Among the other disturbers of the peace JOCCWI wished to control were high school kids racing around in Pop’s-or their own-car in the middle of the night. The chief had his officers spend a lot of time trying to stop that-he had had more than his fill of picking up dead kids who’d missed a turn and hit a tree-but he knew he hadn’t stopped it all.
On the surface, having a number of responsible citizens roaming through the area at night in their own cars, looking for something amiss, and when finding it, reporting it to the police by cell phone seemed at first-even to the chief-to be not so bad an idea.
And among the founders of JOCCWI were the pillars of the community. They were lawyers, executives, schoolteachers, businessmen, dentists, and retired members of the armed forces, including two full colonels, three lieutenant colonels (one of them a former Green Beret), a number of other commissioned officers, and nearly a dozen retired master chief petty officers, sergeants major, and other high-ranking former noncoms.
They showed the chief what they intended to do, and how they intended to do it, and he frankly had felt more than a little admiration for their plan.
The night the concerned citizens went into action, the chief and the mayor went to their headquarters, a rented former concession stand at the Yacht Club, to wish them well.
They learned that the organization now had a name, Jackson’s Oak Citizens’ Community Watch. It was taken from Jackson’s Oak, a tree in Daphne under which Andrew Jackson had allegedly stood shortly before moving west to fight the Battle of New Orleans.
That’s when the chief and the mayor saw that the retired Green Beret, who would serve as watch commander that night, had a Colt. 45 semiautomatic pistol in the small of his back. And so did Dr. Smiley, the dentist who would command the first four-hour tour. Other members of JOCCW (without the “I” for “Incorporated”) were also armed, with everything from pistols to shotguns.
As tactfully as he could, the chief had suggested to the retired Green Beret that perhaps firearms weren’t really such a good idea. All that JOCCW was supposed to do was keep an eye open and call the police if they saw something that looked suspicious.
“How the hell can you go on guard without a weapon? Jesus Christ, Charley!”
The next morning, the mayor, the chief, the (part-time) municipal judge, and the (part-time) city attorney conferred vis-a-vis the armed members of JOCCW patrolling the city.
Legally, there didn’t seem much that could be done about it. Under the laws of Alabama, any law-abiding citizen over twenty-one could apply to the Baldwin County Sheriff for a permit to carry a handgun concealed about the person, on or in a vehicle. The permit could not be denied without good cause.
They agreed that the sheriff of Baldwin County, who is an elected official and wished to be re-elected ad infinitum, was not about to tell the pillars of the community who had organized JOCCW that he’d changed his mind, and they could no longer go about armed.
The laws regarding longarms were similarly not very comforting to the mayor et al. No licenses were required to own longarms. Citizens had to pass a firearms safety program to get a hunting license, unless they were veterans of an armed force, or over the age of sixty-five. Many, perhaps 75 percent, of the members of JOCCW met both of the latter two requirements.
Finally, the city attorney suggested that since the members of JOCCW were all reasonable men, if they were aware of the legal ramifications-primarily tort lawsuits for hundreds of thousands of dollars-for shooting someone without full justification, they might lose their enthusiasm for carrying weapons.
This was brought tactfully to the attention of one of the two retired full colonels-a Marine who’d fought all over the Orient from Guadalcanal to Khe Sanh-who listened attentively, thanked the city attorney for his interest, and said it wasn’t a problem.
“That potential difficulty occurred to Bob Skinner,” the colonel said. J. Robert Skinner, Esq., one of the founders of JOCCW, was an attorney, specializing in corporate liability. “We expected to be incorporated within the week. If somebody sues JOCCWI-‘I’ for ‘Incorporated’-the corporation treasury will be empty, or nearly so.”
The chief, therefore, was concerned but not surprised when his bedside telephone rang at 1:30 A.M. (2:30 A.M. Philadelphia time) and the police dispatcher somewhat excitedly told him, “Chief, we just got a call from Jabberwocky. Request assistance at the Yacht Club Condominiums. Shots fired.”
“I’m on my way. Call the mayor.”
Christ, it was inevitable. I’m only surprised that it didn’t happen long before this.
Dear Jesus, please don’t let them have shot some kid, or some guy trying to sneak into his own house.
When the chief turned off Highway 98 into the drive of the Lake Forest Yacht Club, he saw that three Daphne police cruisers and one each from the Fairhope police department, the Baldwin County sheriff’s patrol, and the Alabama state troopers had beat him to the scene.
When he got out of the car, the wail of sirens he heard told him that additional law enforcement vehicles were on the way.
Then he saw there had been a vehicular collision just inside the brick gate posts. A Chevrolet Impala on its way out of the complex had slammed into the side of a Mercedes sports utility vehicle sitting sideward in the road. He recognized the Mercedes to be that of Chambers D. Galloway, retired chief executive officer of Galloway Carpets, Inc., and a founding member of JOCCWI, who lived in one of the big houses overlooking the beach and Mobile Bay.
The chief shouldered his way through the spectators and law enforcement officers.
“Who was shot?” he demanded, before he saw a very large man wearing black coveralls lying facedown on the ground, his wrists handcuffed behind him.
“Nobody was shot,” the retired Green Beret said, just a little condescendingly.
“I was told ‘shots fired’!”
“I didn’t try to hit him, Charley. At that distance, I could have easily popped him. But I knew that Galloway could intercept him at the gate-I’d already alerted him and others- but I figured, what the hell, if I let off a couple of rounds into the air, he might give up back there.”
He pointed into the condominium complex.
“Why?… What did he do to attract your attention?”
“He had a ski mask on and he was trying to pry open a window with a knife… great big sonofabitch. It’s still in his car-I looked… For some reason, I got a little suspicious. So I alerted the shift, told them to block the entrances, and then I shined my light on this clown and asked him, ‘Excuse me, sir. May I ask what you’re doing?’ At that point, he took off running.”
“Chambers Galloway stopped him?” the chief asked, just a little incredulously.
And then the chief saw Chambers Galloway. The tall, ascetic septuagenarian was standing beside the state trooper, chatting pleasantly, looking more than a little pleased with himself.
Mr. Galloway was wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and shoulder and a matching brimmed cap. He held a twelve-bore Belgian Browning over-and-under shotgun, the action open, crooked over his right arm. He could have been standing in a Scottish field, waiting for the beaters to start the pheasants flying.
As the chief looked, a flashbulb went off, and then a second and a third. The chief saw Charley Whelan, of the Mobile Register, standing atop his Jeep Cherokee in such a position that he could get Mr. Chambers D. Galloway; the prone, handcuffed man in black coveralls; and most of the police officers and their vehicles in his shot.
In a sense, Mr. Whelan was Mobile’s Mickey O’Hara. He was considerably younger, and far less well paid, but he was the crime reporter for the Register.
And he had a police frequency scanner both on his desk in the city room of the Register and in his Cherokee. He had been in the city room-the Register had just gone to bed- when he heard the call announcing that shots had been fired at the Lake Forest Yacht Club.
He almost didn’t go to the scene. No matter what he found at the Yacht Club, it was too late to get it in the morning’s paper. But on the other hand, it might be an interesting story. Shots were rarely fired on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, which was not true of other areas in Mobile.
So he got in the Cherokee and raced across the I-10 bridge, which connects Mobile with the eastern shore.
And when he saw what was happening, he was glad he’d come.
This was hilarious. Half the cops on the eastern shore had gathered at the scene of a captured Peeping Tom. And the actual capture of this dangerous lunatic had been made by an old fart with a shotgun, who looked as if he
