After a suspected gang-related brawl between at least a dozen people Friday night, Officers Dustin Bruland (left) and David Johnson (right) questions three people involved at the Shell on Samish Way. Photo by Ben Woodard

At 8:13 p.m., I pulled open the first set of doors to the Bellingham Police Department, just north of downtown.

Through the second set of doors a custodian swept the dimly lit lobby. The doors were locked, so I picked up the phone on the wall to my left. It rang automatically. I told the woman on the other end I was there for a ride-along in a patrol car.

I hung up the phone after she told me someone would come to let me in. I waited and blew air into my numb hands.

Briefing - 8:20 p.m.

After waiting a few minutes, Sgt. Scott Grunhurd came to the door and led me to the patrol briefing room where the night patrol meets before each shift. The shift started at 8:20 p.m. and ended at 7 a.m. Saturday.

Five officers sat around the table while Gunhurd gave the briefing. Just above the table, against a far wall, a dozen small monitors showed real-time surveillance of downtown Bellingham.

Grunhurd said there was nothing new on the police agenda, and he congratulated Officer Craig Brewer for arresting a man in possession of 60 grams of black tar heroin the previous night.

Shortly after, I was assigned to a patrol car with Officer Dustin Bruland, who has worked for the Bellingham PD for two-and-a-half years. Bruland navigated the hallways and locked the doors of the station. We eventually ended up in the back lot behind the station where the patrol cars are parked.

Adjacent to the exit, Bruland entered a room and grabbed the black assault rifle patrol officers carry strapped to the bulletproof glass that separates the front and back seats in the patrol car.

First call - 8:43 p.m.

Bruland conducted the pre-patrol equipment check before we left. He checked the sirens and lights and booted the computer, which runs software capable of searching a vast database of names and addresses Bellingham Police have come in contact with. For example, if an officer goes to a house due to a loud party, the software records the address and the people directly involved for future reference.

As soon as we pulled out of the station, the police radio was buzzing with dialogue between the dispatcher and other officers on duty.

“Fight at the Leopold,” the dispatcher said over the radio. “Outside the Leopold, 1224 Cornwall, two males hitting each other.”
Bruland began to drive more hastily, speeding through downtown.

The dispatcher described the scene seconds before we arrived: “One subject is a white male in his 30s wearing raggedy clothes; another male was spitting in his face.”

We pulled into the Leopold Retirement Center and parked behind Officer Kevin Freeman’s patrol car. Bruland jumped out. The radio buzzed with more information, most of it spoken in police code, and I quickly followed Bruland.

The fight was over, but tempers were still high in the dark alleyway. Apparently, a man working for the Leopold went to the alleyway to ask three transients warming themselves on a heating vent to move along. One of the men reportedly spat on the employee’s face, and the employee allegedly hit the man’s lip with his elbow.

“He needs to go to jail. If he wants to box, I’ll box him. You here what I’m saying?” the transient said. “He assaulted me. He cracked me in my lip for no fucking reason. If I wanted to assault him, I would have had him up against the wall and beaten his ass; that’s my nature.”

The transient’s friend, Edward Borsey, 39, was the only one arrested at this incident in connection with an outstanding warrant from not showing up for a court date from a previous criminal trespass charge. Freeman, the first on the scene, booked him into Whatcom County Jail downtown.

The other transient was issued a trespass, meaning if the police find him on Leopold property again, even warming up by the external heating vent, he can be arrested.

Motel 6 - 11:01 p.m.

We were back patrolling. The warm patrol car loosened the nerves I built up at the Leopold.

An alert popped up in red text on the computer screen. The radio chirped a few more times and Bruland sped to the next call: a noise complaint at the Motel 6 on Byron Street behind IHOP.

Bruland said employees at establishments such as the Motel 6 can call the police if guests are too loud in a room. Guests can be booted out of their rooms at the request of the employees.

Nobody around. We pulled in behind Officer David Johnson’s patrol car in front of the motel lobby.

The woman at the front desk said room 216 was registered to someone named Candy and had been loud for hours.

However, the room at the back of the motel was quiet when we arrived. The lights were out. Bruland nocked, but no one answered. He knocked again. Finally, a woman cracked the door open. She denied anyone was there with her, and she denied knowing Candy.

Bruland insisted the reports from earlier in the night said more people were in the room. Again the woman denied the allegations. Finally, she cooperated and opened the door. Shortly after, 11 people poured out, all wearing ill-fitted jeans and black shirts, one with a black bandana hanging from his right back pocket.
They filed down the steps, off to somewhere else. The room was trashed. Empty Budweiser cans and pizza boxes littered the room.

Bruland said it was a 426, which is police code for gang-related activity.

“We’ll see how long it takes until we have to deal with them again,” Johnson said.

The Brawl - 11:19 p.m.

Back to the streets. We patrolled for a few more minutes. We drove up Samish Way toward downtown, then turned around and drove toward the overpass near Haggen and Bill McDonald Parkway.

