Saturday, February 6, 2010

Another night of Zero tolerance

I finished training Z last week and have been waiting for my next probationary officer to come to night shift for evaluation. Z is currently in the middle of his first week of evaluation. Due to a scheduling issue, Z had to work tonight while his evaluator was off. Z asked if he could ride with me. I said sure. The past three nights riding by myself had been a little strange. I am not used to doing all of the work.

After roll call, I was in the sergeant's office when Z's evening shift trainer walked in. He was working four hours of overtime tonight. The sergeant told him that he had signed up for a zero tolerance spot and needed to put 2 bodies in jail. He kind of laughed and then asked me if he could borrow Z for four hours. I said, "no, Z is doing my work tonight".

About an hour into the shift, the desk Srg called me and asked if we would be the zero tolerance unit tonight. There were not enough late side officers to cover it. I reluctantly agreed. We immediately started running licence plates looking for a stolen vehicle or warrants. We drove around and ran at least 50 plates and found nothing. Eventually we went to my normal traffic spot and it paid off quickly.

We watched a Lexus convertible make the illegal left. We stopped the Lexus and noticed that warrants came back on the license plate. We got the driver's license and insurance. Sure enough, the warrants were the drivers. 1 or 2 city traffic warrants, maybe we notify you of them and give you the benefit of the doubt. But 8? She, C, the driver, was wanted for 8 city traffic warrants. We verified the warrants and wrote her a new citation. We had her sign the ticket and then broke the bad news to her, she was going to jail. She started crying as you would expect. She had never been arrested before.

She was a 29 year old female and was dressed to go to a club, not to jail. She was wearing black tights, and a shiny purple sleeveless shirt with matching shoes. She looked like a stripper.

She asked us questions all the way to jail. She was worried that she would not get out of jail in time to make it to work on Saturday. She worked in a real estate office. We assured her that she could be out in time to make it to work. After we arrived at the jail and as we were waiting in line for the jailers to process her, C was receiving quite a bit of attention. She did not look like the normal female brought into jail. I was asked by numerous personnel where we had found her and why was she arrested. Most had assumed that she had been arrested for prostitution. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... But, no, not prostitution, she just liked to speed and then not take care of her tickets.

After saying farwell to C, we drove to the club district looking for our next victim. It took us all of 30 seconds to find him. Z nearly hit him in fact. He had been walking on the sidewalk and then just decided to cross the street in the middle of the block. Right in front of our moving police car. Z missed him, thank goodness. He was arrested for public intoxication. While Z was at the jail door dropping him off he said to Z, "I'm really gay, I am straight gay." why he just spouted off that, I have no idea. But he sounds confused to me.

Another zero tolerance night and two more bodies in jail. Hopefully the desk seargent does not start to think that we like it.

No comments: