December 19th, 2016 at five degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
At 4:50AM I slowly drove 2 blocks to drop my girlfriend off to work. There was not another vehicle in sight. On the return trip I'm approaching my apartment building parking lot when Officer James McBroom appears behind me with his lights on. Considering his surprising arrival, I assume he had been sitting in the parking lot of the business next to my apartment. This possibility concerns me as I had recently recorded and uploaded a video of what amounted to an officer-involved public execution of a Native Alaskan man in the nearby town of Fairbanks.
McBroom has pulled me over in my own parking lot. The natural place to stop was my own parking space, so other vehicles would not be blocked in. The lot is well lit with plenty of space for McBroom to pull up directly behind me, which he did. I roll down my window and turn the truck ignition off. Already suspicious of McBroom, I'm careful to leave my hands on the wheel and greet Officer McBroom very pleasantly upon his arrival.
Instead of a greeting response, McBroom yells, "WHY DIDN'T YOU PULL OVER? I CALLED YOU IN FOR EVADING!" I now have little doubt that McBroom is a mentally disturbed individual who's trying to extract some kind of revenge. We're all alone in the dark and McBroom already has a hand on his service weapon.
"What is going on?" I ask. That simple question puts McBroom's anger up another notch as he yells about not stopping at stop signs. At best, McBroom's emotions don't reflect the situation at hand and he's still gripping his weapon. Dialog is making matters worse and and I want to end the situation as quickly as possible. "Then give me a ticket", I say.
But everything I say, even my short sentences, makes McBroom more angry, which makes me more paranoid. He resumes ranting about stop signs and I tell him that I'm not going to speak any more, to just write me the ticket. He then demands my paperwork. I VERY SLOWLY move my right hand and open the glove compartment, which exposes nothing more than a stack of papers.
This is the moment where I very nearly was shot or went to prison for disarming an officer, and it's why I am going to campaign relentlessly for the removal of McBroom from the police force. The moment my glove department opens, McBroom screams, "IS THAT A WEAPON?". I can see in my peripheral vision that he's pulled his weapon from the holster and at that moment I'm sure I'm about to be shot by a crazy person. Fearing for my life, I put my left hand on the door handle. If McBroom had attempted to raise the weapon then I would have reflexively slammed my door open into him and tried to disarm him.
Luckily, McBroom seemed to get a better sense of the situation at that moment. We both froze in place as I replied "no, I'm not going to speak anymore, don't shoot me". I removed the paper on top of the pile, my registration. He holstered his weapon but pulled me violently from the vehicle and threw my paperwork into the air. He slammed me up against the vehicle and put cuffs on me.
As quickly as McBroom had gone off on this rage, he now returns to professional demeanor. He searched me calmly, took off the cuffs and asked me to return to my vehicle. From then on I responded to his questions in writing while he took down my information. McBroom remained calm, returned to his vehicle and drove away after taking 30 minutes to write the ticket. His last words were, "I could do alot more but I'm just going to give you this ticket."
I moved all the way to Alaska to escape our sick society. Now I can just hope that the warring factions in this state and the rest of the world will just kill each other off as quickly as possible so the rest of us can move on with our lives. If you're one of the ones out there that hopes for the most violence as soon as possible to put an end to most of this foolish population, then know that you're not alone. The guy wearing the Hawaiian shirt at the end of the movie "12 Monkeys".....I think about that scene all the time anymore, wishing I knew how to pull it off. Hopefully somebody out there does it quickly, or else. #12monkeys
