Never Assume Anything!

I learned a valuable lesson the other night. Never assume anything with this job. That was the theme of my midnight shift.

The first call of the night came out as a domestic at the park. I arrived at the scene and another cop from another city was waiting to greet me with the victim. The incident happened just out of his jurisdiction and was now my responsiblity. He was trying to clue me in that the story was suspect, but being the rookie I am I did not quite catch on. I realized what he was trying to tell me later. I do not look like a rookie, since I am older, so sometimes officers assume I am the training officer and it is the other way around.

So I spoke to the victim and she told me that she was walking in the park when her ex-boyfriend, who she lived with for 6 months prior, attacked her in the park. I saw some bruises on her arms and I got excited. A righteous felony battery! I kind of honed in on this detail and did not think as much on the fact that she was obviously a meth head, probably a prostitute and her story had some holes. She said he was ranting about how he was "ex-military" and "killed people for a living" and then threw her on the grass. In retrospect, she was not wet and did not have any grass stains on her shirt.

I took down all her information, her story and anything else I could think of on my notepad and then went to contact the ex-boyfriend. I was ready to take him to jail as the night had been slow up to this point, so that made me happy.

As I walked up to the ex-boyfriends house I noticed that he was upstairs relaxing and watching porn with his current girlfriend. Not something I would expect someone who had just assaulted his ex-girlfriend in the park to be doing. Clue #1. I contacted him and he was very calm and genuinely suprised to see the police at his door. He was not sweaty and it was a hot night. Again, not something I would expect from someone who was ranting the way the victim said he was just 30 minutes prior. Clue #2. My partner spoke with his girlfriend and she said he had been with her the whole day and they had not even been at the park. My partner believed the girlfriend. Shit.

Now, I am not saying that there is no way that my victim was not assaulted, but I seriously doubt it. Not only did we not have a righteous felony, now we had to write a report about it.

The second call of the night came in hours later. At this point I had given up on the night as a whole and I was pretty sure nothing fun would happen all night. The city was dead. Dispatched informed me that county fire was responding to a 911 call and needed assistance with large Samoan males who were possibly resisting and had been a problem in the past. Sweet!

We arrive on scene with two other units. That is four officers in total. County fire is not even there. So I inform dispatch that county fire is not there with kind of a "what the hell is going on" tone. Dispatch informed me that County Fire was going to wait around the corner until we told them it was ok to come in.

As I am doing that, the door to the residence pops open and I pull my weapon out. The area I was working is not a good one. Out walks a small asian man who I am guessing is 100 pounds soaking wet and about 60 years old. So here I am expecting this big fight and it ends up being a medical aid with completely cooperative subjects. Haha...where are the huge Samoan males? Where the hell did that information come from?

I was already completely aware of the fact that calls come out that sound like nothing and turn out to be huge clusters, but this night was all about the opposite. It wasn't what I was hoping to happen, but it was educational. Never assume anything!