By Sr. Cpl. Mark Colborn
Dallas Police Department Helicopter Unit
& L.E.T.A. Instructor
An easy job two men thought, cut the phone lines and disable the alarm, break in, remove the safe and make a fast getaway. After all, the average response time to a priority one call in Dallas is seven minutes. What these two burglars didn’t count on at 2 a.m. on April 28, 1997 was the alarm having its own phone line and the cops showing up within minutes. The two men used a crow bar to break in the back door of Bob’s Golf Shop on Tennison Golf Course in East Dallas, and were in the process of moving the safe when our Central Patrol officers arrived on the scene. Sr. Cpl. Paul Stokes and I were on routine aerial patrol over the big "D" when we were called to the scene of the burglary. When the Central officers arrived, they discovered that the business had been recently broken into and felt the actors might still be in the area. I immediately employed our FLIR unit on arrival one minute after receiving the call and promptly spotted a person walking eastbound on one of the paved golf cart trails. The suspect heard the helicopter and took off running toward a creek that flows through the course. He ran under a tall stand of cottonwood trees and brush on the edge of the creek, and lay down. I had officers on foot move to his position, and when they were close, lit up the scene with the Nightsun searchlight. The suspect then realized he was in a bad position and rolled over into the creek. The only part of his body visible at this point was his head, and only a weak thermal image at that. The Nightsun proved to be ineffective due to the vegetation along the creek. The officers on foot searched the area for approximately ten minutes and kept repeating that they could not find him. During this time the heat source emanating from the suspect disappeared and we were unable to relocate him. I kept insisting that he was in the creek and was hiding at the edge of the water, and directed officers to the last know location of the hiding suspect. Several officers came to within less than three feet of where we had last spotted the heat source but could not find him.
Officers searching another area of the course thought they had spotted another suspect running into a wooded area of the course on the opposite end so we left the scene for a couple minutes. After determining that there were no suspects in that area, we returned to the previous location where the FLIR image had disappeared. We remained convinced that the suspect couldn't have escaped or swum across the creek that quickly. Not wanting to admit defeat, Sr. Cpl. Stokes shot an approach to a green on the opposite side of the creek, and while at a hover I could see the outline of the suspect’s head on the FLIR just below the opposite bank. The Nightsun was useless because of the vegetation and lack of contrast. After a lot of prodding on the radio, I finally convinced several officers to move down to the creek's edge. One officer stood directly over the guy and kept repeating there was nothing there. Finally, the officer swept some brush out of the way with his arm and lo and behold the suspect slowly rose out of the water. We could clearly see on the FLIR screen, or perhaps we both imagined what we saw, the suspect look directly at the helicopter and give us a very dirty look, and of defeat! The suspect’s body from the neck down was in huge contrast, temperature wise, from his head. The temperature that night was about 45 degrees, and the water had significantly cooled his outside body temperature. His partner in crime was captured while waiting in a vehicle on the south side of the golf course. Both were charged with Burglary of a Business and our actor was charged with Evading Arrest. Without the help of the thermal imager, this career criminal would have escaped a very cold ride to, and night in, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department Lew Sterrett Detention Facility, affectionately referred to by the residents thereof as; "The Glass House."