Excuse me, but WTF are you doing?

So they have me training new officers right out of the academy now.  I don't feel like I am qualified, but there it is.  I never realized what a difficult thing this is to do.  When I was being trained, I promised myself, that when the time came, I would be patient with my trainee.  Lord knows I made my share of stupid mistakes.

At some point during the night I lost it and said, "Holy shit!  What the fuck are you doing?!?"  I am going to let him drive tomorrow, in the hopes that it will keep him pre-occupied and so that I can keep a close eye on him.  Wish me luck!

Trust your instincts

It was about 0300 hours and a call came out for a burglary just occurred near one of our crappy neighborhoods.  It is one hour from my off duty time, so I am sitting at the station typing up a report from earlier.  The station clears out as five cars race to the location.  We are there quick as there is very little traffic at that time of night.

As I am turning left in to the apartment complex where the burlgary took place, I see a bicyclist in dark clothing cross the street.  Now my first instinct is to stop that guy just in case he is the suspect.  I have no suspect description and very little information at this point.  Instead, I follow my area partner into the complex as I am trained to do.  I don't want him to go in there alone.  As I complete my left turn and drive into the complex, this goes over the radio, "Units responding to burglary, suspect described as male hispanic in black clothing riding a bike."  SHIT!  I hit the brakes and reverse like a bat out of hell.  My other partner sees me and follows me.  He has no idea what I am doing, but he trusts that I am not just testing the reverse gear.  I hear another unit over the radio say he just saw the suspect go southbound into a housing tract.  He saw the same thing I did, but he was blocked by a median.  Stupid medians, they should all be banned!

So I patrol check the area and come across the bicycle in a front yard.  The next door backyard gate is open.  Approximately 5 minutes have passed.  We set up a perimiter and call out the helicopter.  The helicopter finds nothing and after searching two backyards we give it up.

I am still stewing today.  SO CLOSE.  Now, would it have been a good thing to leave my partner to go in there alone?  I am pretty sure there were units coming in from the other side of the complex, so he probably would not have been alone, but ehhhhhh...maybe.  It is kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing.  Do I wish I would have stopped or attemped to stop him when I had the chance?  HELL YES! 

I am still a new Officer.  I have been doing this for two years, but I am still new.  I had to make a split second decision and I went the safe route.  Not a bad choice, just an inexperienced one.  If I could have stopped time, to think it out, I would have realized...hey, it is 3 o'clock in the morning, he is cutting across the street dressed in all black clothing, and he is riding towards a shit neighborhood.  Hey dumbass, he is your guy!  I friggin' knew it too. It is not unheard of in my town for people to be riding bikes at that time of night, but there were red flags there.  It is time to start trusting my instincts.

The good news is, he will do something stupid and we will meet again.

Unchaosyness...I made up a word!

Lately, it has been slower than molasses in January. There has been fog at night and freezing cold weather...for California. It has been down to 40 degrees people! That is way too cold to stab your homies!
I am due to work tomorrow night and I am hoping for something, anything to happen. I see that it is supposed to rain again this weekend. Blech. Gangsters like the rain about as much as I do it seems.

That brings me to a thought. When people hear that I am going on patrol when I talk to them, they say something like, "I hope it is a slow night!" or "I hope the criminals stay indoors for you!" To which I usually reply, "I hope not!" At this point I get a strange, "What is wrong with you?" look.

Do I want people to get hurt? No. In fact part of the reason I do this job is to keep people from getting hurt. Do I want all hell to break loose in my city when I go to work? Oh yes. I think this is only something the patrol officer who really loves his/her job can understand. Is this mental? Probably. Do I care that I am possibly mental? Nope.

You are sitting in your black and white on a slow night. A call comes out of unknown trouble at a local night club. You get there and people are all over the place, some of them are bleeding and they are all looking to you to do something about it, they are all trying to talk to you at once and they are all drunk. Who is a victim and who is a suspect? What happened? When did this happen? Where did the actual crime occur, was it at the club or did it just end here? Why did the crime occur?
Ahhh...chaos. Love it. Making sense out of the nonsense.

OCD Pens!

You wouldn't think so much time and effort would go into choosing a writing implement.  I am here to tell you otherwise.  I have been through at least five different types of pens in an attempt to come up with the PENultimate patrol pen.  See what I did there?

My favorite so far is the Pilot G-2 Retractable Gel Ink Rollerball Pen, 0.7 mm, Fine Point, Clear Barrel, Black Ink.  BOOM!

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/794047/Pilot-G-2-Retractable-Gel-Ink/?cm_mmc=Mercent-_-Google-_-Pens_Pencils_and_Markers-_-794047-%7Bcopy:IQ_PE%7D&mr:trackingCode=48066F1B-EC81-DE11-B7F3-0019B9C043EB&mr:referralID=NA

You need a pen that is sturdy enough so you can "press hard, three copies", cheap enough that you do not mind losing it or voluntarily giving it up after someone soils it, and writes pretty consistently.

Now, when you get out of the academy, you wear your shiny expensive pens in your shirt pocket.  You want to look BAD-ASS and dialed in.  That will last about as long as you polishing your boots every day. 

