Ramesh Nyberg
When Life Gives You Lemons, Ask for Salt and Tequila
There I was, swooping down a blue marked ski slope, making gentle, almost majestic turns through the perfect layer of powder. The satisfying, crunchy swiisshh of our skis was music to our ears as Sgt. Luis Alvarez, my traveling partner, paralleled my serpentine trek down the mountain. We came to a ledge where I executed one of my better 90 degree sharp stops. I turned to Lou and said, “This is the best investigative trip I’ve ever been on.”
Being a detective in a large metropolitan police department’s homicide bureau has its perks.
Two weeks earlier, Lou approached me in the office and asked me if I was available to travel to interview a couple of witnesses. It was not uncommon for homicide cops to travel. We were one of the few units which were afforded permission to go just about anywhere if we had important witnesses to talk to or extraditions to conduct. The department (rightly) felt that, with murder cases, they would open their otherwise stingy pocketbooks.
“Where are we going?” I asked him.
Lou, who knew I liked to ski, put his hands on my shoulders dramatically, “Telluride, Colorado,” he said, unable to suppress his smile.
I should mention that, whenever we traveled, we always tried to build in an extra day for unforeseen circumstances; for example, if we couldn’t find or see the witness on the first attempt, or if there was some other legal issue we had to wrangle.
Or, if there were some very fine ski slopes which required investigating.
The brass probably knew that we structured our travel this way – hell, they did it all of the time when they found a way to go to conferences, meetings and even out-of-town Super Bowls. They also knew we homicide cops did a job they had no interest in doing: late night callouts, handling decomposed bodies, dead children, beheadings, and making next of kin notifications. Maybe that’s why the extra “R & R” was ignored when they signed our travel requests. During my regular homicide duty, from 1985 to 1992, I made four trips to Jamaica; two trips to Costa Rica; and several to Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Nashville, and a number of other spots. Our out-of-town ventures almost always required the assistance of the local detectives. These were the days before GPS, so I’ll be damned if I was going to try to find an address in Birmingham with a AAA road atlas (anyone remember those?). So, we made some great connections in those other cities. The local cops were always helpful in finding addresses and, most certainly, suitable watering holes after the work was done. When I was assigned to our homicide cold case squad, we did the same for visiting detectives.
Because cold cases often involved witnesses who had moved away from South Florida, travel was even more frequent. Granted, most of the travel was to small towns to interview prison inmates, but we always managed to have a good time with the local cops. Most people have never been to – or even heard of – Hobbs, New Mexico; Gillette, Wyoming; or Yazoo City, Mississippi, but those little towns were typical of the places we visited. I can’t complain because, in between those spots, I soaked up the sun and water in Montego Bay, Jamaica (during our “extra day”), skied in Telluride, and even did a wine tasting in Napa. That was a memorable one. When we discovered that a key witness lived in Napa, I wrote up the trip and, suddenly, the prosecutor on the case (they rarely accompanied us) decided they “had to” join us to take a statement from said witness and another detective decided that he had a lead in San Francisco and there were four of us going now. When we went to look for this female witness, we couldn’t find her and we were fearful that our expensive trip might be for naught. We got the Napa Police to help us look for her and they promised they would call us if they found her. In the meantime, the other detective somehow finagled tickets to a San Francisco Giants game for all of us. We were on our way to the stadium when the Napa PD called and said they had our witness at the station. Oh, well – we couldn’t complain much about missing the baseball game; we had spent the previous day in Napa visiting three different vineyards.
Our trips weren’t all fun and games. My partner and I went to Panama in 1989, just a week after the arrest of General Manuel Noriega, to interview a freighter captain who was informing on the Colombian cartel in one of our homicides. We weren’t allowed to carry our weapons there and, everywhere we went, the air was thick with anti-American sentiment and teeming with narcotics activity. After our first meeting with the freighter pilot, he called us at our hotel and said, “The Colombians know you’re in town and I think they followed me today. I wouldn’t stay in the country if I were you.” We were slated to go back home the next day, but I called American Airlines and asked them to put us on the next plane back to Miami.
There were other snafus and similar touchy situations in Jamaica, but all in all, I’m grateful to the department for giving us the leeway and the funds to pursue our cases more vigorously (as well as to enjoy that extra time we always managed to find). The nice “gigs” in law enforcement didn’t always involve travel. I once volunteered to work the 1997 Super Bowl in Miami, mostly because the NFL was paying overtime for the 12 hour shift. I figured I would be outside directing traffic, but, instead, I was posted in the club level, where I watched celebrities and NFL luminaries dine on stone crab and champagne in their suites, and I moved from stairway to stairway so I always had a 50 yard line seat to view the game.
What inspired me to write about this topic was not to brag about all the places I’ve been. Instead, it was my astonishment over what might be the greatest law enforcement gig of all time: Last year, for the summer Olympics in France, the Los Angeles Police Department got approval to accompany their politicians and athletes there. In July of 2024, 32 reserve officers and a supervisor traveled to France to work under the supervision of the French National Police, mostly to provide a show of security presence and to provide protection for L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. (I mean, what are the Olympic Games without the L.A. mayor there, after all?) This extraordinary weeklong gig was funded entirely by the French government, with the exception of the officers’ meals. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Office was not to be outdone, so they sent their own contingent as well. Bravo, L.A., you might have outdone us all – though that Telluride trip was pretty sweet.
When we arrived in Telluride, Lou winked at me and said that the witness we had to talk to was not in Telluride at all, but one hundred miles to the north, but close enough, right? The brass had already signed on all the dotted lines. We got the work done – even waiting ten minutes for a herd of elk to cross the highway – and got some playing in, too.
Ramesh Nyberg retired from law enforcement in November 2006 after 27 years of police work. He lives in Miami and teaches criminal justice at a local high school. He also teaches regional law enforcement courses through Training Force, USA. He enjoys getting feedback from readers and can be reached at ramesh.nyberg@gmail.com. Also, Ram has written a new book, Badge, Tie and Gun: Life and Death Journeys of a Miami Detective, which is available on Amazon in both Kindle eBook and paperback. You can find it by visiting amazon.com/dp/B0CTQQKQTV
