So for today I think I’ll give you the story of a former co-worker and
his ridiculous thought process and you determine which way you feel
about his asinine action.
I was working as a Security Police Officer on a USAF installation, and
although we were civilians and at the time not considered Sworn
Officers (that would come later with a switch to DOD) we were given a
whole lot of leeway by the local Police Departments. Hell, we wore
uniforms that pretty much mirrored every other PD in the city and with
the exception of the Base shoulder patch it was really hard to tell
the difference. Even our badges were the same as our local
counterparts. Looking back on it I think they gave us the latitude
because of our affiliation with the Government, and Uncle Sam carries
a big stick! Oh, the pay was pretty much on the same level with every
other PD in the area, which didn’t hurt.
As for the job, it was a cake walk. Hell, conducting a traffic stop on
a military base can be dangerous but not nearly as bad as what the
local Pd’s dealt with. Yeah we had domestics and drunken drivers and
such, but all in all it was a great place to work.
Getting back to the story line here, I was walking down the hallway
past the admin offices on my way back to my patrol car and I overheard
the the Chief on his phone and he wasn’t happy. The part I caught was,
“Hell no, we’re not conducting a sting operation in that area or any
area for that matter.” He then ended the conversation with, “Arrest
his ass, and confiscate his badge!”
I hurried out the door and jumped into my patrol car because when he
finished that call I didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity.
Someone had really screwed up this time and the last thing I wanted
was to get chewed out for someone elses stupidity.
I didn’t think much more about it and the next day when I returned to
work for briefing you probably could guess what the topic was? That’s
right, and the message was loud and clear. It is no longer permissible
to carry your badge off duty!
Well this just sucked, that badge had gotten many of us into night
clubs, strip joints and other places without having to pay a cover as
well as gotten me for one out of at least two speeding tickets over
the years. We had never really thought anything wrong with it. The key
was to show it but do it with subtlety. You carry a badge holder that
was also a wallet and therefore whenever you had to show ID, you
removed the wallet and at the first sight of the badge it was, “Oh,
don’t worry about paying, come on in.” Thank you very much!
After briefing I went up to one of the supervisors and inquired as to
what exactly had led to this change in policy.
After laughing for a long while, and I mean a long while this is what
he explained to me. One of the officers on his day off had taken his
wife to the hair dresser. Knowing that she would be there for several
hours he decided to drive around looking for something to occupy his
time.
Now most of us in the department probably would have found the closest
firing range and went in and sent a few down range (we all had
concealed permits and most of us carried all the time).
Well not this guy, he wanted to send a few down range but not at the
local range. He drives around and sees this woman standing on the
corner and like an idiot he pulls over and she walks up to the car.
She asks if he’d like a date and he agrees and she gets in the car.
She points him to a alley where they can have some privacy and he does
just that. However, as soon as he parks the car she reaches for what
he thinks is condoms and instead she pulls out a badge! Now the car is
surrounded by several other cops and she says, “Your under arrest for
soliciting prostitution,” without thinking (here I’m giving him the
benefit of the doubt, because up until this time he really hasn’t been
thinking at all) he says to her, “No you’re under arrest we’re running
a sting in this area to stop prostitution”, and he pulls out his badge
to prove it.
This was all about the time I was heading to my patrol car and the
Chief was on the phone, because of course the PD had to check it all
out to see if they could cut the guy some slack as well as show some
professional courtesy. Unfortunately for the officer, or former
officer the Chief wasn’t trying to hear it.
Every time I think about this story I think to myself, “How in the
hell do you get fired on your day off?”
There are officers who take too many chances. Instead of seeing all the steps, they’d see one or two, and then they’d make the stop anyway. But eventually, your luck runs out on you.
We had a girl who went into the fitting room to watch a couple of females try on items. While walking out, she noticed another girl in a fitting cubicle, next to theirs, place a dress into her shopping bag.
Now, she thought she had something. When the girl came out, she followed her and when she exited the store, the officer arrested her.
She took the girl to the booking office and, the whole time, the girl was asking, “What the hell is going on?” When they got into the office, she told the girl to remove the dress she just stole while in the fitting room. The girl of course asked, “What dress?”
The officer reached into the bag and pulled out the dress she had seen the suspect place in the bag. Of course, the girl told her the dress belonged to her and that she was trying to match it to something else that she chose not to buy.
