David Kentner is a retired Freeport, IL, police officer whose career included patrolman, detective, undercover narcotics officer (during which time he performed work for both the FBI and ATF), shift commander, and ultimately Chief of Police. He is a federally certified instructor in "Communication for Community Policing," holds a degree in law enforcement, and is a graduate of Northwestern University's School of Police Staff and Command. Dave resides on five acres outside of Freeport, selling antiques - "I've never sold any junk, but I've sure bought a lot of it" - and has returned to his love of writing. His short stories have been published in several magazines with one of his latest being named Honorable Mention 1st in Calliope, a Publication of the Writer's Specialized Interest Group of American Mensa, Ltd, magazine's 17th annual fiction competition. Dave is always available to offer any assistance he can to any authors with questions regarding law enforcement practices and procedures outside of Cook County and can be reached via email at dakentner@gosgi.com.

Dr. Death
The Best and the Brightest
Close Calls
Informants
Small Towns
The Scene of the Crime
Forever

Dr. Death 

     Before undertaking a career in law enforcement, I served as an Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal Specialist (EOD - the bomb squad).  Part of our assignment was to provide assistance to the Secret Service and State Department in the security of the President, Vice-President, and Secretary of State.  As I was stationed in Germany, that meant we traveled to other countries with some frequency.
     On one such trip I was in London with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's advance security team.  It was then that I encountered one of the most unique and troublingly interesting people I have ever spent time with.  I don't recall his real name, but his peers openly referred to him as "Doctor Death."
     Dr. Death stood over six feet tall, skin as coarse as ostrich leather and just as taut, blond hair swept back on the sides, and truly seemed to float across the floor with the ease and explosive energy of Nureyev.  As UK law prohibited even the Secretary of State's security from carrying firearms (they were hidden inside the vehicles, but never on the agents), the team was voicing their concerns about being unarmed.  Dr. Death didn't engage in the conversation.  Instead, he opened his valise from which he withdrew a sheathed KA-BAR knife, pulled up his trousers leg and promptly duct taped the knife to his bare skin.  Lowering the dress pants to cover the knife, he simply nodded to the others and said, "I'm ready."
     The silence outweighed any words that could have been spoken.  I was never really sure if the silence was from a comfort in knowing Dr. Death was armed, or a discomfort in knowing Dr. Death was armed.
     That particular trip resulted in several days of the team having nothing to do but to experience London nightlife.  Most of my EOD compatriots chose to spend their evenings at the more fashionable Disco clubs.  This was the seventies and John Travolta clad in his white suit was silhouetted everywhere one turned and every nightclub bled the Bee Gees.  I wanted to truly experience London and announced I was going to head out one night for some less-than-mainstream clubbing.  I ask you, how can a person honestly say they tasted London if they only ate prime rib?  Only one person opted to join me… Dr. Death.  It was then I learned of a private activity he relished in.
     Dr. Death enjoyed seeking out the most unattractive lesbian couple he could possibly find, and would flirt with them until he was invited to join them for the night.  We ventured out together on two such evenings.  I never knew if he followed through on the invitations or not, as I returned to the hotel long before he did.  I remind you, this was a man called "Doctor Death."  You don't ask such a man such a question.
     We didn't encounter each other again after that trip and I have no idea whatever happened to him, but he is most definitely someone I will not forget.

     Law enforcement is sometimes far too easy due to the incompetence of some would-be criminals.  Some that stand out are the man who liked to burglarize houses while the occupants were in the yard - he carried his brother's wallet with him in case he was encountered (he was) and would then leave that wallet behind hoping to fool the police.  It didn't occur to him his brother might not want to go to prison for him.  There was the burglar who loved new fallen snow, which coincidentally left his footwear impressions from the scene to his house; the drug courier who, given specific instructions not to let the product out of his sight, was stopped in his truck with the two kilos of cocaine on the seat next to him; the burglar who during my initial interview with him declared that I better not try and say I found his fingerprints at the scene because he wore gloves; the bank robber who ran down an alley and changed clothes under the watchful eye of a security camera; a convenience store robber who looked directly at the security camera, asked if it was working, then, after being assured it was, robbed the clerk anyway; and then there was the young man I stopped one night for a minor traffic violation who promptly placed his hands on the steering wheel and announced, "I've got a gun under the seat, please don't shoot me."

     Twice in my career I should have been dead.  I didn't know about the first time until much later.  I was working for the Carroll County, Illinois, Sheriff's Dept at the time and encountered an abandoned vehicle on a dirt road. I checked it out, ran the plates, and finding nothing overly suspicious other than forwarding the information to the State as a potential poacher, I went on my way.  Weeks later the owner of the car was bragging how he had had me in his rifle sights and flipped a coin to decide whether or not to kill me.  I won the lottery that night - I lived.  He didn't.  The powers-that-be failed the man's young son who was constantly and consistently abused.  Only months after the dirt road incident, the barely-a-teen youth shot his father to death one night when he couldn't take the beatings any longer.
     The other time I was responding to a 'shots fired' call in Freeport where I was a police officer for twenty years.  The only description given was 'a red vehicle.'  There were three red cars on that street, none appearing to be occupied.  As I approached the rear of the first one, the driver's door flung open and the driver leapt out brandishing a .22 caliber sawed-off rifle.  My instincts and training demanded I draw my weapon and fire.  I have no idea why I didn't do that.  To this day I don't remember much of what happened.  I can say that it ended with the suspect on the ground, handcuffed, and the rifle a safe distance away from him.  Upon inspecting the rifle, it was found to be loaded and the round in the chamber had an indentation on the primer.  He had pulled the trigger, but the weapon misfired.  I truly began believing in God after that.

