Just watched the premiere episode of this new show "Southland" during my lunch today on HULU. It premieres on Thursday night at 10 PM on NBC, it's the ER replacement experiment. It was pretty good overall, it tries to be more real and more "COPS" than COPS, but for an overall view of some real life in the big city it works, even if it is a scripted TV show. You can check it right now and watch it on hulu.com
About 15 minutes into the show was a realistic call that involved the new rookie officer and his experienced training officer (the actor that plays this guy usually plays hard arsed bad guys), they are responding to a DB which means Dead Body call with dogs in the house. After taking a look they call out Animal Control and after the ACO's come out and get the dogs the police officers go and check inside to find the dead guy and that his dogs, locked up with no way out, had munched on their deceased owner. The sight made the 'rookie' guy sick and ran out and was throwing up in the front yard. The dumbest thing said was the comment about how the dogs could never be trusted again since they'd "tasted human flesh"? That is SO STUPID!!!!! I used to hear the similar version of since a dog had bitten and "tasted BLOOD" that it could/would revert back to its 'wild' ancestry and be vicious for ever! I guess the writers thought it would be great TV, but it just isn't true in almost all cases. TV and movies can be great for showing things most people never have the chance to experience themselves, just never, never, never, take evertything you might see as FACT!
I COULD RELATE to this part of the story!! Not with the throw up part, I've seen some really gross and disgusting stuff and I've never felt like I'd be sick. I can relate to going out to a call like that.
Now. I'm going to be telling the story of a call that Stacy and I both went out to that was very similar to the one in the show. It was the worst call Stacy ever went out on in her career and she'll still talk about it as the worst.
It's gonna get gross so you might want to skip the rest of this post!
This was in the late 1990's and Stacy was on-call and as I often did, I went with her when this call came in late at night, started around 11 pm. The call was assist the coroner that is having difficulty retrieving a DB at a residence. We got out there in the boondocks of Pinion Hills California, to find a lot of sheriff's cars waiting for us along with the coroner crew. There were about 20 or so shepherd type dogs running loose inside a large fully fenced in yard at a residence. There were also about 15 to 25 dogs and pups in the house with the dead guy. This was in the late spring so it was already getting pretty warm out in the daytime.
We were told he'd been dead about three or four days and his smell had been what had alerted nearby neighbors. The deputy told us that the coroner couldn't get to the house to remove the body and they wanted us to clear a way or pick up the dogs so this could be handled. We very quickly knew that just the two of us couldn't handle at least 20 dogs running all over an almost quarter acre fenced part of the 2 1/2 acre lot in the middle of the night. I called the duty supervisor of the night and he had the officer from Big Bear as well as another high desert officer come out to help. So as we often did, we waited. The guy from Big Bear was going to take at least two to three hours to respond because of the drive. Bob, the other desert ACO was out there in about an hour. Instead of just waiting longer, we decided to try and get the inside animals out first since the outside dogs could be scared away from the front of the house as long as someone stood by and chased them back. With help from the deputies, we got our trucks inside the fenced yard and prepared to go inside. Stacy, Bob and I went inside and found that only ONE light in a light stand worked in the house so it was pretty dim, very smelly and hot. Dogs were all over the place, there were also several cats in cages and we weren't sure what else yet.
The owner had died in the living room on the floor but propped up on his elbows on the coffee table. Bob and I'd already seen 'dead people' on the job, this was a first for Stacy. It was still very surrealistic though, he'd been a big guy and was bigger from the heat and from the distance of the front door with the poor lighting it looked like he was wearing a kind of full head mask, kind of like the Mexican Wrestlers wear, until you could get closer. Then you could see that it wasn't a mask of any kind, the dogs had actually eaten all the skin off his head and it was the exposed muscle and skull that made it look that way.
This was a three bedroom house that he and his dogs lived in together. He had dogs with puppies on beds in each room, including his bed. Bob, Stacy and I started there, getting the dogs and then all the puppies out of the house. That took about an hour and a half even with all three working. We'd go into the bedrooms and close the doors to keep the dogs in there and catch and pull them out. I literally mean PULL them out to, because none of the dogs were leash trained or friendly around strangers so each adult had to be caught then dragged out and stuffed in the trucks. The owner had very nicely bought queen sized beds for all the bedrooms and his dogs, and it got to where they'd try to hide under the beds so I had to push up mattresses and box springs to get them. At first we worked alone in each room then it was working as a team to get the stragglers because those can be the hardest ones to catch.
