Read Online Deliver Us from Evil by Ralph Sarchie - Free Book Online Page B

away my time playing baseball and reading these hair-raising but incredibly fascinating books, when I got to the third year of high school, my dad told me I should think about what to do with my life, should I not become a pro ballplayer. I said, “That’s easy, I’ll become a cop.” My picture of what police work was all about came mainly from cop shows on TV: I imagined nonstop action as I saved lives, solved mysteries, and made one spectacular arrest after another. After my high school graduation, I enrolled in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, mainly to play baseball for the college. If the major leagues somehow decided they could live without me, I’d at least be learning about law enforcement. And since I’m now wearing a badge, not a baseball mitt, it’s not hard to guess how things ended up.
    In 1984 my childhood interest in cop life turned into what I now call “the Job,” when I entered the New York City Police Academy. I quickly discovered real-life police work wasn’t anything like TV shows: It’s hours of boredom, riding around in a patrol car looking for trouble—and responding to radio runs—with spurts of pure adrenaline and stress when you suddenly get a 10–13 call (officer needs assistance), flip on the sirens, and speed to the crime. On the way, your body gets pumped for action, so you’re ready to charge through a blazing gun battle, if need be, and collar the perps. Half the time, however, the emergency is over when you get there, and it’s back to cruising the streets while your racing heartbeat slowly drops to normal.
    A year later, as a twenty-three-year-old housing cop, I was overwhelmed by terror in broad daylight after reading The Haunted , a book about a family under diabolical seige. Here I was a police officer who’d faced down armed perps in public housing projects, and I was scared to death in my own bedroom imagining the living hell these people had endured. The book confirmed what I’ve known for years: These aren’t just stories. Not only do ghosts exist, but there are spirits that are pure evil, which I now refer to as demons or the demonic. I remember thinking that I’d never want any of this to happen to me and had absolutely no desire to get involved with investigating this stuff.
    Initially attracted by the action-filled aspects of police work, I began rethinking my life after being shot in the line of duty in 1986. I was off-duty at the time, looking out the window of my mother’s apartment, when I saw a guy running down the street with a box under his arm. Call it a cop’s instinct, but I knew something was wrong, so I strapped on my gun and went down to investigate. Then the guy started zigzagging down the street, the typical body language for a 10–30, police radio jargon for a robbery. I started running too, sure some poor soul—probably the nice store owner down the block who’d been a frequent target of bandits—had been relieved of his valuables.
    With all the running I did during my baseball playing, I caught the guy pretty quickly. The box tumbled to the ground, and jewelry spilled out. That was enough probable cause for me, so I drew my gun and identified myself as a police officer. The guy seemed meek and was shaking all over, but he suddenly grabbed my gun and got a round off.
    Although I took a pretty good hit in the arm, and blood was everywhere, I managed to slam the guy against a chain-link fence and tried to wrestle my gun away from him. I knew if I didn’t, his next shot might be the last sound I ever heard. After a lot of screaming on his part, and bleeding on mine, I got my weapon back, but the guy got away. Somebody called 911, and more cops and an ambulance showed up in no time. I gave the anticrime unit (plainclothes cops) the best description I could of the perp—who was arrested two weeks later, and pled guilty to the attempted murder of a