The week on patrol, December 6-10, 2010

The week started off very slow and gradually picked up as the days
passed. I had a partner for three nights. I was off on Friday for
Jen's work Christmas party.

B and I were the print unit Monday night. It was very cold and very
slow. There was nothing going on and the radio was silent for much of
the night.

Tuesday night was a little busier. B and I were the print unit again.
AG, another officer, was in an accident. A car ran a red light and
slammed into the passenger side of her patrol car. She was not
injured.

A little later we checked by on a burglary of a business. A cookie
bakery had been broken into. Someone threw a rock through the front
door. The owner said this was the third time his business had been
burglarized in the last year. In the two previous times, the cash
register had been stolen. This time, nothing had been taken. The owner
was, understandably, very frustrated. It smelled amazingly good inside
of the business. Maybe the burglars just like the smell of cookies?

B and I were not allowed to ride together Wednesday night. Four
officers from our district called in sick. It was a very cold night
with not many calls, but not many officers either. The night started
with wrecker drivers repeatedly calling in the same illegal parking
call. A vehicle was parked close to a fire hydrant. I ticketed the
vehicle. But that was not enough for the wrecker drivers. They wanted
it towed. Oh well, they do not run things.

I checked by with a couple of units on a domestic disturbance. Tranny
drama. A transvestite, due to the goodness in its heart, decided to
let another tranny live with it. They cohabitated for a month. Then
tranny A decided that tranny B had to go and kicked him to the curb.
Tranny B was pissed and came back and broke in a few days later.
Tranny A did not know Tranny B's name. They lived together for a
month, but did not know each others names. Wow. I am sure they shared
all kinds of other things, but not names.

My last call of the night was a theft of service from a restaurant.
An obviously homeless guy ordered and ate $18 worth of food. When it
was time to pay the bill, he got up and walked out. He had no
intention of paying the bill when he walked in. Another customer and
the manager stopped him and held him until I arrived. I issued him a
citation for theft and gave him a trespass warning for the location.
If he returns, he will be charged with trespassing, a class B
misdemeanor. Even though he was wrong, I felt like the restaurant, at
the very least, enabled him. They had to know or at least think it was
a possibility, that he was not going to be able to pay. The area is
full of homeless people. I would not want them to discriminate based
upon looks or clothing, but they could ask for him to pay in advance
or at least show that he was capable of paying. That sounds reasonable
to me.

J and I rode together on Thursday. Our first call was a burglary of a
motor vehicle at a very nice restaurant. The owner gave the car to the
valet and the valet parked the car out of sight behind the restaurant.
The car was burglarized and the owner was very upset. He said that the
was going to sue the restaurant for parking his vehicle in the back
and out of sight. Getting your vehicle broken into sucks and causes a
hassle, but to sue a business over it? That seems a little much to me.

Our last call was to the convenience store that was robbed twice last
week. The clerk claimed that he had seen the robbers out on the
sidewalk. When we arrived, they were gone. We drove around the area,
but they had vanished.

I was off on Friday night to attend Jen's work Christmas party. The
party was at a dueling piano bar. They had a really good turn out and
it was a fun place.

That concludes another week on patrol.

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The week on patrol, November 29 - December 3, 2010

I am six weeks behind in writing these weekly summaries. Hopefully, I
will get caught up soon. This week I had a partner for 4 out of the 5
nights. It was a good week with a few interesting calls.

B and I rode together on Monday night. Right after roll call we
checked by with a couple of units to run a warrant with major
offenders. They had a CI (confidential informant) that was feeding
them information about a drug dealer. We waited and we waited and we
waited for the deal to happen. It started to feel like we were being
given the run around by the CI. At one point, the lead officer told us
that there was no telling when anything would happen because the CI
was on "crack head time."

Then all of the sudden it was "GO" time. The CI called and stated
that the vehicle leaving had just made a narcotics delivery.
Immediately the lead officer got on the radio, described the vehicle
and asked if anyone saw it. We had four units spread out in the area.
B and I saw the vehicle and got behind it. We stopped the vehicle and
spoke with the driver. We spoke with the lead officer on the phone and
he requested that we search the vehicle. We asked the driver if he
would give us permission to search the vehicle which he did. So, of
course, we did not find anything in the vehicle. He had just made the
delivery. We needed to get him on the way to the delivery. It turned
out to be a big waste of time. No arrests were made and no narcotics
were recovered. That is how it goes sometimes, it is not an exact
science.

On Tuesday night, B and I rode together for the first half of the
shift, then he had to go and babysit a prisoner at the hospital. Our
fist call was for an open door at an apartment. A couple came home and
noticed that their front door was wide open. So, the called us. We
arrived less than five minutes after they called. However, the man had
decided that he had waited long enough and searched the apartment
before we arrived. There had not been any forced entry and nothing
appeared to be missing. Most likely, they did not shut the door
completely when they left and the wind blew it open. But, if you are
going to go through the trouble to call us, why check the apartment
before we arrive? If we take an hour to get there, I understand, but 5
minutes? Patience.

After B left to go to the hospital, I checked by with another officer
on a theft call. A man met us outside of an apartment complex. He had
been "picked up" by another man at a local bar. They went to the other
man's apartment and did whatever. Afterwords, the man left, but forgot
his wallet inside the apartment. He returned to the apartment but the
man would not open the door. We told him that we could knock on the
door and if he answers, get his wallet. But, if there was not an
answer, there was nothing else that we could do. It was not a theft
since he left the wallet inside. We asked if he knew the man's name,
and of course he did not. We knocked and were not shocked when there
was no answer at the door. We told him to knock again in the morning,
maybe he would have better luck then.

Towards the end of the shift I was dispatched to a robbery at a
nearby convenience store. A man had entered the store and put a gun to
the clerk's head. The man then stole the clerk's money and the store's
money. This turned out to the be the first of a few robberies at this
store over the coming weeks.

B and I were together again on Wednesday night. Our first call was a
loud noise at a local club. This club had been in the area for years
and this was the first loud noise that I had ever had at the club. We
arrived and the noise level was crazy loud. The building has a metal
roof, and the bass was causing the roof to rattle. It sounded like the
building was going to shake apart. We went inside and asked the
manager to step outside with us. He agreed that the music was too loud
and told us that they had a new promoter on Wednesday nights. We told
him that if we are called back, we were going to issue him a loud
noise citation. He went inside and reduced the volume to a tolerable
level. Good choice.

A few hours later we were dispatched to a "see complainant / unknown
reason". That is what the call takers will code a call if they have no
idea what else to call it. Since we do not have a "threw yogurt on
dog" call type, unknown seemed reasonable. The lady told us that she
let her dog out into the backyard to go to the bathroom. When the dog
came back in, he had something pink on him. She went outside and found
a yogurt container that had been thrown over the fence and had hit the
house, the dog, and the patio furniture. She suspected that the yogurt
had been throw by her neighbor. Judging from the yogurt spray pattern
on her wall, B and I agreed with her. Her and her neighbor have had an
ongoing issue with noise. Her dog will bark when he wants to come back
inside. Her neighbor's bedroom is right by her backyard, and they do
not like the barking. We went to talk with the neighbor. He did not
admit to throwing the yogurt, but he did not deny it either. He said
that the dog barks all of the time and that the home owner will have
loud parties in her backyard. I recommended that the two neighbors sit
down and talk about the problem one afternoon when everyone is sober
and in a good mood. And I told the neighbor to keep his yogurt in his
refrigerator. Can't we all just get along? I would expect these types
of issues between children, but not between adults. Throwing yogurt?

Thursday night I was riding solo and it was crazy person night. My
first call was to a lady who had tried to kill herself by shotgunning
(drinking) her child's prescription bottle of Amoxicillin. Not only
did it not kill her, but probably helped to cure any lingering
infections that she might have had. An ambulance transported her to
the hospital. Call number two was another suicide attempt. This guy
was going door to door in a neighborhood screaming that he wanted to
die. He told me that he had tried to stab himself in the heart in the
past. Ouch. I called for one of our mental health units to check by
and they took him to the psychiatric center for evaluation and
treatment. Third call, third unstable complainant. This guy had been
"dumped" by his husband. He was emotional and went out to a club. This
reminded him of his husband because they used to go to out clubbing
together. So, he started crying and left in a cab. I guess the cab
driver got tired of the crying and whining, because the cab driver
threw him out of the cab. Literally, threw him onto the pavement and
drove off. That is why we were called. As the guy was crying and
telling me his story, he said, "I'm sorry, I'm sure that you hate
gays." What? Excuse me? He went on to say, "everyone hates gays." I
think some therapy might be in his future.

At the end of the shift, the same convenience store from earlier in
the week was robbed again. This time the clerk saw them coming and hid
in his car. The clerk has no way to lock the front door of the store.
The robbers took all of the money from the cash register. The clerk
said that one of the suspects was the same guy from earlier in the
week. I told the clerk to call us when he sees them again, because
they will be back.