The officer became angry and basically chewed the girl out for being a liar. The girl started crying and said she wanted to call her dad. However, the officer was unrelenting. She started to book her for the theft, and because of the price of the dress, it would be a felony.
One of the LP managers walked by and saw this young girl crying, and although that was not uncommon, stopped into the booking office. The manager realized that, for some reason, this girl looked somewhat familiar.
The girl was still pleading to call her father, and since she was a juvenile, we had to contact a parent. The manager asked the girl’s name and when she blurted it out, the manager almost fainted. She stopped the booking process and removed the officer from the room, leaving the girl alone for a few minutes.
In the hallway, the manager asked if the agent had seen all the steps required in making the stop. The officer of course said yes, because even though she didn’t yet know why, she was smart enough to know her job was in danger.
The manager went back into the booking room alone. After a few minutes, the girl handed her the receipt for the dress from her purse. The officer watching through a two way mirror realized this was going to be a problem, but she still had no idea how large this problem was about to become. The manager exited the booking room to give the girl privacy to contact her father.
The manager looked at the officer and said, “Not only does the dress belong to her, but to make matters worse, her father is the vice president of the company that owns all the stores our company has.”
Months later, we were all sitting around clowning. Someone said, “Hey, remember so and so?” That’s what happens to you when you take chances. Months later, officers sit around and ask if anyone remembers you.
My first guard job, when I came out of the Corps, didn’t last long. I was hired to work for a company in LA, and they sent me to guard a junk yard.
I was just out of the Corps, so, I was still a little bit eaten up. Regardless of the uniform I was wearing, I had to be all spit and polished. I arrived at the junk yard and reported to the owner. Man, was he an asshole. But, he was a former Marine, like me, and a Viet Nam vet to boot.
He took me on a quick tour of the compound and made sure that I paid special attention to his prized possessions. He had a small area that had nothing but old beat up Cadillac’s; there must have been thirty of them. He told me that he had people coming at night, stripping those Caddies, and my job was to make sure it didn’t happen again.
When everyone was gone from the lot and the night got late, it was a good opportunity to evaluate my situation. A month ago, I was a Marine Corps sniper; now, I was sitting in the middle of a junkyard working as a security guard. Damn!
I was depressed; here I was sitting in my car, and, hell, it looked right at home in this salvage yard. I had a .38 revolver but only three rounds of ammo. The radio the company issued me might or might not work in the event of an emergency. My flashlight stopped working shortly after I left home!
Somewhere in the middle of feeling sorry for myself, I fucking fall asleep. Can you believe it, falling asleep, my first night on the job? When I woke up, I heard the owner screaming something about those fucking Caddies! Hell, I knew I was fired, so I started my rusted out car and went home.
Later that day, while I was going through the want ads again, the guard company called me and said that the owner wasn’t as mad as I thought and they wanted me to go back to the junkyard again.
Shit, the classified section of the newspaper didn’t have a whole lot, so I figured I’d better do a good job this time or I might have to go work at McDonalds. When I arrived, the owner pretty much blew me off. Which was ok; I was lucky to be working.
This time, I stayed out of my car and made rounds of the compound like I was on patrol in the Corps. But by 1:00 am, I was tired. Then, I saw what appeared to be movement in the corner of my eye. Yeah, I thought I saw something; it was the shadows of three guys as they were climbing under the fence. They hadn’t seen me, so, I moved into the shadows to get the jump on them. I got to within about twenty feet of them and with my trusty .38 drawn, I shouted “FREEZE!” They froze alright, but not the two pit bulls they had with them. Those two dogs chased my ass through the compound and I was screaming like a bitch. Finally, I jumped up on some crushed cars and the dogs couldn’t get to me.
I was on that stack of cars until daylight, but, I didn’t know if they’d left yet. The whole night, I was trying to make contact with the guard service on the radio they’d given me. Piece of shit didn’t work!
The owner walked through the lot and he was cussing about his fucking caddies being stripped and how pissed off he was. He didn’t know that I was above him on some cars. I jumped down right in front of him and scared the shit out of him. Somewhere, he’d picked up my .38 that I’d dropped when the dogs chased me. Before he could say anything, I grabbed it out of his hands and ran to my car. This time I didn’t care if they fired me or not because I’d already made up my mind to quit!<a href=”http://www.observeandreport.net
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