Molly's Best - Gatorade

March 2015

Signal 8 Endangered

Missing Adult Endangered

People run away from home, all the time. Sometimes they just snap and want to get away from the troubles and toils of life. Other times, they just go on a mini-self vacation and decide it best not to inform anyone of their travel plans. Often, people just leave home and forget what time they told their loved ones they would be home, staying out a bit past their curfew. What makes them, endangered, is what they say before they go.

For instance, if you leave the house and say to your wife, “I hate you! Life isn't worth living anymore! I'm leaving and if you call the cops, I swear to god they'll have to kill me before I go with them anywhere!” you're probably in for a rough night in a psychiatric facility. We call these threats, Death by Cop, and they are very real. On rare occasion, when someone becomes suicidal, if they do not have the courage to take their own life they will force that act upon another. Cops are a prime target.

There's a rationalization in their minds which convinces them, “...if I rush a cop with a knife or point a gun at the police, they'll shoot me dead. Then I won't have to do it myself.”

Today, a man left his home and told his wife he was going to get so high, he was going to overdose and die. He was sick and tired of fighting with his wife he left and decided death was a better option. The missing adult (we'll call him George) and his wife (Stephanie) had been driving down from Georgia this last week and were headed to south Florida, stopping to see many different families in many different cities. According to the Stephanie, they had been fighting their entire trip.

When they finally arrived in my county, George had had enough. He got into an argument with his wife one last time and told her he was done; done with her, done with life, done with the struggles of just getting by. George warned her, if she called the police, they'd have to kill him... he'd make them kill him.

We searched for George for many hours and had absolutely no luck in finding him. We were looking for a very specific car, a dark silver Dodge Dakota with a broken windshield. Unfortunately, when you're looking for something so specific, you begin to suffer the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. What was once so rare is now everywhere. I probably came across a hundred silver Dodge Dakota's in the hours we spent trying to find the one he was occupying.

Right near the end of our search, before we finished looking and went back to patrolling and responding to calls for service, I happened upon the exact vehicle I was looking for. As I passed the vehicle, I was on the phone with my sergeant and I told him, “Holy crap, I think I just passed George in his Dodge.” I slammed on my breaks and watched as George creeped up to the road, from a gas station parking lot, and stopped. I was watching him form my rearview mirror and he was watching me through his passenger window.

He began to back up.

I threw my car around and drove into the parking lot like a bat out of hell, pinning his vehicle in between mine and another. I exited the car and immediately took an aggressive stance with George. He was still in his car, but he had no where to go. I called over the radio for immediate assistance and for those units responding to come, just a little quicker than usual. George stared at me wide eyed, thinking to himself, “How the hell did you find me?”

I walked up to George and asked him to hang his hands out the window. He complied. We spoke for a short time and George assured me, he wasn't going to make me kill him. What a relief! George explained why he left his house and why he said some of the nasty things he said to his wife. It was an understandable story. Few people in the world enjoy being yelled at, and George had just had enough. He needed to get out for a few hours.

I told George, under no circumstances, was he going to go back to jail, as long as he didn't do anything stupid from the moment I told him this to the moment we were done speaking with him. George said he understand and was grateful. It would seem we both spoke far too soon.

As soon as my backup arrived, I asked George to step out of his vehicle so he could come talk to the deputy which originated the report from his wife. George was reluctant, but agreed to step out and talk with the deputies on scene. As he exited the vehicle, I asked him if he had any weapons on him. All he had in his hands was an orange Gatorade bottle, half full. I conducted a quick pat down of his waistband, to assure myself he wasn't concealing a weapon of any kind.

The moment I was behind George, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a red pill bottle, dumped the contents of the pill bottle into his Gatorade, and shook it quite violently. “God damnit, George!” was all I could muster. I quickly grabbed the bottle out of George's hands and walked away from the commotion. I heard in my peripheral George being handcuffed and detained. I warned him, “...as long as he didn't do anything stupid...”

I poured the contents of the bottle onto the ground over a slab of gray concrete. I immediately saw what looked like little pink crystals floating in the liquid which I had just poured onto the ground. I put the crystals onto a paper bag and did my best to dry them out, hoping they wouldn't dissolve in the process. In as quick thinking as I could, I weighed the crystals and immediately began testing them to identify what they were. Methylenedioxy-Methamphetamine, commonly referred to as MDMA or Molly.

Later, I spoke with George about what happened. George told me he knew we were going to find it anyway and apologized for breaking our agreement. I told him we were going to do everything we could to get him some help, but what he did was just downright stupid. He agreed. It didn't stop him, however, from continuing down this line of idiotic reasoning. He began to get hot and sweaty and started rubbing his face against the partition separating the front of a squad car from the rear.

If you're reading this, and there's a possibility you might ever commit a crime and find yourself in the back of a squad car, don't touch the partition. That is where countless bad people slam and rub their faces... leaving traces of god only knows what on the back of that glass. In George's case, he got what was left over from a recent pepper spraying incident.

Needless to say, he was not enjoying coming down from a MDMA high with pepper spray on his face.