New rookie

I arrived at work on Tuesday expecting to be riding by myself for the first time in awhile. I had not been at work in 5 days due to our trip to Austin for ACL. While I was gone, a new rookie was transferred to night shift and I was assigned to evaluate him. He is in week two of phase four. That means he has been evaluated for a week on evening shift. If he does well with me, he will be done with the training program. He told me that he did well on evening shift and I expect that he will do fine with me because his evaluator on evening shift and I share the same philosophy when evaluating.

As is the case with all my rookies, sometime in the first shift I ask about their history. College or military? Why HPD? Etc... This one, Joe, went to college and was in the military. He graduated from high school in 1987, yup, he is older than me! He joined the navy and was a mechanic on a destroyer for 6 years. He got out and took advantage of the GI Bill. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Houston. Then the story got strange. He decided at that point that he needed a break. He moved to Europe. He joined the Peace Corps. He moved to Russia and lived in a small village about 6 hours east of Moscow. I asked him if he knew Russian, he said some, and then I told him that I was fluent in the language. I took two years of it in college and excelled in it. I even thought of changing my major to Russian. We conversed in Russian for a few minutes. It has been great at calls, if we do not want anyone to know what we are saying and are too lazy to walk away, we just speak Russian. Ok, so all of that about Russian is not true. It sounded good. He said that he can curse in Russian. I can say hello, goodbye, and count to 10. Back to Joe in Russia, the village had no running water and no electricity. He stayed there for to years. He met his future wife in Russia. He moved back to Houston with his bride and needed a job. So, he got a job selling mattresses. He did that for 6 years. Then it was time to get a career. He said that he always liked and did well in his law enforcement classes at UH. HPD was hiring and here he is. Quite an adventure.

Tonight, we got a call for an assault injury just occurred. After reading the call slip, it sounded like family violence, boyfriend vs girlfriend. We arrived and the boyfriend answered the door. He said that they had been together for 7 years. They met in Paris. She is a French resident. She is not a permanent resident of the United States. She can only visit for three months at a time. According to him, tonight they had been out dancing at Sky Bar. He only wanted to stay for two hours because he works full time and is in a MBA program as well. When it was time to leave, she was not ready to go but she left anyway. On the way home she said that she did not want to live with anyone that would not let her dance. Who can blame her, let the girl dance! Just because you have to work and go to school and all she does all day is sleep and shop, let her dance. I digress. After getting back to the apartment, the argument continues and culminates in her screaming. He tries to cover her mouth with his hand. She calms down and they talk some more. Then she decided to call the police. She does not know how to call the police, so he does it for her.

She said that, yes, she was screaming. He tried to cover her mouth with his hand and pushed up on her nose in the process causing pain. She said that he also threw her on the bed. Joe, the rookie, hears all of this and then calls the district attorney's office. He speaks with a DA and basically sides with the female. The DA takes class A family violence assault charges on the guy. After getting handcuffed, the guy decides to tell us the rest of the story. He says that she locked herself in the bathroom. He needed to brush his teeth. She opened the door and he grabbed her new nail file and broke it. This made her mad and she started hitting him in the chest. This is pertinent information. I ask him why did he not tell us that earlier. His response "I did not think it was important". You think? Maybe a little relevant? Joe asks the female if she hit him, and said yes I did. So, Joe calls the DA again with this new information. This time the DA refuses charges and wants the case referred for further investigation. Sounds more reasonable. Neither the male nor female had any marks on them indicating an assault took place. The male was released and spent the night in a hotel.

I asked Joe which side of the story did he believe? He immediately said I believe the female. I said why? He did not have an answer. I am finding that most rookies, either male or female, come out and want to believe the female in these types of cases. I try to explain to them that they need a reason to believe one rather than the other. Neither person is telling the 100% truth. If you believe the female, that is fine. But tell me and tell yourself why. You need a reason and/or evidence and not a preconceived notion that the female is always the victim in these cases. Turned out to be a good training call. Joe learned something about handling these types of calls and something about himself in the process.

Posted via email from will7079's posterous