Menopausal Mountie

Getting a reputation

Some reputations are built on fact, some on fiction and some on both. Here are two stories that contributed to mine:

Randy and I were called to a community at the edge of our coverage area for a complaint of two aggressive Rottweilers running loose. We signed rifles out of the gun locker, loaded them and headed out. Neither of us were thrilled about the possibility of shooting a dog, so we said little on the 45-minute drive.

In the ensuing years, I would be called upon to put down deer on the sides of roads after they were hit by vehicles and still suffering but that was different. On one such occasion, I had to stop traffic to put down a deer in an intersection at suppertime. Moments after the fatal shot, some idiot got out of his car and hollered for me to hurry up and get it out of the way. There’s a word for a person like that. That word is asshole.

I was also called once for a moose, and I remember thinking on the drive there, “Dear God, let it be dead, dear God, let it be dead”. I got there and the moose was lying in the ditch and didn’t appear to be moving.

I had read in the RCMP Operations Manual about shot placement for various animals and I knew a moose required a shotgun slug, but that was the extent of my training. Moose are massive creatures and family folklore has one exacting revenge on my great uncle for wounding him while hunting. The bull had beat him out to the road and efficiently stomped on his car, crushing it. So, alone in the dark with my shotgun at the ready in my right hand, I threw several rocks with my left hand until I finally hit the poor beast. Getting no reaction meant I could get close enough to confirm he was dead and not suffering.

The only thing the Rottweilers were likely suffering from was an irresponsible owner, which made the drive and the pit of my stomach quite uncomfortable.

Thankfully, when we arrived a solution had been found. The owner voluntarily agreed to surrender his dogs to the animal control officer, and we were no longer needed. Randy and I left in much better spirits with all rifle rounds accounted for.

“We have to come up with a better story that this,” he said.

So, we did. Or more accurately, HE did. My job was to be the straight man. We got back to the detachment, came in through the back and put away the rifles.

“I know who’s coming duck hunting with me!”, Randy said when we got into the office. “You should have seen her! The dogs were both coming at her and she shouldered that rifle as cool as a cucumber!”

As the story spread, a few people came to ask how I was doing. I said I didn’t want to talk about it, and they’d leave after giving a knowing nod. By the end of the day, the entire detachment knew that I had done the unpleasant job with aplomb and had ice running through my veins. This new insight into my personality and skills was taken as gospel.

For the record, nobody was making light of killing dogs. I’ve worked in detachments where we laughed and in several where we didn’t. I’ll take the ones with gallows humour any day. And Randy’s whopper of a tale reeled everyone in, hook line and sinker. The best laugh was when he told them it was made up.

But obviously not everyone was there for the reveal. I got called into the Staff Sergeant’s office two days later and was reprimanded for not filling out the forms to document that I had discharged a weapon.

“But I didn’t, Pete.”

“Didn’t what?”

“I didn’t discharge a weapon.”

“When you shot the dogs, Sandra.”

“I didn’t shoot the dogs.”

“Well, who shot the dogs?”

“Nobody. Nobody shot the dogs. When we got there, the owner surrendered them. They went with the control officer.”

Pete sat there looking at me.

“Pete, do you want me to get Randy?”

“Yeah. Tell Randy to come see me.”

The next fall, I was asked how I made out duck hunting. The story faded but my reputation didn’t.

***

The other story that contributed to my reputation involved a physical altercation of thankfully minor proportions. I was in the first weeks of my career, working closely with my field coach. One Friday night, we picked up two men for public intoxication and brought them back to the detachment to be put in cells for the night.

Despite what I was taught to do at Depot, the men were not handcuffed. My coach Dan was in charge, and I wouldn’t have considered voicing an opinion that we should do anything other than what he initiated. That’s just the way things were. Dan was an excellent coach.

By the time we got to the detachment, the pair in the back seat were getting mouthy and I was getting nervous. Dan took one man out of the back of the car and led him toward the side door of the building. I took the second man out of the back seat, consciously keeping him on my left, grabbing his right wrist with my right hand and holding his right upper arm with my left hand.

As we walked toward the door, I was going over in my mind what I would do if he tried something. And that’s when Dan and the other guy started scuffling and my guy raised his left fist and swung at me.

I’m not sure who was more surprised at what happened next, me or the three men. I did what I was trained to do. I threw my weight into pushing his upper arm away and down while yanking his wrist toward me and up. He ended up wedged against the brick exterior wall in an arm lock, not very happy about the whole thing. His bellow interrupted the other two and we made it to cells with no further issue.

The men were released the next morning, sober, apologetic and spreading a story that cemented my reputation. Unbeknownst to me, I knew jiu-jitsu or taekwondo and had flipped both of the men in some Jackie Chan inspired action sequence.

They were telling a good story about their run-in with the police, and I was grateful that the guy weighed 100 pounds soaking wet. It was the only hand to hand physical confrontation I had at that detachment. But it was epic, just ask the two guys.