True Detective Stories

Monday night was a mess. In the first hour, we responded to two shootings and a homicide. An hour later, a police officer called for an assist – she was okay. An hour after that, officers brought in four defendants with four guns.

Suffice to say we were busy.

The shootings, homicide and the gun arrests were all in the same police district, so it boggled my mind when a sergeant from said district called with this winner.

“Yeah, this is Sergeant Clueless. We’re out here at the Rite Aid after responding to a retail theft…” Shoplifters? Are you f**king kidding me right now? “The offender is a juvenile, and she took five dollars worth of candy.” Again, are you shitting me?

Dumbfounded at the call, I could only respond with, “Okay…”

True Detective Stories

Today’s TDS will be episodic in nature. I don’t really have a juicy story to fill an entire post, but I do have a few small stories worth your time.

Since I don’t work for a real police department, I don’t get to utilize real office equipment. Foe example, the computer at my desk caught a nasty virus – it was on my day off, so no, I was not looking for Milana Vayntrub photos. The IT Department demanded the tower be brought downtown so the people who couldn’t be hired by Apple or Google could tinker with it.

That was in early January.

The “fixed” tower returned last week, and an hour after it was dropped off, we were told it needed to be brought back to IT. Why? Because while IT cleaned the virus, they never reprogrammed the computer, nor did they add the pertinent police programs…

True Detective Stories

On Friday night, we were more than a little shorthanded. Two detectives were on vacation, one was at the pistol range, and another is on military leave. One other was leaving after the first half of the shift was over – using vacation time – so we were blessed with four detectives on the floor.

In the span of the eight-hour shift, we handled two commercial robberies, a sudden death, and a police involved shooting. None of those jobs were as stressful as the dreck Officer Lurch brought in. Officer Lurch was born and raised in some diesel-soaked Eastern European hell hole, so he’s a little sketchy on the finer points of police work.

Like the difference between a drunk and an assaulter.

Lurch walked in, and dropped paperwork on my desk. I’m no fan of Lurch, because he’s an arrogant dolt, so I asked him what he had. Lurch claimed it was an assault on police. Since there is a procedure for assaults on cops, I asked him if he completed the ten or so items on the checklist. Lurch was 0-for-10…

True Detective Stories

Sunday was pretty horrible. While my family was home celebrating Erik’s birthday, I was at work, dealing with the dumbest police officers ever to grace the planet Earth. There were many contenders for Sunday night’s Lord of the Idiots title, but one man stood above them all.

Officer Dullard called the division and said he was out on a domestic violence call, where the male offender allegedly threatened the female victim with a handgun. The victim, natch, did not want to speak with detectives, so he said he would write the report and send it up. Fine.

A half hour later, Officer Dullard calls again, stating he magically stopped the car the offender was driving, with the offender inside the vehicle. This would be fabulous if we had a cooperative complainant, but since we didn’t, it would likely not become an arrest…

True Detective Stories

I hate my job.

Yes, I realize I write that once every week or so, but it is now absolutely true. I hate this job, I hate this department, and I especially hate entitled people who believe they deserve “special” service because they’re former law enforcement.

Yesterday I was sitting at my desk entering jobs, when a woman and her son approached the window and demanded to speak with a detective. I asked them if they knew which detective was handling their case, and the mother immediately replied with a condescending “No.” I then asked if they had a report number so I could help them find their assigned investigator, and I receive another condescending “No.” Again. she then told me they hadn’t made a police report yet.

Now I’m starting to get annoyed, but I was not going to let this woman get the best of me. “You’ll need to make a police report first, so it can be assigned to a detective-”

The woman then turned her back on me, pulled out her cellphone and started to make a phone call. Finally fed up with these shenanigans, I returned to my desk…

True Detective Stories

I’m now in my twenty-sixth year of policing, and I have seen some of the worst inhumanities you can ever imagine. Many of those have been highlighted here during True Detective Stories, mostly for laughs. This post, however, is funny, but not “Ha ha” funny.

A sergeant from one of our districts called Tuesday morning and asked if I could give her advice on a job. She seemed nice enough, so I complied.

Sergeant: “Hey, I have a woman at the front window who wants to make a police report, and she’s stating her child is missing. I’m listening to her story and she tells me she was in a relationship with a guy, and while they were a couple, she gave him her five-year old child.”

Me: “Wait, she voluntarily gave her child away?”

Sergeant: “Yeah. The guy has had the child for quite some time, and now the mother wants her child back. She’s claiming she doesn’t know where the guy lives, and has no way to contact him. I called the Special Victims Unit, and they said since the woman voluntarily gave her kid away, it’s now a police matter.”

