Back in the Saddle Again-Midnight Shift Patrol

Well, I had thought that the good ole midnight patrol shift was behind me eight years ago when I had enough seniority to go to the afternoon shift, then the day shift and finally into investigations. God has a funny way of making the improbable, probable.

So here I am in my second week, back in uniform, back in patrol and back on midnights. It is a place I never thought I would be without sergeant stripes on my shoulder. Midnights (well really 11:00 pm to 7:00 am) is a strange place and creates a strange existence.

The first thing you notice is how you awake in the dark and go to sleep in the light. It really throws you. Every time I get up I have this one second of disorientation in which I try to figure out how early in the morning I am getting up. Is it three or four in the morning? Then my brain gets properly warmed up and I realize, oh, yeah, its 8:00 pm. The other thing is that at the end of your day its sunny out and yet you’re really tired. Since all of us has been programed from the beginning of our lives to be active during the light and sleep during the dark, you find yourself foolishly fighting to stay awake because you can’t really be that tired if the sun is out or so your brain lies to you.

The second thing that has struck me is how isolated and alone you feel. There is no one out here. In my eight hour shift I pass more deer, fox and opossum than I ever do with human beings. It brings out a Twilight Zone-esq feeling of living among people but not with them. When you are coming home from work, they are going to work. When you are sleeping, they are awake. Your breakfast is their dinner and your dinner is their breakfast. Your news is never current it is just a recap of the day. Etc.

The third thing is now I sleep alone. I have been married for more than fifteen years and only five of them have we not shared a bed together. Yet now when I come home, she is jumping up and getting the kids ready for school and she enters the bed right when I am walking out the door at night. I have to admit I have searched for her in my sleep, with that sleepy outstretched hand thing and came really close to falling off and hitting the floor when she was nowhere to be found.

Finally just some observations and situations that have come up:

“Why are you drinking a beer right now it’s 7:00 am!” But honey it’s the end of my day not the beginning.
“Why are you eating breakfast cereal for dinner again?” Well for starters it’s my breakfast time.
“Let set that appointment for 1:30 pm.” Um no that would be the same as setting it for 3:30 am for everyone else.
“Aren’t there scientific studies that show the midnight shift takes five or more years off your longevity?” Yes but so far the department has not accepted my proposal to have robots fight crime from 11 to 7.

“Aren’t shifts picked by seniority?” Only if the union will fight it when they are not.

“Don’t you pay a lot in Union dues?” We have a great BBQ once a year.

“What are you going to do for this whole year?” Keeping working and be joyful and remember all my friends that don’t even have a job to be irritated with.

And

“How is working midnights as a police officer different than the other two shifts?” It is easier; there are not any good or legit reasons to be out and about this time of night. Just ask your grandmother, she's right in her advice.

So as you can see I am in the process of coming to grips with it all and it will be interesting to see where this journey takes me. God is in control and he never seems to ask my opinion first before he acts. So when I have the ability to look back and see the context of this current situation I will understand, to a very tiny aspect, how our great and glorious God’s hand was moving to bless me. Until then, well…persevere and convince my daughter to stop asking questions at the foot of my bed at 4:30 pm.

1 Peter 3:17
For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.


Image Credit: NASA

Illiness

The life expectancy of a law enforcement officer that retires with at least twenty years on the job is 66 years (Link ) while the average life expectancy of an American is 77.5. One of the reasons for this, I believe, is how sick days are handled in law enforcement.

I receive one sick day a month that is rolled into a bank. However, once you reach a hour threshold in the bank (it takes usually 7 years of no sick days) there is a six and six split. So six days are placed into the bank but the other six days are put into a medical mutual fund. The medical mutual fund is tax free going in and if it is a medical expense, it is tax free coming out. Then after another threshold is met, the bank is maxed and all twelve days are rolled into the fund. At retirement the bank is paid off at the current salary rate and the fund leaves with you.

Thus the days are incredibly valuable. The tax free nature saves about 28% of the value of the money and the bank is an investment, that unless the governing body of the jurisdiction goes bankrupt, with pay off with a profit.

