Being Frightened by Real Life Hannibal Lecters at the Local Mental Hospital

I became a police officer at 22 and was the youngest cop in the area I worked. I was a baby next to some of the seasoned professionals around. I made some mistakes in my younger days and to the credit of most officers and supervisors, not many made me feel like a dunce. Some of my bigger mistakes I still remember to this day as well as some of my most frightening experiences. Some of the scariest times I experienced were dealing with patients from a local mental hospital.

My first experience at the mental hospital occurred at about three in the morning. Staff called the police asking for immediate help with an out of control patent. A bunch of cops all responded because it sounded bad. At that time, the hospital had plenty of strong staff members—males with the cliché white coats that could handle most issues. Not this time though and four of us arrived at the front door of the hospital. The hospital looked to be built in the early twentieth century and was drab and dreary in the moonlight. The front door was locked and after ringing the bell, we were buzzed in. Inside we were told of an out of control patient on the bottom level of the hospital.

At first, we all had to take our guns off and put them in a secure area. This was done so no patient could wrestle a firearm away from us and cause havoc—similarly as it is done in prisons. Then we were escorted to another door that was also locked. The staff member escorting us unlocked the steel door and let us all in and locked the door behind us. I felt nervous now. Two locked doors behind us, unarmed and going towards an area where there may be many dangerous and well, excuse my description, many crazy people.

The officer next to me was called Tiny. Tiny was not tiny at all. He was about 6’5” and about 280 pounds. He spoke up first and said, “I don’t know about you guys but that door being locked behind us sure got me nervous”—he smiled as he said it but we all knew he meant it. A seasoned and big guy like that admitting that he was afraid, immediately made me feel normal and part of a team experience. We went down the stairs, talked to the patient in question, and convinced him to follow some rules and take some meds and everything would be fine. He complied and we left that night with no problem. It was my first fear I felt at the hospital and just the beginning of many serious confrontations there.

In fact, the toughest man I ever fought as a cop was a 17-year-old patient who escaped one night by literally digging his way out through the walls with a bed hand crank. Again, it was in the middle of the night and we got the call of an escapee from the hospital with a weapon. The weapon was that sharp edged handle. Two of us spotted some movement in a downtown alley near the hospital and went to investigate. We both had our guns out as we walked the dark alley. I noticed him first. He was hiding in a doorway and our eyes met. I pointed my gun directly at him and noticed the sharp edged handle in his hand. I hollered at him to drop the weapon and put his hands up. He looked directly in my eyes and did not move, just stared. He was debating on attacking me. I saw it in his eyes.  By this time, Ed, the other officer was next to me with his gun pointing at him too. I hollered dead to the point and told him to put the weapon down or I’d blow his brains all over the alley. He hesitated for a second, pondering, but I guess he believed me and dropped the weapon. We handcuffed him and surprisingly he was compliant—at least until I placed him in the back seat of my cruiser. Then, he started spitting, kicking the windows and pretty much telling us that we were scum, we could pound salt, and that he was not going to listen to anything we asked him to do. I guess in his case, having a gun pointed at you by a cop ready to shoot, kept him together. Anything less, he did not care about. We drove him to the hospital where we were met by staff. He wouldn’t get out of the car and we had to wrestle to get him out. His strength and ferocity was amazing. He was extremely hard to contain and he only weighed about 160 pounds. After about 15 minutes of struggling with two police officers, and eventually, about five male staff members, we finally secured him in restraints in a bed. However, before us cops could leave, a rookie put his face close to the patient and said, “Okay tough guy, we got you.” The patient sucked a deep lung spit and let it go directly in the rookies face. Yuk! I gave him some alcohol and cotton swaps and as we walked out of the room, I explained the finer points of dealing with patients. That officer and I became close friends.

There was also the time a big patient, about 6’3” and about 260 pounds terrorized an area of the hospital to the point they evacuated an entire area where he had ripped a TV out of the wall and threw it into a huge safety glass window, cracking it. He intimidated and threatened staff and patients. After extensive talking to him and trying to calm him, he told me and other officers to screw off and even said for us to get our guns and shoot him. We ended up pepper spraying him, which turned him into a completely compliant person. He hollered that he would do anything we asked of him after being sprayed by, three officers. I was the only one who was supposed to spray him but there was a miscommunication and all three of us sprayed him simultaneously. Wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, but it worked out.

I dealt with many dangerous and volatile patients there. Towards the winding down of my career, nothing really frightened me. The last time I went there, I had two new officers assigned under my shift. It was the first time we worked together. The three of us were dispatched to a violent patient threatening staff and patients. We walked down those same stairs I walked down 25 years earlier and heard the patient loudly growling and making sounds that would scare normal people. He was pounding on the walls and doors and hollering incoherently. I looked at the other officers and saw concern in their eyes. One was seasoned, but new to my command and the other was a newer officer. I was not fearful and knew exactly what I, and we were going to do. I also knew that we were going to do well, and come out safe and sound. I was on guard and ready but not nervous, really. I remember thinking how weird I had become. Any normal person would be scared stiff walking down the stairs of a mental hospital to a call of a violent patient hollering and sounding like a wild Hannibal Lector from “Silence of The Lambs” movie fame. I was as calm as a cucumber and told the other two officers to have their pepper spray ready at hand, as I talked to him in an unlocked seclusion room. These seclusion rooms were essentially jail cells but staff members could not get close to him to lock the cell door. I told the officers that I was going to try to reason with him first and when, and if pepper spray would be needed, I’d make it clear to them.

I walked right up close to the man who looked at me as if he wanted to kill me. I talked to him like a man who deserved my respect and even my help. I explained that everyone wanted to help him. I talked to him for a few minutes, calmed him down and persuaded him to take his medication. I could tell that the officers  looked at me as the “man” that day for walking into the den with courage and calmness of mind. But, I was not special, I was a cop who learned his craft after years of trial and experience and followed Tiny’s lead years ago (by the way, he eventually became a chief of police) that it is okay to have fear. We just need to understand whatever we are afraid of and learn how to adapt and handle it. We can all do that, no matter what.