Blue Grace Call Notes

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...

I was working day shift, 8am - 6pm.  I was headed into the station, end of the day. A call came out about an accident that had occurred about a block from the station, pretty much directly in my path of travel.  I piped up that I would respond, let the swing shift guys go on about their robberies and drug interdictions. I pulled up to the crash.  It was on a new overpass that had been installed to accommodate new traffic expected to come into the area as some huge new medical facilities were being built.  There is a very small police department that works in that giant medical complex.  At least one of their officers beat me to the scene. Accidents are not a big deal to an officer with any time on.  Most of the time, the cars look HORRIBLE and the people are fine.  So, I was pretty nonchalant about my approach. There were a few people standing around and as I walk into the intersection, a female officer from another agency looks at me and jus...

Apparently. My agency had a program that ran for a couple of years where people in the process or interested in the process of applying to my department could be exposed to some of the ideas, issues, and experiences involved in police work. The primary instructor happened to be someone who would classify himself as a minority group member. The training was very much like what I would later do in the academy. We ran together.  We discussed the law. I think it was actually quite helpful and I was grateful for the opportunity. The instructors were all helpful and friendly to me and I had no issues with anyone. Sunshine and roses. Then, one Saturday, we got to meet a few of the actual academy instructors who were there to show us how to perform to academy standards for some of the physical fitness requirements. I remember there was one guy on the stage doing pushups and another explaining the process.  People cheat on pushups, y'all.  It is no joke.  In...

When I lived in apartments, I always preferred the third floor and front doors that were in a breezeway rather than doors inside of a hallway.  It feels more private - not everyone can hear when you come and go like they would in hallway echoes.  And whatever is going on in the other units, at least the residents are not running to and fro over your head.  I don't like the "pitter patter" of "little" feet. So, we get dispatched to a welfare check one afternoon.  The apartment is as described above.  3rd floor with a balcony.  No windows to the breezeway. A mom had called and asked us to check on her young adult son.  She hadn't heard from him for a while and wanted to make sure he was okay. I don't remember much about the call aside from that. We went and knocked on the door.  No answer and no way to tell if anyone was inside.  Also, the door had the deadbolt you lock from inside with no external keyhole. I know we didn't have much ...

I was just now watching Manhunt: Unabomber and was reminded of this one: Another beautiful day patrolling the urban corridor and I respond to a report of an explosive device. You know, sometimes, the willingness to be a total safety idiot comes with the job. Dee-de-dee. I roll up on the address.  I don't remember if I talked to anybody or if the location was extremely well-described in the call notes.  The latter is highly unlikely and I vaguely recall speaking to a human who pointed across an open yard to a the corner of a dilapidated retaining wall. I turn off my police radio.  I had left my cellphone in the car.  Bomb safety 101, don't send out any radio signals nearby. I tiptoe across the field and peer down into the corner.  There is some sort of white plastic shopping bag with red lettering on it.  It looks like it has been there for a while (dusty, worn looking). At first, I don't see anything, then it comes into focus.  I can't re...

One lovely, sunny day on patrol, I was dispatched to a house that quite surprised me. I was working in a low income district.  Certainly, some of the older homes had been gentrified but they were still small homes with small lots, for the most part.  Nothing like the 'burbs, really. This house ... I started driving down the street to the address and I felt like I had fallen through a wormhole.  Huge, beautiful trees on nice sized lots and the house was a nice-sized two story colonial in lovely condition.  And it was well matched by its neighbors.  A little urban Shangri-La.  Or at least until you actually meet the people who live there. Actually, that is not at all fair.  The reporting parties were new to the neighborhood, moving from a much more expensive area in the foothills with more big beautiful trees and a lovely, very large and quite well-known college campus. Well, these folks proceed to explain their complaint to me.  They walk m...

I am a female who grew up in a broken home.  No drugs, alcohol, or parental abuse.  Just a bunch of relationships of the week for my parents and not a lot of supervision or family time for me.  That will probably come up in some of my writing.  That's the only reason I mention it. I am middle aged, single, childless, and heterosexual.  I am also a Christian, which informs as much of my life as my faulty humanity will allow. I am on my 12th year as a law enforcement officer.  It is less than a week since the Las Vegas massacre. I saw that a LVMPD officer was killed at the concert while enjoying his time off.  His name was Charleston Hartfield.  And he wrote a book, within the past year, I would say, since some of the entries are from 2016, called "Memoirs of a Public Servant."  I figured it was something small I could do, to buy the book to support his family and his memory. Well, the book is absolutely what I needed right now. The j...

I went through the training academy in the fall/winter of 2005.  There were about 40 of us when we started. The first day, we all went to an auditorium.  We were all dressed the same - well, mostly.  Blue dress pants, white dress shirt, blue tie, black dress shoes.  If we had long hair, it had to be above the collar. [Oh my goodness, I just thought of the pre-academy training I need to tell you about!  Later.] One of my female classmates thought it would be a good idea to wear giant hoop earrings with her "uniform."  I can't tell you how much it bothers me that my fellow females don't "get" why we need to follow dress code.  If you CAN do it, just freaking do it.  This girl - did nobody tell her we might have to do some Physical Training that day?  Did she know nothing about dress codes and why you don't want to be the "odd person out" in the academy?  I don't know.  We never discussed it.  She was a nice enough young w...

It was some time in the first quarter of 2006.  I was in Field Training.  Thinking of the neighborhood I was in and the time of day, I think if must have been 3rd cycle.  I was 35 years old, single, no kids.  I think background is important for context in what I may or may not have thought about at the time. The call was of a suicide. When in Field Training, we ride with a training officer, and we go to most calls with another training officer and trainee.  This is after 7 months in the academy, so we have heard all about the horrors of the streets but are new to actually experiencing them. We arrive to the call.  The reporting party is a younger middle-aged woman.  She seemed older to me but I always think I am so much younger than I really am.  She was probably around 40.  She was well-dressed and I know that she was sad but she had her wits about her.  She told us HE was downstairs. As we walked through the townhouse, I notice...