So the last few months have been pretty interesting.  It’s been almost 3 months now.  Not quite.  I’m on my last phase of FTO as of tomorrow.  I go to morning watch (9pm - 7am) and complete the final phase there.  And that’s the shift I’ll be on after FTO.  

    I’ve learned a lot in the last month on evening watch.  Mostly how to handle problems without so much report writing.  And a lot of social skills on interacting with my fellow officers.  Believe it or not, that’s the hardest thing to learn.  Cops are a strange breed.  It really takes some getting used to.  Very abrasive personalities.  But the last few weeks took a good turn.  Earned some respect from some of the guys on my shift.  Did some things that impressed them (I was told through the grapevine) and made a few good cut down jokes that earned me some respect (yes insulting each other gets you further than trying to be nice, if you’re creative and funny).

    So now about the picture to the left.  I get a call last Thursday night.  It’s a "insane person" signal.  The radio traffic went something like this (I am changing our codes into ?? since I don’t need our dept codes publicized)  …

(more…)

    So today was quite slow.  Had to deal with a lot of crazy people today (I mean that in a literal sense too).  Took a few trips to the mental hospital.  And at one point the channel 2 news team was at our station, some report they were doing about bank ATMs.  But it was all worth it when this one call came in.

    We were just finishing up on a report of a man sucking gas out of people’s cars in a shopping center parking lot.  We were parked side by side discussing the incident with our Lt.  A call came in for a suspicious vehicle with someone holding a camera filming the bank tellers at Bank of America.  We asked the dispatcher to confirm if they were filming the tellers (and how that was possible) or filming the ATM machine etc.   The dispatcher responded that the caller only stated "It’s a white van with blue lettering and they are filming the outside of the bank".

    I doubt I need to say anymore about this story :)  Needless to say we laughed our asses off.