I came early on Friday and rode with A. It was busy. Crazy busy. Our
first call was an auto pedestrian accident. A lady was unfamiliar with
the area. She was driving too fast while looking at her navigation
system and turning. She did not see the two pedestrians who were
legally in the cross walk. One of them managed to get out of the way,
but the other was struck and went over the hood of the car. She did
not want to get in the ambulance, so I advised her boyfriend to take
her to the hospital later to get her checked out. She was complaining
of back, hip, and shoulder pain which is understandable since she was
hit by a car. We ticketed the driver who was very apologetic.
Distracted driving, whether from a navigation system, cell phone, or
anything else is very dangerous.

For the next few hours, we ran numerous loud noise, illegal parking,
and disturbance calls. We had just parked to start the accident report
when we were dispatched to a burglary of a motor vehicle in progress.
Another unit was very close and actually caught the suspect trying to
leave the area. We brought the witnesses to them and the suspect was
positively identified as the car burglar. We had just dropped him off
at jail, when we were asked to assist on a fatal accident.

One of our Sergeants had been called by a wrecker driver and informed
that there had been a bad accident on the freeway. We were close and
were the first officers on the scene. Our job was to secure the scene
and begin shutting down the freeway for the investigation. A Camaro
had run out of gas and stopped on the right shoulder of the freeway in
a curve. Two wreckers, one of them a flatbed wrecker, had stopped to
assist the Camaro. A Honda Accord coupe traveling at a very high rate
of speed was not able to negotiate the curve and slammed into the back
of the flatbed wrecker. The flatbed was moved 50 feet forward into the
back of the other wrecker. The driver of the Honda was killed
instantly. The driver of the flatbed wrecker was transported to the
hospital with non-life threatening injuries. We were on that scene for
the remainder of our shift.

That concludes another week on patrol.

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Ticketing Mrs Doubtfire

I had the opportunity to work a six hour overtime shift Friday
afternoon. It was not an ideal time to have to work. But since I am in
the middle of planning our summer vacation to Disney World, I thought
that the extra money might come in handy.

Currently, my department has very little to no overtime. The city is
in the midst of a budget crisis and employees are being let go and
furloughs are being implemented. Luckily for me, the part of town that
I work in has a few civic groups that give money to the city for the
express purpose of police overtime. J and I rode together for the
overtime and were instructed to be productive. We could run calls,
write tickets, put people in jail, just about anything to justify our
time. I like to write tickets while on overtime. It is productive and
leads to more overtime in the form of traffic court, win win.

I drove us to one of my favorite ticket fishing holes and waited for
our first customer. After a brief wait, a van took the bait and made
the illegal left turn. I stopped the van and got the driver's license
and proof of insurance. Then I ran his driver's license number on the
computer and the female voice of the computer shouted "warning"! The
driver had 5 city traffic warrants and two more traffic warrants from
another jurisdiction. I confirmed all of the warrants and wrote the
new ticket. After the driver signed the ticket, J took him into
custody. Since it was a work van, the driver wanted to call his boss
to come pick up the van rather than having it towed to a storage lot.
We allowed him to do that and then waited for his boss to arrive.
After allowing the boss to drive off in the van, we took the driver to
jail. It was a good start to our productive shift.

We made four more uneventful traffic stops, just adding to our ticket
total for the shift. Our last stop of the shift turned out to be best.
It was getting close to the end of the shift, and I asked J if he was
ready to shut it down, or if he wanted to do one more stop. He said
one more, and about a minute later, a large Ford SUV made the illegal
turn. I activated the lights and the SUV pulled over to the right. I
got out and approached the driver's side window while J went up to the
passenger side window.

When I saw the driver, I was mentally startled. Even though it is not
that uncommon in the area of town in which I work, I will never get
used to seeing a large male dressed as a female. I asked for his/her
driver's license and proof of insurance and after getting those
documents, returned to the patrol vehicle. Once we were sitting in the
patrol vehicle, J looks at me and says, "What in the hell is that?" I
said, "A six foot tall, bald, 200 pound, 48 year old male, dressed in
drag." Complete with panty hose, a skirt, blouse, make-up, painted
nails, rings, bracelets, purse, and wig. The whole 9 yards. The only
thing not feminine besides the huge hands and adam's apple was the
voice, very deep. It made for a very strange combination.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask him:

1. Why?
2. Did you just wake up one day and say, "I want to dress like a female?"
3. Why?
4. Do your family, friends, and co-workers know that you dress in drag?
5. Why?
6. Where do you buy clothes?
7. Why?
8. When you are buying clothes, how do you buy the correct size? It is
not like you can try on the clothes. Do you just tell the clerk, my
wife is about my size?
9. Why?
10. Do they sell women's shoes that big?
11. Why?
12. Did you try out for the Coach Beast role on Glee?