The bottom line is basically for every sick day not taken it will be worth about five days in a 20+ career.

The idea was that the city would not have to cover a shift at time and a half to fill the slot of the sick officer. However, in the long run the city will end up paying much more than one shift at time and a half. The officer knowing the value of the sick day will also go into work despite any current aliment and "ride it out". A result of that is a delayed recovery. It would be an interesting study to see if officers are sick more often and for longer periods of time. If that is the case it has to be a cause of a quicker physical decline as seen in the life expectancy in this profession verses the public at large.

So off I go into work tonight, sick as a dog. The flu has hit me and my family full force. I will put in a good nights work, it will not deviate from my normal production and I will be sick a few days longer than if I just stayed in bed and slept. Further, I hope I do not spread it around the station but there have been shifts were every squad was a virus vector.

2 Chronicles 21:15
and you will become very sick with a disease of your intestines, until your intestines come out by reason of the sickness, day by day.

Interesting Info Graphic About Famous Heists

A True Camping Story- 5.11 Adventure Contest Entry

Our camping outings have never been too successful.  They typically involve risk to self and others, destruction of property and the decent into insanity (well, not for me but for others…maybe I’m unknowingly responsible for our fellow campers shrugging off the coils of sanity and embracing the crazy woodpeckers in their head…but I digress).  The following is an absolutely true story.

So it’s 1990, I am a sophomore in college at Baylor and back in the Chicago Metro land for summer break to see my girlfriend (now my wife) and to go with my church college youth group to our two day Michigan Dunes camping trip.  It’s the night of day two and we are all sitting around the camp fire, sober, which is fine for a college youth group outing but extreme intoxication would have better explained our flawed/bizarre/idiotic decision making skills that night.  Anyway, it’s around ten o’clock in the evening and someone, I think me, suggests that we jump into Lake Michigan for a night swim.  My fellow suicidal campers think that this is a good thing and away we go into the water.   It’s cold, it’s dark and the twelve of us are utterly alone.  So conditions being perfect for safety and wellbeing, we decided to swim out over our heads to the “second sandbar”.  At our campsite on the lake you can swim out, way over your head and soon come onto a sand bar that you can stand on with your head above water.  But even better, there is a second sand bar, way past the first, that you can get to and its right about the time your arms and legs are burning and you are wondering if anyone will ever find your bloated corpse, that you arrive at the second sand bar.  So, alone in the dark, in the cold without anyone knowing where we are, we set out to go to that magical place, death, no I mean the second sandbar.  Fast forward to exhausted breathing, burning legs and shouted theories of blame, we arrived at the second sand bar.  All of us except my girlfriend who is swimming way behind the rest and does not seem to be using the classic straight line approach to our destination.    Being the gallant caring boyfriend that I am, I start yelling at her to hurry up and then threw out a few verbal jabs that my fellow sand bar-eians thought was the cat’s meow.  It soon occurred to me that something was amiss.  My short Italian sweetie was always ready with a quick verbal counter thrust.  I started watching her progress and when it ceased to be a horizontal progression and instead turned to a negative y axis motion, I realized she was in real trouble (something about no longer being able to continue on top of the water concerned me for some reason).  I raced over to where I last saw her and swam down and grabbed her and pulled her back to the surface.   Sputtering from her thirty seconds of submersion, I swam her back to the second sand bar for her to catch her breath.  When we arrived, the ten other sand bar guests inquired as to her condition and we were all informed in an exasperated sarcastic voice, that she had developed a muscle cramp (she then pointed at me) said  “But because this big idiot wouldn’t shut up, no one could hear me calling for help!”  (Ah, yes, the beginning of a fine series of “no matter what happens it’s my fault” declarations.  A program that would become the backbone to our relationship. ) With the near drowning putting a cramp in our water plans we decided to return to shore with me pulling my girlfriend along, swimming for two, in a physical act of penance.

