Hero To Zero 2nd edition (6 page)

He was waiting for her to come home, drinking the entire time. Eventually (and fortunately, as he said later), he passed out. His wife came home and found him, the note, and the loaded handgun.

She immediately called the police. Lance was charged with attempted homicide. Eventually a plea deal was reached, and his charges were dropped. But he lost his job, and the chief lost his exemplary patrolman. In the blink of an eye, Lance went from Patrolman of the Year to being unable to get a job anywhere as a cop ever again.

I FIRST MET RAY ZELLER
on a report of a “beer run” at a local grocery store. Late one night we received a report that a group of young men had entered one of the larger retail grocery stores on the north side of the city. They scattered when they entered the store, as was a standard tactic for shoplifters; that way, any store security could not possibly follow them all. They’d agreed to meet back up at a beer display, and each was supposed to grab a case of beer and run back to the car. Ta-da! Instant beer run! What made this beer run different was that the initial report came in saying that shots had been fired.

I arrived with several other units and began to investigate the incident. The investigation revealed that a guy who worked at the store as a stocker had realized what was happening and taken it personally.

He had recently purchased a Glock .45-caliber handgun and had kept it concealed while he worked. He said this was for his “protection.” He claimed that when he realized the group was stealing from the store, he positioned himself at the only exit and confronted them.

A brief struggle broke out, but he was outnumbered five-to-one, and the teenagers were able to get past him; one dropped a case of beer, but the others did not. The stocker gave chase and claimed that the carload of beer thieves shot a single gunshot at him as they drove away.

He felt that “for his own protection” he needed to fire back with his Glock .45…several times. He squeezed off four rounds, to be exact, as the suspects drove off. We found no witnesses who saw the beer thieves shoot at the stocker. The only other person to see the incident was another stocker, and he said that no shots were fired from the car at his co-worker.

Once we were done investigating, we all huddled up and hashed over the evidence. None of us believed that the stocker had been shot at. There was no need for the thieves to shoot at him, as they had already begun to escape. We all pretty much agreed that the stocker was a nut case, trigger-happy and looking to make a name for himself. We’d decided to arrest him when the night shift lieutenant showed up and wanted to be briefed on the incident.

We briefed him and he laughed and said, “It’s about time someone put the fear of God into these fucking thieves.” He told us to make no arrests, and let the county attorney sort this mess out.

Most of the cops present were not happy about this. Deadly force is nothing to joke about, and definitely not called for to stop a beer run. The lieutenant made it clear that he thought this was a case of street justice, and even went over to praise the stocker for his efforts. We all rolled our eyes and got back into our cars. Several hours of paperwork were in front of us to justify the lack of police action the lieutenant demanded.

Several years later, when the beer run call was a thing of the past, I was back in patrol and working nights. I was assigned a new officer to train, as his normal training officer had called in sick.

New guys had to be with trained and certified training officers. I’d reluctantly agreed to become an FTO (field training officer) to help train some of the chief’s new “super recruits” brought in to replace the old-guard veterans the chief had pushed out of the department. So the new guy showed up to ride with me and introduced himself as Ray Zeller.

He immediately rubbed me the wrong way. He knew everything there was to know, and always had a smart-ass comment for anything I tried to teach him. I’d been involved a shooting recently, and that was all he wanted to talk about. He asked all the usual stupid questions:
What was it like? Are you upset you didn’t kill the guy? Do you have any nightmares?
Jesus, this was going to be a long night.

I was beginning to wonder if the new guy had made his training officer sick of work or if the guy truly was sick. My gut feeling was that he just needed a break from this dipshit.

I made up my mind to try to make the best of the night, and started to pick the new guy’s brain. I always tried to get a feeling for a trainee’s life experience and what he or she brought to the job that would help out on the streets. He liked the idea that I was asking him about himself, and started to talk and talk and talk some more. I figured I would need a drink when this shift was over.

He was blabbing on and on about himself, and suddenly he said that he, too, had been involved in a shooting. I was thinking that maybe he was in a drive-by at a party, or that he was possibly a reformed gang member. (Our department had recently hired several allegedly reformed gang members. The wisdom of these hiring’s I would never understand.) I asked him if he had been in a gang?

“No,” he said, “I wasn’t a gang member.”

He then proceeded to tell me how he had stopped an armed robbery several years ago and had gotten in a shootout with the suspects. He said that he felt that his actions that night were the reason the chief had hired him.

“Oh, yeah? Really? Where did this happen?”

He began to recall …the night of the beer run shooting. Only this time, several shots were fired at him. He fired back in self-defense, and only after he had no other choice. He said the “stupid cops did nothing” that night and “it made me want to join the police force and make a difference.”

I was instantly pissed off. I said, “Hey, motherfucker, I was one of those stupid cops that night, and if we had not been ordered to let you slide you would’ve been arrested. So tell me again how many rounds were shot at you? Was it ONE like you said that night, or several like you are claiming now?”

Silence.

“Look, we’re done here. I don’t know how the fuck you got hired, but you don’t belong here. I was there that night, and you don’t try to kill people for stealing beer, asshole! You sit there the rest of the night and keep your fucking mouth shut.”

