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Thread: Daily Bread

  1. #81
    Williamsmith
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    You also learn that a new facility has just been built by a contractor who will lease the building to the state. The new station is about a mile down the road and it's ready to be occupied. Your first assignment is to leave the uniform at home and show up ready to move everything out and into the new facility. It will take two days. When you finish the move and on your first day reporting to duty you stand in front of the building and have a picture taken in uniform. The background is the state seal.

    Despite the elation of having graduated, been assigned, located housing and generally not been run off....the fact is you know nothing about police work. The training and education you get is just enough to get you in trouble. In trouble by thinking you are capable of something you most certainly aren't, in trouble by having no knowledge of local procedures, in trouble by not being familiar with area residents who largely support your agency but when push came to shove will side with any members of their family first. You also need to learn the pet peeves of each supervisor and how to stay on their good side. Especially, the Sargeant who makes out your schedule.

    There is a break in period where you are considered a probabtionary Trooper. Your are assigned to ride with a more experienced "road dog" who is supposed to show you the ropes and teach you enough to stay out of trouble and stay alive. The area is so sparsely populated that there isn't even a midnight patrol except on weekends. A Trooper spends the night in the building answering the phone and deciding whether someone will need hauled out of bed to respond to an incident. That potential responder will have worked the 3-11 shift and taken the car home with him. He is usually also working the 7-3 shift the following morning. It doesn't take long for you to figure out that calling the "on call" Trooper is something that is not done without absolute necessity.

    The coach/trainee system is designed to root out probationary troopers who just won't cut it. Most often it will be the lack of timely reporting that will tangle them up. The report system is still functioning under the carbon copy method of triplicate with each copy to be forwarded to a different location after completion. It is a burdensome holdover from years of military influence. Computers have not yet been incorporated. Your first coach is a stickler for completing paperwork immediately after it is a requirement. He is a strange recently divorced hermit who lives in a house deep up a holler tucked in the mountains. You learn that many of the current Troopers spent time in Vietnam and predictably, have their issues. But they meet the criteria laid out for law enforcement in rural America. They are capable of handling anything on their own. It might not be as per regulation on paper but they know how to quash an insurrection by simple will and brute force. And they know how to report what happened.....clear and concise. Not too much and not too little.

    Your second coach is only on the job three years but you realize that he is both easy going and fully capable when challenged. He is able to talk his way out of difficulty and fight his way out of a bar. Mostly though, he is interested in the wildlife and learning the ins and outs of fly fishing. It will be an endeavor that will lead him to a chance encounter with the 39th President of the United States. He becomes an outdoorsman, photographer, writer and environmentalist of some prominence in the county. He kindles a friendship with you that lasts a lifetime.

    Climbing in a patrol car for the first shift on your own and responsible for a large area, you can't help but feel intimidated. Will you be able to be fair and make good decisions. Can you develop a repoir with the locals? What awaits you? The only tools you have at your disposal is your marked patrol car, a radio that has two channels, a hand held repeater which doesn't work when you get more than a hundred yards from the car, a wooden night stick, handcuffs, and a .357 caliber Ruger revolver with a speed strip of six rounds. That means you have twelve total rounds with which to defend yourself should it come to that. Shotguns have to be signed out. Some do, some don't. Rifles are 30.06 caliber with open sights. They mostly remain in the armoury.

    Your mind is constantly stirring up scenarios. You think of some of the worst ones. Shootings, fatal accidents, missing children......and the silence is broken by the crack of the radio. Central to Central 2. "Central 2. Go ahead." Central 2, we have an incident for you.

  2. #82
    Williamsmith
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    This is a reaction you'd better get used to. In fact, it will become an addiction. Your pulse picks up pace. There is a little tightness in your back muscles and something called dopamine is created in your brain. You are preparing for fight or flight. As time goes on, you will barely be aware of the increased attention and tunnel vision it provides you. It will become second nature. But now, as a new boot, you prepare to be dispatched, and it can be for almost anything.

    The radio barks in response, "Central 2 I got an incident for you. Theft. The complainant will be a Mrs. Anderson at RD 2 Box 236, Port Royal.....that's down in the valley. There will be a white Ford F-150 in the driveway and the house will be of red insulbrick". You respond, "10-4".

