Boredom leads to inane stuff...

Stuff, I guess for a lack of a better word. I really can't believe I've actually been sucked into 16 and Pregnant--only briefly, I came to my senses very shortly.

Far be it from me to be judgmental, people can find themselves in crazy and difficult situations very quickly, as I see on a weekly basis, but some of this is just pathetic.

I've been officially 10-8 for a week now, and I'm still a little self conscious about actually being out in uniform. However, I'm learning some valuable lessons which will be very useful in dispatch. Information--properly disseminated and anything extra will greatly help the officer onscene. Of course, I know this, but now I know how vitally important is to have a clear picture when responding to a disturbance or domestic call.

I've been itching to get to respond to calls and I got my chance tonight. I'm pretty limited on when I can come ride since I work nights and the two days I'm off are the two slowest nights generally of the week. Occasionally they surprise us, but not often enough to mention :). I admit to being a horrible and habitual psycho-analyzer, something I do without even realizing it sometimes. But, when I'm in close proximity with people, such as the officers I work for/with, I tend to try and analyze them.

Yes, it's very similar, type A's with a few exceptions scattered among them, but 9 times out of 10, they are alpha males (or females). The officer I tend to ride with on the evening shift has a wide and varied background, even though he's only about five years older. I always enjoy riding with him because he actually performs the role of an FTO.

He'll ask what I know and quiz me on procedures to see if it's correct and if it's not, he'll show me the proper way. He went over the basic traffic stop, which is never the same and probably one of the dangerous, consistent duties an officer will perform. We actually tried a mock traffic stop in the parking lot of the PD and went over where to stand, what to look for, what to do in the event of a subject pulling a gun and where to go.
Very educational if I do say so.

It was an eventful evening and I'm glad to get the chance to see what it's like.

I should have skipped dinner, now I'm sleepy. Not a good thing...this makes me wish the phone would ring...then I would have to complain! :)

Peace out.

I have to say it's been a fairly productive Monday.
We're back to looking up grant opportunities and I managed to get one application completed last night. Yay me... :

Starting at roughly 430 I started getting heat advisories from the weather service, you know it's going to be hellaciously hot today. Not fun in the least.

This is short and without any comedic instances, unless you count my trying to start working out again :). I've decided to get back in the groove of working out, eating healthy isn't too big of a problem, it's just hard all the time since only thing open in the middle of the night is fast food and I tend to forget to bring healthy food ...

Perhaps I'll go swimming tonight before work and improve my tan!

TGIF!

I have to admit, I'm very glad it's Friday :)
Saturday went really well, considering all the craziness. Most of the issues last night were because parents feel the need to screw off raising their children and calling us when they can't handle them anymore. Yay us.


I guess now I've accomplished the goal of becoming a commissioned reserve officer, it's interesting how now I get to see both sides of a call and this job. Got to go on one call, there were four of us so we kind of SWAT teamed them.

One observation I can pull away from this experience is that those uniforms suck and the vests are hotter than hell :) I'd much rather be working in a pair of 511s and a polo shirt.

Qualified.

I've been unsuccessfully trying to post an update for most of this week, and now I have a chance to do so.

With good news!

I had pretty much decided to put off anymore attempts to qualify for a couple of weeks, thinking it was operator error or perhaps the gun I was shooting and I told the Chief exactly this.

Well, as things would have it, one of the officers I work with loaned me a different gun and the dispatcher I just finished training talked me into trying one more time.
I'm not sure exactly what the problem was whether it was myself or the gun, but I managed to squeak out an 84 yesterday morning after I got off work.

Qualifying score is a 72 :) I managed to refrain from jumping up and down and screaming, but I did tell the instructor that I could have hugged him. Believe me, after failing multiple times I definitely had a monkey on my back ... or so I was told by just about everyone at the dept. :) Gotta love their brand of encouragement!

Well, it's been a great week, went for a couple of ridealongs (I have to say I'm addicted now) and the calls were fairly steady and not terribly complicated.

Right now they're slamming me with traffic stops...a comment was made earlier that one of the officers prefers to take calls versus running traffic, I'm cool either way, I like them running traffic because it keeps me on my toes and gives me practice (wierd I know) so now, one goes out, the other follows.

I'm not sure when I'll be commissioned, the Chief had to make an emergency trip out of town and didn't get back until last night. I'll try to post an update whenever that happens.

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 :)

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.

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...