Police Blotter 25
The Halo-Vest Connection
The return of Corporal Chris Hines of the Royal Canadian Police Force or RCPF to the Integrated Homicide Division had began with a running start. The work had just hit the ground running.
Ten years ago, a bank robber was trying to rob a bank. When he ran outside the bank, Police were already there and had surrounded the building.
The Police had all kinds of weapons with them. There were four different cops and on this day, all of them were carrying different weapons. One cop had a .38 snub nosed. One cop had a pump action rifle. One RCMP Officer had a taser and another had an ARWEN gun. The ARWEN is a less than lethal option in addition to the taser. It fires five rounds of either wood, foam or tear gas canisters. The ARWEN stands for Anti Riot Weapon ENfield and was invented by the British Royal Small Arms Factory RSAF, in 1977. On this occasion a wooden canister was used. It struck the bank robber damaging his spine.
As a result, the bank robber had to wear a David Lynchian looking device called a halo vest for the rest of his life.
In the years that followed, the bank robber Jeff Stearns served seven years and was then released. Due to a rich medical settlement that he got ironically, from suing the Police and getting generous damages from the court, he hired someone to carry him around like how the last Prince of Russia was always had a guy dressed like a sailor carry him around. The guy who carried the halo vested Jeff Stearns around was named Mr. Roberts.
The settlement that he got from the Police was ironic because he used the money to plan yet another bank robbery.
He made another appearance at the bank. He decided to rob the same bank that he robbed years ago, since he knew the layout. He had a gun and with him and also a pit bull. It was a strange sight. A 6' 2" tall muscular man carrying around a man wearing a halo vest. And the man wearing the halo vest holding a leash in his hand that connected to a pit bull.
It was at this point that the call came into the station where RCPF Corporal Chris Hines was working. A team of SWAT cops were on the way.
The suspect Jeff Stearn appeared in front of the bank. He was holding the pit bull in his arms. The tall man Mr Roberts was carrying the halo vested Jeff Stearns. A job which he got $5,000 a month for.
The Police yelled into a megaphone for him to surrender. This lasted for a few minutes.
Then in a fluid chain of motion of events, Jeff Stearns revealed the reason why he was holding the pit bull. He used one of his hands to pull out the gun that was concealed in his chest pocket which the pit bull hid from view.
The Police saw this and drew their guns. Mr Roberts could hear the hammers clicking and a warning shot was fired that just missed Mr Roberts, Jeff Stearns and the pitbull. At this, the arm carrier concierge panicked and turned around running up the stairs. See, the front of the bank had a staircase going one storey up to the front entrance.
Mr. Roberts turned 180 degrees and high tailed it up the stairs of the front entrance. Jeff Stearns was firing at one of the Police Officers. At this point, the RCPF SWAT Team cop raised his sawed off shotgun and shot a powerful blast.
It hit the criminals in the back as they were running up the stairs, just like that scene in the French Connection. But instead of hitting one man in the back as he was running up the stairs, the bullet went through the hearts of Mr Roberts, Jeff Stearns and also the dog killing the three of them simultaneously, in an upward trajectory!
It was another case successfully if not most spectacularly closed.
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