It was very odd. I wrote the ticket and he signed the ticket. I
managed to keep a straight face even though J was trying to make me
laugh while I was dealing with the driver. It was an entertaining end
to the shift.

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Downtown

This is my view of downtown this morning from the Police Memorial as the sun rises.

Posted via email from will7079's posterous

A2's first bike ride

A2 got the bike that she wanted from Santa. This afternoon she took it for a spin.

Posted via email from will7079's posterous

The week on patrol, November 22-26, 2010

I trained three nights this week and had to work Thanksgiving
night for the first time in a few years.

Monday night started off with a hospital check. A hospital check
generally involves going to the emergency room of a local hospital and
speaking with an assault victim that wishes to make a report.
Sometimes the hospital staff will call us and other times the victim.
At the hospital, we were directed to an exam room containing two
hispanic females. Luckily for us, one of them spoke English. She told
us that yesterday, her friend, the victim, had been raped and that she
knew her attacker. The victim and the suspect work together at a
supermarket. They went out on a date. He took her to dinner and then
to a club. She became intoxicated and wanted to go home. He told her
that he would take her home. Instead, he took her to a nearby hotel
and raped her. She had no idea where the hotel was located.
Afterwards, he drove her home. He threatened her with violence if she
reported it to the police. Her roommate convinced her to report the
incident. She brought the clothes that she was wearing during the rape
with her to the hospital in a plastic bag. A forensic nurse was there
to do a rape kit looking for possible evidence. It was D's, my rookie,
first sexual assault call and he did a good job of getting the
pertinent information from the victim. There are some very
uncomfortable questions that have to be asked, and D asked them in a
professional and gentle manner.

A few hours into the shift on Tuesday, D and I were dispatched to
another hospital check. This time for an assault that took place at a
nearby bar. The assault was between a bar owner and a vendor, both
females. The vendor went to the bar to collect the money from her
machines. She emptied the machines and went to settle with the owner.
The owner told her that she no longer wanted machines in the bar. The
vendor went to grab all of the money off of the bar and the bar owner
hit her in the head with a glass vase. The vendor grabbed a nearby
glass tumbler and hit the owner with it. The vendor then went to the
hospital and called us. We got her information and then went to the
bar to get the owner's side of the story. The stories were similar,
but differed on who started the violence. D called the DA's office and
they refused to take any charges on either female. Can't we all just
get along?

Wednesday night started with a few traffic stops. One of the drivers
had warrants from a nearby city for unpaid traffic tickets. D called
that city, but they were unable to confirm the warrants. So, D wrote
him another ticket and told him that it was his lucky night.

At bar closing time we were dispatched to a fight in progress. The
victim flagged us down in a nearby parking lot. She told us that
herself, her husband, her cousin, and his wife had all gone out to the
bar that night. They were all dancing, but she danced with her cousin
a few times. This upset her husband. While they were walking back to
their car after leaving, the husband started yelling at her. The
yelling escalated into punching. He hit her numerous times in the face
while the cousin and his wife tried to separate them. The husband
left, and then came back a minute later and kicked her a few more
times before leaving again. The victim thinks that her husband's "baby
mama" probably came and picked him up. She said that this was not the
first time that he had hit her. She told that she has a job and is
self sufficient. So, why does she put up with it? Not only does he hit
her, but he fathers children with other women. Dysfunction.

Thursday was the Thanksgiving holiday. On holidays, we have minimum
staffing which for our shift at my station is 20 officers. Even though
I am in the top third in seniority on the shift, I was officer #20 for
the minimum staffing. We have a lot of officers that have either
Wed-Thurs or Thurs-Fri as their regular nights off. That left me
working the holiday. I spent the first hour of the shift getting to
know our new dispatcher a little better. It is always helpful to be on
good terms with the dispatcher.

After our typed conversation, she dispatched me to a burglary of a
motor vehicle report. A female had left her wallet underneath the
passenger side front seat and went into a nearby bar. When she
returned to her vehicle, a window was smashed and the wallet was
missing. It seemed a little strange to me, almost like she had been
observed putting the wallet underneath the seat. Nothing else had been
taken and there was nothing worth stealing in plain view. Odd. I spent
the second half of the shift working the front desk at the station.
The front desk officer is responsible for walk in reports. Luckily, no
one walked in during my stay at the desk.

I was off Friday night to observe the second half of the Thanksgiving holiday.

That concludes another week on patrol.

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