A Song

Posted by: Blue

Most days, I am content and happy with my job and my choices that have brought me thus far in life.  Every once in a while I get melancholy and reflective and wonder how my life might have been different.

I was listening to one of my favourite artists today - Del Barber.  Some days I feel like The Waitress, who could have, and maybe should have done much more with her life, but just got stuck and never broke out. Some days I wonder if I should have studied in university to become a doctor or lawyer or engineer, or if I should have taken more risks and made bigger attempts with my business.  Some days I wonder if I should have started building houses and become a developer.

Some days, I just wish it was way back when, and all I had to worry about was a horse, a gun and a saddle. On those days, the cowboy days, the last chorus haunts me.

Here it is in it's entirety.  Also a link to the iTunes album, here.

THE WAITRESS

She was tall and always tired
Works the late shift at the all night diner
The years can fly by you in a place like this
Waiting for a perfect man and a perfect kiss

Coffee cups, eggs and sausage
Steady hands, friendly smiles hold her hostage
She traded her 20′s for a job that never promised more
Her dreams fell asleep on the top bunk and woke up on the floor

There ain’t no good fight
There ain’t no hero
There ain’t no bad man out to get you
There’s just a tough job 
That will swallow you in the darkness of another day

She grew up in the West 
She grew up in the country 
Great plaines, long trains, horses and hay 
She thought she was rich cause she had everything she could need 
Till the storm of divorce came and all was lost to legal fees

She moved to the city before she turned 25 
Never looked back never wondered what she’s lost
She got a job, learned to work, tried her damndest to be happy 
But she know’s she’ll never feel what’s it’s like to be free enough to leave

There ain’t no good fight
There ain’t no hero
There ain’t no bad man out to get you
There’s just a tough job
That will swallow you in the darkness of another day

There’s no more cowboys
No more bonfires
No more stars up in her sky
There’s just the streetlights
Casting shadows into the darkness of another day

- Del Barber

Escort

Posted by: Blue

A number of months ago, we were dispatched to a Check Wellbeing call.  The family of a young woman were outside of the hotel where she was staying.  They had tracked her there after clandestine communication with her through text messages to a phone number they had found listed with a picture of her in lingerie on Backpage - a common internet site for seeking-out escorts and hookers.

As the story unraveled, it became apparent that there were quite a number of women working out of this particular hotel, all under the oversight of their "manager" (read: pimp).

This particular newly 18 year old young lady was not willing to leave the hotel with her family.  They begged and pleaded with her.  JT and I explained all of the dangers.  She would not budge.  Our supervisor was assigned to the call.  He tried to smooth things over; to no avail.

In the end, we had to escort the family off of the premises, as they were not paying customers of the hotel and they had begun disturbing other customers.

In our country, it is not illegal to be a hooker or an escort.  It is not illegal to solicit hookers or escorts.  It is illegal to Communicate for the Purposes of Prostitution.  Communicating for the Purpose is a Summary Conviction Offence (similar to a Misdemeanor in the States).  We did not have any evidence of any communication directly relating to sexual services for the exchange of money, and therefore, in the Crown's opinion, there was no evidence to a crime.

According to the hotel manager, it was next to impossible to legally evict someone from a hotel room if they were still paying all of their bills.  He looked quite angry when I explained the circumstances of our attendance.  It was a reasonably nice hotel.

We submitted an intelligence report for Vice Unit.  A short time later, the unwelcome guests vacated the hotel, only to take-up residence in another nearby location.

The family yelled at us, took our badge numbers down and threatened our jobs.  It is impossible to explain the black and white of the law to someone who is watching a family member willingly partake in dangerous behaviour.  It is impossible to go home content with your work on a day like that.

Unfortunately for everyone, it happens more often than not that we are handcuffed by the letter of the law.

Motivated

I am not today.  - Blue

Pursuit

Posted by: Blue

On Christmas Day I was the prime unit for a traffic pursuit which began on the same block that I live on.

We spotted two males running through the field near my house where the power lines run through that part of the city.  I thought it was odd to see 2 males dressed in baggy black clothing jogging late on a Christmas night, especially in my neighbourhood.

We turned around to check them out.  They hopped into a grey Chevy Cavalier.  I hit the cherries and pulled up parallel with their front bumper (approaching from the front of their car so our front bumpers were facing one another, but I was still in the traffic lane).

The driver didn't look at me.  He immediately started shimmying his car, trying to get it out of the parallel parking spot I had wedged him into.  He reversed.  I went forward and put the front driver's side bumper of the unmarked cruiser we were in at his driver's side door so he couldn't jump out.

"Get us another unit here now!" I told my partner.

