So, everyone wants to know how the police ride-along went Thursday night, right?
It was fabulous I enjoyed the whole 12 hours. I love it when I meet the coolest people in the most unexpected places, and I truly met someone on Thursday that changed my life. [It has been brought to my attention that I am more dramatic than I give myself credit for (as the previous statement proves, lol.)]
But it is true! I worried all day about how the police ride-along was going to turn out. Every time I see a cop pulling over a speeder or I get pulled over (which happens a lot), I scream about how the cops should be out looking for rapists and murderers, rather than targeting speeders. And I still feel that way. But I do have more respect for police people and I learned something important about the role of the police in the community.
Community Policing
The city where I am doing my internship is so cool. I know I talk sh*t about some of the boring stuff I have to do, but I am impressed every week with the cool stuff that D-town does. Community policing is one of those super cool things.
Community Policing basically means that the cops don’t come banging in as “Mr. Authority Bow Down to ME I am the POLICE”. Community Police act more like customer service people; they try to solve problems in the community. This police force folks truly believe in protect and serve, and that makes me happy. They do all this while having a reputation for being tough on crime.
For example, one of the calls that we went to involved stolen property. The victim was a young chick, who did something stupid, got caught up, and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She got her computer stolen. She knew who took it, but she couldn’t prove it and she didn’t know how to get her it back.
We went out to her, and got the phone number of the perp (hee hee), called the guy, told him that if he returned the property by the end of the night that he wouldn’t get into trouble. At first, I was like, really, aren’t we going to go slam this guy into jail?!?!?!
After we left, my awesome officer explained to me that his goal, first and foremost, was to help the victim. And in this case, helping the victim meant getting her back her property. And guess what, at about 3 in the morning, we got a call from the chick saying that the guy had brought her back her stuff (and we’ll still probably get the bad guy, this time or the next time, because guess what, if he isn’t caught from this crime, the idiot will do something else stupid and get caught)
This next event actually made my night; we got called to a house for an automatic alarm. My officer recognized that is was a house that had been burglarized 2x before so we hightailed it over there. We couldn’t find anything wrong at the house, but instead of shrugging and saying “oh well”, my officer and I go look for them. (After he deduces that the owners were probably down at one of the pubs near their home) And I don’t mean just a drive-by look-see, I mean we went into every pub on every corner of a half mile around their house. He knew their descriptions (and their dogs) and had me looking for them as well. We didn’t find them, but around midnight, we rode back by their house and found them at home. We checked in to make sure everything was ok, (it was). And after seeing them, I realized that I had seen them in one of the bars, (whoops, my bad, my definition of petite and my officer’s differ wildly, lol)
I was moved that he was concerned enough to go that extra mile, and so was the family that we check in on.
Police should be a visible and welcomed presence in the community
We saw kids (black teens with baggy clothes and white t-shirts) walking down the middle of the street, and I was thinking to myself, uh oh, this is not going to go well. My officer stopped the car, rolled down his window, and asked the kids, “why the hell are ya’ll walking down the middle of the street when there is a very nice sidewalk?” The kids were laughing with him, even when he told them that next time he was running them down. Wanna know why? Those kids see him all the time, and they know and trust him. AND my officer knows the difference between black kids walking in their neighborhood minding their own business and black kids doing something suspicious. The kids were more concerned with the pretty girl in the car, than they were with anything else.
Police have it rough
v Some people hate them for no reason (my bad, sorry)
v Some people want to kill them just for being cops
v Cops lose friends just by being cops
v The job consumes their lives (they work 12 hour shifts, 5 days a week, and they have to sleep sometimes)
v Almost no one is happy to see the police (unlike the fireman)
v People expect them to behave a certain way.
v It’s hard to relax when you are a cop, hence the rampant drug and alcohol abuse (you try getting shot at for a living)
v Even when they are off, they aren’t really off, (don’t let folks in the community know that you’re a cop, they expect you to be at their beck and call.
v It takes a toll on having relationships (especially romantic ones)
v Some things only another cop can understand, so you find it hard to talk to loved ones
v Cops are always on high alert
v Cops only hear complaints, seldom compliments
v They have to walk a thin line…they are under constant scrutiny and mistakes can be deadly
Being fair and doing the right thing
The one rough spot of the night was when we did a random license check and found out that a lady was driving alone with a learners permit. We had to give her a ticket. And my officer, by that point in the night, knew me well enough to know how I felt about giving tickets, asked me how I felt about it. When I told him it made me sick to my stomach, he reminded me about something that I think about all the time: being fair and doing the right thing.
Being fair means trying everyone the same way, duh. But seriously, I had to go stand in a long ass line at the DMV and pay the money to get my license, I pay $150 a month on car insurance, and I pay my property taxes on my car yearly. And if I have to do those things, then dammit, everyone else should to. And one way that cops make sure that everyone follows the rules is to do random checks and give tickets when folks disobey them.
