The Ride

“You buckled up?” Officer Mike Zimcosky asks me as he switches on the lights and siren. We just got a call for an assist with a Signal 5: traffic emergency, in pursuit. “Yes,” I say as a small bolt of electricity zaps through my stomach. My right hand instinctively crosses over to verify that my seatbelt is, indeed, engaged. I press back into the seat as Zimcosky pulls a tight U-turn and floors it down Brown Street.

It is 12:39 on a Friday afternoon. I’ve been riding with Officer Zimcosky as a C.O. — a civilian observer — since 6:30 a.m. We’re in a dark blue Ford Explorer that has definitely seen better days. The transmission slips when Zimcosky accelerates, and every little bump in the road makes the shotgun that is secured vertically between the front seats jostle and squeak.

Zimcosky has been back on patrol for about six months now. He left the plain-clothes narcotics division after 23 years to return to a uniform and a regular day shift. “I loved it,” he says. “But there was a lot of overtime. You get calls at all hours. Patrol is a whole different thing. You can leave the job to go home.”

As we speed down Brown Street, Zimcosky constantly covers the brake pedal. Cars leap-frog each other in front of us, make left turns in front of us, seem to be oblivious to us despite the lights and sirens blaring. At each intersection, he slows to a near-stop, carefully checking for cross traffic. Zimcosky tells me this is normal, that “they don’t even hear us.” I make a mental note to pay closer attention to emergency vehicles when I’m driving.

“One thing about day shift,” he says early on, “when it goes bad, it goes bad quick.” The first call of the day was a hanging, code 6: “That means he’s already dead.” We decline to check it out, though Zimcosky says he’s never seen a hanging in his years on the force.

Tall and fit, with just a hint of a gut, Zimcosky has the face of a boxer. The pronounced bump on the bridge of his nose looks like it’s been broken several times. His light eyes are keen but kind, sharp without appearing angry. He wears no jewelry, save a chunky silver watch with a complicated face.

The radio in the truck buzzes constantly with dispatcher calls and codes. 39 is a traffic stop. 10 is a fight. 604 is a canine unit. 43 is a mental illness call. Signal 2 is a meet-up with another officer. Zimcosky calls in a Signal 1 when we need to stop and use a restroom. He says the Sheetz at Main and Waterloo has the cleanest restrooms in the city. When we’re done, he calls in 23: all clear. His voice goes a decibel or two lower when he calls in.

I have difficulty tuning my ear to the dispatcher and deciphering the code-speak. I can’t count the number of times Zimcosky says, “You hear that? We can get there,” when I heard nothing but bursts of static and the groans of the chassis. I am geographically turned around all day, whereas Zimcosky seems to know the labyrinthine street grid around Arlington Street like the knuckles of his scarred hand.

Each time I jump out of the truck to follow Zimcosky on a call, walking right up to who knows what, I fear the worst.

“You get numb to it,” Zimcosky says when I divulge my apprehension. Then he tells me a chilling story. In 1998, when he had been on the narcotics division for six or seven years, a package addressed to him was delivered to the downtown police station. It contained two pipe bombs. Zimcosky was in Columbus at the time, and nobody was hurt, but the experience struck a nerve. “It made me rethink my career choice,” he says. “But it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I can’t just hang it up.”

Zimcosky’s father served two terms as the police chief of Munroe Falls, from 1967-1969 and from 1972-1975. That was a big factor in Zimcosky’s drive to pursue a career in law enforcement after his time in the Air Force. In his off hours, Zimcosky sometimes drives a limo for his friend’s chauffeuring company. He likes doing it for the extra cash and because, he says, “it’s got nothing to do with police work.” He also takes on extra shifts and does security in an office for extra income because he’s got two kids in college.  

In 2008, Zimcosky and his wife of 12 years divorced. She was also a police officer; they met in the academy. “We just grew apart,” he says. He often refers to himself as an open book and doesn’t balk at personal questions. But he admits that years of being lied to and seeing people at their worst has made it difficult for him to trust anyone, even in his personal life.

In his 25 years of service with the APD, Zimcosky has never once discharged his weapon in the line of duty. However, in the six months that he’s been back on patrol, he has seen 11 overdose deaths.

Zimcosky says the Ride-Along Program is good both for cops and the community. “If more people saw what we have to put up with, the 99.9 percent of great cops [would] not be punished for the one percent of bad,” he says.

Racial profiling is something Zimcosky says he does not see on the job. “If you’re a bad guy and you mess up, I don’t care what color you are,” he says. He uses the terms “bad guy” and “good guy” a lot. His criteria for a bad guy? “Someone who is crooked with us,” he says. “It’s a sixth sense, a gut feeling you get.”

When we catch up with the Signal 5 pursuit just off Brown Street, there’s already a paddy wagon and a code 40 (sergeant’s car) on site. We hang back, just there as back-up. The young driver has no license on him, but is carrying a big wad of fifty-dollar bills. We wait while another officer calls in to see if there are any outstanding warrants on him. The call comes back 26. “He’s going to county because he has a bunch of warrants,” Zimcosky says, searching the vehicle while the first officer on the scene cuffs the driver and escorts him to the paddy wagon. “We can go,” he says after a few minutes, laying the key on the roof of the car. “They’ve already started a 35.” That’s a call for a tow.

We get back in the truck. Zimcosky calls in 23: We’re all clear.