FOG CANNOT VEIL IMPACT FROM DEADLY SHOT IN DARK

The fog. All that fog.

Thick enough, dense enough to be impenetrable to the eye.

But not a bullet.

A trained police officer, a guy who carries a gun as a condition of
employment, gets off at least six shots and hits nothing.

ROBERTA'S BLOG See Roberta de Boer's blog A kid, barely 15
years old, fires - allegedly, tragically - who knows how many shots
and one bullet finds the chest of one officer.

In the middle of the night, telephones ring. Bedroom lamps switch on.
The people in those rooms, squinting against the lamplight, go from
sleeping to sorrowful faster than the speed of light.

He was just two hours away from getting off work for the night. Two
hours away from going home to his wife and kids.

Keith Dressel, undercover vice detective, working the overnight 8-to-4 shift.

"On routine patrol," is how the police chief described it.

Can working vice ever be routine?

"They work a lotta street narcotics," Police Chief Mike Navarre said.
"They don't get involved in the long-term investigations that the
metro [drug] task force does. ... The majority of their time is spent
on drugs and prostitution."

Rousting hookers, shooing away the dope boys. Just trying to keep it
all off the streets. "Quality of life" issues, a sociologist would
say. Maybe, if you live in the North End neighborhood where Detective
Dressel died, you might just call it street cleaning. In any case, it
sure isn't like wearing a blue shirt and a badge.

"It's so different," Chief Navarre said. "You're out there on the
street, living the life of the people you're arresting. You have to
talk like them, dress like them."

Method acting for cops.

Tuesday night, Toledo's police chief caught the 10 o'clock news. In
bed by 11 p.m., three hours later the phone along his wife's side of
the bed rang.

"It was at 2:05, to be exact. When the phone rings, I always look at
the alarm clock. And at 2:05, I know it's bad."

All police commanders have a copy of the memo titled "Notify Chief of
Police." It outlines the 21 circumstances under which command is
ordered to disturb the chief's sleep.

"Calls between the hours of 12:00 midnight and 5:45 a.m. are not
necessary," the memo advises, "unless a police officer is seriously
injured or causes injury."

The chief climbed in the shower, dressed, and drove off. It took him
three times longer than usual to drive from his house in the Franklin
Park area over to the North End, on the other side of downtown.

The fog. All that fog.

By early afternoon, when I sat down with Chief Navarre in his office,
police still hadn't found the gun used to kill Detective Dressel.
Police still didn't know for sure how many shots were fired at the
officer. Police still didn't know for sure if drugs were involved.

So what did they know?

"We know this was literally a shot in the dark" that killed Detective Dressel.

Once a year, every police officer has to fill out a form with all
sorts of personal information.

"We keep that sealed in an envelope marked 'confidential' in
personnel," the chief explained. "It's updated yearly, and we don't
ever look at it. It stays sealed."

Until, that is, someone in the police department needs that officer's
information. Like, for example, which fellow officer do you designate
to be your family's liaison in the event of your untimely death?

In Detective Dressel's case, he singled out a former partner.

Chief Navarre couldn't say for certain who notified the detective's
wife of her husband's horrible death, "but probably that would have
been" his former partner.

Police got Mrs. Dressel and her father-in-law to the hospital, while
the detective's mother remained behind with his young children until
someone could relieve her. Chief Navarre was near the emergency room
entrance when the detective's mother arrived, and was told by her
husband the news no mother ever ever ever wants to hear.

It is not a scene the chief of police would much care to relive, and
especially not for public consumption.

In his dreary gray office in the Safety Building almost 12 hours
after the phone in his bedroom broke the middle-of-the-night silence,
Chief Navarre sat back and looked through his mail.

An ordinary act on an extraordinary day.

Outside, the fog had long since lifted. Now and then, the sun
threatened to burst through.

"Look at this," said the chief, tossing a stapled bunch of papers
across his desk. "Look at what I got in the mail today. Talk about irony."

A newsletter, Concerns of Police Survivors, Inc., - for families
whose loved ones were cops killed in the line of duty.