One of many US Army CID stories as remembered by me...If you (Dave or Bill) remember it differently please jot down your version and post it so we can enjoy your version.
This memory has faded many times and took place a long time ago, so if any of you remember it with more detail jump in and add your two cents cause this happened a long time ago way back in the good old days of the Army CID at Ft Ord, CA.
Back in the late 1970s I was working at Ft Ord, Ca as an Army CID Agent, just finished my year of apprenticeship, had my accreditation and thought I knew all there was to know about crime fighting, how wrong was I, only time would help me learn all the fun and horror of crime fighting.
I was single at the time I arrived at Ft Ord, CA and lived in an old WWII building adjacent to the Army CID office, so I was always at work for one reason or another.
One day I was in the office working on a case report after everyone else had left for the day and I heard what sounded like the MP radio squawking down on the first floor, but was not worried about it, we had an on call duty agent and it was not my day to be duty agent so I was sure the MPs would contact the duty agent where ever they might be.
A few minutes later I heard someone running down the hall yelling “Is anyone here”. That is never a sign of good things to come at an Army CID office at 6PM on a Pay Day Friday evening.
The duty agent that fine day was none other than Wild Bill Turman and he was looking for some help on a call he just received from the MPs. I was busy and was not in the mood for working on a case that was not mine, but hey, we do what we have to do to get the job done. I yelled I was in my office on second floor just about the time Wild Bill ran by yelling come on we got to go.
Not sure how Bill came to be known as Wild Bill but hey that is another story. Wild Bill and I made our way down to the duty agent vehicle parked in front of the office.
I am thinking the duty agent vehicle was a four door, 1976 Ford Sedan that had seen better days. Bill jumped in to drive, took me longer since Bill had the passenger seat full of cop stuff, I shoved it all in the floor board and slid in just as Bill was backing the car out of the parking slot and just got the door closed as we sped out of the parking lot.
Bill was giving the duty vehicle a chance to show just what it could do speed wise, we did not have sirens but did have blue bubble lights we could slap on the dash or the roof of the car. I was looking through the mess in the floor board of the car and found the blue bubble light, pulled it out of the mess of tangled wires and stuff and stuck it on the roof of the car, then reached down and grabbed the plug in and plugged the blue light into the dash. We were moving down the road at about 65 MPH in route to who knows where, the MP radio was blasting something but everything had happened so fast I was still not sure where we were going or what we were responding to.
Then the MP dispatcher yelled over the radio “Shots fired…Officer Down” the reason we were moving quickly on this call became all too clear, there was a shooting taking place as we sped down the road in the direction of the incident.
The MP dispatcher was talking to two MPIs who were backing up a CID agent on a drug bust that went bad, the MPIs were screaming over the radio the Agent was down and the bad guys were on the move, so at that moment sirens erupted all over the place, MP vehicles were responding from all over the post to this call.
Bill and I were at the location the MPIs said the incident took place, but just as we sped by the street the shooting was taking place, our duty vehicle locked up and we could not slow down and drove by the turn we needed to make. We could see the bad guys speeding our way shooting out the window at the MPI and the MPI shooting at the bad guys, but could not see the down agent.
As Bill was trying to get the duty vehicle back into gear I smelled smoke and looked down and the center portion of the front seat was on fire, smoke and small flame … how could this get any weirder? I grabbed a coffee cup off the dash and doused the smoke and flame as we continued around the block the area where the agent was supposed to be down.
In the mean time I determined the blue bubble light was not plugged in, the large spot light face down in the seat was plugged in and that is what set the seat and paper on fire between Bill and Me! Unplugged the light and plugged in the blue bubble light just as we got to where the down agent should have been no agent. Just then MPs arrived on scene, we told them to look for the agent and we took off in pursuit of the MPI and bad guys who were just blocks away speeding down the road shooting at each other.
Bill and I caught up to the cops and robbers and or shooters and it was all we could do to stay behind the MPI vehicle and they were still shooting at the bad guys who were still shooting at the MPI. We were a little worried since we were now in the troop area and there were troops all over the place out and about for Friday night pay day.
Just as we got to the back gate near highway 1, the bad guys tossed out a large amount of money and drugs that blew all over the side of the road, they kept going out the unmanned entrance and exit gate onto highway 1 and rush hour traffic with MPI right behind them.
Bill stopped and said grab all the money and drugs, we were running all over the side of the road scooping up money and drugs and even had to pull our guns on some soldiers who were walking and decided they wanted some of the money and drugs. We got their ID cards and tossed all the money, drugs and ID cards in the back seat of the car and headed out to see how MPI did with the bad guys.
We were not a thousand yards outside the gate when we came up on the traffic jam, the MPI had the bad guys car pulled over, one subject on the ground and the Marina PD were also on scene, the sight was kind of weird, but then it hit us, where was the second bad guy?
All of this action from the time we got the call till the time we were on highway 1 only took about fifteen minutes and all the support MPs and CID were just now showing up at the office, on scene and anywhere else they were needed.
We heard the Agent had not been hit but did fire point blank from the back seat of the bad guys car into the front seat of the car, the bad guys fired point blank with a shot gun at the agent in the back seat and they all missed each other! The agent jumped out of the vehicle and rolled into a storm drain and that is why we could not find him, and the MPI was on top of the bad guys before they could get out and look for the agent.
The missing bad guy had jumped from the car in the troop area during the chase and the MPI called it in as they pursued the speeding vehicle.
When we returned from the chase about ten or more MPs and CID had a barracks surrounded where the bad guy had jumped and were searching the building for the bad guy, but he was not located till much later.
This was one of many weird times whil assigned to the Army CID Office at Ft Ord, CA way back in the 1970s.
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