow-up questions entered my mind such as; things to say like: “don’t you mean wizard? What does the spell do? Where did you get the chicken from? How do you manage the bad smell? Where did you learn this?” But I decided to keep the curiosity to myself and stayed focused on the task entrusted to me. You see, my years in law enforcement have taught me that the more questions you ask about stuff that doesn’t involve the police the more of a mess you make. So instead I looked Harry straight in the eye and said to him “put the knife back, throw the chicken away and stop scaring your parents.” I then left the place.
A few months later I received another call to Harry’s neighborhood about someone checking packages by people’s front door. When I got to the neighborhood, I saw a person in the distance matching the description of the suspected package thief. He saw me and ran right to me. As he came closer, I realized it was Harry. When Harry got closer he said, “officer thank goodness you are here I need your help.” I asked him what’s wrong and he said “I had some packages that I was told were delivered to my house but when I went outside to check they weren’t there. So I checked all my neighbors' houses to see if the delivery man took my packages to the wrong house but I couldn’t find them. That means that someone else took them.” I looked at Harry and said “first things first “ you can’t go to people’s houses to look for your stuff that’s wrong”. You also scared a lot of your neighbors and what you did is trespassing. Now tell me what is missing so I can do a report on it.” Harry then took out his phone and showed me the two packages that he ordered. The first one was a magic ring that was “blessed” by a witch for about 12 dollars. The second was a spellbook for 8 dollars. After seeing the items I looked at Harry and said “yeah I’m not doing a report on this.” Harry stared at me as if to say why not?. I then said “Harry no one would steal this garbage. Your parents threw it away because they don’t want you doing Magic.” PoorHarry hung his head and mumbled “oh…. I’ll go home and talk to them. Sorry for the trouble.”
I am pretty sure that his parents convinced him to stop doing magic, because that was the last time I’ve heard from “Harry the witch”.
Originally posted on my blog (https://ourstoriesfrombehindthebadge.wordpress.com/)
