Officer Alex watches the news and has some teary thoughts
“Oh yeah, he really got under that one,” I said while watching the news from a table in a local Chili’s with a few of my co-workers. Lunchtime is a real thing to cops, and we needed the break. Radios were on, but we were tuned out it’s safe to say.
“Whaddya mean?” Ortega responded. “He didn’t even come close.”
“Look at the spread he got! Really made best use of the wind. Most guys just shoot straight in but a lateral shot creates a curtain, you know? Not some little cloud.”“Yeah,” Ortega continued, “but he didn’t hit anyone with it.”
I’d tried to ignore him, but it wasn’t going to last. He was talking about pegging someone with the actual CS gas round, which of course was verboten in our line of work, but ‘Tega had this bizarre knack for making contact with the bad guys when we had to pop smoke into a house.
It wasn’t intentional on his part; the very first time he was handed the launcher he fired it through a small second story bathroom window with a curtain—he couldn’t have seen that’s where the guy was hiding—and next thing you know, the angry ginger that had barricaded himself inside his house after treating his wife to an especially aggravated beating was stumbling out dripping snot, his eyes squeezed shut, and awkwardly trying to simultaneously reach over his shoulder and around his back at the same time to touch the place that was going to soon be hosting a most spectacular bruise.
We were astonished, and ‘Tega drank for free that night I can tell you.
Since then? It’s just been a gift he has that others very much don’t want to share. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s the ultimate bill to hand to someone for playing an extremely stupid games and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me laugh (bless their hearts), but it’s not a report I’d like to have to write.
“Yeah, that’s what he should have done. He should have fired a canister into an immigrant’s bean on national television,” I said sarcastically.
“There’s no ‘beer summit’ for that kind of thing man," I said, leaning in. “You wanna get prosecuted, man? Because that’s how you get prosecuted.”
He actually got quiet.
“I’m just saying,” he muttered.
Tear gas, formally known as a lachrymator agent or lachrymator (from the Latin lacrima, meaning "tear") as well as my favorite name “mace,” is a chemical weapon that causes severe eye and respiratory pain and skin irritation.
In the eye specifically, it stimulates the nerves of the lacrimal gland to produce tears. Nothing has been more aptly named in my experience, and I’m not just talking about the colloquial name “mace”; I’m referring to the “weapon” part as well, because like waterboarding, if you’ve ever experienced it you’d agree pretty quickly.
That said, do I consider it appropriate to use on families? Of course not. But when storming the gates to the point that people are impaling themselves on the fences after having passed uniformed officers there to begin the asylum process?
Yeah. There’s a time and place for less-lethal and this definitely qualifies. Bring your kids to storm the literal gates to a nation, don’t blame the guards for making you all cry. Period.
That’s the thing really. What I like about “mace” doesn’t make me a monster; it makes me a nice guy. A darn nice guy, actually. Let’s just pretend for a moment that you’re not allowed to break the law (bear with me), and that I am tasked with preventing you from doing so: Do you want me to stop you with my hands or my gun…? Or juice that makes you cry? ‘Zackly.
It’s a tough world out there, but cause and effect is a real thing. Speaking of which? “Quit moping, brother. Here, have some more salsa.”
But alas…Officer Edwin Ortega would eat no more. Unless, perhaps, he’d like some mace on his nachos? Ah-HAH!
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.