All the dogs and puppies finally out of the house and then it was work on the animals in the cages in the living room/kitchen area near the dead owner. With all the dogs out of the house it was a lot quieter so as we worked on the cages, Stacy and I kept hearing this quiet hissing sound, at first we were concerned that maybe with all the running around a dog might have damaged a gas line to a stove or something, we didn't want to blow up in a natural gas explosion and with the stink of dead body and dog poop EVERYWHERE in the house we were concerned we might not have smelled the gas. So as I was looking around with my flash light that was how I discovered that the hissing and now gurgling sounds was escaping gases from the body of the owner. With the skin gone from the head and upper neck, and with the heat of the daytime temps and nothing to keep it "in", he was the hissing noise.
That news totally grossed out Stacy. She just wanted to get the animals and get out as quickly as possible. We were both concerned that trying to get the animals out of the cages in such close proximity to the body might make it to where one of us might bump it with our catch poles, we DID NOT want to do that!
We worked as fast as we could, everything was going OK then a couple of the cats started to escape. In her effort to catch them Stacy accidentally knocked over the floor lamp and broke the bulb in the lamp that had been the ONLY light in the house!
We all had flash lights but in going back and forth to the trucks with animals, Stacy and I both had left them outside in our trucks. I called Bob and had him come in with his flashlight because it was DARK, no street lights out in the area so neither one of us wanted to move in fear we might walk right into the owner in and attempt to get out. It took Bob a few minutes to get back in, he'd been working on the loose dogs outside by now with the now arrived Big Bear Officer. We got everything out, but still the coroner crew wouldn't come in because of the loose yard dogs. We all chased them around and around and just couldn't contain them in a small enough area to get them out. After I talked with the sheriff sergeant and then the on call supervisor, it was decided that the only way to finish this call was to chase the dogs to an area and have the sheriff's start blasting them with their shot guns while they waited there. Only a few dogs were actually shot, then it became possible to start catching them as they cowered in the bushes in the yard.
The four of us caught all but a few of the dogs, the coroner crew got their body, and the remaining dogs were later caught over a few days with dog cage traps.
During our night there we found out all about the owner, Bob knew him and had dealt with him recently for illegal kennels. He'd had this 2 1/2 acre property as well as another 3 acre property a few miles away with even MORE dogs on it that we all wound up picking up later that week.
Turned out the deceased owner had been one of the heirs of the Maxwellhouse coffee fortune. He had been very, very rich. He paid cash for just about everything and was waiting for a brand new pick up truck to be delivered to get around after wrecking his old truck. He'd also been a collector of dogs, like so many he couldn't and didn't do anything with them, he just liked getting any he came across, and then those would breed and interbreed.
A great line in the show I started this post talking about, SouthLAnd, was the line "in this job, you've got a front row seat to the greatest show on earth" after 25 years of a very similar job and going so many similar places and seeing so many things, I can attest to it!
About 15 minutes into the show was a realistic call that involved the new rookie officer and his experienced training officer (the actor that plays this guy usually plays hard arsed bad guys), they are responding to a DB which means Dead Body call with dogs in the house. After taking a look they call out Animal Control and after the ACO's come out and get the dogs the police officers go and check inside to find the dead guy and that his dogs, locked up with no way out, had munched on their deceased owner. The sight made the 'rookie' guy sick and ran out and was throwing up in the front yard. The dumbest thing said was the comment about how the dogs could never be trusted again since they'd "tasted human flesh"? That is SO STUPID!!!!! I used to hear the similar version of since a dog had bitten and "tasted BLOOD" that it could/would revert back to its 'wild' ancestry and be vicious for ever! I guess the writers thought it would be great TV, but it just isn't true in almost all cases. TV and movies can be great for showing things most people never have the chance to experience themselves, just never, never, never, take evertything you might see as FACT!
I COULD RELATE to this part of the story!! Not with the throw up part, I've seen some really gross and disgusting stuff and I've never felt like I'd be sick. I can relate to going out to a call like that.
Now. I'm going to be telling the story of a call that Stacy and I both went out to that was very similar to the one in the show. It was the worst call Stacy ever went out on in her career and she'll still talk about it as the worst.
It's gonna get gross so you might want to skip the rest of this post!
This was in the late 1990's and Stacy was on-call and as I often did, I went with her when this call came in late at night, started around 11 pm. The call was assist the coroner that is having difficulty retrieving a DB at a residence. We got out there in the boondocks of Pinion Hills California, to find a lot of sheriff's cars waiting for us along with the coroner crew. There were about 20 or so shepherd type dogs running loose inside a large fully fenced in yard at a residence. There were also about 15 to 25 dogs and pups in the house with the dead guy. This was in the late spring so it was already getting pretty warm out in the daytime.
