It was 2 a.m. and I was sitting across a neighborhood parked in a school parking lot working on a boring report about man who was tired of his neighbor turning on the water sprinklers and pointing them at his car every time he parked his car too close to the man's house. Was this what I got into police work for?

Didn't have to wait long for the answer.  My police radio squawked out an "assault in progress" and requested all units in the vicinity of the assault to respond. The address was in the neighborhood right across the street from me. Here we go. 

Thirty seconds later I was at the residence and met with a 35 year old white woman I recognized. I had been at the residence one month earlier on a damage report. She (along with the landlord) reported that her husband had been drunk and caused damage to the house. When I inspected the house he had trashed it completely. Turned over sofas, refrigerator, stove, and broken walls in every room. He was not there at the time of the report so I just took the report and gave her a case number. The rest would be handled by the investigative division.

Now I stood with her in front of her house and talked to her while her eye was swelling up from a hit to the face and the back of her head was bleeding. She told me that her husband was drunk and punched her in the eye and then grabbed her by the ears and pushed her head against the brick wall on the outside of the house. She reported that her husband had calmed down already and was sitting in the living room watching TV. I asked if there was anyone else was in the house and she said her two daughters (11 and 14) were in there. She added, "Oh, and two rottweilers are in there too." Great.

As I approached the house 2 other officers had already arrived and went inside with me. Her husband, I'll call him Mark, was sitting on the sofa just staring at the television (which was not on). His 2 daughters were sitting next to him on either side. The 2 rottweilers were the size of horses and were just walking around us sniffing away. I asked Mark if he could put the dogs away and ask his daughters to step outside. He said, "You put the dogs away. My daughters are staying here". 

Mark was a 6'5" black man who I remember used to play basketball for the local university a few years back. He was built like Shaquille O'Neal, but with a lot more muscle. When I took the report from his wife a month ago she reported that he was the nicest guy you could ever meet, unless he was drinking hard liquor. There was an empty bottle of vodka on the table in the kitchen. 

I told the 2 officers to stay put and stepped outside. I told his wife I was going to place him under arrest and she did not respond at all. Because I knew this was not going to be easy, I called for more officers. I was hoping a show of force might convince him to give up. Three more who were close by showed up quickly. I explained the situation and told them we might have to take Mark in by force if I cannot talk him into letting us arrest him. I also told them about the giant dogs. I assigned one officer to mace the dogs. I figured if he did not give up and we had to take him by force, the dogs would be all over us. I told the officer his only job was to handle the dogs if they came after us. 

We stepped back in the house. Now there were 6 of us. I told Mark he was under arrest for family violence and he would have to come with me. The oldest of the girls asked, "Are you going to arrest my dad?". I said yes and told her and her sister to go outside with their mom. Both girls got up. But instead of going outside right away they quietly started moving the living room furniture out of the way. They picked up the coffee table and the lamps and moved them to another room. They then came back and got a vase from the kitchen table, the television, and a VCR, and also moved that to a room. Then they walked outside without saying a word. Shit, this was not going to end well.

I reached over with another officer to pick up Mark from the sofa and he would not budge. Then three of us tried and he stood up for us. Suddenly the room was filled with mace and we could hardly breathe. The dogs had come at us and were maced by the officer. In such close quarters everybody was feeling the mace. I tried with another officer to put Mark's hands behind his back to cuff him and he wouldn't move. He wasn't fighting us, but he wasn't helping either. 

As it often happens in these kinds of fights, somebody gets tired of nothing happening. He was technically resisting, but he was not trying to hurt anybody. Still, you can't sit there and wait for that to happen either. An arrest has been made. No time for games. Games get officers killed. 

He was turned away from me for a second so I dug my heel into the back of his knee and he went down a bit. One of the other officers took advantage that and jumped on his back. He went down only when 3 officers were on him. As soon as he hit the floor he did a push up and all three officers that were sitting on him slid right off. He got back up and again we went at him. 

The dance went on like that for what seemed like forever. Eventually he was maced also, but if he noticed he did not show it. Three of us had PR-24 batons but we were not stupid enough to use them. It would only piss him off.  We needed to subdue him and cuff him.  He was grabbed, pushed, jumped on and squashed. Nothing affected him. Even having 6 officers there, one of the officers called in a "code 3" during the fight. More officers would come. I knew if we didn't take him down soon, enough officers would get here to cause real damage. 

At some point during the fight we all stopped for a rest. Everybody. We all just got dog tired at the same time.  I swear I looked around the room and we all looked like we had run a marathon.  Everybody was soaking in sweat. I was on one knee with my shirt torn open, the officer in charge of macing the dogs was in the kitchen throwing up in the sink, and the other guys were in all manners of unrest scattered around the room. One of them even had a shoe missing, taken by one of the dogs to the other room. Mark, who seemed untouched, was sitting back on the sofa where it all started. From a distance I we could hear sirens approaching.

I yelled at Mark (or tried at least, I was so out of breath), "Hear that? More are coming and it's probably DPS and Sheriff's department. Those guys don't fuck around. They will shoot you!". Mark looked at me and smiled. And just like that he stood up, turned around, and put both hands behind his back. It took 3 sets of handcuffs to bring those 2 massive tree trunks he called arms together. I called in a "code 2" indicating everything was okay. I walked him outside as a parade of different agencies were pulling up from all directions. As we walked to the car Marked looked at me and said "You know I let you take me, right". Hell yes I knew, "Thanks, I appreciate that". 

Mark was taken to the department and booked on an assault charge and a resisting arrest charge. The next day he was taken before a judge where he was given a bond. His wife, the victim, was there in court and refused to file charges on the assault. She then paid the bond on the resisting arrest charge. She took him home a couple of hours later from the Sheriff's department. 

He was already out of jail the next day when I was working on the report. I checked some of the other officers reports who were on scene to see how long the fight was. They all said it was somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes between the time fight started and ended. I checked the radio log. The entire fight lasted 2 minutes and 49 seconds. Not even 3 freaking minutes. 

The day after that I was back at work and ran into one of the officers who assisted in the arrest and I told him how long it lasted. He said, "Really, it kinda seemed like forever, huh?".  

Yeah, it sure as hell did.