The car slammed into our bumper, pushed us out of the way and took-off W/B.  I revved the engine, spinning the rear-wheel drive Crown Vic into a 180 on the icy road.  We gave chase.

He stopped at the first stop sign, and then went through every other stop sign and red light.

My partner started calmly calling the pursuit over the air, asking to be patched into the other districts.

It was quiet.  Every available unit volunteered and was assigned.  By the time we were 1000 yards away, the suspects ran-over a well-placed Stop-Stick, taking-out their front passenger-side tire.

The pursuit continued with the suspects on three tires and one rim.  A Downtown unit came up behind us to take-over as prime unit because they were a marked unit.

They hit another Stop-Stick around 1000 yards further up.  Two more tires blown.  They only had 1 intact now - the driver's side rear tire.

The downtown unit got out in front of the suspects and tried to slow them down.  They took a left.  We were prime again.

They made it another block and we saw the driver's door crack open as the vehicle slowed to a stop.  "He's running!", I yelled.  My partner voiced it over the air.

The passenger was slower to get out of the car (we found-out later it was because he was holding a safe on his lap and had to wait until the driver bailed so he had a place to ditch it).  He opened the door to come nose to nose with my partner's Glock.  He gave up and hit the ground on his belly, hands outstretched.

I gave chase to the driver down the back lane of the street we had just come down, along with one of the guys from the downtown car.  Units were flooding the area.

I got hung-up with my duty rig on a chain-link fence when the suspect headed for the front street again, tearing the sleeve off of my shirt and cutting my shoulder.  The downtown guy kept going.  When I managed to free myself, they were about 75 yards ahead of me and the driver was cutting back into the back lane.  I cut back, hoping to intercept.

I gunned it, scanning for a figure emerging from a back yard.  The downtown guy came across the air "I've got him in the side yard of 29!"

I could see the reflection of the flashlight against the snow and darted over there, drawing-out my Taser as I ran.  I showed-up and found the suspect proned-out.  "Contact," said the downtown guy.  "Cover," I replied.  He moved-in to cuff him while I kept the red laser of the Taser in the centre of his back.  "Don't don anything dumb or you're gonna get lit-up," I said.

He was cuffed and brought to one of the cruisers.

The driver was on a warrant plus numerous breaches.  The passenger had breaches, not to mention the Flight charge, Dangerous Operation of a Motor Vehicle and Possession of Break-in Instruments for both of them.  The safe belonged to a drug dealer who wasn't cooperating, so we couldn't get the Break and Enter or Possession of Goods Obtained by Crime.

During the Duty Inspector's briefing, she told us the only reason she didn't abort the pursuit on the icy winter roads was that my partner was extremely calm and reassuringly in control of the situation while he was voicing over the radio.

Check Stop

Posted by: Blue

This year for Christmas, I'm T/A'd to traffic for the Check Stop Program. We're hunting out impaired drivers.

Last night we had two ASD passes and a fail, along with quite a number of traffic stops.

The fail was arrested for Drive Impaired and Drive Over 80 mg%. By the time he provided a breath sample on the full sized Breathalyzer, his BAC was down to 70 mg% and 60 mg% for the two tests respectively. He was released with no criminal charges and his license was suspended for 24 hours.

While driving him home, he said "You know? I'm glad that happened. It was a real wake-up call. I know I never want my kids driving drunk. I don't want to set a different example."

I believed him.

He shook my hand and told me "Merry Christmas" when I dropped him off at home.

Typically Abnormal

Posted by: Blue

A couple weeks ago, we showed-up at a Family Troubles call where the 18 year old son had smashed everything in the house, including breaking the tempered glass storm door with his face.

When we arrived, he was buck naked and swinging from the chandelier (not a figure of speech).

The odd thing about the call, I realized later on, wasn't cuffing him while he was stark naked, nor was it helping him zip-up his pants that I had to put on him.

The strange thing was that I never thought to ask why he was naked in the first place.  It just seemed so normal to me that he had no clothes on; perhaps due to his behaviour and intoxicated state.

I had to type into my report later on "It should be noted that it is unknown at time of reporting exactly why the male was naked upon arrival..."

It was a strange threshold to reach in my career when the nudity of a male that I proned-out at Taser-point was little more than a footnote in the report.

Bribes

Posted by: Blue

A few days ago, we pinched a dude on 2 warrants when his mom called the police anonymously, stating that he had gone into the mall with a handgun and large knife.  She ratted him out because he wouldn't give her $100 towards her crack habit.

He didn't have any weapons on him when we located him.

When we got to the car, he offered my partner and I five bills to let him go so he could spend Christmas with his new baby and his baby mama.

He cried when he found out that he would be going to adult prison and wouldn't have a chance at bail until Monday morning.