    This is before the 911 system mapped out the county with easy to find addresses. This is where your coach/trainee sessions pay off. All the traveling around and paying attention helps you know where to look for the house. Many mailboxes have the box number written on them but not all. You also carry a map of the county with you with handwritten notes, local names for roads and appropriate zone assignments and district justice jurisdictions.

    You find the house. Out near the end of the dirt drive is an old refrigerator next to a garage. You notice it but don't pay it much mind. A German shepherd lopes across the front yard toward your car. He looks friendly enough but still you put down the window first to see his reaction. Meantime, a woman comes out on the porch and says,"Don't worry, he won't bite." Dogs are famous for attacking people in uniform, that you know but as a kid you used to roam the neighborhood and pet all the dogs that were either running around or tied to a box. You figure the dog is trustworthy and get out of the car.

    He circles around behind you as you introduce yourself to the woman who obviously must be Mrs. Anderson. She is unkempt but not dirty. She appears to live by herself and scrapes by, probably with social security ....she lives on what used to be a dairy farm. Now she keeps free range chickens. And hens in the coop behind barn.

    She has a serious look look on her face and something troubling her greatly. You expect to hear something like her stash of cash has been taken from her house or maybe a car is missing. You are resolving to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of whatever is causing her this much grief. She starts explaining, "Young man, you see that refrigerator down by the road? Well, this has happened a few times and I just let it go. I was sitting on the porch here and a car pulls in. They go to the frig and open the door. I don't hear any clinking noise. Nothing! And then they leave. Well, this time I am ready. I got these here binoculars and as they pull out I got the first three numbers of the plate. "

    You still havent gotten what the crime was. "Mrs. Anderson, what happened?" She looks at you sideways and asks..."Young man, are you going to get my money or not?"

    "For what, Mrs. Anderson?"

    "The thirty-five cents for the dozen eggs they took without putting any money in the coffee can!"

    There is a part of you that just wants to reach in your pocket and hand her the thirty-five pennies. But the compassionate side wins out and you tell her you'll do your best to find the culprit.

    Armed with a description of the vehicle and having checked that the coffee can was indeed empty...you drive south in the direction of the suspects vehicle. A few miles south is a crossroads with several houses and a few side streets. You drive around not expecting to find the car but needing to put something on the report to say you tried. But there it sits. The right color and the right first three numbers of the registration plate.

    A woman meets you at the door door when you knock. She is shocked to see a State Trooper at her door and probably is expecting to be informed of the untimely death of a family member. There is no easy way to suggest to a person that they are a thief. Especially when the amount is less than the cost of a postage stamp. She is apologetic and immediate produces a quarter and a dime for restitution. You assure her it must have been a misunderstanding. She asks you to apologize for her to Mrs. Anderson.

    On your way back to the scene of the crime, you can't help but think at least someone will have their faith restored in the justice system. You pull into the drive, hop out and drop the two coins into the coffee can. A voice booms from the porch, "I heard that!" It was a valiant attempt to not have to explain but you reluctantly return to the porch and apologize for the egg thief.

    Retuning to station at at the end of the shift, you drop the assignment report into the shift supervisors Box along with a few Traffic citations. Feeling pretty good about your first day, you undress and go home. When you return the next day there is a discrepancy notice in your box from the crime unit supervisor. You can't believe what you are reading.

  3. #83
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    What a great story. I love the telling details in simple language. I'm thinking Dragnet meets Hemingway.

    Really interesting window into your world and the world of law enforcement.
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
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  4. #84
    Williamsmith
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    Quote Originally Posted by catherine View Post
    What a great story. I love the telling details in simple language. I'm thinking Dragnet meets Hemingway.

    Really interesting window into your world and the world of law enforcement.
    I was thinking more on the lines of William S. Gray and Zerna Sharp....."Fun with Dick and Jane" meets "See Spot Run."

  5. #85
    Williamsmith
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    This morning I go to attend a funeral for a friend who's son did not live quite three decades. It was a violent end to a turbulent life. One of my golfing buddies supposed that it was partly the parents fault for failure to impart the right morals and ethics. I put that supposition down pretty harshly. I think as parents we take way more credit for successes and way too much blame for the failures of our children.

    I just read an article about the widow of a Trooper who was ambushed by a sniper while walking to his car from his station. The widow is suing the parents of the now convicted cop killer who is on death row by the way. According to the widow, the parents developed a great hatred for law enforcement and provided a fertile environment for violent actions toward police to the point that the ambush was a direct result of the "education" they gave their child.

