So it’s been about two months now.  Things are going great.  I’ve been having a blast.  Have to draw my gun almost daily (normally to clear a building or house).  Get to run code almost daily (full lights and sirens).  Everyone I’ve worked with has been amazing.  I’ve quit posting weekly because, well, I am just tired and like to turn police mode off when I am not on duty.  So I’ll tell a few stories as they come up.  Just won’t be as often as before. 

    The first thing is an announcement.  I have been switched to evening watch as of tomorrow.  I have about two or three weeks left on FTO because they want me on evening watch, so they want me to do a few weeks FTO on that watch so I am familiar with how things go.  Big difference there.  Day watch was like the easy setting, morning watch would be medium, and evening watch is hard.  I’m told a lot of the guys on evening watch don’t get along too.  So this could be a real buzz killer.  Guess I’ll find out this week.

    I finally got my own car too.  I spent all day Friday getting it equipped the way I want, getting it all ready, etc.  It’s an old piece of shit.  But not the worst in the fleet.  It was the Sgt.’s old car so it has a few bells and whistles that other’s don’t have.

    And last but not least, if you are wondering about the pictures in this post (yes I blanked out the words and numbers on my car).  I had my first "power lines down" call the other day.  And sure as shit, there were down power lines.  I had to block off the road while the crew came to fix it.  A tree had fallen on someone’s house.  No storm or anything.  It was actually a nice day.  It fell down, almost hitting the people outside.  But it landed on the powerlines, ripping it from the pole on both ends.

    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.

    My first day was interesting to say the least.  Within three hours into my law enforcement career, I already had to draw my weapon.  And to top it off, the bust that my FTO and I made, was 6 o’clock news worthy.  I recorded the story but haven’t digitized it yet, but I will at a future date.  Here’s what happened (note: I obviously have to leave out some details). (more…)