Just as we pulled into the intersection of Samish and Bill McDonald, Bruland saw something I didn’t and flipped on his lights and sirens, while he whipped through oncoming traffic. My eyes darted to the left, down Byron Street leading to the Motel 6.

A dozen people were brawling in the street. One man, wearing a red shirt and red hat, was swinging his fists wildly into the face of a man I saw moments ago walking out of room 216 at Motel 6.

In a split second, half of the men in the brawl bolted across the street toward Blockbuster and the Shell station in reaction to the sirens and lights. A few ran toward the motel. It was the definition of scatter.

Bruland threw the car in park and ran after the men who headed toward the Shell station.

Two men and one woman remained on the curb in front of me. All three were in room 216 earlier. One was bleeding from a gaping cut on his forehead.

He sat for a while with his girlfriend while his friend yelled in Spanish. They were angry. They wanted payback because the brawl was cut short, so they took off in the direction of Bruland and the rest. I was petrified at first, but finally jumped out of the patrol car and followed. Johnson pulled into the Shell station and cut off the bloody man and his friends from chasing after the men responsible for his wound.

Bruland and Johnson sat the heated men and the woman down on the curb outside the Shell station as more police cars arrived. Bruland and the other officers tried to get the story of what happened to them after they left the Motel 6, but they wouldn’t say who it was who jumped them.

In order for police to conduct an investigation, they need a victim and someone to press charges, but the man who was hit didn’t want to press any charges.
They were released, Bruland told me that even though they wouldn’t say, they knew exactly who jumped them.

“It might be taken care of tonight or next week, but with a 426 like that, it will be taken care of,” Bruland said. “They don’t want us to take care of it, but someone will pay.”

Party Bust - 12:38 a.m.

After the brawl, the streets were quiet for a while. We backed up Johnson at a traffic stop as a precaution. A woman was arrested on suspicion of driving with a suspended license on Bill McDonald Parkway. We came from downtown and drove 55 miles per hour up Lincoln Street.

On the way, we whizzed by car after car, but as we approached a silver Subaru hatchback, it accelerated to at least 60 miles per hour in a 30 miles-per-hour zone. Bruland let him go. The speeder was lucky we were on our way to back up Johnson.

“Your brother is more important than any traffic ticket you’ll ever write,” Bruland said as the Subaru made a left turn in front of us.

We backed up Johnson without incident, and shortly after we received another alert on the patrol car’s computer screen for noise complaints from a loud party on 31st Street.

As we rolled by, people were standing on the front patio, and it was loud. The people outside scattered when they saw our patrol car. Some went back inside. Others started walking down the street.

Johnson went to the front door, and Bruland and I went around to the back of the house. We jumped down a muddy embankment and came around the corner to the backyard.

One person was urinating off the back patio. He heard us walk up, and he turned his head to see who it was. He stumbled sideways, obviously startled. The man looked underage, but Bruland said nothing to him as the young man awkwardly hid his beer behind his legs and shuffled back inside the house through the sliding glass door.

Spilled beer dripped on my shoulder from the porch overhead as Bruland knocked on the sliding glass door. Another young man opened it. Once his eyes adjusted to Bruland’s flashlight, he realized he was facing a cop and muttered an awkward “sorry” before going back inside.

“Where are the renters?” Bruland asked the teeming crowd inside. A girl tried to pull the blinds closed, but it was too late for hiding.

I observed the crowd of at least 60 people inside, and as the word spread through the room, the beer pong stopped and the music was turned down.

Eventually one of the renters came to the door. Bruland took him around to the front of the house where Johnson was talking to the three other renters.

The party was broken up. Eighty-nine people filed out the front door, while about a dozen bolted out the back. Most looked under 21 years of age, but no one was given a citation. Johnson gave the renters a stiff warning before leaving.

The quiet, affluent neighborhood was filled with people from the party. Most drove off, but some lingered for a while in the streets. The warm patrol car was welcoming again. The smell of cheap alcohol filled the cab from my beer-soaked shoulder.

Downtown - 1:45 a.m.

We stopped downtown with three other officers to observe the bars as they stopped serving alcohol around 1:45 a.m. East Holly Street was filled with drunken bar-goers, mostly 20-somethings. A few were puking in the streets, and one man fell face-first on the sidewalk after tripping on the curb. I heard the distinct thud of bone against concrete from 50 feet away, but he seemed to shake it off.

The crowd outside The Royal nightclub dispersed by 2:30 a.m.

We patrolled up North Garden Street after hearing reports of people kicking cars, but we didn’t see anything, so we decided to head back to the station.

“After about 2:30 a.m. the calls really start dying down,” Bruland said.

To the station - 2.43 a.m.

We arrived at the downtown station at 2:43 a.m., and I thanked Bruland for taking me on patrol. We talked about the night: the 426 brawl, the party and all the patrolling, but were interrupted by a report coming through his earpiece from the police radio.

He rushed back down the hall. I could have followed and discovered where he was going, but it was late. And the smell of beer from my shoulder was making me nauseous.

I left through the front doors of the station where my adventures started six hours ago and scraped the ice off my windshield.

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