Scariest call police officer can receive is 'shots fired'

It was on a hot August evening when a man shot at police in Hudson, Wis., and then fled across the river into Minnesota. Andrew Ellickson, a 31-year-old patrol sergeant for the Washington County Sheriff's Office, responded to a "shots fired" call at the Bungalow Inn in Lakeland, where the suspect had crashed his car.

"That's a very bad feeling for a supervisor or a cop," said Ellickson, thinking back to that night. "Who's out there?"

He first made sure the restaurant's doors were locked. "My concern is that if this guy goes into the Bungalow, he's got bathrooms, food, water, hostages," he recalled this week. Deputies blocked off roads while the sheriff's office called residents in the neighborhood to warn them of a potential intruder.

"Then we get a phone call from this woman who said, 'My husband is fighting with this man in the garage,' " Ellickson said.

Ellickson, carrying a rifle, ran to the garage with a reserve deputy, a Stillwater police officer, and the chief of police from Bayport. They heard yelling.

"It was scary going up that driveway. No doubt, it was scary," he said on a Monday evening in November as he drove past that neighborhood.

The garage was dark, but when they stepped across the threshold a motion-detector light came on, revealing a bleeding homeowner wrestling with an intruder on the garage floor. The suspect's rifle lay nearby.

The homeowner was exhausted from the fight and from a gunshot wound to the back, inflicted by the suspect's handgun. When Ellickson and the other officers intervened, the suspect wanted to fight some more.

"I hit him with a Taser and then that was the end of it," Ellickson said.

His passion for law enforcement started early in life. When he was a teenager in New Brighton, he sometimes slept in the back seat of his father's squad car, waiting for the "big calls" that police officers inevitably handle. Now, fully endorsing Sheriff Bill Hutton's philosophy to "have fun and catch bad guys," he sees that action from the front seat.

"Andy's a great sergeant," Hutton said. "He's a very responsible, knowledgeable young man who has a great future ahead of him."

Darkness settles on the St. Croix Valley. Ellickson, badge No. 152, drives south toward Afton in a tank-like cruiser full of law enforcement tools. There's a battering ram, a pry bar, plastic handcuffs for mass arrests, an oxygen kit, drug detection equipment, a bullet-resistant shield. The cab has a "non-lethal" shotgun that shoots beanbags that hurt, and a rifle that's capable of doing worse.

The big white squad car has lights and sounds and gizmos all over, including a video camera that watches through the windshield during traffic stops.

Red tail lights wink along County Road 18 as commuters hurry home from work. Ellickson stops a maroon van that swerved over the fog line. The female driver is remorseful -- and sober -- and he gives her a warning. It's a slow night, he said, but he knows the big calls are only a radio transmission away.

Some winter nights are the worst for boredom, he said, when the bone-jarring cold keeps people indoors and deputies sometimes fight to stay awake on lonely drives through the dark forests and fields of Washington County.

"Out here it still feels a little more rural," said Ellickson, who's worked for the sheriff's office for eight years. "We have pursuits, we have people with guns, with meth, we have all the same issues, just on a smaller scale."

Ellickson wanted to be a police officer since he was a boy, when he began to admire his father's work.

"He drove this cool squad car and caught bad guys," he said. John Ellickson now oversees the police functions in New Brighton's public safety department.

"As far as heroes, it was never Spiderman or Batman, but my dad," said Ellickson, who came to patrol after being an investigative sergeant in charge of welfare, computer and juvenile crimes.

Now he's one of a dozen or so deputies who patrol Washington County in the evenings. Roll call for the afternoon shift starts at 2:30 p.m. at the Law Enforcement Center in Stillwater. Then Ellickson unlocks a room where deputies each take a Taser from the shelves. He said his role as sergeant is to coach deputies, and he's happy:

"I don't see myself ever leaving here. I love it."

Kevin Giles • 651-298-6571

Kevin Giles • kgiles@startribune.com