Monday, October 25, 2010

I have been blessed

In the world of patrol, simplicity is a far away land.  The simple task of learning a child's name because he is suffering from a potentially life-threatening head injury can present a challenge that makes K2 look like a walk in the park.

Yesterday, a young boy and his friends were riding their skateboards up and down a street.  During one of the downhill portions of this usually fun activity, the boy accidentally ran his skateboard under a parked vehicle, giving himself a decent whack on the head.  Head injuries usually bleed with a frightening amount of efficiency, and this kid's head was no different.

He was with several friends, so, easy?  Right?  We'll get his name, address, call Mom and Dad and get this show on the road.  Ha! Not in the inner city.

We tried talking to this kid and his friends, and quickly realized, he does not speak English.  Not even a little bit.  And his friends do not speak English.  We are not even lucky enough to be dealing with a kid who speaks Spanish.  I say lucky, because we have an abundance of well trained Spanish translators on the department.  

The frustration mounted because we wanted to help this young man, but the simple tasks were kicking us in the face.  The kid looked like he was of Asian decent...should not be to hard...  What language will be the right one?  Cambodian?  Laotian?  Vietnamese?  All easy enough, as we also have an army of skilled translators in those languages.  

The ambulance arrived.  Well, at least the medical part, and really, the most important part, of this puzzle is covered.  Medics asked us, "Hey, do you guys know his name?  What about his parents?"  We had nothing.  One of the victim's friends directed us to an apartment complex, and a specific apartment where this kid lived, but no one was home.  To add yet another layer of confusion, the neighbors insisted no one lived there.  Ugh, wall. bang head. against.

And then we learned;  He is from Burma.  Our young victim speaks Burmese.  Any Burmese speakers in the house?  City wide?  No.  Other divisions?  No.  Mega no.  AT & T has a language line that police officers may use for translation, but the rush of a slight medical emergency is not the best time for this service.  One of his friends speaks just enough English to give us his name.  I quickly told the dispatcher, so when the missing person report was called in from Mom and Dad, we could let them know, hey, junior is okay, but he is at Children's Hospital with a busted noggin.

The medics took off with our young man from Burma.  I wondered for a moment, what the heck kind of political nonsense has he seen in his very green years?  Burma is not necessarily the most stable place right now.

Then the lady blessed me.  A stern, but jovial looking lady who lived in an apartment complex on the street where the incident occurred walked up to me.  She thanked me for my service and told me she was disgusted with some of the residents on her street she sees dealing and using drugs.  She was a retired elementary school teacher and spoke with the passion of old school-Baptist-god-fearing religious conviction about told me she did NOT allow any disrespect in her classroom, and that she is appalled when she sees the criminal element creating discontent in the neighborhood.

This lady was a character.  She wore a bright blue flower print dress and wool bowler-type hat.  She placed her hand on my shoulder and said, "Brother Roark, I bless you!  No one crosses Brother Roark, I can tell.  Brother Roark don't let anyone mess around!"    I laughed out loud.  I thought, the criminals on this street will hurl all the insults in the world at the coppers, but this woman,  this woman, they wouldn't dare cross this woman.  And not because she is armed with a gun and taser and pepper spray.  This woman would bring fire and brimstone and fear DOWN to their beings and tell them the way it is.    This is a fascinating part of my work.  Fear.  Who fears who.  A hardened gangster will puff out his chest to an armed cop any day, but the harsh disapproval from a grandmother will reduce the same man to a shrinking violet.

***

"HE CALLED ME A F****** C***!!!! AND THEN HE TENSED UP HIS BODY!!!!!"

Oh dear.

The call came in right after the sun went down.  Our interest immediately peaked as the address was in a neighborhood that is known for being not well known to us.  Translation: a nice neighborhood.

We walked up the driveway to a beautiful two-story home and there she was: Cruella Deville, minus the coat.  She had long stringy blond hair, lips puffed to size of garish pillows, and implants that heaved out of her tank top like choked blobs with each angered, hyperventilated breath.  A wave of the odor of alcohol emanated from her direction.

Her voice seethed under the heavy influence of too much drink and thus too much anger as she explained how she allowed her daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter to rent house, but they were behind one month on the rent and she wanted them OUT.

A conversation with the daughter and son-in-law revealed they were in fact behind on the rent, due to a recent job loss and financial constraints, but the daughter was going to school to obtain a master's degree in public administration, and the son-in-law had three job interviews in the next two weeks. Fair enough.    They further explained this is not their first go around with Mom.  Apparently she has a habit of drinking herself into a stupor, driving(!) to her kid's house, and then making a drunk, crazy scene.  