Another thing that my officer and I discussed was how, in doing random checks (from the back of the car, so the officer doesn’t know the color or ethnicity of the driver) when an undocumented immigrant is driving without a license, cops should (but I don’t think this is actually happening in the US) be able to take the immigrant to the police department, fine them for being illegally driving (or illegal period), fingerprint them, and put them in queue to get licensed, and get tax id numbers, because, sh*t if they are going to be here, using social services (schools, health departments, etc) then they should pay into the system. AND if by chance, they are criminals, we can prosecute them, or sent them back to their home country.
And you do these things for everyone, even when it makes your stomach hurt.
Doing the right thing is a little bit harder, and cops have a lot of discretion when it comes to doing the right thing. To come back to the stolen property incident, the right thing to do was to get her back her property. Even though the rulebook (and most cops) would say GET THE PERP AT ALL COST. If we had gone that route, that young girl would never have gotten her stuff back, because the perp wouldn’t have had any reason to give it back. By telling him we wouldn’t press charges if he brought it back, we let the bad guy go, but we met the goal of the person that called the police in the first place.
So even though some would be upset at that outcome, it made me feel really good.
Cops can’t be PC. They have to treat everyone with respect, understand cultural differences, and talk to people on their level. They have to be careful not to talk down to people, not to frighten them, and not to piss them off. Some people would say a scenario with young black, Hispanic, or white man should sound exactly the same. NOT! Especially if you don’t want to take someone to jail. People respond differently to different tones, words and police procedures.
Sometimes the right thing to do isn’t easy or palatable and sometimes doing the right thing breaks the rules.
Cops can be cool people too
I think I peed at every public school in the city’s school district. Why? Because my officer has keys to all the buildings, and his bladder was smaller than mine. And we had frequent smoke breaks, lol.
On those smoke breaks, I had to chase him down to talk to him, finally I asked him why he was running away and he said he didn’t want to blow smoke in my face but no matter where he stood, the wind blew the smoke in my face. So considerate, right?
My cop has about 14 tattoos and most of the other officers think he belongs in a circus. That automatically gives him cool points with me. And he gave me the name of his tattoo artist so I can get my ink 
For fun, he restores Vespa motor scooters (he tried to sell me one, but not if it meant that I was going to max out my credit card, lol) And his fiancé is burlesque dance! Don’t know about you, but that just made my day. He is one of a few city people in D-town that I really wanted to tell that I was gay, but didn’t.
Over pizza we talked about his background and how he spend some years traveling in Europe and South America in his words “wasting time”, and I am soooo jealous because I really want to go overseas and I’ve spend my twenties doing the right thing. Anyway, it was mostly a conversation about risks and how I’m scared to take them. He said, of course, all I have to do is make the decision to go, and then actually do it; which I haven’t been able to do. And I hate looking like a coward, but he outed me so quickly in a way that I couldn’t dispute. All I was able to do was say that it scares me not to be in control and randomly quiting my life and moving to Brazil seemed awfully irresponsibe. He nodded and said, “So what. Get over yourself and join the peace Corp or do something but you have to make yourself happy! I hate it that he made it sound so damn easy and he made me believe that I could do it. *sigh*
When we were matched at the station (at the beginning of the shift), he didn’t say hello, he said “let’s go” and walked away, LOL. He had just gotten a call, and literally I jogged to keep up with him. (And I jogged all night to keep up with his pace.) We got into his patrol car and burned rubber to my first scene. Within 30 minutes he had already scared the sh*t out of himself and me (and some citizens sitting at a traffic light, lol.)
Note: Impalas are front wheel drive and are unpredictable when going 70 in a curve in a downtown area, Crown Vics are much better police cars because they are rear wheel drive, and can take a curve)
From my super awesome officer, I learned to be more aware of my surroundings. I learned more about identifying suspicious behavior and distinguishing suspicious behavior from normal behavior. I learned how to assess a scene and keep myself out of trouble. I saw someone defuse a potentially bad situation with humor and honesty. I was reminded that force should never be a first option and that while respect is earned not given, sometimes people earn respect without us knowing it.
Bottom line, I enjoyed my police ride-along, not only because I got to drive really fast through the city, sirens blaring…(which was loads of fun) but also because I learned something new and unexpected. I made a new friend, and learned some things about myself in the process. AND he dealt with having a smelly girl in his car (my deodorant stopped working, lol) and while I hoped that no one could smell me, the gf confirmed for me how stinky I was when she covered her nose to walk by me when I got home, lol.
It is amazing how much you can learn about a person in 12 hours, when both parties are willing to challenge assumptions, check their respective egos at the door and are open to having a real conversation.
