After a long recovery at home, Detective James Letts is back on the job at full capacity and has returned to his previous assignment.
TRENTON — By his own admission, Detective James Letts likes to stay out of the spotlight. For the next few months, that isn’t going to be easy.
Letts returned to work at Trenton Police Headquarters yesterday morning, nearly six months after he was shot in a gunfight that left him wounded in the shoulder and side. Detective Edgar Rios, who was beside Letts when the two were ambushed as they escorted a domestic violence victim back home to Hobart Avenue, was shot as well, suffered serious injuries and is still recovering at home. The officers fired back and killed their attacker.
After a long recovery at home, Letts is back on the job at full capacity and has returned to his previous assignment.
Yesterday, he tried to settle back into his work in the department’s Special Victims Unit amid congratulations and back-slapping from his colleagues. Letts said it’s a different feeling from what he’s used to.
“I mean, people want to come up and shake your hand and say, ‘How’re you doing?’” Letts said. “I was just like, no attention before. So it’s out of the ordinary. I was just doing my job.”
For his bravery that August day, Letts will be honored as the department’s Officer of the Year in April. Rios has already won that award in 2007 and is ineligible to receive it again, but his name will be on the program as an honorable mention. The two will also receive the Police Athletic League “PAL of the Year” award later that same month.
But the biggest ceremony by far comes in May, and the man doing the honoring will be the President of the United States.
Letts and Rios are going to the White House May 12, where along with officers representing nine other states they will get the Top Cops award from the National Association of Police Organizations.
President Obama is set to recognize all the award winners during a presentation and remarks. Last year’s ceremony was held in the White House East Room. The awards are presented during a dinner that features special guests, often actors who play police officers on TV series.
It’s all quite a lot for Letts, who hopes Rios gets back soon so he can soak up some of the attention.
“I don’t know how I feel about it,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
He says Rios is doing “very well.” Their friendship has only strengthened since the shooting, sparked by a brutal domestic violence incident in the early hours of Aug. 15 last year. After 23-year-old Eric McNeill assaulted his girlfriend Yama Blue and stabbed her puppy to death, McNeill fled Blue’s residence on Hobart Avenue.
Rios was called in a short time afterward to handle the case. He asked Letts to take a ride with him as he and sheriff’s officer William Miller went back to the scene of the crime with Blue to take photos.
Rios and Letts barely had left their car when McNeill appeared from the house and started shooting. In those deadly seconds, McNeill seriously wounded Rios with gunshots to the abdomen and hit Letts twice before McNeill was killed in the return fire.
Both Rios and Letts were rushed to the hospital. Letts was in stable condition and released the next day, but Rios was placed in a medically induced coma to give doctors a better chance of saving his life.
“That was probably the hardest thing, ... me leaving the day after and him having to stay, knowing he might not make it,” Letts said.
Rios, 53 and one of the department’s longest-serving and highest-regarded officers, eventually improved. For the 46-year-old Letts, who marks his 20 year anniversary with the department this month, the recovery was actually more painful than the injury.
Letts needed physical therapy, and had to make sure he had full range of motion in his shoulder before returning to work. Doctors sent him to a shooting range to make sure he could handle a weapon, and Letts took a long psychological test just last week.
“I’m happy to be back,” Letts said. “I’m happy to see the people.”
There’s no denying the experience of being shot has changed him.
“I’m human,” Letts said. “When you come out of the academy, you’re superhuman.”
If a suspect has a weapon, you think to run straight at him without looking for cover, Letts said.
“You’re invincible,” he said. “After a day like that, that happened in August, you realize you’re not invincible. So you rethink things.”
Like the amount of time he spends at home.
“When I was sitting there, I thought about my family, and how much they mean to me,” Letts said.
He decided to take fewer overtime assignments, and if it means cutting back on vacations, the family time is worth it.
“Both my kids and my wife didn’t want me to come back at all,” he said.
He says he appreciates all the awards and approval, even if he never sought any of it.
“I don’t know about erasing it, but it makes it easier,” he said. “Not like I want the recognition that comes with it.”
His family is excited to be going to Washington, and his 9-year-old son wants to see the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The family has never been to the capital before.
The men almost didn’t make the cut for D.C. Rios happened to stop by headquarters last week and saw the packets waiting for them on the desk. Thinking they were unimportant, he waited until what turned out to be the day before the deadline to look in his.
Last week, Rios called Letts over to his house to share the good news. Letts opened the packet in Rios’ kitchen, he said.
“When I opened it up, he was like, giddy, like a kid on Christmas,” Letts said of Rios. “Which was actually surprising, because you never see him react to anything.”
Neither detective was wearing his bulletproof vest the day they were shot, an oversight that Letts grudgingly acknowledges.
“It would not have helped, but I should have been wearing one,” Letts said.
When serving a warrant, detectives are supposed to wear the vest and bring handcuffs along with an extra magazine of ammunition. But Rios and Letts had no idea McNeill had returned to the crime scene. Besides, Trenton detectives are rarely seen with their vests on as they work the streets of the city.
But now the chain of command has spoken, and Letts has been ordered to wear his vest more.
“I’ve been told I have to,” he said. “By my wife.”
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