 

Arriving on shore we quickly dragged our bodies back to the campfire that we had forgotten to put out and had grown to burning the wood pile outside of its retaining wall of found stones.  Quickly throwing all the burning logs into the center of the stones we sat down and began to drink our remaining supply of pop and water.  I decided to prank our exhausted group with a pop bomb.  I covertly took a six pack of diet Pepsi and pretending to stoke the fire, I placed the cans into its heart, giggling like the Hamburgler  right before Ronald catches him fleeing with his hot beefy bounty.  I then used my college math skills, when I figured that the last time I put a can in the fire it was funny with the popping noise and soda shooting out, it would be six times as funny with six cans.  I waited.  I waited with baited breath.  I got bored so I told my girlfriend so that I had someone to wait with in prankster anticipation for the pop and then our laugh at the surprise expressions of our camping-mates.

Then…BOOM!!!!  The camp fire flew into the air spreading itself evenly onto the tents and the assembled people.  A blessing for the cascade of diet Pepsi that came airborne with the wood was that it instantly turned the fire to just an airborne grouping of glowing embers.  The curse to the boiling Pepsi however, was wherever it landed, it latched on and gave a little gift of its heat to that lucky individual or item.   The campers, yelling in surprise and in pain for their minor second degree burns where instantly plunged into darkness that was dotted everywhere with tiny red dots.  A second then went by when someone shouted, “The tents!”  Yep, each little glowing dot covering each tent was one of our little friendly embers trying to burn through the covering.  The camp then sprang into action and with more profanity then what should normally be heard on a church outing, the embers were swept off the tents.

Suddenly there was a scream!  We quickly ran to our overwrought female camper and demanded to know what was wrong.  She just started yelling over and over, “It’s gone!”  We waited as long as we could, then shaking her we asked her what was missing.  She pointed to her feet and said, “That!”  We looked down and observed one bare foot and one foot shod with a sock.  You lost your sock?  We all asked incredulously.  She went on to inform us that this was her lucky pair of socks and she could not go home without it.  We then initiated a halfhearted search of the sandy camp site for the forlorn sock while our fellow camper stood with raised bare foot asking us every five seconds if we had found it yet.   Sticky, burned, tired and impatient we searched the campsite for the sock.  After finding three socks that belonged to owners other than our one shod female camper, I asked her what color the sock was.  She stated with an intense serious tone, “Sandy Brown”.  The assembled campers froze and stared at our “victim”.  Everyone then went into their tents without a word other than someone said, “Half luck is better than no luck at all”.  She then sat down and cried.

That morning we emerged from our tents.  Our sleep molested by the tiny holes in each tent that was perfect for letting mosquitos and water in and heat out.  We gathered our sticky burned and melted clothing and shoes and loaded the Pepsi stained van.  No one would talk to me and an active argument ensued that included my girlfriend as to who would be unfortunate enough to be forced to sit with me since at the last minute then had decided they would not be leaving me behind after all.  The matter resolved we left the camp.

It was a long silent eight hours.   

They do talk to me now, twenty years later.   But they don’t let me go to the Dunes any more.  I wonder if I outfitted them to replace their lost and damaged items they would change their minds and let me go…………….probably not.

Polarized sunglasses, Flashlights, and Hiking boots.

One Year through the Bible

I just finished my second One Year Through the Bible (Pictured) and I highly recommend it.  It is a great way to get into the habit of being in the word and in just a few pages a day before you know it you have read the bible cover to cover.  I just throw it in my bag and when I have a few minutes of free time I rip it out and read it.  I promise you not a day will go by when something won't leap off the page right at you and into your life.

Well the genealogies can be a little challenging but you can say you read them at least once.

Happy New Year

Its 2012 I hope and pray its a great year for each and everyone of you.  2011 for us was not the best; death in the family, damage to the roof, flood damage (on separate occasions), children struggling in school and the like.  But the Lord is in charge and it'll work out all right.


Hebrews 8:13
In that He says, “A new covenant, ” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

Merry Christmas

Luke 2:11

King James Version (KJV)

11For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

Best Christmas Present EVER!

