Cops Answer The Call, Always Have, Always Will
/Cops Answer The Call, Always Have, Always Will
By: Chris Amos
It was Spring of 1989. It was hot. It was humid. It was miserable. By this time I had been on the Norfolk Police Department for two years. On this day, I was one of about 200 officers detailed to Greekfest. The weekend event was, as best I could tell, a kind of spring break that targeted several historical African American Colleges. Meaning thousands of college students converged on the Virginia Beach oceanfront. Norfolk State University hosted a well-attended step dance contest.
Our event went off without a hitch. We returned to the station for a quick debrief and to turn in our gear before heading for home, exhausted. For some reason no one collected the radios and keys we were assigned for our detail. And to my surprise no one told us we could go home. And so, for an hour we all just hung out. Our time of relaxing ended when the Chief arrived. He told us the Virginia Beach Police Department had requested our assistance. We had five minutes to call whoever we needed to call and tell them we would be late getting home. We then squeezed four or five officers into each of about 30 police cars, marked and unmarked. Over my career I have seen too many funeral processions for officers killed in the line of duty but this was different, much different. We were not a solemn procession traveling at 35 of 40 MPH. We were speeding freight train, 30 cars strong, traveling 65, 70, maybe 75 MPH, lights flashing and sirens wailing.
As we neared the oceanfront, residents came out of their homes from a neighborhood adjacent to the oceanfront. They were waving, clapping, and hollering. As a relatively new cop I was a little shocked by the warm reception. Once on scene, we were led into a large room. A supervisor from the Virginia Beach Police Department began to brief us. He started by telling us an officer from their mounted patrol had just moments earlier been shot. We would find out later the officer hadn’t been shot but someone had thrown a brick striking his horse, which sent both the horse and officer to the ground. The briefing went something like this. “We are on the verge of losing control of much of the oceanfront. A State of Emergency has been declared. Anyone on the street is subject to arrest. There have been reports of shots fired up and down the oceanfront and multiple businesses have been looted. We have working car fires that our fire department cannot safely respond to. Thank you for coming, we can use all the help we can get.”
Without getting into too much detail, I can tell you the next six hours was unlike anything I had ever experienced, before or since. Keep in mind, I found myself on the same streets that just a few years earlier I had “cruised” with my buddies from high school. Those very streets now looked like something you would see on the news from a third-world country. Fires, broken glass, fire extinguishers being thrown at us from hotel balconies 7, 8, 9 stories high. When all the smoke cleared, we discovered the ringleaders to, and most of those involved in the Greekfest riot of 1989 were locals. Many of the out-of-town college students were holed up in their respective hotel rooms, terrified.
From that very night until the day I retired, 25 years later, I was one of the officers that answered a neighboring police department’s call for help. T-shirts were printed up that pictured drawings of officers from VBPD, NPD, and Virginia State Police. In the background was a picture of total chaos. Underneath the officers were the words “It’s a Blue Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand.” You know what? Unless you put on a badge and strap on a gun every day or night before heading out the door, you wouldn’t understand. Thirty-one years later, I can still tell you who was on my right and left during much of that night.
Friends, the Greekfest Riot of 1989 is small potatoes compared to what you are facing. You are, right now, standing in the gap for all of us. You do not have the luxury of calling in sick or to work from the safety of your home. No, you are on the front lines and while it may mean very little right now. I promise you in time, you will be able to look back and proudly say, “Where was I during the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020? I was on the front lines. I was serving, protecting, reassuring, comforting, and yes, maintaining law and order.”
Many are fearful of this unseen, undetectable, at times deadly virus. They live in fear not knowing if the next doorknob they touch or shopping cart they push is going to be infected. All I can say is welcome to the world of our nation’s 800,000+ law enforcement and corrections officers. You have chosen a career of both seen and unseen threats that at any second could cost you your life. Long after the Coronavirus is gone, and folks stop hoarding toilet paper, you will still be walking into dark alleys, approaching suspicious vehicles, knocking on closed doors, not knowing what waits on the other side. Friends, you are all heroes in my book. And I didn’t need a pandemic to realize that.
Take care, God Bless, and see you at the finish line!
