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A Thick Blue Line |
| Written by Daniel | |
| Saturday, 12 April 2008 | |
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Share it:      I was a cop once, for two whole days. I spent six months at the local community college taking the Basic Law Enforcement Training, or BLET. I went through the rigorous hiring process of the local police department, including the psychological test, the polygraph, and the physical. Finally, I was done. I was a cop. My first day was pretty uneventful. I rode around with my Field Training Officer (FTO) Mack Brown. He had been on the force for over 15 years. He smoked a lot. He cussed a lot. I liked him immediately. We stopped a few cars and wrote a few tickets. We chased a group of skateboarders away from City Hall. We even got to respond to a fight call. But they had already left by the time we arrived. I was actually starting to believe that this would be my permanent career. Mack apparently saw my eagerness. "Young Buck Syndrome," he called it. Then he decided to sit me down and have a heart to heart with me. "Listen Kid," he said. "There are two types of people in this world. Those who are cops, and those who call the cops. If you do this job long enough, you're gonna see some stuff that bothers you. And that's okay. I would be worried if it didn't bother you. But before you decide which kind of person you are, give it some more time." I agreed, but secretly thought that he was full of crap. I fully understood that I would eventually see a dead body, possibly deal with a murder suspect or rape victim. The world is an ugly place and I held no illusions. What a naeive fool I was. The second day started much like the first. There was a minor fender bender in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, and we had to run the same group of skateboarders away from City Hall again. They just loved jumping over the mayors' car. Then came my final call for service. A nieghbor called in and reported that he kept hearing a small child crying from the apartment that was just upstairs from him. According to him, the mother was not around and the father had a drug problem. We responded. "I know the guy that lives there," Mack said with a hint of bitterness in his voice. "I've arrested him a few times. Real *******. It's a shame that he's reproduced." I nodded and kept silent as I went over the proper procedure for handling this type of thing in my head. First we would attempt to make contact with the father. If we couldn't get him to the door, we would get a key from the landlord and make entry for a welfare check. If we did make contact with the father, we check on the child. If everything checked secure, we would be done. If everything didn't check secure, well, we would cross that bridge if we came to it. We arrived at the address given and walked upstairs to the apartment in question.The hallway reeked of urine and music blasted from one of the downstairs units. Mack tried knocking on the door, but got no response. Over the head banging racket coming from downstairs, we could hear the small voice of a child whimpering from inside. Finally, we told dispatch to make contact with the landlord and have him come out here with a spare key. Arthur Bucket was his name. More of a slum-lord than anything. They told him the situation and the bastard said he wasn't coming out. It was our problem. When the dispatcher told him that he could be held liable if anything happened to that child he changed his tune in a hurry and said he could be there in 45 minutes. Mack swore under his breath when he heard the news. From behind the closed door, a child-like wail pierced right through our bullet proof vests, and into our hearts. That was enough. "Close your eyes, Rookie," he said. "You don't see what I'm about to do." I obediantly closed my eyes, but reopened them again a moment later when I heard a loud crash as Mack's hefty boot made contact with the flimsy door. It came away from the wall, hinges and all. I will never forget what happened next. It was the middle of July, and even these crappy apartments had a working air conditioner. This one had apparently been turned off to save power. A wave of heat rolled out of the open doorway, nearly taking my breath away and causing me to squint my eyes. The next thing that I noticed was the smell. It rode piggy back on the heat wave and nearly caused me to gag. It was a sickeningly sweet smell, combined with an after odor of feces and urine. I put my sleeve up to my nose and mouth in a vain effort to filter out the offending smell. What my eyes beheld next, made me believe in the existence of true evil in this world. In the center of the living room, littered with cigarette butts, beer cans, and drug paraphernalia, sat a child of about 2 years old. His blond hair was matted to his forehead with sweat from the sweltering heat and his diaper was so full of excrement that it dragged behind him on the floor as he attempted to crawl towards us with his hands outstretched, reaching for help. Tears welled up in my eyes, as the horror of the situation took hold and prevented me from moving an inch. Thank God Mack was there. He immediately rushed to the infant and picked him up, stinky diaper and all. "Snap out of, Kid," he barked at me, but not loud enough to scare the child he now cradled in his arms as if it was one of his own. "This is where you find out which kind of person you are. You have a job to do. Now do it. We can both have a cry over this later." On some level I registered the truth in what he was saying. I administered a protective sweep of the residence, to clear any and all possible threats from the area. I found the Father, passed out in the back bedroom, the needle still hanging out of his arm. The rest of the call went by in a blur of activity. The Department of Social Servies was called and they took protective custody of the child, who I later learned was named Rudy. Before they got there, I got to see a whole different side of Mack Brown, the gruff, rough-and-tumble street cop who I thought I had pegged so precisely. Having two kids of his own, he expertly cleaned and changed Rudy, all the while playing peekaboo and lightly tickling his extended belly. He then took him outside into the fresh air and got him one of the toys that he always kept in the trunk of his patrol car, for just such emergencies. Rudy clutched at that little teddy bear as if it were the most precious thing in the world to him. Meanwhile, and ambulance arrived on the scene and started attending to Rudy's dad. He wasn't dead, which I considered and still do consider a terrible shame. After reviving him with a shot of adrenaline, they took him on to the hospital. I heard that he was brought up on multiple counts of child neglect and endangerment. I'm not sure what his punishment was. After everyone had left, Mack did his best to reposition the door as he had found it. We got back in our patrol car, and I sat their for a moment. My hands shook slightly as I put the keys in the ignition. Mack lit a cigarette, took a long drag, and gave me a meaningful look. "Well, did you decide what kind of person you are?" he asked. "Yeah. I said." Without saying a word, I took off my badge and laid it on the front dash. "I'll call you if I need you." Copyright 2008 Daniel |
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