I came in to work a little early today. I had signed up to work 4 hours of patrol overtime in the Upper Kirby District. The district is a rather wealthy part of Houston that has recently experienced an increase in property crime. My regular shop (patrol vehicle) was not available so I was given another. The air would only blow on full speed in that shop. That was not going to work for 12 hours, so I exchanged keys and tried again. Once in the shop, I heard a familiar voice over the radio as the dispatcher. I met her when I worked evening shift for a few months at the beginning of my career. After evening shift, Courtney and I would go to headquarters and work out. While we were there we met Liz who was also working out. She was the regular evening shift dispatcher. We got to be friends. Let me just say that being friends with the dispatcher is a good thing. It can be a very long shift if you are not on good terms with the dispatcher. I have seen Liz made life absolutely miserable for an officer after they were rude to her over the radio. On a side note, Liz is also a dental assistant and she assisted Mike when he took his Dental Boards. While on overtime, you are required to show some type of production. There is not a quota or anything like that, but they expect you to do more than just drive around. On evening shift you have to constantly check the computer for calls for service. There are quite a few evening shift officers and the calls are claimed quickly. I was able to jump on a few calls and ended up with one report. Not surprisingly, the report involved property crime. A female left her vehicle parked overnight in a strip shopping center and when she returned the driver's side window had been shattered. Nothing had been taken from the vehicle. Normally, a radar detector, iPod, camera, GPS, laptop, or some other type of electronic devise had been left in plain site and stolen from the vehicle. PAUSE for a quick public service announcement: When you leave your vehicle, do not leave anything of value visible in the passenger area. Resist the urge to stop at the bar on the way home from work and leave your laptop in the backseat. Do not put your purse on the floor of the vehicle and expect it to still be there when you return.
Overtime went by quickly and it was time for another day of evaluating Adrian. We are on day three out of five. She is still very nervous, but she has reined in her driving. I am thankful that he nervous energy in no longer being transferred to the gas pedal. I found out that another rookie is waiting in the wings for me to finish evaluating. Her name is Jocelyn. That will make three females in a row. Strange. During our shift, we did two more property crime reports. One person came outside to find someone else in their vehicle rummaging around. They chased off the suspect. They leave the doors to their vehicles unlocked because that way the suspects do not break the windows in order to look around inside the vehicle. Good solution, but it is sad that it has come to that. The other report was for another vehicle burglary. A female left her laptop on the backseat and went into a bar. She returned later to her vehicle and found the passenger side window had been shattered and her laptop was gone. She had watched a little too much CSI. She noticed a footprint on the passenger seat and the wanted us to take pictures of the footprint. She also wanted us to checked the dirt around the vehicle and make plaster casts of any possible matching footprints for evidence. Okie dokie. We made quite a few traffic stops as well. One particular driver made an illegal left turn, was driving without his license, did not have an inspection sticker, his registration expired in November of 2007, and his vehicle still had Nevada plates even though he had been in Texas for 30 months. Texas gives you 30 days to register your vehicle once you establish residency. He knew his driver's license number so we were able to verify his identity. To top things off, two traffic warrants had been issued for his arrest. They were from 1999. They could not be verified, so he was not going to be arrested. I went up to talk to him while Adrian was writing the ticket. I told him about the warrants and that he was not going to be arrested tonight. He said, "I am not trying to be a smart ass, but aren't the warrants arrest warrants? Why am I not being arrested"? That is not a usual question for us. Why are you not arresting me? Well, because the City spent millions of dollars on a new computer system a few years ago and it routinely goes down at night so we can't verify warrants. Your lucky night, now please sign here.
No comments:
Post a Comment