Part One; The Ride-Along.

          It was a warm, clear, beautiful Saturday evening. The ride-along was scheduled to start at the beginning of the overnight shift, six P.M.  I had arrived a few minutes early. I walked in to the small, cluttered office of the Sheriff’s Department South Zone HQ located on the campus of Jefferson Community College in Hillsboro. There were a few desks outfitted with several-year-old computers with CRT monitors, walls lined with file cabinets and shelves. At the desk placarded ‘Watch Commander’ sat a young deputy filing out some paperwork, stapling the forms to a thicker stack, stuffing them into an outbox.

I introduced myself as the ride-along, he wrote my name into a logbook. I already felt like I was in the way. Not because of anything the deputy said or did, but simply because that’s how I normally feel in new situations.

He made a phone call, I couldn’t make out the entire conversation, but I knew it was in my regard. He told someone would be with me shortly. I thanked him and stayed out of the way, looking at maps, posters and artwork on the wall. A large framed Frederic Remington (or Remington-like) print was the centerpiece of one wall. It depicted cavalry soldiers on horseback, some bandaged, riding behind the squad’s officer and accompanied by a western-clad civilian man holding a small girl. I never got close enough to the print to confirm my interpretation of it, nor the actual artist, though I imagined that the soldiers depicted had just raided and rescued the girl from local savages (using the vernacular popularized in John Wayne movies) and returned her to her distraught father.

I pondered the intention of that since I really had nothing else to ponder about at the time. Perhaps the significance was the notion of uniformed men riding out and helping civilians, as the Sheriff’s Deputies are sworn to do.

The radio was full of chatter, it sounded like the East Zone was having a busy evening. In fact they were. A phone call came in, it was the East Zone supervisor requesting general assistance from the South Zone supervisor. There was only so much they could do though, there were only three deputies scheduled for this shift in the south.

Another deputy soon arrived and chatted outside, out of my earshot, with the one who had been at the desk. The new guy came towards me and stuck out his hand in a tentative manner, I suspected that my appearance was somewhat unexpected. Either a bureaucratic SNAFU, or merely a memo overlooked or forgotten.

“It looks like you’ll be riding along with me.” He said and formed a smile. He was a big guy, tall, thick, but not ‘fat’, just big. His hair was close-cut, high and tight, frosted with age-appropriate gray. His skin was healthy-tanned and the bottom of a complex tattoo extended barely below his left sleeve. His brown uniform was creased and sharp. His shoes clear of scuffs, the uniform seemed tailored to his fit. His smokey-bear hat (Officially a ‘Campaign Cover’, colloquially also known as a scout hat, drill sergeant’s hat, or a lemon squeezer) tilted at an imposing angle, a pair of glasses hung from his neck. I got the impression that I was in the presence of a true, seasoned professional. I briefly suffered minor flashbacks of my drill instructor from basic training. I made note of his name and stood by as he looked through some papers, sorted gear, and rearranged the stuff in his cruiser. He called me over to the back of the car. “Can you stop someone if you have to?” He asked me as the trunk popped open. I looked in as he pointed toward the pump-action, twelve gauge shotgun. “If I have to, sure.” I answered trying to appear much more confident than I actually was.  He showed me how to pop open the trunk from the outside and told me something I’d already learned at the academy.

“There’s only three of us on duty tonight, getting backup can sometimes be problematic. If things get really ugly, even though you are not trained for it, you could find yourself in a position as the only person available to help get me out of a really nasty situation.”

I’d heard this before, and also knew it only very, very rarely came to that. I crossed my mental fingers and nodded.

He then popped open the passenger door of the brown Malibu. Cops have to carry a lot of stuff. Attached to the center console was a swivel pedestal that held a metal-encased (field-hardened) laptop. In order to be out of the driver’s way, yet readily accessible to him, the swivel positioned the computer halfway across and above the passenger’s seat. I would be pretty much be sitting under it. In the back I noticed that even more equipment lined the floor and the seats. Hanging from the center of the back seat was a pocketed attachment that held forms and office supplies, lots of forms. At any point on patrol a deputy may be forty or so back-road miles away from the substation, so they, like astronauts and long-haul truckers, pretty much have to take the office with them. This is one of the reasons that cruisers tend to be full sized cars, Crown Vic’s preferably, because they are large, as well as being nearly indestructible. A police cruiser easily has to carry a couple hundred pounds of equipment and supplies to accommodate just about any potential situation. I squeezed myself into the co-pilot position and strapped in. The radio and the scanner were clicking with static and stoic voices, competing for attention. After a couple of checks and short conversations with the supervisor, the deputy climbed in, also squeezing and shifting.

He looked uncomfortable.

