McGinn: The night the Springfield  police almost shot me

McGinn

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer 8:56 AM Friday, August 26, 2011

I never thought I’d go out like this — on Clifton Avenue after dark with The Turtles oldie “Elenore” blasting out my car window and a gun pointed squarely at my head.

At least I think it was aimed at my head.

Do police shoot to kill?

Then again, very few of us actually get to choose the method of our own demise.

I always think back to poor David Carradine.

Do you think this 72-year-old man ever once envisioned himself hanging naked in a hotel closet in Thailand with a rope around his neck?

Personally, I keep an active list of certain activities to abstain from just to be on the safe side.

I mean, I never want my wife or my son or my mom or my dad to one day have to tell people, “They found him naked.”

I steadfastly refuse to visit Thailand, too, just in case.

“He died in Thailand” just leaves too much to the imagination.

I’m probably overly cautious, to be honest.

I still recall that day back in middle school when the boys and girls were divided in order to discuss the different paths our young bodies were taking.

We boys were shown a video on how to check ourselves for testicular cancer while in the shower.

Predictably, everybody started snickering — everybody, that is, except me.

“My God,” I remember thinking, “this is going to save my life.”

Now that I think about it, though, I had a very small group of friends throughout the rest of my school years — no doubt thanks to a whisper campaign that accused me of being “that guy who didn’t laugh through the testicular cancer video.”

I’ll be honest. As someone with OCD, the thought of dying is never far from my mind.

I once seriously thought I had contracted the lethal respiratory disease hantavirus — a disease spread through the poop of certain species of infected rodents.

I apparently got better.

But not even in my wildest fits of obsessive-compulsiveness did I envision myself dying in a police shooting.

Dying of elephantiasis? Yes.

Dying of some strain of souped-up, drug-resistant, weaponized black hairy tongue disease? Yes.

Rabies?

Possibly.

But being shot by a cop?

In Mexico, maybe.

In Springfield, no.

At age 13, I stole more than my share of Upper Deck baseball cards and even a few issues of Penthouse, but other than that, I’ve been a fairly law-abiding citizen.

So that night a few years ago, when I was told to go cover a shooting on Clifton Avenue, I never once feared for my life when I got into my car.

My choice of driving music even says as much — in fact, I was singing along quite happily to “Elenore” when I turned from John Street onto Clifton and could see the flashing cruiser lights a few blocks down.

“Elenore, gee I think you’re swell!”

And that’s about the time my headlights hit the shiny black shoes of the officer standing in the middle of the street waving a flashlight.

I stomped on the brakes.

“I told you to stop!” the guy screamed something to that extent, now pointing his service weapon a few feet from my face.

Apparently, he’d just found some shell casings related to the case in the street and assumed my unwillingness to obey a command, which I didn’t even hear, meant I was trouble.

Believe it or not, I’ve never shared this story before because I’m not sure who it actually reflects on — me or the police.

C’mon, though, when was the last time a thug drove around blasting The Turtles?

Just a heads up then for the SPD — should you ever hear The Monkees barreling toward the scene of a crime, it’s probably just me.

Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.

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