A Night with the Police

I did a civilian ride-along with the Hendricks County Sheriff's Department last night. I have a friend who is a sheriff deputy there, and when I have the opportunity, I like to ride along with him for a shift. I often do this when my wife and kids are out of town, as they are this weekend, because my friend works 6:00pm to 6:00am, so it takes a little bit of sleep preparation and recovery time for me to ride with him. I imagine a lot of guys hit the bars and strip clubs when their wives are out of town. I ride with the police. I'm quite the party animal, aren't I? At least the Mrs. can rest assured that I'm not out getting into trouble while she's gone.

I've always been a big fan of the police, ever since I was a kid in Cub Scouts, and we toured the local police department in the small town in which I grew up. Those police officers looked so majestic, proud, good, like superheroes in their crisp blue uniforms, their shiny badges and pins, and their polished leather belts and shoes. They drove cool cars with lights and sirens, and they rushed to help people wherever there was a need, not thinking twice about risking their own safety. When they'd drive past my house, they'd wave to me like I was someone special to them, a little "Hey, we're here if you need us" wave. As a young boy, it was not hard for me to liken them to my favorite comic book superhero, Batman. And when Batman took the time to wave to me, that was pretty darn cool.

As an adult, I worked in a Municipal Court in Texas for a few years, which was housed in the same building as the city's police department. Through the nature of my job and our shared facility, I was around police officers all day at work. I made some really good friends there. I completed that department's Citizen Police Academy--a multi-week education for civilians about what it's like to be a police officer--and I did a number of civilian ride-alongs with that department.

When I moved to Indiana, I wasted no time riding along with the Indianapolis Police Department several times. I've ridden with a small town police officer. And I've ridden with my friend at the Hendricks County Sheriff's Department more times than I can count.

It has always bothered me when people bad-mouth the police. Granted, there are some bad apples in the profession, but name one single profession where there aren't bad apples. My profession is no exception. But I have found the police to be uniquely misunderstood, feared, loathed, and unappreciated by the general public. If a person is the object of the police's attention, the police arrived with too many officers, used excessive force, and violated their civil rights. If that same person wants the police to protect a loved one, the police took forever to get there, they were callous to the victim's needs, and they were too lazy to do anything about catching the bad guy. It's a no-win situation for the police.

Many people don't even know how to act around a police officer. It doesn't matter what state it is or what size of department it is, police officers are just regular people. My favorite part of riding with my friend is watching all the deputies interact. They're just regular guys. They have bills to pay, just like the rest of us. They have families, just like the rest of us. They have parenting issues, just like the rest of us. Their cars break down, their homes need maintenance, they plan vacations, they get together with friends for barbecues, they're concerned about their financial futures, they get sick, they go to church, and they're involved in all sorts of activities outside of their jobs, just like the rest of us. They talk about their work with each other, just like the rest of us do. They gripe about things they don't like about their jobs, just like the rest of us. The difference between them and most of the rest of us, though, is that they mobilize instantaneously and are willing to risk life and limb to protect people they don't even know. They get yelled at, spit at, swung at, and in the worst of circumstances, shot at by the very people they have sworn to protect. Every little thing they do at work is scrutinized, not only by their employer, but by the general public. Imagine if you made a mistake at work, and it was broadcast on the evening news for everyone to see. Imagine if something went wrong, but you DIDN'T make a mistake, and yet it was STILL broadcast on the evening news for everyone to see, and everyone simply ASSUMED that you made a mistake. To illustrate my point, read this recent article, including the comments posted at the bottom by readers.

I highly recommend a civilian ride-along or two for some of those readers, so they can attain a better understanding of what police officers do.

One might think that every shift is like an episode of COPS. Couldn't be farther from the truth. Here's how my ride-along went.

