Blue Grace Call Notes

Police officers come in a much wider variety than the public knows or than many officers will accept. I am an introvert.  I am beyond uncomfortable in social settings with lots of people and I don't really drink (most of my regrettable moments have involved alcohol as well as many of my most fun, unfortunately).  Noise and busyness and chaos of crowds all drain me. You would think that wouldn't be a good fit for a police officer. But I am also kindhearted, decisive, problem-solving, sometimes gutsy, and, when I need to be, brave.  I mean, I have never acted in a cowardly manner as a patrol officer.  I took my share of calls and then some, I always ran towards the gunfire, and I pushed past some serious fear on several calls - mostly having to do with clearing houses and turning the next corner. I was a good cop.  I looked out for my teammates and did everything I could think of to help out. But I am not a "choir practice" cop.  Once the day is don...

When I was in my last week of Field Training, I was riding with a fill-in Field Trainer, meaning he had not trained me before.  The guy who trained me, that I should have been with, was on vacation. This guy was a lateral from the Los Angeles area and had done his time.  He was also a Marine. But he was ALSO one of my favorite car partners because he was so chill.  When the week started, he said I should relax.  He had no concerns about me and wasn't going to "FTO" me that week.  I mean, if I had screwed up, he would have addressed it, but he just treated me like another officer, not a trainee. It was the wee hours of the night on graveyard shift and I was driving around town, looking for mischief when this chill guy next to me, suddenly says with urgency, "Stop the car!" What?  Okayyyyy ... I stop in the middle of a fairly busy roadway that happened to be deserted due to the time of day. He was in plainclothes and I see him take off his leather b...

This is just one incident, but I am sure a book could be written with this title, if it hasn't already. Afternoon shift in suburbia.  I get a call about a shoplifter at a chain department store. I make contact with security and the shoplifter in question, a girl of about 15 years. She is pretty, cooperative, sane.  All good here, just a low grade kid misbehavior matter, right? Well, except one of the things we do "incident to arrest" of a shoplifter is search them and their belongings to ensure they have turned over all of the stuff that doesn't belong to them.  I put "incident to arrest" in quotes because sometimes an "arrest" is cleared by just issuing someone a ticket rather than putting them in handcuffs and taking them to jail. Shoplifters often just get summonses.  It depends.  Do they have a criminal history with our agency?  Do they have a history of Failure To Appear to their court dates when summoned?  Do they have valid identif...

I need to put a disclaimer on this one.  This is how I remember it but it was a reallllllly weird circumstance, and several years ago, so ... We get a call about a dispute between a mother and son involving a knife in an apartment complex. We arrive and contact the involved parties.  According to the mom and siblings, the young man did threaten his mother with a butcher knife.  I think he may even have confessed to it but anyway ... he cooperates with being taken into custody. He did not have and was nowhere near the knife when we contact him but I did see it laying on the kitchen counter. He is placed in the back of my patrol car and for whatever reason one officer is having a conversation with him with the back door open and I am sitting in the driver's seat, listening.  Maybe the other officer was my car partner that evening.  I really don't know. In the course of the conversation, this young man admits he stabbed his girlfriend tonight.  In th...

THUMP. I had a rider and we had just left the station.   Graveyard shift. We are sitting at a light about 4 blocks south of the station, talking and I hear a rather loud THUMP. There doesn't appear to be anything going on as I enter the intersection and turn left. About half a block into the lane of traffic, there is something in the roadway. HOLY SH*T!!  There is a man laying in the street and he is NOT WELL. The only car anywhere nearby is up ahead another block at the light.  It is dark out. THAT ASSHOLE JUST HIT THIS GUY AND IS LEAVING THE AREA!!! I have one car and one officer. Do I stay where I am and block this man from being struck again or do I go after that hit-and-run driver????  What do I do???? I aired the information on the radio and drove around the man to get that car!  Actually, I think I told my rider to talk on the radio.  She had no idea what was happening but she handled it well. Fortunately, since we had just fini...

Graveyards.  Summer. Whatever the night had been like to that point, one of my classmates and I were parked car-to-car late one night, writing reports in the back of one of the stations.  There wasn't enough room for either of us to get out of our cars.  Lesson learned.  But anyway ... I see a boy approaching us in my rearview just as my peer sees him.  Both of us mentally prepare for the worst.  It's the middle of the night.  What is this about?? The kid throws his hands down on the hood of my car and says, "I've been raped."  He said it kind of calmly so we both thought we heard him wrong. Nope, that's what he said. Despite being completely taken by surprise, we muster up and start talking to this youngster.  He proceeds to describe his ordeal to us and come to find out he was, in fact, selected by a stranger/predator at a public event earlier in the weekend, as a victim. The man who ultimately made illegal sexual contact with h...