Where do I begin. The beginning would seem like a natural place to start, but that spans so many years back I would be writing for weeks…if not years. So many snippets of a life that had led to me to this place, where I seem only vaguely familiar to myself. I will start then at what seemed to be the turning point in my 22 year career as Police Officer, June 21,2002. A jumper on the Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena Ca. Matthew Ackerman, 22 years old, good looking, silent, and unwilling to tell me what had forced him to climb over the rails and on to the exterior of the bridge. I spoke to him for 45 minutes or so until the “crisis negotiators” got there and relieved me. Relieved me to stand silently by, watching their efforts fail as they talked to him of his church and religion….which I knew in my heart was perhaps the reason he was here to end his life. He leaned forward and let go…and the 5-7 seconds that it took until I heard the dull thud of his body hit the pavement below, felt like it was suspended in eternity.
He made me promise to give his shoes to his brother, which I did. I attended his services and spoke, or rather tried to speak to his eldest brother in my patrol car. Assuring him that Matts 4 brothers were his last final loving thoughts. It’s engrained in my memory as though it was yesterday….and that was not nearly the first time I’d watched someone die. It was simply the most helpless I’d ever felt in my entire life. And responsible. If only I’d confided in him more, got him to open up, got him to understand that darkness touches most of us at one time or another….the overcoming it is the true trick to remaining here…with the living.
There were more jumpers, more close calls, more lives nearly lost then saved….but even more lives lost than saved over the next few years. So I took a break from patrol, in my 11th year as a Police officer I was assigned to Detective Bureau. To the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Investigating primarily the production and distribution of child pornography, along with other crimes against children that occurred in my city. Which were almost exclusively child molestations and child abuse. I spent 3 1/2 years there. 3 1/2 years looking at thousands and thousands of images and videos of children being raped and victimized, writing search warrants, trying to identify and locate victimized children and their victimizers. I had some great successes and sent several monsters to prison for life terms. Several more convicted and mandated to register as sex offenders, so my job was satisfying…..or so you would think. But for every arrest, every identified child molester or child victim, there were hundreds more that remained nameless. The things I have seen in those videos, one can not describe….nor would I ever attempt to. Ignorance is bliss….and it’s best not to know what can only haunt you in your nightmares.
So I eventually left ICAC, at my request, and went back to the simple and satisfying job of patrol in 2010. It was fun again…no more pending cases….no more child pornography or children I couldn't help…just patrolling and responding as needed to emergencies and calls for service. All the while having too much fun with my coworkers playing pranks on each other and meeting for coffee or C-7. Then the suicides and fatalities started coming in increasing numbers again, only this time, they were younger adults and children.