It's Ride Along Week!

What is Ride Along Week, you ask?  Ride Along Week is where I tell you all about my adventures riding along with an actual police officer for a night and sharing in the adventures that come along with the job.  It has ups and downs, a new background, and a bunch of stories, so strap yourselves in and get ready.

I actually first heard about ride alongs at Iowa State but it never worked out for me to go on one and I was majorly bummed.  Then this last spring, my Mom and her friend attended the Sioux City Police Department's
Citizens Police Academy and got to go on a ride along.  I was mega jealous.  At their "graduation ceremony", I talked to a few police officers and asked if I would be able to do a ride along and they said yes.  So this last week after school was finally done, I called and made my appointment. 

I decided to go on the 3rd shift because I figured it would be the most exciting.  I showed up at 10:30pm and checked in then had to wait for about a half hour until the nightly roll call meeting was over.  Eventually Randy showed up and told me that I was going to be riding with him.

Randy is a guy in about his early to mid 50s with gray hair and a pleasant personality.  He also has a mustache, so you know he's def awesome.  He took me to the car, showed me what things were inside, started up the computer and then told me how to run it.  That's right.  I got to run the computer.  I'm practically a police officer.

Fun fact: Randy and I own the same flashlight! He uses his to fight crime. I use mine to find shoes in my closet.

Once we were on the rode, we got a call about a woman who was in a fight with her boyfriend in a rougher part of town.  It actually happens to be the same part of town I went to high school in but it looks very very different at night.  After not being able to find her for 10 minutes, we finally saw the woman walking up the street.  

Randy and I plus another officer got out to talk to her and see what was happening.  Okay, I didn't talk at all.  I just stood there and tried to figure out how to hold my arms so that I felt comfortable but tough.  It's really hard to look tough next to people with guns when you're just wearing jeans and a t-shirt. 

This woman claimed that her boyfriend had choked her three days before and that he now had her $25 and food stamps card.  She also explained after being asked a lot of questions that she and her boyfriend had showed up in town with no jobs and no housing hoping to "start over".  But because they had no game plan, they were now living on the streets.  The woman had tried to get into a shelter for the night but the shelters were either full or wouldn't take her because she wasn't a domestic abuse case.  The police explained that her situation was really a civil matter and that they couldn't do anything because there was no way to prove that it was actually her money.  But they did agree to walk down to her boyfriend and stand there while she asked for her stuff back.

So that's what we did.  I stood in a parking lot while Randy and his fellow officer shone flashlights on this guy's backpack while he rifled through it.  Of course once the police were there he was more than happy to return her items to her.  What I found the most interesting, though, were the other people present.  There was one guy who was milling about "cleaning" the yard, which was strewn with trash and surrounded by a broken chain link fence.  His efforts were pointless.  There was also another woman who had shown up in a cab (how do these people have money for cabs?) who proceeded to run around, sit down, hug the cleaner man, stand up, offer to take a phone charger, and generally just be a crazo.  She was obviously drunk but it was a little funny to see her put on this side show while the police were obviously there.  

We finally left after Randy explained that this was in no way an emergency and we had other things to do.  As we started walking back to the cars, I asked if these type of people were a common occurrence.  Randy explained that Chicago had recently shut down a housing project and that the state of Iowa graciously allowed those displaced people to bring their money to low income housing here.  So now we have an influx of people with no jobs or family here who are hoping to try and find a place to live on the cheap.  It creates a less than ideal situation for the city.  But it also creates an entertaining look at the nut jobs roaming around the Sioux at night.

Lesson learned: If you are assaulted, report that immediately, otherwise the police can't do anything to help you.  Also, the police do a fantastic job of getting people to do things just by standing close by and holding a flashlight.  Very impressive.