"Them's Fightin' Words!"

It’s a difficult job being a police officer. One starts out the day not knowing what situation might arise or what danger might be faced. Some days might actually be boring and routine, and others might provide a lot of hilarious situations. But overall, any given situation can lead to difficulties or distress, or even pain or death. Sometimes the criminals do indeed fight back.

This story started, as so many stories do, with a traffic stop. In this case the police in St. Paul stopped a vehicle near I-94 on Dale Street in connection with their drug investigation, not just because it was missing a tail light or speeding. It was just before 6 pm on January 17, 2012. Two armed suspects jumped out of the vehicle and one turned to shoot at a police officer. Officer Brian Wanschura then fired at the suspect, hitting him twice.

The injured suspect was taken to Regions Hospital, and after a pursuit on foot, the second suspect was caught. Police officers later found “multiple pounds of suspected methamphetamine and marijuana” in the vehicle. Officer Wanschura was placed on administrative leave for a few days, as is regular procedure.

Then there’s the story about a guy who lives over in Grand Forks. Apparently, he was very unhappy about having to take a drug test, so he broke into the lab and stole his own sample so that the results would not come out. Then he decided to steal the drug testing equipment so that he would never have to take a test again…or so he thought.

In this case it was a sincere and heartfelt desire to fight back, but it sure didn’t work out very well since he was arrested for breaking and entering and theft.

The last story was actually about a drug user’s child fighting back. The 11 year old boy just got tired of living in a house that was full of marijuana smoke all of the time, so he took pictures of the drug and made sure that they got to the authorities. The drug agents brought a search warrant and then arrested the boy’s mother, who is a Dakota County probation supervisor. They also arrested the boy’s stepfather.