FIREWORKS

HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY 4TH ‘ALL

Ya ever have one of those days. I went into work tonight, and I’m tellin ya it was hot humid and sticky at the beginning of the shift. The patrol car I was assigned to was in the shop for repairs so I had to find another one. Detectives had me come up and compare notes on an initial investigation I had done a few nights ago (which is really cool) because I appreciate that (to me it seems)  they are comfortable with my assessment of situations and ask me for my input.

I inspected and got on the road about 45 minutes after roll call, the dispatcher asked me to make a coffee run for them. I did , partly because I’m a nice guy, partly because the dispatcher offered to buy my coffee. I made the run and brought it back. I still had some piss and vinegar (as my grandpa used to say) left in me and was ready to do some pro active police work. Dispatch calls me back into the station, it seems as if the donut shop left out one coffee and it was the dispatchers (I’m no dummy, a happy dispatcher is a good thing, an unhappy, uncaffinated dispatcher can screw you in so many ways) So I trudged back off to the donut shop and got the dispatcher a coffee. I brought it back and finally hit the road about an hour and a half into the shift. I fielded a bunch of alarm calls and a surprising amount of  “the kids are being noisy outside calls”  Now I can see if they were blasting music out of boomboxes and having impromptu block parties, but one of them was sitting on his stairs talking to a friend dribbling a basketball.

The call of the night award goes to the person who called “not for someone lighting fireworks” but because they left the cylinder in the roadway” and “absolutely no one would stop to clean it up” so could we be a buddy and send a car over there to clear it away?

Yup, that was my call and the thing that pissed me off the most is that it is trash collection night, the caller couldn’t have gotten off their happy ass, picked it up and deposited it in the trash pile 5 feet away from where it was left. Add sanitation specialist to my resume.

Come to think of it, most of my job is to get the riff raff and garbage off the streets. So from now on instead of letting people know I’m a cop when I’m off duty and they ask me what I do I’m  just telling them I’m a garbage man.

Not all loud bangs heard on the 4th of July Weekend are gunshots.

Also, even though the peoples republic of Massachusetts has outlawed fireworks, (unless you are a Kennedy) there  is no right of arrest and very few options to combat said nuisances.

As much as I’d like to jam the brick of fireworks down the revelers pants and light the wick for you, the law says I can’t.

So if the fireworks bother you, remember that they are much more bothersome to me. I will be out there going from loud bang, possible gunshots call to loud bang, possible gunshots call to loud bang, possible gunshots call  all night long. I will then go home and sleep right through the 5th of July hopefully.

We got a call late in the shift for a loud party. When we got there there were a few guys sitting on the porch smoking butts with a loud radio on.  Through the windows we could see many other people inside the house.

As we came up the stairs one of the guys begins getting all lawyerly and uppity and then makes the cardinal no no of all  police etiquette mistakes. That being “Officer, I know my rights, you cant go in there without a warrant” 

Well actually if you are creating a disturbance that prompts neighbors to call us due to a bothersome situation we actually can go in there without a warrant to assess the situation.

We ask how many other people are inside and he says ‘Ohhhh only about 3-4 other people. I can count at least 10 from my vantage point. So we go inside, making sure not to tip over the several beercans and hard liquor bottles all strewn around and decide to shut the gig down. I lost count after the first 35 people paraded past me and into the night.

He has lied to us once so we do a room to room check, kicking everyone out. as we go into one of the bedrooms I observe a motor vehicle citation. Being the nosey  ever perceptive officer I am. I pick it up and look it over. It was issued earlier today. $100.00 for speeding. He ended the night with an additional $200.00 citation from me for the loud party city ordinance infraction.

Had he not gotten all lawyerly and challenging towards me, I probably would have given him the option to shut the party down on his own and issued him a verbal or written warning. But when you challenge the po-po don’t be surprised when we get all hard assed on ya. I actually hate giving out money fines. But I will when challenged….

One of my favorite cop bloggers has just retired from the force. He is a great guy with some wonderful insights and stories Please go over and wish him well in his retirement.

I feel honored to call him a friend and I hope that his retirement is filled with every good thing that life has to offer.

I am a cop and as a cop I am a trained observer, I will be posting general observations on here whenever the mood hits.

The first observation I would like to bring to your attention is that when we are all coming to a green light and I have to go to the bathroom really really bad, you people who slow down and make a perfect approach at just the right speed, being really courteous to all other motorists and letting them into line and go first really are not fooling me, I watch the same people speed up to get “through the yellow” cut people off, jockey for the first position day in and day out when I am in my personal vehicle at the very same light.

So I’m thinking you know I have to take a piss really badly and are busting my balls with good driving techniques. (Does this sound like I’m paranoid) LOL

At the start of my kids little league season. Opening day the league puts on a big day long event, this year I helped out before the team I coach had to play their game. I flipped burgers and hot dogs in the food tent. They had a huge pile of hotdog and burger buns right next to where I was cooking. So every time they ran out of buns they’d call out and I would throw em another package.

Well, they nicknamed me “Buns” that day and it stuck, all season (truth be told it aint so bad being called buns by a group of little league moms) It could be so much worse LOL. I don’t think that some of them actually know my real name at this point.

Well, the moms went from calling me “buns” to “coach buns” and a few of the games I could not make because I was working but I would sneak over to the field during my shift and see how they were doing. In uniform, and you guessed it.

Being called Officer Buns soon followed.  One of the moms pulled me aside one day to ask for help with a legal question. I realized then and there that some day one of these ladies may go to the station and ask for Officer Buns, I can just imagine the ragging I’ll get when and if that happens.

But it could be worse I guess