A Promotion

I made Corporal Sunday. It means a nice raise and great days off, at least for this rotation. Some of the officers that have been at the department a while are not too happy. I guess they should have studied harder for the test.

An Anonymous Letter

Our shifts start off with a briefing. In briefing we are given information we may need like areas that need extra patrol, people with warrants and so on. There is also a lot of teasing and friendly banter that goes back and forth among the officers.

The other day in briefing we were read a letter that had been sent to the station. An unknown person typed a letter telling us a certain car was being driven by an intoxicated person.

Most of us listen in briefing and try to look for things mentioned. It is kind of hard to take something like this serious. If the person was really concerned they should have called while it was occurring not sent a letter after the fact. There is not much we can do about that.

A Motorcycle Wreck

I started my last post by saying how bad Friday was. As I mentioned I felt horrible. Well it just got worse after that call. I went to the station so I could try to write what would be a lengthy report on the minor drinking and CPS response. I walked in the door to the station only to get dispatched to a disturbance call. There was nothing to it so I cleared and headed back to the station to write.

As soon as I walked in the station I was dispatched to an alarm call. So out the door I went. I handled the call and cleared. As I cleared dispatch put out a broadcast on a possible intoxicated driver coming right by where I was.

A moment later the truck came by and another officer got behind it and made a stop, I followed. Sure enough the driver was intoxicated, so was the passenger. They were both arrested.

By this time it was late enough in the shift that I thought it may slow down. I finished helping the other officer and tried to go eat. As I pulled into the parking lot where I was going to eat I got flagged down about a guy riding a pocket bike on the road with no lights. I found the guy and talked with him. I was thinking that when I finished I would finally be able to get something to eat and was hoping I would feel a little better after eating.
Well that didn’t work out. I was on the far north end of town when dispatch said they had a motorcycle wreck on the far south east part of town. Dispatch said that there was probably a dead person. Since I was working two beats it was in my area. So off I went muttering to myself about how my night had gone from bad to worse.

After driving hard and fast I arrived on scene along with a couple of other officer’s right behind the fire department. To my relief I found that we were just outside the city limits and in the County. That meant a State Trooper would come work the wreck.

I saw a woman doing CPR on a guy on the side of the road, she was covered in blood. Another guy was lying on the side of the road having agonal respirations. He had blood coming out his ears, nose and mouth. The blood from his nose also had a clear mucous in it. This was not good. Obviously the guy being administered CPR was way low sick. The other guy wasn’t far behind. I’m no medical expert but I understand that if someone is having agonal respirations they are very near death. The fire department got me to help them with some of their equipment. I ended up holding an IV bag for the guy that was still breathing. He had a strong radial pulse. It appeared they both had head injuries.

While I did this one of the other officers spoke to the woman that had been doing CPR. He learned that she had come from Kansas to visit her nephew, the one she had been doing CPR on. Evidently they had been at a motorcycle rally not far from the scene of the accident when her nephew and the other guy decided to ride into town for cigarettes. They had been drinking. For some reason they ran into the ditch throwing them from the motorcycle. Sometime after the wreck she left and found them lying on the side of the road. Since she was not from the area when she called 9-1-1 she did not have any idea where she was other than in the country. A short time after she called someone else drove by and was able to tell the dispatcher where they were.

A helicopter was called for the guy that was still breathing. As they loaded him they lost his pulse.

The woman apologized to me for doing CPR on her nephew and not working on the other guy. She said she worked on her nephew because she knew him and had no idea who the other guy was. For all practical purposes they were both dead so I can’t blame her for working on her nephew.

Loud Music

Last Friday night sucked, I was not feeling well at all and considered calling in sick. I didn’t and it was a looong night. We were shorthanded; since we were shorthanded I was working two beats. It was a super busy Friday night. I went from call to call all night.

At the beginning of the shift I was dispatched to a loud music call not far from the station. While in route I thought I would locate the music give a warning and clear the call. It didn’t work out that way.

I arrived in the area of the call and did not hear any loud music, but I saw a male standing in the driveway to the house where the music was supposed to be coming from. When he saw us he started to walk inside. I could see a light on inside the truck that appeared to be coming from the radio. I also saw condemnation notices on the house.