Ted is a big guy. Six foot two or three, and muscled. Between the Malibu’s mid-size features, less than ideal leg and seat room, and a utility belt that would make the Caped Crusader jealous, the fit was rather tight.

He adjusted his mirrors, checked some switches, adjusted the squawking radios, then cleared the cruiser for duty with an efficient “One-oh-two, in service.” Call on the microphone. The Malibu responded to his control and leaped out of the lot.

The initial conversations were direct and awkward. I’d thought about this beforehand and worked in some vital information about myself as quickly as I could. “My biggest concern is staying out of your way. I’ve not done this before, but I don’t want, at any point to be a liability.” He nodded and was hopefully comforted by that. I also worked in the part about being ex-military hoping that would make him less worried about the shotgun in the trunk that I, a complete stranger, now had full access to. I also tried to let him know that I was no one’s overzealous hero, and that my second priority after staying out of his way, was self-preservation. I avoided mentioning the ‘writer’ bit as I didn’t want him clamming up in fear that I was some left-wing, uber-pacifist investigative journalist, looking to catch the department in heavy-fisted, fascist activities. Besides, even though I signed up for the Citizen’s Academy because I wanted to learn more and write better about law enforcement, I was not on assignment, and not even sure I would be writing much, if anything about this ride-along. I figured that if it turned out that we got along and if something interesting happened I could always tell him later. He did see me taking notes though, I did not try to hide that.

We’d barely been on the road for a couple of moments when the first call came in. We roared south (at a safe and legal speed, no flashing lights, no sirens, just determination and urgency) as he responded to the call. My fears were instantly realized. A domestic situation, threats had been made.

On the way he turned up his scanner’s volume and leaned in to hear another call, the busy East Zone. I made out bits and pieces of it, his expression turned from attentiveness to something else, some form of tension, worry, anger, frustration. Somewhere around Arnold an eleven year-old girl had been reported missing. She’d left her house that morning and had not been heard from since. He swore, then apologized. I assured him that in my mind, swearing was perfectly appropriate in a case like that. “The dad just now got around to reporting it? She’s been gone form the house for nearly twelve hours and he’s just now getting worried?” He said to me. I knew that he was taking it a little personally and that didn’t bother me at all. He, like me had kids, I could tell. After a few minutes, and displaying a true mastery of multi-tasker driving, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call. He was obviously talking to another deputy, the subject was the missing girl. Ted offered advice, told him things to look for, things to ask. Sure enough, the deputy that took the missing-girl call had been trained for a while by Ted. During the course of the shift, several calls were exchanged between the deputies on duty, throughout the county. They kept in close touch and seemed to always know where the others were and what they were working on. Several times the phone would chime and buzz, he took every call, joked some,(“Hey Jim did you ever locate that missing horse? Should we meet down by the corral and form us up a posse?) offered advice and always offered to turn around and rush to assist if needed.

I was relieved and comforted to know that this was a real interactive team, not just a collection of lone, loose individuals.

As we hurled toward Highway 67, we chatted a bit, still rather stiff and sporadic, much like a conversation between strangers on a train or an elevator. I soon learned that he was a twelve-year veteran of the department, had once sought a career in the Marines, but due to a minor medical flaw, back or foot or something, had found himself forced out. He then joined the department for a while, but upon realizing that he was, based on hours worked vs. salary, only getting paid about five dollars an hour, left the department and started up some businesses here and there, but eventually found himself back in uniform. Despite the low pay and lousy shifts and hours, he really, really liked the work.

He asked about me, I told him that I was an IT consultant. As is almost always the case I had to explain that further. If I were a plumber, carpenter, pilot or warehouse worker it would be simpler. Most people have no idea what a systems administrator actually does, so I simplified it: “I sit in a comfortable cubicle all day and stare at computer screens looking for problems.” As is the case with a lot of people with more physical and outdoor based jobs do, he seemed to struggle to imagine himself strapped to a desk all day in some homogenized and generic office environment. He didn’t appear the least bit jealous.

As his eyes darted around, constantly on the lookout, constantly on the alert, we turned onto a frontage road above the highway. He slowed down and rechecked the address on his notepad, started scanning the sparsely spaced mailboxes. Up ahead was a solitary mobile home, somewhat isolated by rows of thick trees. Outside were three young men, two of whom were using a crowbar to pry the fender away from the front tire of a weathered and scuffed, fifteen year old mid-sized ford. Another young man, with a distant, unattached look in his eyes stood over a young woman, also twenty-ish who was sitting on the stoop leading up to the door of the fading trailer. At the top edge of the driveway sat a small black kitten that I was sure we were about to run over. In the scrappy, small yard two or three of the kitten’s siblings wandered about. As we pulled in the two men stepped away from the ford and aligned themselves with the couple on the steps. Butterflies awakened in my belly.

(To be continued)    Go To Part 2