The real life of an American police officer: Winning over others with virtue

Chapter 276 The Stupid Way

Of course, these two options only apply to law-abiding patrol officers.

For someone as flexible as him, there was a third option: to infiltrate and search.

It can also be seen as an opportunity to hone certain skills.

Eric drove the Explorer patrol car slowly down the street, his eyes scanning both sides.

Based on the information currently available, he can also find the criteria for selection.

The core point is very simple: the wanted criminal who stole the car is probably still awake.

Therefore, he excluded houses without vehicles or light sources.

The only houses that fit his criteria were those with light sources and transportation.

At four o'clock in the morning, the presence of lights was itself an unusual signal. Eric's gaze automatically filtered out all the dark houses, focusing only on those with light emanating from them.

After setting these filtering criteria, Eric's search efficiency was greatly improved.

Soon after, reports from Weston and Will began to blare from the police radio.

They are all in place.

"10-L-11 received, Over!"

Eric put down the walkie-talkie, his face expressionless, and systematically scanned every scene along the way.

The initial scenery was relatively primitive and remote, with a strong trace of nature. Occasionally, tall California oaks and Monterey pines intertwined their branches, forming a deep dome on the roof of the car.

The road surface is a cracked asphalt road, the environment is like the countryside, and the houses are mostly detached bungalows or ordinary ranch-style houses.

The wanted criminal must have passed through here, Eric thought.

The scenery changed halfway through.

The old cement roads have been replaced by paved asphalt roads, and the houses have been transformed into ordinary urban residences with satellite antennas on the roofs, rocking chairs and potted plants on the porches, and practical pickup trucks or economy cars parked in the driveways.

"The first one."

Eric looked at the house that was emitting light, reached out and turned off the body camera, turned off the engine and got out of the car. After confirming that there were no cameras around, he quietly sneaked in.

Looking through the window, they saw a woman in a bathrobe sitting on the sofa watching late-night television.

Eric, an ordinary night owl, made a quick judgment and retreated, continuing his search along the way.

"The second one."

Eric parked the car in the shade and fixed his gaze on a bungalow that was emitting a steady white light.

He turned off the engine and got out of the car, moving as nimbly as a cat, quickly checking several possible camera angles, but there was nothing there.

Eric quickly crept in and got close to the window that let in light; the blinds weren't fully closed.

Through the crack, he saw a scene of a family workshop, where an elderly man with gray hair and a magnifying glass lamp was intently soldering a tiny electronic component with delicate tools.

"The third one."

The light source here comes from a separate small house behind the main house, which was converted from a garage.

The lights were quite bright, even a bit dazzling.

As Eric approached, he heard extremely low, deliberately suppressed electronic music beats.

He found a sliver of light with an excellent vantage point, and the view inside made Eric raise an eyebrow slightly.

There was no furniture inside; instead, there were several huge shelves covered with lush cannabis plants growing vigorously under bright grow lights.

A Latino man wearing a t-shirt and a pollen mask was intently trimming branches with a pruning shears, next to a weighing scale and a vacuum sealer, and the air was filled with the pungent smell of marijuana.

A small-scale drug dealer's workshop, a small, privately used illegal marijuana grow house, is considered a low-level policing issue under California law.

They are far removed from dangerous wanted criminals wielding long guns.

This guy's trouble is at most a misdemeanor charge; it's not worth alerting him now and ruining the main mission. Eric's lips twitched, but his heart remained unmoved as he silently withdrew once again.

The fourth one.

The fifth one.

Eric patiently eliminated all the unusual but irrelevant targets one by one.

Although this method was a bit clumsy, it did allow Eric to further narrow down his search area.

Luckily, the timing was right; a large area was dark, otherwise he wouldn't have needed to search.

Eric was really going all out for this mere 0.5 reward from the mission.

"The eleventh family."

Eric silently told himself to keep going, and drove the Explorer police car away without making a sound as it slid into the shadows next to an abandoned mailbox and came to a complete stop.

Eric parked the police car and squinted slightly as he looked at the houses on the side of the road ahead.

The house before him perfectly matched the scene he had sketched out based on the clues.

Located at the end of a side alley, backed by a steep hillside covered with dense oak and pine trees, it provides a natural barrier and privacy.

The main point is that if things go wrong, we can run here.

The key point is that a rough driveway extends from the main road, and in the two rather shallow ruts at the entrance, a little bit of reddish-brown clay appears dark in the moonlight.

This was unprecedented in the previous houses.

"This one is a better match than the previous houses we searched. Could this be it?" Eric muttered to himself, looking towards the end of the tire tracks.

Several cars were parked there, and the car tracks belonged to one of them, a dark green Toyota 4Runner.

Then look ahead along the car.

A building with its own warehouse and large yard, surrounded by iron mesh on the left, with a staircase leading up the middle, and a group of low houses connected together on the right, came into Eric's view.

"This terrain is a bit dangerous," Eric thought, frowning.

After thinking about it, Eric simply called for backup; after all, it wasn't a big deal.

Eric took out a walkie-talkie and switched to a private channel.

"Guys, I think I've found it."

The next second, Will's voice rang out: "Address!"

Eric gave the address, looked at the house emitting light, and waited for Will and the others to arrive.

My intuition grew stronger and stronger.

Eric instinctively pulled out his Glock 17 and checked it with a few quick clicks to make sure it wouldn't jam or malfunction.

The wanted criminal was carrying a long gun, had accomplices, had a background as a veteran, and had just abandoned his vehicle. All these details combined suggest he was not a good person.

After the inspection, Eric removed the extra items from his duty belt, leaving him only with handcuffs, a high-powered flashlight, two magazines, and a Glock 17.

After completing the preparations, Eric waited a short while before hearing a noise and looking in the car's rearview mirror.

The shadow of a black and white police car was revealed through the dazzling headlights.

Will and the others have arrived.

Including Darren, who lost out on things there.

As soon as the three police cars spotted Eric's police car, they turned off their headlights and quietly approached.

As the three police cars came to a stop behind them, Will and the others got out of their vehicles.

Eric took a shotgun from the central gun rack, got out of the car, and went to meet him.

(End of this chapter)