Third shift wrap-up

Overnight Wednesday and Thursday closes out my short week of the late shift. Last night, though, I wasn't the duty commander. Rather, I was Officer Tim Abele's gopher. He and Officer Cass Briggs were the lucky (or maybe unlucky) winners of a shift of my services as a contest for this year's United Way campaign. The deal was that if you were a donor, regardless of amount, your name was in the drawing for the chief to chauffeur you around for a shift, work your calls, and do your reports.

I sensed that Tim's a little like me: he likes to control the remote, and to control the car keys. He was gracious about it, but my guess is he'd rather be driving the bus than riding shotgun. Tim's beat is 5A: a ten square mile swath of southeast Lincoln from 27th to 98th, O Street to Van Dorn Street. Tim knows his beat very well--just what I saw when Officer Jim Hawkins was forced to take me as a replacement for a sick partner in the fall of 1974. Tim knows what lights are normally on, what alleys have the best access, and where the high spots for the best surveillance are. I was duly impressed. I'd like to think that he was duly impressed too, as I showed him a few spots on his beat that he wasn't familiar with: like Lincoln's least-known City park, Sunburst Park.

Unlike Monday and Tuesday, it was slow this morning in the wee hours. I survived the night with only two reports, a minor hit & run traffic collision, and the brutal egging of a 2001 Mercury Cougar. I doubt I'll get off that easy when I work Cass's 12-hour shift. The dayside may be better for sleep and family life, but the sunlight officers tend to get slammed with a lot more reports. In police work, the fun tends to be during the dark.

Tim and I spent most of the night spotlighting businesses and shaking doors. I think we hit every commercial establishment on the entire beat at least once. With a full moon, we spent a good deal of time in residential areas running in stealth mode, but hard as we tried, the best we could do is snag a urinator and a few girls who sneaked out from their sleep over. Tim opined for my benefit that we probably prevented a burglary, even if we couldn't catch one.

The three 14 year old girls we snarfed up at 70th and O were an interesting contrast to the preceding night's ninth graders. The Wednesday morning boys were convinced that Their Parents Would Kill Them. They were both as scared as a mouse in a trap in my patrol car. The three girls, conversely, were giggling in the back seat as we drove them back to the non-slumber party a mile away.

Can you imagine that--getting taken home by the police chief at 2:20 AM and laughing about the ride? I think I would have involuntarily sucked the plastic back seat into my lower gastrointestinal tract. This wasn't a nervous laughter, they were just cavalier about the whole matter. Mom wasn't exactly in a death-dealing mode when the girls roused her and she came to the door. The boys yesterday had gotten the hairy eyeball from their mothers so severely that I tried to ease the tension with a little levity. This morning's mom, however, was pretty mellow about the whole affair. My warning lights about their next five years were blinking brightly. I hope I'm wrong, and have just blown a fuse.