Ride Along continued

*The computer screams and dings, the flashing lights are blinding, the speed you zoooooooom down the road, making zippy in U-turns for traffic stops, listening to the radio, listening to the police radio, calling in license numbers and listening for answers, chatting, getting in and out, in and out of the car, dealing with life’s problems, dealing with those that MAKE their life a problem, being on edge at the beginning of a call….it’s was a very sensorial evening.
*One woman called 911 for personal assistance. (I don’t want to go into to great of detail about what calls were about called because these are people’s lives here. I was basically a voyeur into them.) O1 & O2 couldn’t do anything for her. O2 had already spoken to her once before. (there really was nothing they could do to help her.) She got mad. She was also filled with attitude, a bit belligerent and didn’t seem completely in control. She was holding all of her belongings in a grocery bag under her arm.
She kept saying, loudly, “YOU aren’t doing your jobs!!
O2 - “Lady, I can’t help you with this.
Lady- “YOU AREN’T DOING YOUR JOB!
O1 - “Did you do X”? Did you do Y? Yes. Well, then we cannot help you. You
have to go to court to take care of this.”
Lady - YOU AREN’T DOING YOUR JOB! YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO YOUR
JOB!
O2 - “But lady, we cannot do this!
Lady - FINE then, give me your badge number. I’m going report that you aren’t
doing your JOB!
O2 - “You already took my badge number on the last call!”
Lady - She turns to O1, “fine give me YOUR number!”
She reached into the bag and pulled out this itty bitty receipt. She searches for a pen.
O1 - “Here, let me write it down for you!”
Lady –“Do you have a phone”?
A phone? O1 points across the street
O1 – “You can use the payphone at the convenience store there.
Lady - “Well, do you have money”?
O2 - WHO are you going to call”?
Lady - I'm calling THE POLICE!!!!
O2 - LADY WE ARE THE POLICE!!!!
Lady – “ BUT YOU AREN’T DOING YOUR JOB!!!!!!
I nearly cracked up when she told the police that she was going to call the police!!!!!! OMGoodness. It ended with them sending her on her way.

*When there were no calls needing attention, O1 and O2 did traffic stops. Now let’s not confuse traffic stops with handing out tickets. They actually didn’t hand out even one ticket. As O1 said, they are looking for drugs and thugs. Well, in the meantime, any itty, bitty infraction was cause for us to zooooooom down the road, throw on the flashers, pull the car over and give them the once over. O1 and O2 took turns being on point and most of the time I had to ask why we were stopping this car or that. Trust me; take a look at the lights that illuminate your license plate. These traffic stops got to be kinda funny because they didn’t hand out one ticket. When they weren’t stopping cars, they were running license plates. I looked at O1 and said “You don’t give out tickets.” He jokingly said, ok fine, next traffic stop, I’ll give them a ticket, just for you! It was a little lady sitting right on top of her steering wheel, peering over the dashboard. I looked at him. Nah, he didn’t give her a ticket.
*when we finished with dinner and got back into the car, O1 looked at me and said “You ready to go have fun!” These guys LOVE their job. They spend half of their day playing counselor and half of their day enforcing the law.
* I was really hoping that we would get a chance to go with lights and siren. We didn’t. The police must have a certain level call or be given permission to use sirens. O1 was pretty funny because we were nearly back to the station, he was talking on the phone, he put the phone to his shoulder said “hang on” and turned on the lights and sirens for about 1 sec.! He then went back to his phone call and said, “ Yeah, she wanted to go lights and siren and we never got a chance!” I thought that was pretty nice! Not quite the same but really nice.

One more entry on this topic….It was the most interesting call of the evening and the reason why I got home at 4 am…….