     Never underestimate the importance of informants.  One of the most critical times an informant played a role in my career occurred when I was an investigator for Carroll County.  There was a man formerly from there wanted by the FBI for the bombing of the home of a black family.  He had been on the run for years.  One of my informants, a man I simply had always treated with courtesy and respect whenever I arrested him, called me one day saying that he knew a way to capture the suspected bomber.  He had been dating a woman, a relative of the bomber, who had three children the approximate ages of the three children the bomber now had.  The bomber had been in touch with her, asking if she would obtain passports for her children, then send them to him so the bomber and his family could slip out of the country.  The informant convinced the woman to meet with me.  She gave in, and that meeting led to the bomber's arrest at a New Orleans' Post Office when he went to retrieve the passports provided by the FBI.  

     Crime never happens in small towns?  Freeport is a city of 26,000 residents.  I started there in August of 1982.  By that November I had encountered the man with the sawed-off rifle, gave CPR to a fifteen-year-old girl shot through her chest by her fifteen-year-old boyfriend brandishing a .357 magnum revolver the girl had stolen from her father (she was ruled 'dead on arrival' at the hospital), and stood in the living room of a woman whose death had been ruled as 'natural causes' - heart failure - but was later changed to homicide and the son of a minister was eventually charged with her murder partly because of what I saw there.  Sometimes it is the smallest of things that scream out that not everything is as it appears.  In that case it was the fact that I was standing in the home of an immaculate woman.  There was no dust to be found anywhere, yet her eyeglasses resting on the couch were smeared, filthy.  Far too far out of the character of this woman.  The other clue begging for discovery was her deceased husband's picture.  It was on a table at the end of the couch with a multitude of other photographs of her family.  But there was one difference.  While all of the photographs of her family faced the spot on the couch she sat upon where she could always view the photos, her husband's was turned away from the couch.  She wouldn't have done that… ever… for any reason.  It was clear to me that someone had knocked the picture frame off of the table and then returned it to the table, not thinking about which way it should be facing.

     "Suspects always return to the scene of the crime."  Not really, though it does happen in rare instances.  The best friend investigators have is the 'beat cop' who knows the players in his or her beat.  Twice those officers played critical roles during investigations I was a part of.  
     An octogenarian was found nearly beaten to death in his home.  He couldn't tell us what happened or who had done it.  We received a call from the beat cop who told us there was a man he knew wasn't from the neighborhood walking three blocks away from the scene, peering between houses towards the victim's home.  My partner and I jumped on it.  It turned out to be a brother of the man who had committed the home invasion.  He had gone there to see if what his brother had told him was true.  He figured if he saw cops around the house, then his brother had told him the truth.  Eventual confessions revealed it was done as a wager amongst three buddies.  The one that broke into the house and beat the old man with a pipe had been promised a cassette tape of his favorite rock band if he would do it.  None of the three had anything against the old man… he was just a convenient target for the wager.
     The other one was the particularly gruesome murder of a fifteen-year-old girl.  The killers had taken their time with her and then toyed with the dead body afterwards.  Investigators believed they knew who had done it.  I was back on patrol at that time as an assistant shift commander and saw three men I knew lived half way across town walking down a side street staring between the houses towards the murder scene dwelling.  As the murder hadn't hit the press yet, I contacted the investigators and both suspects were found in the home of those three men I had seen out for a stroll.
     A side note here; I was requested to interview the harder of the two suspects.  He confessed, then confessed on tape, then again on videotape while taking me on a guided tour of the scene, describing the killing blow by blow including how he stuck a fork in the girl and sat on the kitchen floor with her dead body 'twanging' the fork back and forth, watching it vibrate.  

     Criminals can be rehabilitated - victims are victims forever.
The strongest example of that statement I can provide was the case of an eighty-something-year-old woman.  She and her husband had lived their entire married life in the house the husband built for the two of them.  The husband even suffered a heart attack and died in that house.  It was her home and she had refused to leave it to live with her daughter even when her declining health was telling her it was time.
     But the night a seventeen-year-old youth on weekend leave from juvenile detention broke into her home, stripped her, and then beat her so badly blood covered the walls of her bedroom because he couldn't get an erection, changed all of that.
     The woman recovered from the beating, but upon her release from the hospital she refused to even go to the neighborhood with her daughter to get her clothing.  In fact, she refused to wear any clothing that came from that house.  She never again saw the home she had shared in love with her husband.  Fifty years she had lived in that house.  Fifty years of happy memories were stolen from her in one night.
     My partner and I worked thirty-six hours nonstop to identify her attacker and make the arrest.  Her torment stayed with her to the day she died.  Her attacker served his full twenty-three year sentence - he wasn't a model prisoner - and is back on the street with a family of his own now.  I have always been one who could overlook anyone's past.  I do believe people can change.  But that man is my personal exception.  I can't get past what he took from that woman that night.  I do not wish him well in his life.