Give 'Em Hill: This outlaw is a cop's best friend

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jul 27, 2008 | by Angela Hill

HE STARTED OUT as a white-collar criminal. Check fraud, I think it was, but that was just a gateway crime. Soon, the downward spiral began, and Dan descended into the abyss of lawlessness, his misdeeds escalating to a deadly pinnacle of transgression.

In no time at all -- maybe an hour and a half -- Dan became more aggressive. He had abandoned mere identity theft and moved on up to armed robbery, hitting a bank (one that was still in business), then holing up in a vacant house (possibly foreclosed upon) out in the middle of a hot, dusty lot in Dublin, hands clamped on his Glock 9- mm like a pit bull biting a ham bone. In willy-nilly desperation, he sprayed bullets at FBI SWAT teams, some CHP officers and a couple of sheriff's deputies from Stockton, shooting at least two of them in the back, no less. Now that's just rude.

"You're not gonna take me alive!" he didn't shout, but probably thought, because, well, when in Rome "...

Finally brought down

Yet justice prevailed. Renegade Dan was arrested a total of 14 times, and took some lead himself -- a few in the forearms, one in the upper chest, and even a kill shot to the head.

I know because he showed me the next day.

"See, I got one here, here, here. I guess that's about seven," he said, pulling up his sleeves to reveal quarter-sized purple bruises. "They were fake bullets, but they hurt a little."

Yes, my friend Dan is still alive. See, in reality, he's a super- nice guy, a 36-year-old woodworker and erstwhile techno-geek who has a friend who is an FBI agent who asked him to volunteer last week in an exercise at the Alameda County Sheriff's Office training center in Dublin, mostly because Dan is big and looks intimidating and they were short on bad guys that day.

Basically, he had the time, so he did the crime.

"We often use civilian volunteers for training," said Special Agent Joe Schadler, an FBI public information officer based in San Francisco. "You could do it too if you want. Wanna be a terrorist?"

Um, no thanks, Joe. I bruise too easily.

Fantasy felonies

So Dan's escapades were clearly fantasy felonies in a controlled environment, a magical land where crime doesn't pay and banks still have money to steal. But it was far more than just playing cops and robbers. For one thing, the cops weren't playing. This was serious training. The scenarios were fabricated, but the action was authentic with real people reacting in unpredictable ways -- far better than any video simulations or pop-up targets.

It's pretty funny to think of Dan as an outlaw. Yes, he's a big guy -- 6-foot-6, 240 pounds -- affectionately called Sasquatch at work, online screen name of Mapinguari, a giant sloth-like creature in South American folk legend. (Maybe he should have trained with Fish and Game instead.)

But he's, well, Dan. His lone brush with crime was that time a cop pulled him over because he'd taken all the emblems off his Audi, to which Dan responded, "You've gotta be kidding!" and then, "You're not gonna take me alive!"

OK, not the second one. He merely asked to speak to the officer's supervisor.

So I would have expected him to be bad at being bad. Turned out he was disturbingly good.

Bad boys. Whacha gonna do?

Reach Angela Hill at ahill@bayareanewsgroup.com.