The Alarm Has Been Terminated

(A call about a burglar alarm going off at three am comes over the radio for my partner and me to respond to. We coordinate our approach and arrival together and check the outside of the house. We notice the back door is cracked open, but both locks have been set and are still in the “locked” position. There is no sign of force, so we radio in that we are making entry. We work each room together, and as we come to one of the back bedrooms, my partner is going in first and hasn’t even broken the threshold when we hear a voice shout out.)

Voice: “GET YOUR HANDS UP!”

(The next thing I know, my partner fires off three rounds, with me dropping to a knee and coming around the side of him)

Partner: “GET DOWN! GET DOWN! Ge– Oh, s***.”

(That’s when I noticed he had just shot a stand-up cutout of Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator holding a shotgun and, after my ears stopped ringing completely, I heard a lot of squawking and crashing. Turns out it was the home of a retired police officer from another state and his parrot was taught to say police terms. He and the wife were on vacation and they hadn’t shut the back door completely, which set off the alarm that night. The house was cleared with no one in it, and the PD paid to patch the holes in the wall. From then on, anytime we saw him we’d say, “SQUAWK! DON’T SHOOT!”)