My friend is a sergeant and a shift supervisor, so we spent our first hour at the Sheriff's Department while he trained another deputy on a new computer system they're using to write their reports. He also proof-read an accident report being prepared by a lieutenant as a result of a deputy being injured a few days ago in a crash. We finally got into my friend's police cruiser, which has enough electronic equipment in it to put Radio Shack to shame. Cameras, computers, radar equipment, controls to the infinite number of lights on the car, and on and on. I can only imagine how much training was necessary to educate all the deputies on how to use all of this stuff, plus all the stuff that is attached to their 30-pound duty belts, plus all of the weapons that are in their cars. My friend's entire--and I mean ENTIRE--back seat is filled with books, forms, police tape, reflective stuff, stuff to stop speeding cars, rain gear, cold gear, department issued hats, cameras, and who knows what else. His trunk is equally full. The front passenger seat, where I sat, was like being in the Apollo 13 capsule, with what little room is left from all the electronic equipment. I was a Boy Scout, but police officers take the "be prepared" motto to a whole new level. And it's out of necessity. One thing that struck me when I looked at photos of the injured deputy's cruiser from a few days ago was how much crap must have been flying around in that car--and, I assume, hitting the deputy--when he crashed. Another thought I had was that if we wrecked, my head was going right into the video camera screen that is mounted on my side of the car, even with my seatbelt on. But by the end of the shift, my friend had used every single piece of electronic equipment in the front of the car, as well as some of the forms and equipment in the back seat.

So after we left the station, we joined a few other units in responding to a citizen's call about a possible party involving underaged drinking. When we arrived, there had to have been 50 kids in this house. They were like clowns in a Volkswagen, as the police herded them all outside and gave them breath tests. Many of them were wearing clothing that identified them as middle schoolers. And let me tell you, when I was in the 8th grade, the girls didn't dress like they do now. I'm pretty sure some of my hair turned grey right then and there as I envisioned what my life is going to be like when my Olivia and June get to that age.

Incidentally, none of the kids were drinking. But there were no parents home, either. That situation was rectified by a phone call from a deputy to one of the parents.

Our next stop was to serve some legal paperwork on a local homeowner. The bank is foreclosing on his house. That sucked. My friend listened as the homeowner expressed his frustration and desperation with the situation. None of it was directed at my friend, but this is the kind of thing he has to do more and more often in today's economy.

Throughout the night, we responded to a variety of things. One neighbor called the police on another neighbor because they were lighting firecrackers while having a bonfire in their back yard. People called the police because kids were doorbell-ditching them late at night. Naturally, the perpetrators were nowhere to be found when we arrived. Someone called the police because a car occupied by a couple teenaged boys was driving slowly down the street without lights on, and then was parked for awhile with the boys still inside. Naturally, the vehicle was gone when we arrived, the boys likely having picked up their female friends who had sneaked out the house, my friend surmised. Again, my hair greyed at the thought of having to deal with this in the future with Olivia and June.

We got called to another house with a loud party involving young girls. (I was considering enrolling my daughters in a nunnery at this point.) But in this case, a parent was home, and she had brought the hammer down on her daughter's birthday party before we got there. Peace had already been restored.

At around 1:30am, we responded to a 911 hang-up. Someone had called 911, hung up before speaking to the operator, and then failed to answer the phone when the 911 operator tried calling back. So we and another deputy rushed to the residence. After initially acting like it was a complete mystery to him how that could have happened, the twenty-something-year-old resident admitted that he had accidentally dialed 911 and was too scared to answer the phone when Dispatch called him back. So instead, his actions brought two deputies rushing to his house in the middle of the night, having no idea what could be going on inside the residence.

(In case you're wondering, the proper thing to do if you accidentally call 911 is to stay on the line and tell the operator you made a mistake. And that will be the end of it.)

We got behind a neat old car at one point in the evening, and we couldn't determine what kind of car it was (looked to us like it was a 60's model Ford, but we couldn't be sure), so my friend ran the license plate, expecting to learn the year and make of the car to answer our question. Except that the license plate came back to a 2002 Mitsubishi. So we stopped him. He admitted he had had a couple of beers earlier in the evening, so my friend gave him some field sobriety tests, which he passed with flying colors. He was not impaired. His drivers license was suspended, though, so he got a ticket for that, and he had to park his car (it was a Ford Fairlane, by the way) and call someone to come get him.

