Saturday, July 3, 2010

Yay for me, it's a week with 30 hours of OT on my time sheet :)
I've been breaking in a new dispatcher this week, worked both of my days off, and failed to qualify in firearms training not once, not twice, but three times. I will eventually get this.

All I can say is hooray for the 4th of July...or not. Our towns celebration will be held later today, including a parade with all of the headaches. So far though, I think it's going to be a little soggy.

So, since I've failed to qualify, I'm still waiting to go 10-8 officially. I will, however, still be working in an "unofficial" position (I think).

Anyway, on to the fun stuff of the week. It's been a very productive week, depending on who you ask, we've logged seven arrests since Monday, including a whopping hat trick last night. That call was a complete cluster and not my best moment :)

Tonight, thankfully, people have refrained from beating the living crap out of each other, and have simply been imagining people hanging outside their houses.

Best one so far: dispatch to a possible prowler with a hero RP.
He informs me on the phone that he has a gun at his residence in another state and he will be retrieving them at some point. He also informed me of the different laws that this state and others have, pertaining to lethal force by a homeowner in the event of a home invasion. I simply told him, stay in the house, don't open the doors, and don't start pulling weapons out unless you are absolutely positive you have to use them, preferably not at all because units are enroute. ("enroute" by the way, isn't an actual word, either apparently)

Units go on scene, less than five minutes later they clear and go 10-8. One officer tells the other, "should we tell her to log what he said about registering?" to which he replies, "definitely".

So, I wait for the phone call to fill me in on what I missed. Apparently, in the state from which the RP recently moved from made him register his teeth and his fists as lethal weapons.

??

So, this gentleman is either The Hulk or a member of the Cullen clan.

It was entirely too ridiculous to fathom :)

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Well, here I am riding again :) I could definitely get addicted to this. I'm riding tonight with a different officer and he's more then happy to get out and play to make the night go faster. He's been FTOing me tonight asking questions and giving advice, he's definitely looking out for me here. We just got a call from a neighboring county looking to serve a warrant here. It's handy being a dispatcher, because we remember names, places, and dates the way guys remember sports stats. So, Im now sitting outside the pd in the car waiting while he go finds a picture.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Wheee....

Oh geez... it was an interesting day today.

I live in a rural area just south of town and as most people who live out in the country, I shoot on my property.

As you know, I've been working on my techinique and just practicing for qualifications next week. (which are Wednesday, btw). I shoot a .40 handgun, no rifles, no shotguns, just handguns. We've shot out at this place since I've lived there and never had a problem with riccochets or had the neighbors to the east complain.
Let me explain the setup. It's roughly 5 acres and our fence butts up against another lot with an empty barn. On across the road and back south there is a house, in this house lives a state trooper who I've known for a couple of years now.

All in all from the point where I'm shooting to his house is close to 1500 meters. We don't have a berm set up because the field slopes up at a steady incline from where we are to the end of the fence and there's an empty barn directly in the line of sight.

Well, this morning I get off work, go to the house, and get my range gear out. I've shot roughly 35 rounds before he shows up at my house. Apparently, somehow, some of our shots have been riccocheting all the way down to his house.

I felt pretty stupid, but I would never have known that a .40 handgun with a 3.5 inch barrel could travel that far...apparently it can. So, I rode over with him to a deputy's house to check out his shooting area. It's really no safer, its just a creek bed... So, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do, I guess once Wednesday gets here and it's over, we'll see how I did.

In other news, the dispatcher who I was filling in for is now home from the hospital. However, they believe he had a stroke...so no one is really sure if he'll even be back. This is going to suck, because I'm the only other fulltime dispatcher we have. I'll definitely be getting the overtime at this point, hopefully they'll get someone hired pretty quickly...