Occupy Wall Street Infographic (To View Better CTRL +)

Via: Online MBA Guide

Risk Reduction Justice Delayed

The Penn State sex scandal or a better way to state it, a long running multiple person conspiracy to aid and abet a pedophile in his crimes, has brought to light a growing blight in American culture.  It is the idea of sliding away from duty and obligation and rather standing in the swamp of risk/labiality/benefit analysis. 

 

It can be seen in the multiple civil lawsuit settlements where money was paid out but no fault was claimed.   I have personally heard the justification of “we have done nothing wrong but it will be more expensive successfully defending ourselves than just paying off and getting rid of the problem.”  What is missed is the value of justice, the reward of perseverance and a declaration of an intention to fight rather than capitulate.  The message it really sends is there is no value in right and wrong but rather life is a benefit analysis.  If there is a victim let him/her be properly compensated if it is a false accusation let them be punished.  But there is no change if there is no fault assigned and the actions are not made public.  The organization, whether public or private, learns there is no value in values and justice.  Rather, there is a calculation about the ability to control people and information.  If the information and personnel can be controlled the event or action is buried, if it cannot be controlled a settlement is then rendered, no fault is declared, a gag order is made and everyone moves on.  There is no correction, there is no blame assigned, there is no shame, there is no reward for good and punishment for evil, it is just another entry on the balance sheet.

Now layer this event over and over through the years.   The system rewards tight information control and inaction.  If I don’t know about it then I cannot get pulled into it, happens again and again, till the first response is personal risk exposure minimization becomes the first priority.  It is the first priority because that is what is rewarded.  Identification and notification only increase exposure and ensure punishment.  This is how you get an assistant coach’s first response on a child rape is to call his Dad and have a meeting about what to do, rather than take action, call the police and make notification.

This can best be illustrated by a call that I have responded to hundreds of times.  It’s a theft call at a local business.  I get ushered into the senior manager’s office and told about an employee that they suspect is taking money out of the petty cash fund.  They are concerned and want to know what to do.  I end up interviewing the employee and usually after about ten minutes they confess to most (never all) that they have done and there is a sad story to accompany the story to show that they are really not a bad person, just a person in a bad situation.  I then go back to the senior manager and ask what he would like to do.  I always suggest prosecution, to recoup the money, to create a record of their conduct to make illicit action more difficult in the future and steer the offender in a more positive direction.  The manager listens to me patiently but always asks if that has to be done and I say no.  But I interject is you let them resign they will just go to another employer and do the same thing much like what has already happened to you.   I then am told that firing an employee is a tedious process and expensive.  Further, they do not want to take all the time off work to go to court.    So out the door goes the now ex-employee having resigned and tearful.  Fast forward about six months and I am called to a different business about the same offender and they too opt for resignation rather than prosecution and more victims are created.   The crime is not large and the loss is not great in each incidence but over time added together it ends up with a multitude of victims and a large amount of theft that one person doing the right thing could stop.  But no one does.  This is the society we are living in, here in America.  Where justice is inconvenient, expense is more important than protecting the innocent and silence is awarded.

But that does not have to be that way.  If each of us sides with the truth, protects the victims over expense and inconvenience, refuses to stay silent in the little things, then when the big things come the course of action is clear and people are saved.

Another Surveillance

Statics...some good some bad.

Statics ()=Source

It is estimated that 25% of Police Officers are alcoholics.  ( http://milestonegroupnj.com/?p=142)

 The rate for the population at large is 17.7 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism

6% of criminals arrested suffer from severe mental illiness  (http://karisable.com/crmh.htm

The best estimate of suicide in the law enforcement profession is 18.1 per 100,000. This figure is 52% greater than that of the general population but 26% lower than that of the appropriate comparison group (white males between the ages of 25 and 55). (http://www.policeone.com/health-fitness/articles/137133-Police-Officer-Suicide-Frequency-and-officer-profiles/)