We were told he'd been dead about three or four days and his smell had been what had alerted nearby neighbors. The deputy told us that the coroner couldn't get to the house to remove the body and they wanted us to clear a way or pick up the dogs so this could be handled. We very quickly knew that just the two of us couldn't handle at least 20 dogs running all over an almost quarter acre fenced part of the 2 1/2 acre lot in the middle of the night. I called the duty supervisor of the night and he had the officer from Big Bear as well as another high desert officer come out to help. So as we often did, we waited. The guy from Big Bear was going to take at least two to three hours to respond because of the drive. Bob, the other desert ACO was out there in about an hour. Instead of just waiting longer, we decided to try and get the inside animals out first since the outside dogs could be scared away from the front of the house as long as someone stood by and chased them back. With help from the deputies, we got our trucks inside the fenced yard and prepared to go inside. Stacy, Bob and I went inside and found that only ONE light in a light stand worked in the house so it was pretty dim, very smelly and hot. Dogs were all over the place, there were also several cats in cages and we weren't sure what else yet.
The owner had died in the living room on the floor but propped up on his elbows on the coffee table. Bob and I'd already seen 'dead people' on the job, this was a first for Stacy. It was still very surrealistic though, he'd been a big guy and was bigger from the heat and from the distance of the front door with the poor lighting it looked like he was wearing a kind of full head mask, kind of like the Mexican Wrestlers wear, until you could get closer. Then you could see that it wasn't a mask of any kind, the dogs had actually eaten all the skin off his head and it was the exposed muscle and skull that made it look that way.
This was a three bedroom house that he and his dogs lived in together. He had dogs with puppies on beds in each room, including his bed. Bob, Stacy and I started there, getting the dogs and then all the puppies out of the house. That took about an hour and a half even with all three working. We'd go into the bedrooms and close the doors to keep the dogs in there and catch and pull them out. I literally mean PULL them out to, because none of the dogs were leash trained or friendly around strangers so each adult had to be caught then dragged out and stuffed in the trucks. The owner had very nicely bought queen sized beds for all the bedrooms and his dogs, and it got to where they'd try to hide under the beds so I had to push up mattresses and box springs to get them. At first we worked alone in each room then it was working as a team to get the stragglers because those can be the hardest ones to catch.
All the dogs and puppies finally out of the house and then it was work on the animals in the cages in the living room/kitchen area near the dead owner. With all the dogs out of the house it was a lot quieter so as we worked on the cages, Stacy and I kept hearing this quiet hissing sound, at first we were concerned that maybe with all the running around a dog might have damaged a gas line to a stove or something, we didn't want to blow up in a natural gas explosion and with the stink of dead body and dog poop EVERYWHERE in the house we were concerned we might not have smelled the gas. So as I was looking around with my flash light that was how I discovered that the hissing and now gurgling sounds was escaping gases from the body of the owner. With the skin gone from the head and upper neck, and with the heat of the daytime temps and nothing to keep it "in", he was the hissing noise.
That news totally grossed out Stacy. She just wanted to get the animals and get out as quickly as possible. We were both concerned that trying to get the animals out of the cages in such close proximity to the body might make it to where one of us might bump it with our catch poles, we DID NOT want to do that!
We worked as fast as we could, everything was going OK then a couple of the cats started to escape. In her effort to catch them Stacy accidentally knocked over the floor lamp and broke the bulb in the lamp that had been the ONLY light in the house!
We all had flash lights but in going back and forth to the trucks with animals, Stacy and I both had left them outside in our trucks. I called Bob and had him come in with his flashlight because it was DARK, no street lights out in the area so neither one of us wanted to move in fear we might walk right into the owner in and attempt to get out. It took Bob a few minutes to get back in, he'd been working on the loose dogs outside by now with the now arrived Big Bear Officer. We got everything out, but still the coroner crew wouldn't come in because of the loose yard dogs. We all chased them around and around and just couldn't contain them in a small enough area to get them out. After I talked with the sheriff sergeant and then the on call supervisor, it was decided that the only way to finish this call was to chase the dogs to an area and have the sheriff's start blasting them with their shot guns while they waited there. Only a few dogs were actually shot, then it became possible to start catching them as they cowered in the bushes in the yard.
The four of us caught all but a few of the dogs, the coroner crew got their body, and the remaining dogs were later caught over a few days with dog cage traps.
During our night there we found out all about the owner, Bob knew him and had dealt with him recently for illegal kennels. He'd had this 2 1/2 acre property as well as another 3 acre property a few miles away with even MORE dogs on it that we all wound up picking up later that week.
Turned out the deceased owner had been one of the heirs of the Maxwellhouse coffee fortune. He had been very, very rich. He paid cash for just about everything and was waiting for a brand new pick up truck to be delivered to get around after wrecking his old truck. He'd also been a collector of dogs, like so many he couldn't and didn't do anything with them, he just liked getting any he came across, and then those would breed and interbreed.
A great line in the show I started this post talking about, SouthLAnd, was the line "in this job, you've got a front row seat to the greatest show on earth" after 25 years of a very similar job and going so many similar places and seeing so many things, I can attest to it!
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