True Detective Stories

I apologize for two True Detective Stories in two days, but I really needed to rant about yesterday.

I walked in early – 6:30am – and the overnight shift left us a domestic arrest. There were a few detectives still working, so I wondered why they did not handle the job.

The overnight shift is filled with quite a few morons and lazy clowns, so it wasn’t a surprise when I saw the arrest occurred at 5:30am. An hour and a half before their shift ended.

I softly (read: loudly) mentioned to my sergeant that the victim had been sitting in the hallway for over an hour, and no one bothered to help this woman. I them also mentioned we only had one detective in at 7am (Salma) and two in at 8am. Nearly everyone else was indisposed.

Two detectives were in court, one detective called off sick, our domestic team called out, and – get this – Diego the Idiot Detective took a vacation day…

True Detective Stories

Editor’s Note: This is going to be one giant bitch-fest, so feel free to ignore this post.

Every time we change shifts, my fellow detectives do their level best to shove a nightstick into my rectum. When I walked into the division, I knew there was going to be a pile of unassigned jobs for me to enter, and boy was I not kidding. There were forty unassigned cases in the queue, and of those forty, nineteen were from our squad.

Worse still, the dates were all over the place. The earliest job was from January 31st, and the latest was February 4th. When someone works the desk, the entire queue appears on the screen, so these dolts know when one of our jobs are on the list, and yet they do nothing.

Since I walked in twenty minutes early, I started printing and assigning the jobs. From beginning to end, it took me three and a half hours. After that, I was able to enter the current jobs, which were also piling up…

True Detective Stories

So I walked into work yesterday – the first day of night work – and the previous shift was a skeleton crew. Three detectives. I thought to myself, “Wow, that sucks for them,” and I looked at my roster.

Three detectives. Actually two, because one detective was Diego.

In the first two hours I did the following: the primary paperwork for the supervisor (he never told me he was going to be an hour late), scoured the building for copier ink (we were fresh out), entering old jobs left for me on my days off, calling coworkers with Covid to find when their return dates were, and hoping upon hope we wouldn’t get slaughtered.

At 4pm, a double shooting popped up on the board, and our gun teams decided to take the evening off. Guess who got the shooting? Sadly, Diego…

True Detective Stories

So let me tell you about my Sunday…

The manpower situation not only hasn’t gotten any better, but it got worse. This week we will be short of four detectives. Two on vacation – including Diego the Idiot Detective – one on military leave, and the other on paid maternity leave. Last night was our first day back on nights, and our list said there would be two detectives and me.

There were no domestic teams, nor any shooting teams. On a Sunday, during football season.

I figured we would just suck it up and try to go on with two detectives and myself. However, moments after I walked into the building, my supervisor said one of the detectives called out sick. Strike that, he actually tried to call out sick, and during the conversation with the supervisor, the guy stated he was taking his son to a rugby game. This douche knew full well we were short-staffed, but decided to screw us anyway…

True Detective Stories

Today is my last day on the early shift. I start night work on Sunday afternoon, and I always make a habit of checking the personnel list on my last day. The personnel book is on my desk, and I took a gander.

One detective is on military leave, another is taking paid family leave – that’s actually a thing in our department now – two detectives are on vacation, and one was moved to the overnight shift. What does that mean? It means I will be working the front desk, and we will have two detectives on the floor handling jobs.

In the past few months, our squad went from fifteen detectives to eleven. Four in A Group, five in B Group, and two in C Group. I wanted to ask the sergeant how he could justify having so many people off, but I figured I wouldn’t receive an answer.

We are arguably the busiest division in the city, and because it’s a weekend, we do not have a shooting team, or the domestic teams. We average twenty to thirty jobs on every night shift, and I have to dole them out to the female (who is very good) and the male (who is not so good). I’ll take as many jobs as I can, but there is no way we can handle the volume of jobs we’re going to see Sunday and Monday.

My Lieutenant told me Wednesday that the department is hemorrhaging officers every day, and we’re losing detectives as well. The city refuses to hire more officers, and refuses to promote detectives. Most big blue cities deny they are defunding the police, and they can get away with that because they’re aren’t open about their policies -plus, there is a compliant, sycophant media to cover for them.

The fact of the matter is this city is making the job so unbearable that people are simply quitting, or signing up for early retirement. Philadelphia will easily pass the 500 homicide mark, and I shudder to think what this city looks like in a few years. This city is no longer a safe place to visit, because there are not enough police to protect the citizens.

Oh, by the way, I am the only detective here today, because the a-holes at the District Attorney’s Office subpoenaed every detective in my squad.

True Detective Stories

So yesterday a gaggle of bosses were congregating around my desk talking about the state of the department. I almost always ignore those conversations, because 1. it’s boring, and 2. there’s nothing we can do to fix this police force.

The conversation continues, and one of the bosses claims the city’s manpower is much worse than we were told. The department always claims we have a 6,000 member police department. No one believes that statistic, because it’s 100% false. Between officers who are injured on duty, posted to irrelevant “teat jobs,” and those under investigation, we’re actually looking at 5,000. At least that’s what I thought…

True Detective Stories

Night work began Friday night, and as always, we were terribly shorthanded. The city hasn’t promoted detectives in nearly two years, and we’ve lost many to attrition.

Every group’s optimum manpower is five detectives, and the groups working Friday each had three. Add in the fact one detective from the other group is off long-term sick, and one from my group called out sick, it left us three detectives to handle jobs, and me on the front desk.

In the first ten minutes, we were hit with a narcotics arrest and (ironically) an overdose. So the two early detectives were immediately out of commission. One processing the arrest and one driving out to the corpse. The late end detective was not due in until four, so it was just me to handle the jobs, answer the phones, handle the front window, and lie to Congress.

About an hour or so later we received another call for an overdose – the heroin in this town is bangin’. The detective who handled the first OD was actually up for the second, and as she walked out she asked, “Who am I, the Grim Reaper?” Moments after she left, we got word of a shooting. One male victim shot in the face and shoulder.

A half hour later, we received two – yes, two – consecutive calls for gunshots where spent casings were found at the locations. I found myself alone on the floor again, while out shooting team hit the street and my fellow detectives responded to the shots fired calls.

With two hours left in the tour, we received a call for a missing tender age – a lost child with mental disabilities – a domestic assault arrest, and another call for gunshots. In short, I spent most of my tour in the building alone, answering phone calls from idiots, and typing until my fingers bled.

Ironically, a teletype message came down from HQ today, claiming detective promotions are set for next month. My platoon is currently five detectives short, and the entire division is short eleven detectives; manpower we’ve desperately needed since, well, 2016.