Officer Steve Johnson: Officers' 'Close Encounter'

It was a Saturday morning in the Taraval District a little after midnight when officers Paulo Morgado and Dennis Cravalho were on patrol making small talk when a call of a hot prowl burglary came across.

The suspect was well-described and was last seen on the bike he had taken from a residence on the 2000 block of the Great Highway. Morgado and Cravalho were on their way. Morgado was driving the marked unit with Cravalho reading a description of the crime with the latest updates. They took a heading they thought the suspect might have chosen and, sure enough, there was a guy matching the suspect's description on a bike.

Morgado pulled the car over a half block away to let Cravalho out so they could box in the suspect just in case he dropped the bike and started running. They were right - as soon as he saw the officers he dropped the bike and took off - but he didn't go very far.

Cravalho, now on foot, started toward the parked cars where he last saw the suspect. He thought the suspect had taken off running, but instead, he was crouched down behind a parked van. Cravalho had the suspect at gunpoint and was ordering him to come out when all hell broke loose.

Morgado had continued driving down the street in an attempt to locate where the suspect had gone when, all of a sudden, the suspect stood up from behind a parked van and opened up, firing his 9mm semi-automatic weapon at Morgado. The suspect put three holes into the passenger door (right where Cravalho would have been had he stayed with the car) and Morgado was now trapped taking rounds from the suspect.

Morgado slammed the car into park and bailed out, planning to use the marked unit as cover. But the car kept rolling and now Morgado was on the street, totally exposed with the suspect firing right at him. But Cravalho had already opened up on the suspect and it wasn't until the suspect had fired several rounds at Morgado that he even noticed Cravalho. But he did, and now the suspect and Cravalho were fully engaged in a firefight separated by less than 12 feet with no cover.

The rounds kept flying back and forth until the suspect and Cravalho both ran out of bullets at the same time.

Cravalho was reloading, thinking he now had the edge on suspect, when he saw the suspect reach into his waistband and pull out a new clip. This wasn't supposed to be happening. A suspect with additional clips? Every police officer's nightmare.

But then Cravalho noticed that the suspect was having trouble loading and, instead of continuing the firefight, he took off running with the two officers in pursuit. The suspect was eventually flushed out of his hiding place and arrested for the attempted murder of two San Francisco police officers.

Investigators later found that the only reason the suspect stopped shooting was because one of Cravalho's rounds slammed into the suspect's extra clip and rendered it useless, otherwise.

Officers Morgado and Cravalho were honored by the San Francisco Police Officers' Association (POA) on Nov. 28 at 800 Bryant St., along with several other very courageous police officers. Morgado and Cravalho received the POA Medal of Valor for their bravery.

We are all extremely grateful that they made it out alive but the beat, as they say, goes on.

Steve Johnson is a San Francisco police officer. This article first appeared in the Police Officers Association publication POA Journal.