A Gold Badge

My midnight ride with the Watch Commander certainly zipped up my midlife agenda. To help the police department, LT worked an eight month stint as  Watch Commander on Midnights. I, on the other hand, watched the nineteen prior episodes of Law & Order.

Next on my schedule was Operation Repro, a reality show based on automobile repossessions. I knew I needed an Intervention.

LT suggested I ride with the Watch Commander the following Friday. Secretly knowing I had the DVR programmed to catch OR, I agreed I needed to step out of my comfort cave.

As is the case with most women, my immediate concern involved my attire for said occasion. I settled on the casual, but “tough if needed” look. I mean, I was a girl scout, I had to be prepared. I wasn’t going to ride in a little black dress/w/wrap and Jimmy Choo shoes. I was saving THAT outfit for my ride with the fire department.

No, I selected a pair of stylish pair of cargo pants, a 100% cotton shirt and alligator flat sandals. The sandals did not pass LT’s “are they functional” test. I bet Watch Commander duties does not list uniform selection as one of the Watch Commander responsibilities. He agreed I probably would not need my steel toed boots; we compromised. I wore a pair of black Nike Shox, the shiny pair with the gold swhish.

As most couples were saying good night, LT and I headed out to watch over a city and the officers on duty. His rank is LT; his position is the city’s WATCH COMMANDER. The nature of a 911 call is always an emergency for the caller; sometimes the call may not, however, be a 911 emergency needing an immediate officer response.

When all units are busy, split-second decisions must be made. Which calls to place in pending, which calls to send units immediately available which calls are priority, which calls must remain in a pending status? Like a proud parent, I watch as LT choreographs the units, diverting one officer to respond to a life-threatening call, sending a back-up unit closes behind.

Suddenly a sonic boom tone comes over the radio describing a reported stabbing in progress. My head slams against the head rest as the thrusters of the LT’s police package Impala kick in.

To improve communication many police departments now use ‘plain talk.’ Replacing our favorite Barney Fife 10-4 code, plain talk uses simple words to relay information in short, easy to understand commands.  The intended result is an increase in comprehension. For the not-so street savvy, officers and me, officers speak with the microphone flush with their expressionless face.

As such, communication over the radio is not easily understood unless you, too, are an accomplished microphone flush to the stone face talker. Police officers perfect the “stone-face” expression using this technique. Don’t you remember your mother telling you, “You keep that look on your face too long, it’s going to stay that way.”  I have not a clue as

• What just happened
• Where we are going

Screeching sideways into the crime scene, the police-package Impala stops on a dime. LT looks at me with his most stern, stone-face look, and tells me not get out of the car. He jerks the vehicle into park and jumps out.

Minutes pass, more police cars, and unmarked cars pull up. Suddenly I see LT walking up to the vehicle. He opens the door and climbs in.

I ask, “Where is the victim”

He replied, “You mean the alleged victim.”

I ask, “I mean the guy who got stabbed“

“No one was stabbed,” he says without inflection.

I am undone.

I know I heard tones; I know we responded to something or why in the hell are all these police cars here?

I, not so delicately ask my husband for the answer. LT sits behind the wheel looking nonplused. He glances toward a Sergeant, nods, and puts the police-package Impala in drive; LT picks up the microphone, presses it to his lips uttering “22 is in service.”

Excited, flabbergasted and tickled pink I understood what he just said to the dispatcher, I now begin to pester him with specific questions about the call.

Photo courtesy of dreamstine photos, Chevrolet.