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that officers were not wearing a seat belt in 42 percent of fatal car accidents. According to federal numbers,  car accidents are the leading cause of death for police officers throughout the country. (http://www.austinaccidentattorney.com/blog/2011/03/officers-unbelted-in-42-percent-of-fatal-police-car-wrecks.shtml)

Police and detectives held about 883,600 jobs in 2008. About 79 percent were employed by local governments. State police agencies employed about 11 percent. Various Federal agencies employ police and detectives.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, police and detectives employed by local governments worked primarily in cities with more than 25,000 inhabitants. Some cities have very large police forces, while thousands of small communities employ fewer than 25 officers each. (http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos160.htm

Projections data from the National Employment Matrix

Occupational Title	SOC Code	Employment, 2008	Projected Employment, 2018	Change, 2008-18
				Number	Percent
Police and detectives	—	883,600	968,400	84,700	10
First-line supervisors/managers of police and detectives	33-1012	97,300	105,200	7,800	8
Detectives and criminal investigators	33-3021	112,200	130,900	18,700	17
Fish and game wardens	33-3031	8,300	9,000	700	8
Police officers	33-3050	665,700	723,300	57,500	9
Police and sheriff's patrol officers	33-3051	661,500	718,800	57,300	9
Transit and railroad police	33-3052	4,300	4,500	200	5
NOTE: Data in this table are rounded. See the discussion of the employment projections table in the Handbook introductory chapter on Occupational Information Included in the Handbook.

(http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos160.htm)

To date in 2007, 157 Law Enforcement Officers have been killed in the line of duty.

The statistics for the last 10 years are as follows:
2006 - 147
2005 - 159
2004 - 162
2003 - 147
2002 - 159
2001 - 242
2000 - 163
1999 - 151
1998 - 175
1997 - 176

Source - the Officer Down Memorial Page (http://www.odmp.org/index.php )

• In the last decade (since 2000) the homicide rate declined to levels last seen in the mid-1960s.
• Based on data from 1980 and 2008, males represented 77% of homicide victims and nearly 90% of offenders. The victimization rate for males (11.6 per 100,000) was 3 times higher than the rate for females (3.4 per 100,000). The offending rate for males (15.1 per 100,000) was almost 9 times higher than the rate for females (1.7 per 100,000).
• The average age of both offenders and victims increased slightly in recent years, yet remained lower than they were prior to the late 1980s.  (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2221)

• The percent of U.S. residents age 16 or older who had face-to-face contact with police declined from 2002 (21.0%) to 2005 (19.1%) and declined again in 2008 (16.9%).
• White (8.4%), black (8.8%), and Hispanic (9.1%) drivers were stopped by police at similar rates in 2008.
• Male drivers (9.9%) were stopped at higher rates than female drivers (7.0%). (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2229)

• The U.S. murder arrest rate in 2009 was about half of what it was in the early 1980s. Over the 30-year period ending in 2009, the adult arrest rate for murder fell 57%, while the juvenile arrest rate fell 44%.
• From 1980 to 2009, the black forcible rape arrest rate declined 70%, while the white arrest rate fell 31%.
• Between 1980 and 2009, while the adult arrest rate for drug possession or use grew 138%, the juvenile arrest rate increased 33%. Similarly, from 1980 to 2009, the increase in the arrest rate for drug sale or manufacture was greater for adults (77%) than for juveniles (31%). (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2203)

• The estimated 12,575 local police departments operating in the United States during 2007 employed approximately 463,000 full-time sworn personnel.
• Operating budgets of local police departments totaled $55.4 billion for fiscal year 2007, 14% more than in 2003 after adjusting for inflation.
• In 2007, average starting salaries for entry-level local police officers ranged from $26,600 in the smallest jurisdictions to $49,500 in the largest. (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1750)

PS:  I know that the table bled into my margins but I really liked it.  Go to the site to get the whole totally readable one or wait till this post get old enough that it slides down and does not mesh with the side bar.

Judges 8:14
He caught a young man of Sukkoth and questioned him, and the young man wrote down for him the names of the seventy-seven officials of Sukkoth, the elders of the town.