This Fourth of July, I came in early for the parade detail. The detail is double time, so it's worth sweating through your uniform. This year, we have started a drone program. Usually, I would have either a parade post or overwatch, but this year, there was a drone pilot and spotter on the sign-up detail. I got to be the drone spotter. So this 4th I got to sit in a bag chair, under a tree, watching for obstacles for the drone to avoid. I was quite comfortable. After the parade was over and we packed up the equipment, I ran the afternoon shift with my co-sergeant.
My son and his wife were in town, and the rest of my family was at a block party hosted by family friends. I was getting off at 21:00hrs, so it was early enough to go straight to the party that would still be going on. My wife texts me at 19:35hrs and asks me how it's going. There is an old superstition that you never say it's slow or you're comfortable because if you do, it will change in a flash. In an unguarded moment, I texted back "So far so good first 4th where I haven't soaked all the way through my uniform". A half an hour later, bang, I cursed myself. Four Russian nationals were living in a home that they were remodeling. They decided to strip into their underwear, get liquored up, go swimming, and end with a fist fight. When we got the call of a 4 on 4 fight the entire shift and I responded. The two less injured and I assume less drunk bolted on foot, and we never found them. The other two were still fighting, and the responding officers had to draw down on them because they refused their orders to stop fighting. I got there a short time later, and they were sitting on the asphalt, covered in blood. Neither spoke English, and the closest Russian-speaking officer was three towns away. It took us two hours to arrive at no complaints to be signed, no arrests to be made, and both refused medical treatment (One needed to have his face stitched up, but he insisted that no medical treatment was required). So now the uniform is totally soaked through.
Back at my desk, I was due to sneak out a little early to get to the block party, and the other sergeant was staying until at least 23:00hrs, so he was just going to pick up the shift after he was done with the fireworks drone overwatch duty. At 20:45hrs, a shots fired call came out in one of our neighborhoods. Two shots had come into the home from the backyard area, one barely missing the homeowner and her baby. The entire shift responds (Midnight shift was forced in early for the fireworks detail, so I had access to afternoon and midnight officers). Half go to the victim's home, the other half to the house that is in line with the two shots. Very quickly, we find multiple shell casings in the backyard and no one in the offender's home would admit to firing the gun (At the time, we had not recovered it). The suspects consented to being interviewed on station, so we shipped them off and locked the home to get a search warrant. First, I got to sit on the spent casings in the backyard so that I could hand the scene to the ETs once they got there. After that happened, I held the scene until I was relieved. I actually soaked through my vest carrier this time. I was the first officer to be able to get off shift, and that was at 01:00hrs.
So, had I just said I was uncomfortable and busy, I would have gone home early, sweat-free, and made it to the party in plenty of time. Because I was an idiot, I was basically swimming in my sweat, having no party, and just going straight home to bed after a 14-and-a-half-hour shift. *Sigh*