    I don't quite know what to make of the ability of some people to lay blame on the family of actors. I suppose if you can make that leap, you can keep jumping ditches until you get to blaming an entire race, population, avocation or culture.

    I was the victim of crime numerous times. Twice I was just happy I came out alive. The anger, hatred and revenge never sat well with me for very long. I would rather symbolically wade into a cold clear trout stream in the mountains and let it wash downstream. That's the best way, I think. Let it go.

  6. #86
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    Quote Originally Posted by Williamsmith View Post
    The anger, hatred and revenge never sat well with me for very long. I would rather symbolically wade into a cold clear trout stream in the mountains and let it wash downstream. That's the best way, I think. Let it go.
    I agree a hundred per cent. This is best in life in general, in my experience.

  7. #87
    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    WS: I agree that parents don't have as much influence as you think. I raised 3 boys with very different outcomes.

  8. #88
    Senior Member SteveinMN's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Williamsmith View Post
    I don't quite know what to make of the ability of some people to lay blame on the family of actors. I suppose if you can make that leap, you can keep jumping ditches until you get to blaming an entire race, population, avocation or culture.
    It is a widespread human tendency. Where do xenophobia and its ugly cousin bigotry come from other than an extrapolation of behavior expressed by a minority of a given group of people (race, population, avocation, or culture)?
    Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

  9. #89
    Williamsmith
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    No, you can't believe that the Crime Unit Supervisor has put a correction notice in your box. He is requiring an initial crime report for this Mayberry RFD Andy Griffith incident. The ICR is a monstrously detailed report that is used for the reporting of felony crimes on down to simple harassment. It is ridiculous to document such a thing on more than a deli napkin, let alone a full blown investigative report with attachments and supplementals. You'll also have to re contact both the "victim" and the "suspect" because the new report requires detailed information you didn't obtain the first time around.

    As a rookie, you aren't in much of a position to argue the point. You get cracking because any delay will expose you to falling behind as you are assigned more incidents. In fact, there was one waiting for you when you got to work. You learn that the padding of statistics is a game played by some supervisors in order to manipulate the compliment of manpower they are assigned by Headquarters.

    Accidents are another matter. The accident report is due at the end of the shift. That requires you stay after your shift often to complete the reports. You don't get paid for those hours and you end up arriving home late.....far too often. Actually, the first accident you investigate on your own almost results in your not getting home at all.

    It is a simple crash. A college student headed home for the weekend straightened out a curve on the major highway connecting the interstate with the college town. He travelled through a split rail fence and into the trunk of a large maple tree. It is beginning to snow on the mountain. The road is greasy on your arrival but the State Highway department isn't much concerned until they get a supervisor to assess the situation before calling out a plow driver to salt the road.

    You get there before the volunteer fire department. The student is out of his car standing in the yard. You pull up and snap on your "gumball" style single red emergency light. It's the kind made popular in the movie Smokey and the Bandit. It has no where near the visibility modern light bars have but it is tradition. Unbeknownst to you there is a flatbed truck tractor combination approaching the curve out of sight. You step out of the patrol car and circle around the front beginning to hike up your heavy gun belt. It is now that you hear the trucks jake brake.

    Turning toward the sound you see the trailer swing around sideways on the slippery road. The truck is sliding straight toward your patrol car and the trailer is headed directly at you. In the split second you have your mind calculates the best direction to run. It is counter intuitive. You have to run directly across the road toward the other side which happens to mean retracing your path around the front of the patrol car hoping the impact doesn't take you out also.

    The sound of the impact is not much different than tossing a stick of dynamite into the trunk of your car or so you imagine. The slush on the highway is thrown up the back of your uniform by the trailer tires as you dash across the road. You dive headfirst into the ditch and then look behind you. The student is standing frozen in place. He hasn't budged an inch. The truck driver is still in his rig. There is not much left of your patrol car and on your way back across the road you pick up a shard from an amber lens cover and put it in your pocket.

    That shard remains in your dresser drawer to this day along with other reminders. Reminders of lessons learned. This one was, never turn your back on Traffic. Another will be....never take your eyes off their hands. The reminder, an empty shell casing.

  10. #90
    Williamsmith
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    Wake me up, when September ends.

    https://youtu.be/NU9JoFKlaZ0

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