705th Military Police Company
Hurricane Andrew Relief Operation
Homestead, Florida
August - September 1992

SSG MICHAEL B. SHIMER

The Florida Army National Guard armory in Cocoa is located on Fiske Boulevard and isn't much to look at as armories go. On the grass facing the street from the main entrance is a sign proclaiming the company name and the names of the commander and first sergeant, directly below the crossed pistols of the US Army Military Police Corps Regiment. The sign is painted in the green and gold colors of the regiment. A flag pole sits adjacent to the sign. During duty hours, the flags of the United States and Florida can be seen for several blocks flying high above the surrounding two-story low income housing units.

When I first entered the armory on August 23rd, 1991, recently honorably discharged from active duty, I located the office of Corporal Tracy Boutwell, the company clerk. Up until that point, CPL Boutwell had only been a name on my National Guard enlistment paperwork. She was the first corporal I had seen in the Military Police Corps since I had left Germany in 1990, and she seemed just as surprised to see that I was also a Corporal.

I was once told by my former operations sergeant, SFC Motzko from Ft. Sam Houston, Texas, that of all the ranks in the US Army, Corporal was the only one on the "endangered species" list (Corporal, by the way, is the oldest rank in the US Army and the first of the Noncommissioned Officer grades). I guess that made me all the more proud to wear those two stripes and just as defensive when told on numerous occasions in the National Guard "Don't be surprised if they make you a Specialist again, Shimer." I would always respond, "Like Hell, I never go backwards!" (even though a promotion from Specialist to Corporal is considered a "lateral" promotion and not an advancement). Well, I never did lose my stripes. I wore those two endangered little stripes up until the time I made Sergeant, in 1993; and again when I reentered active duty in 1994 (I cheated to keep my stripes then at Ft. Campbell, playing a little trick on the personnel pukes when I in-processed, but that's another story).

The 705th was going through quite a few changes when I attended my first scheduled drill in September of 1991. The unit had only just returned from Saudi Arabia in May after serving six months of active duty during Operation Desert Shield and Storm as an Enemy Prisoner of War guard company. The company commander, Captain Frank Mason, was preparing to leave the 705th for a job at battalion, and a number of the soldiers were leaving the unit after serving honorably during the Gulf War.

In December of 1991, the 705th welcomed it's new commander, CPT Mathew Hearon, who had been assigned previously to the Provost Marshal's Office at the State training center: Camp Blanding. With the war now over, CPT Hearon began to concentrate training for the unit on the 705th's peace time mission: civil disturbance. This became increasingly important after the rioting in Los Angeles in April 1992, following the acquittal of four white LA police officers accused of beating a black suspect, Rodney King.

The civil disturbance training was conducted in earnest, with concentration on riot formations and the use of force. The riots in California came and went, leaving the State of Florida relatively calm compared to the past history of racial disturbances in Miami's "Liberty City" and Overtown. The 705th was no stranger to riot duty, having spent time in Miami following the 1980 race riots which tore the city apart. But the calm that pervaded over Florida was like the still air before a storm. A storm that, in the early summer of 1992, seemed almost inconceivable to the soldiers of the 705th. 

Detective Bobby Mutter, my partner for the evening on the Titusville Police Department's anti-burglary "Tac Team," asked if I had heard a shot. It was late in the evening on the 23rd of August, and we were conducting a field interview of a suspected burglar on the railroad tracks at South Hopkins Avenue and Knox McRae. I said that I had. Hearing a shot fired in the evening air didn't necessarily get me excited. I had been a cop with Titusville P.D. for almost a full year at that time; not to mention my four years of previous service as a US Army Military Police. 

Just then a call came over the radio reporting a shooting at the docks not more than two blocks from our current location. Bobby and I jumped in our unmarked Ford Aerostar Minivan, put the blue light on the hood, and raced to the scene of the shooting. A black male appeared to have been wounded in the upper right chest, and an older white male appeared to have been the shooter. Other officers began to arrive on the scene,  so Bobby and I followed the ambulance to Jess Parrish Memorial Hospital's emergency room to observe the treatment of the victim. 

Initially, the young black man's injuries didn't appear to be life-threatening. He had a small, 9mm entrance wound to his upper chest, about three inches below his collar bone. There appeared to be no exit wound. Despite the appearance, the victim's heart stopped beating about five minutes after we arrived. Notwithstanding the valiant efforts by the attending medical personnel at Jess Parrish, this young man died on that early morning. 

I got off late from my shift due to the ensuing paperwork, and was fast asleep that afternoon when I was woke by the ringing telephone. "Yeah, whady'a want?" I asked groggily, expecting it to be the police department. "This is the company," the voice on the other end of the line replied. "Rolling Thunder." "What the Hell is 'rolling thunder'?" I asked, annoyed at the disturbance and seconds from hanging up the phone. The voice told me to check my National Guard alert roster and hung up. 

I got up and stumbled to the fridge, beyond annoyed and borderline pissed off, and focused in on the roster. "Bring all my gear in for an immediate deployment, prepared for at least two weeks?" I read the explanation for Rolling Thunder a second and a third time. Then I dialed the number for the armory. "What the hell is going on?" I asked.

