More cops being shot at.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35587861/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

Really not thrilled about this breaking story. So far the news is that the three officers who have been hit are in the hospital, two in critical.

For those of you not in the LEO circles, this kind of thing sends ripples through the community. It is heartbreaking to hear of. Yet there is a side to it that is heartwarming, and that is precisely the ripples that stretch across this nation, in the LEO community. Officers across the nation will be talking about this tonight, with their coworkers, their families, their friends. Many of them will be extra vigilant tonight, extra cautious of approaching houses, hyper aware of every movement of the people they come in contact with. They grit their teeth when they hear the news of these events, flex their arms, and start itching to take vengeance on the people who would dare do such a thing.

Police-Wives.org

Went ahead and joined the site today. Will probably lurk a lot til I get familiar enough to make a decision about really diving into the community.

Any recommendations for/against the forums?

The idiots are on a ROLL lately!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35559056/ns/us_news/

Two Florida teens were overheard on an open 911 call, discussing what they should take from a car they were CURRENTLY breaking into. The kicker? The 911 call was made by a cell phone belonging to one of the teens. Setting aside the tiny possibility that just MAYBE the phone belonged to the younger teen who was trying to back out...that's just karma.

Reminder: don't report when your ILLEGAL items are stolen

http://www.wlwt.com/news/22645390/detail.html

Man tells Police his bag of pot was stolen.

You just cannot make that up, folks. It's not even an isolated incident. J has taken these sort of reports himself. Someone wanted to report check fraud, then conveniently 'forgot' what the bad check was given to her for. After the tiniest bit of prodding, she admitted it was for drugs. But she insisted she didn't DO drugs anymore. She quit doing them and selling them, right after she received that bad check! Honest!

We can't be right all the time

Last week J goes to search for a 17 year old male who told his mother he was going to kill himself. When she wouldn't leave him alone, he took off into the woods near their house. After talking to the mother, he says "ma'am, I literally do not think he's going to walk out of the woods right here." He was interviewing her at the spot that the son ran into the woods. The mother responds, "Oh there he is."

The boy is walking right back out of the woods at the exact same spot he entered them.

I meant to ask him if the egg does anything for your pores.

Big, fat, WAH.

Man begs judge to change sentence.

Gee...guess he should have thought of that before driving drunk multiple times, and buying the coke!

I don't know about you guys, but I was raised that consequences were consequences. You broke the rules, you paid the price. Maybe I'm just a hard-ass.

Today will be Technology Tuesday

I don't know if I want that to be every week, mind you. But for today, it fits.

"Gang Members moving to Twitter, Facebook"

My first reaction to reading that headline is, "oh great. Now the idiot thugs are moving into the 'intelligent' world. There goes the neighborhood."

Then I read the article. And I can't help but spew a hearty BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Dumbasses. Thoughts?

Mental Monday, 1st of February

J gets a call several weeks ago, about telephone harassment. Goes to complainant's house. Describes her as dressed nicely, well spoken, clean and organized house. She begins to describe the telephone calls she's been receiving. The phone will ring, she answers it, and nobody is there. She says this happens quite often. J tells her what their protocol is, which is to place a trap on her line, more or less, and each time she calls in to report that she's just received a harassing phone call, they make a note of the number. After a few weeks, a report is given to the officer.

While they are discussing this, she says there might be a problem, due to another issue that she can't talk about here (in her home). She mentions this concern that she can't elaborate on several times. J gets a hypothesis forming in his mind, as to what she might be referring to. Eventually she ends up telling him that the CIA is monitoring her, everywhere she moves she gets these harassing calls, and they pay off all her neighbors to help spy on her.

I have a great emoticon I'd love to insert here but I just can't, since it's buried within an IM program. I'll leave you to your imagination.

Since the initial call, J has dutifully followed up on the harassment report. The complainant then tells him that the CIA probably heard her ask for the wire trap, and therefore the phone calls will stop. She does notify of two calls during the monitoring period, which J determines to be from a credit card company. He receives multiple update calls from her, though, during the course of the monitoring period. More calls than she received and noted as harassing.

By the by, because it was only two calls, albeit both from the same company, it's not considered harassment. To indicate a pattern of harassment, a minimum of 3 instances are required.

I think what's interesting to me is how normal he described her (By normal I mean having the appearance of mental health). Each time she called him to check on the progress of the investigation, he patiently but painstakingly explained to her that there is a very limited amount that he can do, that the phone calls aren't considered harassment, that the car driving by at the same time every day is the newspaper delivery guy, etc.

In a way it's funny, to discover that conspiracy theorists really do exist. My little right-shoulder angel, of course, pipes up to remind me that this woman is elderly and sadly is probably suffering from some form of dementia. J and I mused about the potential of him calling a family member. Is that beyond the call of duty? Or appropriate? Or necessary?

Theme posts?

So I've been trying to brainstorm over the last week about this blog...maybe come up with a daily 'theme' to keep me motivated on writing it. Hell I can't even remember if I mentioned the theme idea in my last post. In the past I'd just waited for stories to come to me to share here.

But "Mental" Monday is one idea that I keep coming back to. No, not to make fun of people with mental issues. But sadly it is the police who deal with people with mental issues far more often than they should. In a suburban bubble world, one would think that people with mental health problems are dealt with at home, and then with therapists and counselors and qualified professional medical help.

Unfortunately that's just not the case.

Today J and other deputies had to escort a combative person down four flights of hotel stairs. Screaming and ranting the entire way, in anger at them and at her family. As it turns out, she had already done this on a flight earlier today. Her anger this time: at losing a compact disc that was of high value to her. Naturally, a healthy person writes off the loss of a CD and buys a new one. With any luck it's available for free Super Saver Shipping on Amazon, and it's on your doorstep a week later. Or you go down to Best Buy and pick it up. Maybe you pout about the loss of the CD; maybe you can't get that cover art anymore or your copy was autographed.

This person resorted to screaming obscenities at her family. For hours at a time. J and the other deputy he was with at the time knew already that this woman was suffering from some mental health disorder, and because they are decent human beings, tried diligently to speak to her in civil, calming tones. Finally they put her in handcuffs and took her straight to the clinic that she is in Ohio to get help at.

This was actually a fairly tame example of typical, similar calls. Often they are called to help find missing persons. Technically their job is Law Enforcement, and being schizophrenic or bipolar isn't illegal. But so often the police are called because they are more easily available and more readily equipped to deal with combative, angry, irrational people.

It does end up that all too often, the people who commit crimes are mentally ill. A disturbing portion of people sitting on death row are mentally retarded, or borderline.

It occurred to me while listening to J recount today's story that in general, the police are trained to deal with fighters. They're trained to deal with drunks, druggies, belligerent assholes, angry people, psychopaths, etc. But there really aren't a lot of in-services or external courses offered to teach them to deal with a SIGNIFICANT portion of the people they deal with on a daily basis. Sad.

I'm back!

Maybe. Tentatively. Probably.

I'm mulling over a rebirth of this blog. I still periodically think of things from J's job that I want to post, but other things as well. For a while I wanted this blog to just be about his job...but I can't come up with a daily post about his job. Sometimes there are things I want to share that I just can't. And it is the Badge Family now; why should that stop me from posting other tidbits about our life? So hopefully you'll bear with me through the makeover. Hell, if you're stopping by after such a long inactivity, what's a little 'dust'?