He argued that he was in the right that night and that I was prejudiced by the event. He claimed that I had not witnessed the robbery, so I didn’t know what really happened. We rode the rest of the night in silence.

I recommended that Ray Zeller be let go. He shouldn’t have been working as a cop with that mentality. But he was exactly what the chief was looking for—6’2”, a pretty boy, and he’d do whatever the brass told him to do. There was no doubt in my mind that he was a lawsuit waiting to happen. The brass did not get rid of Zeller, however. He stayed around, and almost immediately rumors started on the streets about him—and the streets never lie. Well…almost never.

Several years passed, and Zeller became a seasoned patrolmen. His cocky attitude had blossomed into all-out dickhead. He was married to one woman and yet having a child with another, one of the dispatchers.

A friend of mine described him as having the “golden penis syndrome”—meaning that he thought his dick was a gift to every woman he met. Maybe it was; I don’t care to know. There were new stories floating around almost monthly about Zeller beating up people, degrading people he stopped or arrested.

This is the kind of shit that makes cops’ jobs even harder, planting seeds of hatred and mistrust among the public for law enforcement in general. But no one would ever come forward and make a formal complaint.

They’d talk on the streets, and word got around to a few of us that Zeller was out of control. But there was not much we could do without a victim who would come forward. We listened and kept an eye out, but Zeller was careful never to fuck anyone up with a witness present.

Eventually the administration did have enough of Zeller’s bullshit, and they started to prepare a file on him, preparing to fire his ass. The clock was ticking for Zeller’s police career.
Tick-tock, motherfucker, karma is coming, and coming hard
.

One day a few months later, Zeller was at a mall in a nearby city with his new wife/baby momma-dispatcher. They were out celebrating Valentine’s Day. He was taking his wife out to profess his love for her with dinner and a night out. Zeller, as was his usual habit, was armed with his Glock .45.

He was in cop mode 24/7/365. He felt that he always had to be armed “just in case.” Zeller wanted to be sure that if anything went down, he was there to lend a hand and “make a difference.”

Vlad Urlich lived near the mall, and had survived the ethnic purges in his home country of Serbia. He had survived—but barely, and was deeply scarred by the violence of the ethnic cleansing he had witnessed.

He was depressed, and having difficulty acclimating to the United States. His family was concerned about him, but they didn’t know what to do to ease his mental anguish. Nothing they tried was helping.

While Ray Zeller was eating dinner with his wife, Vlad entered the mall with a loaded shotgun and began picking off people one by one. He was randomly strolling through the mall, shooting and killing anyone who came within shotgun range. It was an unbelievable scenario for most people.

People were screaming and running for their lives. Zeller heard the gunshots from the restaurant, and told his wife to stay put. He was armed, and finally his time had come to make a difference. He calmly walked out into the hallway, Glock in one hand and his badge in the other.
BOOM! BOOM!
Vlad dropped another screaming victim to his death. Zeller cautiously crept up the mall walkways, looking for the shooter.

The local police had already been called and were just arriving. The local SWAT team had several members on duty, and they had their gear in their vehicles. When they arrived, they coordinated deployment, and entered ready to take down the now-confirmed killer on a rampage.

The on-duty sergeant also entered the mall to assist the SWAT team members. He met Zeller in the hallway. Their meeting was videoed by an anonymous witness. On the video, you can see Zeller calling out to the sergeant that he himself was an off-duty cop, in the hope that he wouldn’t be shot.

The reality of being the guy who “makes a difference” hit Zeller hard. He was scared shitless and terrified. The sergeant asked Zeller where the shooter was; Zeller cried out in a whining tone, “I don’t know, I don’t know!”

The sergeant rolled his eyes, turned his back on Zeller, and headed towards an open common area of the mall. He assumed that Zeller was following and had his back in case he got attacked from behind. The video recorded this, and then
BOOM!
Vlad had just shot another victim. The video clearly showed Ray turning and running from the scene of the shooting.

Just like that, “Billy bad ass” turned tail and ran, leaving the sergeant and the rest of the people in the mall to fend for themselves. His time to be tested had come; his true colors were shown on the video as he ran
from
the shooting and killing, while the sergeant ran
towards
it.

The next day, Zeller made national news as the “hero cop” who stopped the mall massacre. He claimed that he was there and acted to “save his buddies.” The media eats this shit up. Rarely do they have this kind of cooperation from a cop who has been involved in a shooting.

Ray Zeller was present at several press conferences in full uniform, with his baby-momma wife present. The chief was also standing next to him, basking in the limelight as well. For the media, this kind of thing is a wet dream come true.

Zeller was photogenic, outgoing, talkative, gregarious, and really liked the attention they were giving him. Most cops hate the media, really dislike attention, and severely mistrust reporters, but not Zeller. He recounted a bullshit story that omitted any real detail about what he did to stop the shooter. When he was asked point-blank what he did to stop the shooting, he replied that he “did what any cop would do, he helped his buddies.”

The media ate this up. Zeller made the TV talk-show circuit, appearing on Good Morning America and Larry King Live to tell lies about his heroism.

The reality is that the video shows him running away, but the mainstream media turned a blind eye to this fact. They had their good-looking poster-boy hero cop, and he liked the attention, answering any question they asked.