As I arrived at the armory around 2000 hours (8 pm for you civies), the scene was pandemonium. People were everywhere, moving in a hundred directions on various missions. Vehicles were parked inside the armory, being loaded with everything the company owned. The reports on CNN, playing on the TV in the conference room, were not good. Hurricane Andrew, one of the most powerful storms ever seen, was barreling toward Miami with top sustained winds around 150 MPH. The soldiers of the 705th worked through the night preparing to move south. We ordered pizza for dinner and completed packing the unit by 0600 on the 24th, one hour after landfall in South Dade County. 

We sat and waited most of the morning for traffic to clear on Interstate 95. All of the evacuees were returning home and had the roads choked heading south. After a full day in a convoy of over forty vehicles, we arrived a Tamiami Park north of Miami. A National Guard task force was being established for the relief effort. The 705th received word that we were to move out first thing in the morning for Homestead, site of the worst destruction from the hurricane. I helped to load magazines for our M16A1 rifles, and couldn't help but think "My God, they're giving these pizza delivery boys live rounds."

When we arrived in Homestead the morning of the 25th, with a Florida Highway Patrol escort, we were greeted by scenes of utter chaos and destruction. Nothing above ground level appeared to have been untouched. Every power line was toppled, every roof dislodged, cars were stacked on top of one another, every window shattered. We watched as merry people looted stores right in front of us; waving as they passed by. The only troops to arrive before us were a platoon or so of Special Forces (SF) from Ft. Lauderdale. I watched as a group of three tackled a looter leaving a Blockbuster Video store, his arms full of stolen movies. 

We "circled the wagons" in a field off of US 1, and waited for our local contact from the Homestead Police. Camera crews from just about every major network filmed us eating our lunch: Meals Ready to Eat (MREs). We then moved out to the Cleveland Indian's Spring training baseball stadium on the outskirts of town and set up our base of operations. The company was divided into a day and midnight shift, with most of us experienced civilian officers (there were about twenty or so guys who worked as police and corrections in the company) on the mid shift. 

That evening around 1800 hours my squad moved out to post a stagnant security position. We were tasked to secure certain businesses and locations deemed vital to the relief effort and the community. My squad's position was a moving and storage building that stored a lot of the household goods for US Air Force airmen arriving and departing the Homestead Air Force Base. When we arrived, we were welcomed by two SF soldiers: a sergeant first class and a lieutenant. They had been there most of the day trying to hold off the looters from the nearby project apartment complexes. There were several overturned Ryder moving trucks in the parking lot, and the entire backside of the warehouse had been destroyed by the storm. The SF guys told us of how the looters tried every trick imaginable to get in and steal the property inside the warehouse throughout the day. 

The darkness was indescribable. With no electricity or street lights, the area was pitch black. It was also extremely hot. The temperature in the evening stayed above 90 degrees Fahrenheit with humidity at 100 percent. Nevertheless, the SF guys decided to start a bon fire in the parking lot, above my objections. Gunfire could be heard constantly coming from the direction of the apartment buildings. There were loud BOOMS from shotguns, CRACKS from pistols, and RAT A TAT TATS from automatic weapons. 

One of my guys, SPC Calvaruso, was a Seminole County Deputy when he wasn't playing weekend warrior. Calvaruso had walked out to the road in front of our location to talk to a Homestead cop who was passing by. After about fifteen minutes, I went over toward the police car to tell Calvaruso to come back toward the hummers. 

No sooner had the police car drove down the road about fifty meters, and Calvaruso had walked about ten feet away from me in the parking lot, when a person about one hundred feet away on the street toward the closest apartment building began shooting at the police car. I dropped to the prone and saw the muzzle flash from a gun, and heard the 'crack' of bullets passing over Calvaruso toward the police car. The officer in the car apparently hadn't heard the gun fire, as he continued to drive without haste down the road away from our position. I yelled at Calvaruso to get behind some cover. When he had dropped to the ground, Calvaruso had left his Maglite flashlight on and the light was shining out from under his still body. The thought raced through my mind that one of my guys had already been shot, on our first day on duty! 

Eventually Calvaruso pulled his head out of his ass and moved behind some cover. I had locked and loaded a round in my M16 as soon as I had hit the ground, and had sighted in on the shooter's muzzle flash. I had even taken up the slack in my trigger, preparing for the shot. The only thing that held me back was my concern for my backstop: that is, the area where my bullet might travel if I missed my target or if my round passed through the shooter's body. I knew that there were apartments directly behind, so I released the slack on my trigger. This all occurred within the space of about ten seconds.

I crawled and ran to my hummer, where the rest of my squad had taken cover with the SF guys, and grabbed the radio handset. "I need night vision NOW!" I screamed into the radio, talking with the TOC (tactical operations center) back at the stadium. The response came that they had found the night vision (AN/PVS-4's; night scopes that can mount on the carrying handle of an M16), but couldn't find the batteries in the storage trailers. I was furious. I ran to one of the Ryder trucks and searched for a fire extinguisher. Finding one, I promptly put out the SF bon fire in the parking lot, which was certainly drawing attention to our position. Then we rode out the remainder of the night with noise and light discipline strictly adhered to.

The next evening, while guarding a Red Cross supply tent next to one of the middle schools, some of the relief workers began handing out free packs of cigarettes. I accepted the offer. So began a bad habit that I still have to this day.