Infolice

The lead position officer catches his supervisor's visual cue. Permission granted, he swings the battering ram back and then forcefully forward, splintering the dry wood of the doorjamb into pieces. Three men, in dark bulletproof vested uniforms rush though the new opening and rapidly clear each room, shouting "Police!"

A young woman, slender in build and moderate in height, with shoulder-length pin-straight dark hair darts through the kitchen and slams open the back door to escape the onslaught.

As her first racing foot lands on the wood of the back deck, her head snaps backwards. The third officer into the apartment and first to find the fleeing unsub, grabs tightly at her hair with his nitrile gloved hand.

Her feet and body are still dashing forward as her skull stops dead. In a blink, she is leveled to horizontal, slamming supine down onto the ground. Her lower back snaps over the threshold of the door, prompting a scream, hollowed with deflation from the lungs' painful loss of air. She automatically rolls to her side, crunching her legs up to her chest.

The arresting officer rotates around to behind the perp, forcibly raising the woman to her knees and yanking back at the left, then right arms to quickly zip-tie her hands. He releases and she crumbles back to the floor, whaling.

"Collared!" he shouts to the others on his team.

"Let's get her into the wagon and move on to the next one," orders the supervising officer. He reaches across his chest to the radio clipped near his shoulder, depresses the button and twists his head and lips to the microphone, "This is team seven. Collar three complete. Over."

***

The DA straightens her collars and flattens her skirt. A dozen TV cameras nest upon their tripods, guarded by their operators. Well-dressed men and women wait impatiently in several rows of folding chairs with pens and notebooks in hand. The podium holds ready, crowded with microphones and voice recorders. A foot to the side stands a display-board stating "Operation IDU."

The DA takes a deep, cleansing breath, stands tall and then strides into the dancing light of flashbulbs and the snapping clamor of camera shutters. She nods to smartly uniformed Police Chief Gregory Harman as she passes by his position, standing tall and flanking the podium. She pauses a moment to permit the initial wave to subside.

"Good evening. I am District Attorney Catherine Straight. Tonight, we are pleased to report to the people of this county that our office, in close coordination with the Police Department," she nods again toward the Chief, "has saved lives. With the successful arrest throughout today of eighty-seven offenders, future lives - leaders, artists, teachers, journalists," she smirks and winks at her audience, "will not be impeded any longer."

She turns her attention to the display board at her side, waving her hand upwards toward it, "Operation IDU was a grand success. As you know, 194 days ago, Federal protections for contraception were legally eliminated and our great state's life-saving law that for too long was neutered by this protection - forgive the pun - became enforceable yet again. As such, life-preventing contraception was de-legalized here."

DA Straight continues in her confident manner, "Many of these contraceptives were simply removed from distribution. However, these eighty-seven women chose to commit ongoing criminal acts during this time."

She grabs at the bottom of the page on the display board and prepares to lift in theatrical form, "Our problem, until recently, was identification. Thanks to the effort of my staff and to the right-minded judges of this beautiful county, twelve days ago, a sealed emergency order was granted to waive the HIPAA privacy provisions unlawfully hindering the identification of lawbreakers and the Police Department's ability to execute the laws of this land. The order required Gynecology offices to turn over records on those in our county who still have IUD contraceptive devices inside of them, stifling life and blockading new citizens."