The ride-along

It's probably high time to resolve at least one of the other two pictures I posted last week, namely the one taken inside a car, and which featured a laptop built into the dashboard of the car. For those of you who were wondering whether I had finally truly embraced my status as a workaholic and had a computer installed in my car, don't worry, I'm not completely over the edge yet. The picture was, as some of you guessed, taken inside a police car.

So what was I doing inside a police car? One of the things you should know about me is that I'm really a little kid at heart. A little kid who loves tree houses, candy that makes your tongue change color, and who, when she grows up, wants to be a firefighter. Or a police officer. Fortunately for the eight-year old tomboy inside, our local police department allows local citizens to go on so-called ride alongs with their police officers. After hemming and hawing about this for weeks, because, seriously, isn't a ride-along for police wannabes? And was't I too old, too serious, too tree-huggy, hippy-dipy for something like this? I finally convinced myself that none of that really mattered, and I should just go already.

And so last Wednesday, I spent four hours with Officer Smith, patrolling the rougher neighborhoods in our town. Or what passes for "rougher" in our neck of the woods. After all, in a town where the vast, vast majority of the population is employed by the Department of Defense, and unemployment is so low I'm not even sure they keep track of it, the understandig of what is rough is possibly a little different from the rest of the world. Regardless, the ride-along, as my inner 8-year old would say, duh-mazing.

There was the odd bits of information about my town that I would have never suspected, such as the fact that the rooms in the two motels next to The Dairy Queen are mainly rented by the hour. Or that local teens hang out behind the Walmart to smoke pot. Then there were the locals themselves of course. Such as the unassuming driver of an SUV who decided that the best time to rifle through his repair paperwork and swerve from the curb to the centerlane and back would be on a busy thoroughfare with a police car right behind him. Or the small girl who stopped the police car to tell Officer Smith about the "crazy lady across the street" who had been harassing her older sister. There was a parolee who had violated their probation and needed to be arrested and taken to jail.

Then there were all the 911 calls that inspired most of the action. Some were what you'd expect, an alarm going off at a residence, someone reporting hearing gunshots fired, and a shoplifter caught at Walmart. Others were a little less common. like the woman who called from a daycare center to report that there was another woman there who "picks up her kids every day and lets them run across the street to her car." Call me off the wall nuts, but I might consider talking to the lady first myself. Fortunately, Officer Smith agreed with me, and after a futile search for a Toyota minivan driven by an Asian lady (Officer: "Well, that's a Toyota van in the right color, but I can't see the driver very well.". Me: "And I take it that pulling them over and saying, 'Oh, sorry, I thought you were Asian American is just not protocol'), we gave up, only to report to the call of the afternoon.

The way these calls work is that dispatch relays an emergency to a specific officer via a radio, and that the content of the call also appears on the laptop each officer has in their car. Because of the way the laptop is placed, I was able to read most of the calls as they came in, and this particular one made me sit up and take notice. The report on it read, "Caller says there is a convertible with the top closed sitting on side of the street. He can see two people inside, moving around, and the car is moving up and down as though they're having sex. Elementary school kids are about to get off the bus, so this should be checked out."
"I'm probably weird,", I piped up, "But I would knock on their car and ask them to stop first."
"Heck, " Officer Smith said, "I'd break out the popcorn, put out a lawn chair and pretend to watch them until they would be so embarrassed they would stop."
"Nice."

As we pulled into the street, we saw the bright yellow bus drop off a zoo of little kids.
"And there are the elementary school kids." The officer looked down the street and pointed at a big tree, "And there is the car."
(By the way, these cops have bionic eyes and ears. They see stuff before it's there, I swear)
So he pulled in front of the car, blocking it from view, got out, and knocked on the car door. A lone woman stepped out, looking thoroughly confused. Now, thanks to the fancy pants radio that all officers in our town carry, I was able to hear every conversation the officer carried out while I waited in the car. And this conversation quickly turned into something Ionesco himself could have written. Or any other modernist French playwright for that matter. But after ascertaining that there had been no untoward behavior exhibited by this lady, or her apparently invisible passenger, we went on our merry way. No second person, no sex. Young minds were kept pure and innocent, but I was just a tad disappointed. I mean, we're in the bible belt, and this would have presented me with enough material to keep me at the center of attention of all parties until the new year.

Two more calls, one last trip past a notorious "drug house" (who would have ever thought we had such a thing in our town), and one attempt to pick up a wanted parolee later, and the officer's shift was over. It was time to head back to the station.

And the eight year old inside of me was happy.