Me: “They’re right. The woman gave her child away, so the male really hasn’t committed a crime. The irony is the woman could be prosecuted, but that would have be through the Department of Human Services (DHS).”

Sergeant: “Okay, I thought the same thing. I’m glad you confirmed it. The worst part is this woman is pregnant with another child and she really doesn’t seem too concerned that the kid is missing.”

True Detective Stories

There is a running argument in the division concerning which is the dumbest of the four police districts we cover. To be fair, all four contain more than enough dimwitted officers, so the title “Lord of the Idiots” fluctuates from day to day.

Then Thursday came.

An officer called in with a question about a job. When he gave his name, I rolled my eyes, because this man is arguably the dumbest person in the department. He makes Diego the Idiot Detective look like Sherlock Holmes. The job he responded to was not a job at all, but I’ll give you his version of events.

“This is Office Dimwit, and I want to run a job by you. We responded to a call for a person with a weapon, and the complainant here said three unknown black males approached him. They asked him if he had any weed, and the complainant said yes. The complainant gave the men the weed, and the men threw it on the ground, stomped on it, and fled the scene.”

So, effectively, these men robbed a drug dealer, and this jackass wanted to write a report for this nonsense.

“This happened about noon (five hours before the police call) but after the men took the complainant’s weed, he walked to an alleyway and fell asleep for a few hours. When he woke up, he decided he wanted to make a police report.”

Once my ears stopped bleeding, I asked a simple question. “Officer, do you realize what you’re saying? You’re asking me if you should write a report claiming a drug dealer was robbed. You realize dealing drugs is illegal, right? You realize the DA’s Office will never files charges for this?”

The officer, nonplussed, replied, “Well, what am I supposed to do?”

I suggested Officer Dimwit should call his supervisor, or anyone else who had a modicum off common sense. Either way, the job never came to the division, so I assume the supervisor laughed so hard it actually embarrassed the officer.

True Detective Stories

When I was first promoted, the seasoned detectives in my squad told me, “Eventually, you’ll hate cops.” Like most of the newly-promoted, I thought they were just disgruntled old guys who had seen one too many awful report.

Turns out, they were right.

On Tuesday evening, three cops came to the division with the victim of an alleged theft. Two cops were with the transit police and one was from the city. The three of them were arguing about who was handling the arrest, but they are arguing that neither wanted it. (Because why would you want to make an arrest if you could go back to eating bon-bons?)

Between these three dopes, the victim, and their police radios, I could not hear myself think. (Something I rarely do.) I stand up and say, “Hey, can you take this in the hallway? We’re trying to conduct interviews.”

True Detective Stories

So, let me tell you about my Monday.

I’m sitting at my desk, minding my own business, and wondering if I’m too old to become a professional video gamer when I notice an Assault on Police job pop up on the screen. The time was about 4:30pm, but the incident allegedly occurred at 3pm. I mean, that can’t be right, because no cop would wait nearly two hours to inform detectives of an assault on an officer, right?

At approximately 4:40pm, the officer saunters in, looking better than I have in years. For someone who was assaulted, he looked fabulous!

True Detective Stories

This is the sign which greeted me on my first day back from being sick. Our building consists of three floors. The bottom floor is where the (nasty) locker rooms are located. The first floor is the police district, and the second floor is the detective division.

Each floor has a male and female bathroom, but the district bathroom is tiny and rarely clear. The locker room bathroom usually works, but t.p. and soap are rather scarce.

The female detectives have their own bathroom – I’ve seen it; it’s nice and smells like potpourri. This sign is on the male detective’s bathroom. We have two sinks, two bathroom stalls, and two urinals.

ALL WERE INOPERABLE SUNDAY, AND APPARENTLY HAVE BEEN FOR DAYS.

The problem with our bathrooms are they’re linked to the plumbing in the cell rooms. Most of our prisoners are disgusting humanoids, and they spend their time here flushing anything and everything down the toilet. Entire rolls of toilet paper, drugs, and water bottles to name a few. (No, that is not an exaggeration.)

As a result, the bathrooms in the building clog, and no one can relieve themselves.

Our only recourse Sunday was the tiny toilet used for defendants and victims. It’s a nasty bathroom which gets cleaned during the week, but when the cleaning service is off, we’re on our own. I’ll suffer through the asbestos, the fumes, and the other life-draining aspects of this building, but is it too much to ask for a major metropolitan police department to offer working restrooms?