Being a police officer can be a very difficult job. Each day they suit up putting their own lives on the line to protect this country from criminals. Each day they have the chance of being severely injured or even killed. Each day they go out on patrol unaware of what may happen next. What does this feel like to put a man in handcuffs or

Paul Soberano is one of these hero’s and knows first-handedly to what it feels like to be in a life or death situation while attempting to arrest a subject. He has arrested many people before but had never had an experience like this one.

It was just another day for me as a police officer. I woke up, suited up and went off to work like any other day. What I didn’t know was that this day was not going to be like any other day.

As the day was coming to an end I was driving around on patrol and I saw a man in a parked car on the side of the road and decided to pull over to see if he needed any assistance. The man seemed like an ordinary man and had done nothing wrong. Once I had pulled up to the curb I noticed that the man was very surprised and seemed caught off guard to see me pulling up. In my head I knew this was a red flag right away because the man seemed very suspicious to me.

I ran the mans license plate number on my computer to find out if this man had any violations on his record. It turns out that the man had a suspended drivers license. So since this man had a suspended drivers license he should not be allowed to drive a vehicle on the road. And as I was doing this the man had gotten out of his car and was standing on the side of the road just kind of standing nervously. I confronted the man telling him he shouldn’t be driving with a suspended drivers license because it will come with consequences. When the man was told this, he was not a happy one bit with the information and things just went downhill from there.

So as I was talking to the man and trying to explain what was going to happen, he suddenly takes off down the side of the road. And this isn’t just any road, it was a main highway where cars were flying up and down the road. It was also around 8 at night so it was very dark outside. Since the man is running dangerously on the side of this busy road at night, I am doing the best I can to get the man of the road for his own safety. I was not only concerned about my own well-being but also the well-being of the man I am chasing down the side of this road and making sure he doesn’t cause a car crash that will harm others. I continue to chase after this man down the road and just when I thought things couldn’t become any worse, they did.

The man ends up running out into the middle of the road to try and escape me and he runs right into the flow of traffic flying by. Now this just makes the situation way more dangerous for me, the man, and the people driving on the road. I then run out after him, getting into somewhat of a tug of war match as I try to pull this man off the road. I am in desperate need of help to get this man off the road at this point. I feel almost helpless right now as I’m wrestling this man. I did call for back up, which they take about a couple minutes to get there, but to me it felt like tit took them forever to get there because of the crazy situation I was currently in.

My backup did finally show up and it could not have been at a more perfect time. The police officer who had just showed up ran over and pulled the man off of me and started to fight with the man himself. When I got back up and saw the other officer fighting with the man I thought to myself that this can not be happening right now and got back into action to help the other officer out. We were not going to let this man get away. More officers came to help out as well to get this man down once and for all. This was just a crazy situation overall. Multiple police officers attempting to arrest one man in the middle of a highway where cars are still flying by and swerving around us to avoid a collision and its pitch black outside.

We did however finally arrest the man and putting him in custody. That was after the fact that all of us had to wrestle this man down in the middle of the road and put many lives in danger. I realized how scary and dangerous that entire situation was and just was amazed no one was severely injured. Of course this is not how every arrest occurs but it just shows how dangerous it can get to just arrest one person and this experience was just so outrageous that I will remember this event forever.