Deputies Always Ready for What’s Next

By Uriah Kiser

In Stafford, sheriff’s deputies use words like probable cause, indicators and articulate.

It’s probable cause that helps them identify potential dangers to the community and those who are breaking the law.

Indicators are used to that tell them whether or not their suspect is telling the truth, or if there’s more to a situation than meets the eye.

During an arrest, deputies must articulate to the suspect what laws he broke, what rights he has, and to potentially talk themselves out of danger if the suspect becomes combative.

One constant remains, however –– and it can’t be summed up in a single word –– you never know what’s going to happen next.

It’s just after 2 p.m. on a Tuesday and Sgt. Renzo Beltran has just hit the streets.

He drives his mobile office, a Ford Crown Victoria, to a car wash off Warrenton Road (U.S. 17). The attendant waives him into the wash bay when a voice the police radio calls out about a stabbing that had just occurred a few miles away in Falmouth’s Olde Forge neighborhood.

A deputy calls his cell phone to relay initial details about the case. At least five teenagers were outside playing a game of football when one of them pulled out a hunting knife and stabbed three of them. Still bleeding, the victims drove themselves to a nearby hospital in Fredericksburg.

Now, police are left to determine where the stabbing occurred.

They’ve roped off a playground but there are no signs of blood. Neighbors aren’t talking, leaving investigators with little to go on. “We’ll go ahead and search this area, and let me know what you find,” said Beltran to the deputies.

A crime scene technician and other deputies fan out across the neighborhood but find little. One of them is seen talking with a neighbor who is giving an official statement, but in this neighborhood the informant could be putting his well being in jeopardy by taking, as many who live here have known gang ties.

The victims in the stabbing suffered non-life threatening injuries, and a teenager was later charged.

“A stabbing right out of the gate…the first thing we get called to…I don’t know, reporter, you might be bad luck,” Beltran says to me.

Beltran is a veteran officer with a wife and two children that live in the same county he works tprotect. He’s Hispanic, bilingual, and knows what its like to be the focus of media attention. Another reporter interviewed him in 2007, after neighboring Prince William County passed an ordinance allowing their police officers to question anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant.

That ordinance was later changed, and it had little if any effect on life in Stafford, where deputies here are already known for being a little tougher than your average Northern Virginia street cop.

Crime is colorless, and it happens everywhere, says Beltran.

Much of this job is about experience and being ready for what happens next.

“In Virginia, it you’re 18-years-old, graduated high school and able to pass the academy and you can be a police officer. They give you the basics but then its up you to learn the code, the laws and to become a better officer,” said Beltran. “I can’t say I’ve seen the worst thing I’ve ever seen this week because something will happen the following week that will surprise me even more.”

That night, Beltran went on to arrest a man from Woodbridge on shoplifting charges, stopped drivers who were speeding and those cars had defective equipment. He also found two young lovers in a parked car at a playground in North Stafford’s Park Ridge neighborhood. He told them to go home.

His cell phone rang at the end of his shift, and again it was another deputy with new details on another crime.

“You’re never going to believe what just happened, sir,” said the voice on the other end.

A man dressed like a cow crawled into Walmart, pushed a cart to the milk aisle, loaded it with 26 gallons of milk and then pushed it outside the store without paying for it and tried to give it away to bystanders. He was arrested at a McDonalds across the street.

It’s proof you never know what is going to happen next.