Impossible to work

Last night I went on a ride-along with a bona fide sworn Tulsa Police Officer. This is actually the second time I’ve gone on a ride-along and it was over way too early in the evening. A chase ended in lots of paperwork which led to the end of my ride-along at 2 AM. Last time around, I was out with the po-po until 5 in the morning and I got to see a guy get rolled out on a gurney after having been stabbed in the chest (getting blood all over his white tee) by his (ex?) girlfriend. Since he had shown up earlier and destroyed her TV, he was considered a prisoner and the officer I was with had to sit with him at the hospital til the end of her shift. C’est la vie.

I’m not always the biggest fan of the police, but I also know that there are lots of great officers out there everyday putting their lives on the line. I think it’s great that you get the opportunity to ride along with an officer and see what his/her shift is like. And let me tell you, most of it is pretty boring. The officer I rode along with (who is a long standing friend) offered her stepfather’s description of her job”^a1a”: You wait around for long periods of time followed by short periods of pure terror.

Spot on. As a civilian, the officer you accompany can’t do a lot of the things s/he would normally do (can’t let a citizen get hurt), but you do get to go along on a lot of pretty serious stuff. You don’t get to leave the car. But when semi-automatic rifles come out, do you really want to be outside of the car without a bullet-proof vest? You get plenty terrified all on your own just listening to the various calls coming in over the radio.

The best part is getting stuck in the car while the police are doing some serious stuff. If they switch over to a different radio channel, you’re in a police car with a real police radio, so you can listen along. When you’re just stuck in the car while the police are attending to something that’s not really all that serious but is serious enough that you’re not allowed out of the car, you can run all of the car tags you see, as well as your own. That’s about it though, everything else that you could possibly do in the car by yourself seems entirely too likely to screw something up, or send something out that shouldn’t. Still, it’s fun to type in your tag and see your name and address pop up on a screen.

There are many places where ride-along programs aren’t used (I can’t find anything online about CPD ride-alongs and I would be really surprised to learn that they do them). But if you live some place where you are able to spend a shift with a police officer, by all means, sign up. It gives you an opportunity to put a real face with a real name to all of those police cruisers you see rolling around town. And shouldn’t you know the people whose job it is to protect you from crime? It isn’t all Bald Eagles and allegories of Justice, but it is the only real way I know to learn about the mundane aspects of maintaining order and the rule of law (even if some of the laws are stupid) without actually attempting to become a police officer.

1. He’s a former Navy SEAL, he knows what he’s talking about aaa