Riding Solo

Thursday was my first night riding solo. The night started off easy with a couple burglary reports. I then made my first solo vehicle stop for a car with suspended plates. The driver turned out to be wanted for a misdemeanor warrant so I called for backup and arrested him.

The rest of the night was relatively routine: a guy that wanted his neighbor arrested for criminal damage when his car door opened too far and left a microscopic fleck of paint on his car. When I tried to explain that we couldn't proove his neighbor was responsible and that even if we could, we would have to proove that the damage was intentional, the guy wanted to argue. I told him it was a civil matter and he could sue him in small claims court for damages if he wanted to. The guy started showing me polariods of the door-ding, had a clipboard with notes he had written and showed me the neighbor's red car that matched the speck on his car. I congratulated him for his detective work and told him again it was not a police matter since no crime evidence of a crime existed. He was not happy with my answer but then told me, "yeah, that's what the last officer told me, too." I guess he thought it was important to waste police resources to get a second opinion on an obvious civil dispute.

With my night nearly finished, a 'shots fired' call came out at a stip club in my area. I heard three other patrol units respond to the call and decided I would go over and be a backup for them. As I pulled up to the club, the bouncers started jumping up and down and waving frantically at me to come in. Somehow, I was the first one there. I thought to myself: great-I get to take a shooting call by myself at the end of my shift. Luckily, another patrol unit came right after me and took control. There was no victim -just a few empty .45 shell casings on the ground.

I was nervous but enjoyed my first night alone.