Officer Ed Nichols checks the address of an incident report before heading out onto the scene.

Village News staff reporter Nick DeRatto went on a ride-along with Chesterfield Career Officer Ed Nichols as part of our new series A Day in the Life…. This semi-regular series will take a behind the scenes look at occupations in the Chester area.

July 16 may have been his 24th anniversary of being an officer, but for Chesterfield County Career Officer Ed Nichols, it was just another day on the beat.

“You never really know what’s going to happen during a shift,” says Nichols. “You get a little bit of everything.”

Once he has checked for any court appearances and calibrated his radar, Nichols starts off his shift, patrolling the roads on his beat while waiting for calls.

“It’s like fishing,” says Nichols. “Sometimes you get bites and sometimes you don’t. You never know what you are going to catch.”

After nabbing a few speeders, Nichols cruises past one of the addresses listed for a suspect wanted on drug charges. Spying the suspect’s vehicle in the driveway and knowing that the suspect is listed as armed and dangerous, Nichols rounds up a few officers and heads up to the house. Though a search of the house turns up nothing, he is able to round up a little information: the license plate on the vehicle has been changed, making the search slightly easier for officers.

With shows like “Cops,” many people see incidents such as these being the norm for police officers. However, incidents like this happen much less often than most people think, at least in Chesterfield.

“There can be a lot of downtime and boredom where you are just patrolling the roads,” says Nichols. “You also get a lot of running from call to call.”

While most people’s experiences with the police tend to stem from a heavy foot on the gas pedal, officers do much more than pull people for traffic violations. Calls can range anywhere from directing traffic and helping stranded motorists to filing citizen crime reports and breaking up fights. They can even involve a little animal control.

“One of the strangest calls that I ever responded to was a woman who reported a big snake in her yard in Huntingcreek Hills,” says Nichols. “When we got there, she said the snake had gone under the shed. Thinking that it was a black snake, I stuck my head under there. It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

The snake was an escaped 10-foot rock python. With a head approximately the size of a baseball, the snake took four officers and an animal control worker to subdue.

“The animal control worker put a dog holder around its neck and told us to all dive in and grab handfuls. After we got the snake to the shelter, we opened the cage to transfer it to another one. The second we opened the cage, the snake struck the cage with such force it shook the truck,” says Nichols.

Nichols has seen a bit of danger during his years of service as well. Though he has never had to fire his gun on duty in his 24 years, he has had a shot fired at him once. After responding to call about a stolen work truck, he tracked down the suspect, an employee of the company. Though the owner declined to press charges, he fired the employee on the spot, leading to a verbal altercation. Hoping to diffuse the situation, Nichols led the suspect away.

“The suspect was mad because he wasn’t able to get back home to Petersburg. I found out that he was clear of warrants in Chesterfield and Richmond and was waiting to hear back about Petersburg. After waiting quite a while and getting no word, I decided to go ahead and give him a ride back to the county line,” says Nichols.

Halfway to Petersburg, with the suspect in the front seat, Nichols received a call from dispatch giving the code that the suspect had a warrant for his arrest in Petersburg. Calmly pulling the car over, he walked to the passenger side and attempted to arrest the man.
“He looked at me and said in such a bone chilling way, ‘I’m not going back to prison,’ and grabbed me,” says Nichols. “We wrestled back and forth with my gun; the only way he didn’t shoot me was because I put my finger behind the trigger. After wrestling, we went over the hood of the car and he managed to get the gun. He stood above me with it and then ran off. As I chased him, he fired back at me once and ran off into the woods.”

Though incidents like this are a very real fear for officers and their families, Nichols still loves what he does.

“You see a lot of grief and families with a lot of hurt, but you have to keep doing your job,” says Nichols. “I come to work with the attitude that most people are good folks and deserve respect until they prove me wrong. Helping folks makes it a very rewarding job; I wouldn’t do anything else.”

nderatto@villagepublishing.com | 751-0421

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