We met up with another deputy and chatted with him for awhile, and he told us about a vehicle he had stopped for doing 40 mph. On the interstate. In the passing lane. It was a 75-year-old drunk driver. And this wasn't her first arrest for drunk driving. That deputy had at least an hour's worth of paperwork to do involving that arrest, plus what was likely a couple hours worth of paperwork to do on a crash he had worked earlier in the evening. He asked my friend for permission to spend the rest of the evening back at the department to finish his paperwork.

We patrolled several neighborhoods, driving through each subdivision with our windows rolled down so we could see and hear anything strange going on. It was a quiet night in that area of the county.

We cruised past the house again where all the kids had been earlier in the evening. There were still several kids out on the front porch, but they weren't doing anything wrong, and they noticed us as we slowly rolled by. Which, of course, is exactly why we drove by. We didn't want them to think we had forgotten about them.

Then we were on our way to assist a deputy in responding to a call about a car in a ditch (driver turned out to be drunk) when we got a call to assist another deputy on a traffic stop. When we arrived, two other units were there, too: a State Trooper and a local town police officer. The deputy had been conducting a traffic stop when he was nearly run over by a passing vehicle. He got the second vehicle stopped, and the driver was more than three times the legal limit for alcohol. The passenger in the car was so intoxicated that he could barely speak or stand. The driver was yelling expletives at the top of his voice as he was being handcuffed, brow-beating himself for being so stupid as to drive, when he had just gotten out of jail, and he was planning to see his kids the next day. We never really could figure out much of what his passenger was trying to say. The driver went to jail for drunk driving, and the passenger got a ride home in a police car. We parked the car in a church parking lot across the street for the driver to retrieve when he gets out of jail. A nice gesture, I thought, since had this happened in Indianapolis, the passenger would have gone to jail for Public Intoxication, and the car would have been towed. When we got back in our car, we looked up the driver's criminal history on my friend's computer. He had a drunk driving arrest a year ago. This one is going to be a felony.

I had mentioned to my friend earlier in the night that it absolutely baffles me how people can drive into a police car during a traffic stop, like I see happening with regularity on TV and read about in the newspaper. The lights on my friend's car are plentiful and amazingly bright. As we'd assist other units, I could see their overheads at least a half-mile before we got there. So how could people miss those lights and drive into the back of a police car on the side of the road? "They're like moths to a flame," my friend informed me. Amazing.

And let me tell you, when you get four police cars, with all their lights on, as it was with this drunk driver, it is downright blinding. I don't know how those officers can see what the heck they're doing. I guess they're used to it, but I found all the flashing red and blue lights, combined with all the spotlights, to be quite disorienting. Which is probably the point, allowing the officer a kind of home-field advantage over someone who may want to get violent with him or her.

We drove through a few more neighborhoods, business areas, and construction sites before calling at a night. As my friend was taking me home, I commented that this had been a pretty active night. He looked puzzled and asked, "Really? Why do you say that?" I mentioned all the underaged parties, the 911 hang-up, doing the field sobriety test on the driver of the Fairlane, at least four drunk drivers that I knew of that were arrested during that shift, all the minor calls that we responded to, plus countless other such calls that other units had responded to. I was surprised by how busy the deputies were, even for it being a Friday night. My friend assured me that this had actually been a pretty slow night. But it had ended well. All the deputies went home safe to their families, and a handful of drunk drivers were taken off the streets before they hurt anyone. The deputies responded to every call that John Q. Public made, and they did some proactive patrolling to make sure you and I can sleep safely at night.

So I will continue to teach Olivia and June that the police are our friends, and that they help people. Because I know from repeated first-hand experience across several departments in different parts of the country that that's exactly who they are and what they do.