Free We Are the Cops by Michael Matthews Page B

He had jumped just as I was getting the call. I stepped out of my car and there was nothing left of him. He had basically exploded. I think we found parts of him two hundred and fifty feet away, in the intersection of Baltimore. It was just very graphic.
    What was strange, though, was that there were people that were hit by his debris. And because of the sound of him hitting the ground and the velocity that the debris took off at, people would find pieces of him on them and they thought that they had been shot. We had two people that had actually passed out. So I pull up and I have a person laying here and another person laying there, as well as a body. Then a Japanese tour bus passes by and I remember looking up and they’re all taking pictures. I mean it was the most surreal experience I have ever seen, all theflashbulbs going off.
    So as this happens I’m trying to shut the road off and things like that and there was a guy who got out of his car and he had body matter all over the side of it. He swears, gets in his car and starts driving off.
    So the very first officer that arrives, I tell them, ‘You’ve got to go stop him. I don’t know what his deal is.’
    He pulls over and his thing was that it was a rental car and he was concerned that they were going to charge him for cleaning it, so he was going to find a car wash. This is the mentality of people!
    It was absolutely crazy and because of the way traffic was blocked up, I was there, all alone for probably about two minutes or so, although it seemed a lot longer. It was like some strange movie. There was so much going on all at once. And it’s hard because your brain – and I don’t care who you are or how trained and experienced you are – your brain will automatically have a pre-conceived idea of what you’re getting yourself into. I was thinking how I was going to run through the casino to the elevator and take it up to the top. I’m thinking about handling this scene at the top of the Stratosphere and all of a sudden, in a split second, I’m confronted with the scene right here in front of me on the ground and a whole element that I wasn’t even ready for.
    It was crazy. It was like being in a war zone. It was almost like a bomb had gone off – like a car bomb had got off – and I’ve got all these victims everywhere but actually I only had one person who was dead. I imagine a suicide bomb would probably have the same look to it.
    Later that night we had to walk around with the biohazard bags and haul pieces of him off. We called out a biohazard team – they’re private contractors that come out and clean things up; crime scene cleaners – and so to help them out we had to pull parts of this poor guy off of palm trees and we’d have tourists coming up to us and say, ‘Hey, I think there’s something other here that needs your attention.’
    Later that night, as the guy is being cleaned up, there was something white on the ground and the crime scene guy looks at it and he goes, ‘Oh my God! You know what that is?’ And he goes over to his car and grabs a screwdriver and he starts chiselling at the ground and pops it out.
    It was a piece of vertebra that had actually embedded itself into the asphalt. It was 105 degrees that day and so the asphalt’s a little soft and a sliver about the size of a domino had embedded itself right into the asphalt. It was the craziest thing in the world.
    It didn’t bother me a bit though. I guess I looked at it more from a professional standpoint of, ‘Well, someone here needs to fix this problem and I guess that’s me.’
    It wasn’t any more graphic than a really serious car wreck where a body has just been shredded apart. I mean, there was a moment of, ‘Ooh! That’s different!’ – but it certainly didn’t affect me in any kind of negative way. You have to learn to really compartmentalise in this job. But at the same time you have to learn that there needs to be an outlet for that somewhere – a