My assist officer and I made contact with the guy in the driveway. I immediately smelled a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from him. I saw that his eyes were bloodshot and watery. I thought he might be intoxicated, but really did not care, he was in his driveway.

When I spoke with him I asked him how old he was and he told me 17 but he did not have any identification. Well that could be a problem. In most circumstances 17 year olds can’t drink alcohol. I asked him where his parents were and he told me mom was working and dad was out of town. That was a problem. It got worse though. I asked if there was anyone inside the house and he told me a friend that had been drinking and his 4 sisters that were in bed. I asked how old his sisters were and he told me the oldest was 14.

I had a problem. The boy was under arrest for minor consuming alcohol and there was no one to release him to. On top of that if I took him to jail there was no one to watch his sisters.

My assist and I found that the door to the house was open. We went in to check on the sisters inside. The house was dirty and nasty. It consisted of a kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedroom. We found the guys friend hiding from us in the bathroom. He was 17 and had been drinking so he was arrested. In the bedroom we found 5 people in bed asleep. We did not wake them up.

I went outside and talked to the first boy again. He said there was no one to call to come take custody of him or his sisters other than his mom. We tried calling mom’s cell phone several times and got no answer. That made the problem even worse. I had to contact Child Protective Services (CPS) to have them come get the kids.

After I spoke with CPS I waited on scene. While waiting the boy told me he was really 16. We were able to verify that this was true. That caused yet another problem. 16 year olds don’t go to jail, they go to juvenile detention. The problem is our county does not have a juvenile facility and sends them out of county. Since there is not a juvenile facility juvenile probation deals with juveniles but will not take custody of them in most cases. They just refer the juveniles to court. So now I had a 16 year old in custody for drinking no one to release him to and I could not put him in jail because of his age. I called juvenile probation and was given the answer I expected, they would not take custody of the boy even though he had been drinking and there was no one to release him to. They suggested releasing him to CPS since I had already contacted them. CPS won’t take custody of him because he had been drinking so I was really in a bind. It was looking like I was going to be a babysitter until mom got home.

We sat on scene for about 2 hours waiting for CPS. Just before CPS arrived mom showed up. Mom had not been working, or maybe she had, she had been at a bar with her boyfriend. I started to explain to mom what was going on using an interpreter when CPS showed up.

Since mom was on scene when CPS showed up they did not take the children. Maybe they will in the future. Obviously mom is not taking care of the kids and the living conditions were horrible. The boy was released to mom with a citation for minor consuming alcohol and I did a report charging him with failure to identify for lying about his age and birth date.

My First Shooting

One hot Saturday afternoon I was working dayshift in a pretty large city. I was in field training and it was nearing the end of our shift. My FTO (Field Training Officer) had the mentality a lot of senior dayshift officers have, which was to do as little as possible. We were not on call and were just patrolling our beat when the radio crackled “east patrol to any George unit that can clear for a signal 37 priority 1 on New York.” By asking for a George unit the dispatcher was asking for a unit in that district to clear for the call.

Well no one spoke up. The next thing I heard was “Ed 112 copy a signal 37.” In the lingo of the department Ed was short for Edward which was the district we were working. The 1 signified dayshift and the 12 denoted our beat. A signal 37 is a shooting. So she had called my unit number and told me to copy a shooting. George district was in our division but a good distance away.

I was excited; it was going to be my first shooting call. So off we went running code 3 (lights and siren) to one of the roughest parts of the city. It was also an area I was not familiar with because it was not my normal patrol area.

Once the call was dispatched to us several units cleared their calls and took assists to help us out. It’s funny how that works, no one wanted to be the primary officer, but they cleared to come help as soon as someone else got the call.

We arrived on scene after several other units because we were so far away. I was pretty overwhelmed since it was the first shooting I had been to. The victim was dead in a car, shot in the eye. I don’t remember much, my FTO and other officer’s did most of the work. I do remember that the shooting was drug related and that there was not an arrest made. I never heard if an arrest was made later.

The media showed up. I remember thinking “this is pretty cool, this is my call and the news is here.” Later after I got home I made sure to watch the news, sure enough I was on the news. They had video of my FTO and me talking to the homicide detective that had come out. I looked like I knew what I was doing. Funny thing is I was just following my FTO around.

That was an exciting call. I was pretty certain I was the first in my class to work a shooting/homicide.