Monotony and Voices in the Night

It's been slow lately, the nights start out with the occasional report to be done for destruction of property or perhaps a theft, then will start to die off. The nights always end up with us sitting in the dark, comparing the various stories we have regarding ex-girlfriends, pranks and what our plans are after the shift is over.

The monotony of sitting on a four lane road that is completely deserted is broken infrequently by the high pitched shriek of the radar gun and accompanying speeder who has decided to give us a break from boredom. The other way the silence has been broken more often is when one of us inadvertently turns up the volume on our radios, giving the dispatcher a booming and godlike voice and causing both of us to react in ways that would surely have been entertaining for the motoring public to see.

*decided to start including songs sporadically as they relate to my posts or how my mood strikes me*

Civil Servants

Why is it that people assume we serve them at their every beck and call simply because their taxes in part pay for the salaries of Police Officers? it boggles my mind why some people think that.

This little irritation of mine is based off of being on a traffic stop in a small parking lot, a lady actually has the gall to back her car out of the spot and inch it up as close as she can to the police cruiser, and then come up to me during the stop while the officer is trying to speak to the driver of the stopped vehicle and say this:

IM: (ignorant motorist): "hi, excuse me...excuse me!"

me: *takes a guarded stance* "yes Ma'am?"

IM: "yes, hi, i need you to move your police car...i need to get out THIS entrance" *stands there looking indignant*

Me: *desperately trying to contain the sarcasm* " I'm sorry Ma'am but you're going to have to use the other exit, officer safety takes priority over your convenience at this moment"

IM: " Well FINE! if you're going to be rude about it!" *storms off in a huff back to her car*

I then stood there for a few seconds trying to work out the bizarre manner of this young woman before snapping back to reality and focusing on the stop.

People like this seem to be getting more common around here, which is a very disturbing trend. If these are the kind of entitled people consisting of the new generation, i'm concerned for this area...

Sidenote: when you see several officers and me standing inside a 7-11 cause we have a break in-between what has been an insane shift so far and we are trying to enjoy some warmth and a hot coffee, coming up to us and saying " don't you people have anything better to do than waste tax payer money?" is not an appreciated criticism and was naturally met with the sarcastic responses from all of us that you rightly deserved.

Ok, rant over.

Graveyard shift heartbreak

I decided to do a throwback for my first true post on the blog, and talk about an evening shift experience I had several years ago.

It was a full moon so naturally i was on edge, the nights always seem to be more violent when it is a full moon, i was even more concerned when we did not receive a single call for service for the first few hours. I'm sitting in the passenger seat with the radar gun aimed down a completely dark road that had been deserted for hours, discussing about how the department doesn't supply the officers with anything that wasn't bought at a fucking surplus store back in the 1980's. As we sat there debating the worse parts of being an officer in that particular county, a call went out that every graveyard shift officer dreads:

*emergency tones go out over the radio)

Dispatch: Car 123

a perplexed me: 123 go ahead

Dispatch: respond for a possible 10-50F (traffic accident, fatality) on ******** rd, EMS is already en route

As soon as we heard dispatch say "10-50F" the radar gun was on the floor, i was lighting up our mobile christmas tree complete with siren, and the officer was slamming the pedal through the floor in an effort to get us there as soon as possible.

Halfway en route to this wreck we were hitting 110mph down back roads with no lighting when possibly the worst imaginable thing happens... The officer knocked his knee against our siren and lighting system box while cutting a sharp turn, as soon as this happened we lost ALL visibility. the lightbar and siren shut off, our wigwags were off and for some reason the headlights shut off too. Naturally both of us were screaming every cuss word we could think of while i unbuckled my seat belt and bent down to fiddle with all the wires going into the piece of trash. We were still screaming down back roads with no lights for about 3 minutes straight when i found a wire and fiddled with it causing everything to come back on at once which caused me to smack my head on the dashboard.

nursing the soon to be major headache i still had the presence of mind to put on my surgical gloves as we rolled up on scene and found a four door sedan smashed through a k-rail and hanging over a twelve foot drop into a small river. As we ran over to the car my heart was in my throat as i saw a child's toy in the back window and prayed there was not a child in that mangled wreck. We got to the open driver's door and found blood all over the compartment but startlingly and slightly relieving was the fact that there was no one inside the car. We discovered the driver further up the windy back road right before she nearly got crushed by one of the fire engines responding to the wreck. After we checked her out and confirmed there was no child that had been in the car and loaded her into ambulance that had finally arrived on scene we finally discovered what had caused the wreck when there were no skid marks at all.

It turns out, that that day was the anniversary of the death of the young woman's son who had died last year. She was suicidal and decided a good way to end her life was to come down the windy road towards the twelve foot drop off and just accelerate as hard as she could, thankfully her car was hung up in the railing and too disoriented to attempt another way.

That moment while i stood staring at the blood covered car with the children's toy in the back window, the whole scene bathed in the red, blue and white flashing of the emergency vehicles was one that has stuck with me for a long time. I still am able to close my eyes and flash back to that scene several years later.

As i stood there and tried to cope with the whole situation, the officer i was with came up behind me and patted me on the shoulder, standing there with me staring, at what could have been a very different night except for one strong K-rail. He told me " This is why we're out here, it takes a certain type of mentality to deal with what you see in this line of work and do what we do. Just remember, if you aren't willing to put everything on the line and help these people...who will?" It seems i have taken that statement to heart even after all this time.

Dispatch, show me 10-41, beginning tour of duty

Well i'm lousy with introductions in the first place but let me give this a whirl. Due to reading through Motorcop and Officer Smiths' blogs i have suddenly felt the urge to share my own little slice of oddity that is a career in Law enforcement. I am an older person in a volunteer program out east. I'm a very short time away from casting out into the world of law enforcement that i was born into and am looking forward to experiencing all that is involved with it. I also am currently a firefighter working on several different credentials to further my activities in the other side of the first responder spectrum

In summary, Thanks Motorcop and Officer Smith for the humorous stories i've always read by you two! i'll try to add a few that i experience every month and share my own personal insights. To all of my readers, i was born into the world of first responders with a family that has several generations of federal and military law enforcement and military experience, and several close friends are firefighters or police officers.
Thanks for tuning in and i'll try not to let my cynicism leak into my posts too much.