"I OWN THIS HOUSE.  I PAID CASH FOR THIS HOUSE!!!!  I WANT THEM OUT NOWWW!"  Said the drunk, harpy, who harbored under the misconception that she had fooled everyone into thinking she looked like a 24-year old gal.  She shrieked away about her son-in-law calling her a f* c*.  Lord, oh lord, grant me self control.   I wanted to say, yeah, I agree with the poor guy.   If someone showed up at my doorstep ranting and screaming like that,  I would lose my temper too.

Instead, I calmly explained that ultimately, this was not a police issue.  Name calling is annoying and rude, but our founding fathers saw fit to let people tell it like it is.  I also told her she could not simply barge onto the property at her whim.  Landlord/Tenant laws in my state protect privacy and frown upon property owners tromping around a person's living space without proper notice.  Oh, and eviction?  30 days notice.

As I spoke to this lady, I noticed she was breathing heavy and gritting her teeth, I wondered if she was going to started wailing on me and I briefly considered taking her to jail for public intoxication, but a sympathetic (and sober) family friend who was also at the house offered to drive her home.  Cruella Deville put up an argument, saying she was not going ANYWHERE and she wanted them OUT and so on and drunken so on.  I quickly shut her down with two options, jail or home.      

She sobered up just enough to realize I had just uttered the "j" word, and stepped into the passenger seat of her car.  The family friend, who was obviously familiar with this woman's issues, drove her home.

Be safe out there.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

October 23, 2010

More vocabulary:

"Where are you from?"  or "Where you from?"  a noun.  Not a true question or polite greeting, as in, "Hello fine sir, may I inquire as to where you are from?"  "Oh, hello jolly fellow!  I am from San Francisco."  Nor is it meant to be inquiry about someone's accent; as in, "Oh, I can't understand a goddamn thing you are saying, where are you from?"  "I am from the north, you uneducated sap."

It is a statement usually uttered in a neighborhood area with crappy street lights between the hours of 2200 and 0300.  The direct translation is, "I am going to (hurt, maim, kill, rob, shoot, etc...) you for no good reason right now."  The  person on the receiving end would be well advised to start running in the opposite direction.

I have been to more shootings and stabbings than I could ever count that started off with this otherwise friendly question.

Friday, October 22, 2010

October 22, 2010

I started this journal on my days off, and I don't want to re-hash an old story, but I thought I would begin with a short vocabulary primer.

"Clicking" a verb.  To speak in a rude, obtuse manner.  "I was like, hey, knock it off, and then she started 'clicking' on me."  I heard this expression for the first time when I was a baby cop.  A young female was describing how another female was speaking to her.  At first I thought she meant the young lady was clicking a pair of canastas.

"A Kick It"  a noun with verb tendencies.  To meet with close friends and speak in a jovial manner.  "So you went to a party with your friends?"  "No, it wasn't a party, it was 'a kick it,'  you know, where you go and you're like, hi."  I heard this term recently when I was taking a statement from a witness.

"Mollywhopping" or "Mollwhop"  a verb.  (Not violence against people named Molly).  To hit and kick another person in an angry, uncontrollable manner.  "Hell yeah, that motherf** got a 'mollywhopping' and he deserved it!"  My partner told me about this one.  He responded to a fight call, and needless to say, the sympathy for the victim was a bit thin.

"Whoop Whoop Whooping"  well, a verb, although it is often used as an adjective.  I think the best way to define the "type" of this word is to use it in a sentence.  "Well, she came over here, and she was all 'whoop whoop whooping' and I TOLD her, you gotta GO."  Obviously,  this is an action, but it's really being used to describe a person's actions.  I have heard this term countless times.  People use it to describe everything from generic snarkiness, to physical violence.

"Barely" an adjective and a verb.  To describe how long one has lived in a house or apartment, but also an effort to cultivate a lie about where one lives.  "Where do you live?"  "I am not sure, I just barely moved there."  "How long have you lived there?"  "Oh, I just barely moved there last year." The use of this of this term is usually an indication the person is lying.
            
These are just a few that I remember, more to come later...

Thursday, October 21, 2010

October 21, 2010

Hello, my name is Roark.

I have been a patrol officer in a large city for 9 years.  The last seven of those years have been in the busiest division of my department, the last four have been in the busiest beat of that division.  The purpose of this blog is to share my stories with you, thereby providing people with a direct link to the little known, often misunderstood art of patrol.    

The stress of police work eats away at the men and women in blue like an invisible chain saw.  The sadder effects of our work manifest themselves in the form of divorce, obesity, mental illness, sickness, the list is endless.  Which brings me to the second purpose of this blog; stress relief.  Writing is a tool I use to dull the teeth on the invisible chain saw, a way to keep the demons at bay.

The names will be changed, of course, and I will avoid writing any specific details about people and places.  Please enjoy these stories, as they are the unreported, unseen photographs of my work that wind up on the cutting room floor of the local news.