I have one pen in my shirt pocket and one of those pen shaped handcuff keys.  I keep an extra pen stuffed by my taser in case the other one goes out.  Your pen is one of the most important things you can have.  If you don't have a working pen and a notepad, you are pretty much useless.

Quick little academy/real life tidbit.  During training in the academy, they told me I could use my pen to double lock handcuffs.  How convenient!  Yeah, you do that a few times and your pen will start leaking ink.  Pen ruined.  Don't do that.  I don't remember who told me that, but I question their expertise.  I figured out that was a bad idea after I went through about 3 pens in one week.

I think I started obsessing about pens during training.  I had to write EVERYTHING down at an extremely fast pace.  If I had to stop to shake the ink in the pen, I missed something.  What did the dispatcher say about the guy with the gun?  Oh never mind, I am sure it was not important.

Am I a weirdo obsessing about pens? For those patrol folks out there, do you have a favorite pen?

I promised myself I wouldn't cry!

I had probably the scariest/best call I have ever been on the other night.  I am going to have to be careful what I say about it as the suspect is going away for a long time and I don't want anything I say here to jeopardize that.  He deserves to go bye bye.

Really, REALLY short version.  Guy with a gun tackled, subdued and arrested.

But, that is not the purpose of this post anyway.  The call was awesome.  Huge adrenaline dump.  We were all done and exhausted after it.  There were only minor injuries to us.  Let me give you some background...

I have been working in my current city for about a year now.  I have earned the trust and respect of 99% of my fellow officers.  They like me and I like them.  However, there is this one crusty veteran that treats me like old white dog shit on the bottom of his shoe.

I would show up to his calls when he asked for backup and he would say something like, "Where is Officer Betterthanyou?"  As if to say, I did not want you, noobtard.  So I stopped showing up at his calls unless he called for me.  Which he never did.  I can take a hint.

We had this stabbing at one of our ghettoish areas.  I show up and he says, "322!  Come stand here and guard this knife."  Does he even know my name?  I don't know.  How about a please/thank you.  I stood on that knife for five hours.  Ugh.

I would take his prisoners to the jail for him when I could.  So that he could stay out and catch more bad guys in his undercover car.  Not so much as a thank you.  In fact, he bullied me in to taking three loser prostitutes one night.  That was the most annoying, longest car ride ever, and I did NOT want to do it.  I am still new, so I took it in the pooper and taxied those three lovely young ladies to the clink.

So, we have this man with a gun call the other night.  I was in the middle of the scrap with three other guys, including Crusty Veteran.  After the craziness is over, this happens:

Crusty Veteran: Hey FlyTrap, do you have latex gloves?

Me: Yes, sir.

Crusty Veteran: Grab the pistol and clear it for me, please.

Holy fucking dogshit, Batman?  Was I recording that?  No I wasn't, shit!  First off, he called me by my first name...and please!.  Also, he asked me to clear the 9mm pistol this dirtbag had tried to kill us with.  That is a huge.  I doubt I would have trusted anyone but myself to clear a loaded weapon and my primary piece of evidence.

At this point, I would have shined his boots, kissed his ass and sucked his....well, maybe not.  It was a big moment for me.  The guy is a genius.  Treats me like shit for months and hands out one compliment.  Now I am ready to give him my first born.

I think it is mostly because I have worked hard to build a positive reputation for myself and he was the one guy I could not get a beat on.  I was convinced if I called out for help, he would run me over on the way, and take my arrest.  LOL.

I may be back to "Hey you!" next week, but for now, call me Captain HAS A NAME!!

SIDENOTE:  Best picture ever!

Pistol Pointing Pressure

I had a strange realization the other night. It is a good thing...just strange.

We get a call for a subject outside a residence trying to break in. As we arrive, I see this white guy with no shirt on running towards the backyard. I calmly put out, "322, white male no shirt, blue jeans running from us towards the alley to the west of the residence." I jump out of the car to the fence that is blocking my entry to the front of the yard. I pull my weapon out. At this point, I do not know if he is armed or not and I really have no idea what is going on. He could have just murdered someone for all I know.

One of our units goes to the back of the house and this guy comes back to the front yard. I notice he is bloody. I point my weapon at him. My partner is closer to him on my right.

PARTNER: "Hey! Police Officer. Keep your hands up and walk over here."

I put out over the radio, "322, we have the suspect in the front yard, one at gunpoint." The dispatcher quickly responds with, "10-4 322, one at gunpoint in the front yard, 10-33." 10-33 basically means the channel is to remain clear for us until we are safe.

NOSHIRT: "Why?"

PARTNER: "Because if you don't, we are going to shoot you."

NOSHIRT: "Oh, ok."

So he walks over to us. I keep him pistol pointed, my partner has him at taser point and another officer hooks him up, searches him and stuffs him in the back of his car.

My last transmission at this point was, "322, one detained 10-34." 10-34 means the 10-33 clearance is over. We are safe.

