I cursed myself on the 4th of July

 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*

Last Duty Gun

 I am down to 19 months until retirement with 30 years on.  I thought that this would be a good excuse to purchase my "plaque gun" (Wife is still irritated, however).  I will be transitioning from my Glock 22, Glock 27 combination to the Shadow Systems DR920P and a new Glock 26 (For some reason, their subcompacts have their own magazine system.  They should have a cross-over magazine that uses Glock or comparable magazines (I will be using Magpul)).  I originally purchased a Staccato P 2011for the "plaque gun." It was expensive, but they have a fantastic law enforcement discount.  However, when I presented it to our rangemaster, he was entirely against it.  It comes down to the differences in triggers in that the Staccato is very short, and the Glocks that I have been using for 28 years have, basically, a long two-stage trigger pull (Called taking out the slack).  Unless I put 1000 or more rounds out of it, I would be in the field and making the shoot or don't shoot decision, and I would fire the gun before I was ready.  Thus, I got to buy two new guns to be my last gun (Again, my wife is not happy).

I have a Holosun HE508T site and a Streamlight TLR-1 for its setup. I will be getting a duty holster from Tier 1, the Centurion. I had a very difficult time finding a duty holster above level 1 (for on-duty, non-concealed patrolmen's carry, general orders demand a level 2 or more holster to be worn).  I am already shooting it better than I have been with my Glock 22.  I will do a full review of the Shadow and the holster in a later post-need to use them more on duty first.

Have a safe and awesome July 4th.  Since time is running short, I am going to be active with the blog again.  I know that I have typed that before, but this time I am serious.

Missed Opportunities: Could have Improved Morale

 Morale in a police department is a tricky thing.  Most of the time the budget is set a year and a half in advance and has little flexibility to add something incredible for the officers to enjoy, unless it costs nothing.  Morale builders that cost nothing are unicorns.  In my department, the Chief missed an excellent opportunity to improve morale and, in reality, decreased it.  My father-in-law (who has since passed) was the chief of two police departments in my area.  Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, on his own dime, he would buy each shift a meal, knowing that they were sacrificing their families and holidays to be patrolling the streets.  Most departments in our area do it or get with their fire department colleagues and share a meal.  It makes a bad situation, better.

The PD has never provided anything for Thanksgiving or Christmas in my department.  The Chief would give out small gift cards, and we would partner with the FD for special meals.  Somehow, with time, we no longer eat with the FD.  So this Christmas, the chief did not bring dessert, provide a meal, give a gift, give out cards, or anything.  He didn't even wish the sworn a Merry Christmas, either in person or through email...I mean...nothing.  So that, our course, was the talk of roll call for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day.   The consensus was that the chief cared little or not at all for the wellbeing of his patrolmen and patrolwomen.  That idea was brought home when it was discovered that he took our social workers and support staff to Christmas lunch.

Before I was promoted, I worked closely with the Chief, and if I had told him his employee's feelings, he would have been shocked because he believed himself to be the "Chief of the People."  A quirk of this chief is that his likes and dislikes he assumes are also everyone else's likes and dislikes.  He will even argue with you when you say you like something, anything he doesn't like, he will tell you no, you really don't like that.  He doesn't care if someone does something nice for him on a holiday or even wishes him a merry (holiday here), so he doesn't think to do anything for the officers away from their families.  It also doesn't occur to him because he is home for the holidays.

So, for the price of a few meals, there was the opportunity for a real morale builder, but instead, it was a morale killer and won't be addressed because the head of our organization would never even think about it.