Now, here is where my realization came in. I am not breathing hard, my heartrate is not elevated and I am very calm. Jump back a year ago on a similar situation and I would have been shooting through the roof, sweating, breathing hard and in an adrenaline rush.

I think I have pistol pointed enough people and been in enough moderately stressful situations that I am getting used to it. That is a very strange thing to get used to. Pointing a weapon at a person who just committed a crime and is bleeding.

Now this "gentleman" had done nothing more than violated a protective order and cut himself running from us on a fence, but I am sure you can imagine how many different scenarios this could have been. He was drunk too and kept yelling, "Bonnie! I love you!"

I made a decision a while back to transfer to this area because it is a REALLY bad area. I did this after I made a stupid mistake on a code 3 run. I let the stress get to me and I was not thinking. I realized that I needed to be exposed to this kind of call more than once a month. I now handle calls like this once a night.

I love my job.

LLPOF

To say that last Friday was busy, would be an understatement. We had coppers coming in from other cities to cover our calls. It was nucking futs. I handled so many calls, it was ridiculous. We had gangsters running from us, major traffic accidents, drunks driving down the main drag on their rims, sparks flying. One of our guys got shot at. He was not hit and we never figured out who shot at him.

It has taken me a few days to process all the craziness from last Friday and you know what stands out to me the most? I got lied to quite a bit that day and it amazes me how bad people are at lying. Do you really think I am that stupid? Does the uniform activate some kind of dumbass lying reflex? Let me go by the numbers here...

#1. Recovered Stolen Vehicle
My partner and I get dispatched to a recovered stolen vehicle. I am handling the call. These are pretty easy. Someone forgets where they park their car and they report it stolen. They find it the next day and have to call us to come out and confirm. If they don't, they end up getting proned out at gunpoint on the highway.

So I knock on the door and LIAR answers the door. He is really quiet. I have to ask him obvious questions that people usually volunteer. His hands are shaking. Within like 15 seconds of talking to the guy, I know something is up. I am not sure what yet, but something is not right.

ME: Did you call us?

LIAR: Yeah.

ME: So you found your car?

LIAR: Yeah.

ME: Ok, where was it? How did you come to think it was stolen?

LIAR: Oh, I drove it to a parking lot, took a bus and forgot I left it in the parking lot.

So, he has a car, but he took a bus halfway? SHENANIGANS!

ME: Ok, let's go look at the car.

He show's me his POS (Piece of shit) car. I am trying to imaging anyone wanting to steal it. There is fresh front end damage on the car. BINGO! So I say...

ME: When did you get this damage on the car?

LIAR: About two weeks ago.

ME: Oh, because it looks a day or two old.

So my partner, wanting to mess with this dirtbag a bit goes...

PARTNER: The only reason we mention it is because some people report their cars stolen when they commit crimes or are involved in hit and runs. We are not saying you would do that, but we have to investigate.

LIAR: Really?

I smile at my partner, he rolls his eyes and I proceed to finish up the recovered vehicle report. I can't prove he was involved in a hit and run, but DUH.

#2. Rear End
We roll up on a small little traffic accident. A nice SUV rear ends a shitty mini-van. No big deal and the damage is minor. The SUV is at fault. I advise them to just exchange info. The guy in the mini-van said he did not need paramedics. However, he starts this Oscar winning neck injury performance. His neck must hurt from seeing dollar signs. So this means we have to take a nonsense traffic report just so this idiot can attempt to milk the other guy for $$$. Whatever.

While I am getting the info from the SUV driver, Mr. Mini Van comes walking over. I am thin on patience at this point. So I turn around and say, "Why don't you go sit down in your vehicle and I will be with you when I am done here. I wouldn't want you to further injure yourself. Are you sure you don't want paramedics?" I am hoping he could tell that I was not buying it. I even told the SUV guy what I thought was going on and wished him good luck.

#3. Vandalism
I stop these kids in an alleyway. We received a call on some kids tagging some store fronts. One of the kids has a white paint marker in his pocket, white paint on his hands, and he is sitting right by a pole that has been marked with a white marker. Hmmm...you think maybe they were tagging?

PARTNER: What name do you tag under?

KID: I don't tag.

PARTNER: Seriously? Look, this is your one chance. I am not an idiot. You can either get a ticket, go to the station and we can have your parents come pick you up, or you can be straight with me and I will let you go.

They go round and round like this for about five minutes. The kid lies like crazy until finally he tells the truth. We take his photos and info. We will see them again soon, I am sure.

#4. Traffic Accident
We roll to a traffic accident with a rolled over vehicle. It is a really nice Mercedes...bummer. The driver has a few scratches, but he is ok. Lucky dude.

He tells us someone hit him hard from behind and he crashed. So I look at the rear of his car and there is not a scratch on it. In fact the rear portion of the car is the only part of the car that does not have some damage on it.

You messed up and flipped your car over. You have insurance. Why lie? I don't get it.

I used to think it would be difficult to tell when people were lying to you. It is never this obvious on TV. 95% of the time it is glaringly obvious.

By the way, in case you did not figure it out. Liar Liar Pants On Fire.