I did my Vic PD ridealong the night after Chris did his. I feel like I got a different perspective (maybe it's because I was with a lady cop) so I'm going to put out a few observations from my first night in the front seat of a cop car.
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| From trendhunter.com - Brooke Shields, Candice Swanepoel and Elaine Irwin are 'Lady Cops' in Vogue Paris. |
Law students get almost no practical experience in their first year. We learn about the law in general, and not a lot about how it applies to people's lives. I've done six months of criminal law, and if I was arrested, I wouldn't be clear on my rights. So any chance I get to do a real life law thing, I take it.
When I went out on Saturday night, I was pretty sure that I would get to talk down a hostage-taker, or tase someone. Instead, almost the entire night was spent on things to do with drugs, alcohol, or mental illness. My night started with a call to a woman who was walking around threatening to hurt herself and others. Turns out that she's well known to police - they've responded to calls about her more than 250 times. While I got a kick out of her asking all of the officer's astrological signs and explaining why they were in conflict with her based on the position of Venus, it was clear that she was a huge drain on police resources. Another officer just drove her home while my cop told me about how mentally ill people cycle in and out of the hospital - they have an episode, get arrested and taken to the hospital by the police, where they can be held if they are deemed to be a danger to themselves or others, and once they settle down and get back on their meds they get released. Mentally ill people are incredibly underserved by governmental services and they often go off their meds and cause a ruckus on the streets again.
As an aside - the Vancouver Island Health Authority has a 24-hour crisis line at 1-888-494-3888.
We then went to Esquimalt and dealt with a robbery between two 12 year old kids. One of the girls was already hooked on drugs and turning tricks. At 12. When I was 12 I was learning to ride horses and sewing boxer shorts in home ec.
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| porcupineridge.com |
We got back into downtown Vic around 11. After guarding a crime scene in front of the McDonalds for a while (for the love of god, police tape means go around, not duck under), I realized that I hadn't been downtown, stone cold sober, on a Saturday night for a long time. I am an old lady - I couldn't stop commenting on what all the 20-year-old girls were wearing. My god, how can they walk around with those super high heels and tiny dresses with no jackets? It's cold out! I was once young and fun, but now I just snicker as drunk girls get their heels caught in sidewalk grates.
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| From redcarpetvictim.com - even Jessica Simpson, with her own line of shoes, can't handle grates. |
At 2am, drunk twentysomethings streamed out of the bars. My cop told me that it was the same every Friday and Saturday night - lots of punches thrown between drunk guys for no good reason. Almost none of them will want to press charges the next day, so the police mostly try to break up the fights and send people home. If any of the parties are overly belligerent, they might get to spend the night in the drunk tank (which I saw - it is gross) but the police don't want to go through the paperwork of processing everyone and then babysitting them at the station.
We didn't arrest anyone all night, but we did talk to a lot of people. A lot of the people that police deal with don't make it to court, or even to the police station. Policing is mostly about being an authoritative but reassuring presence - the police show up, talk to people, calm things down and send everyone on their way. If I was a police officer, I would likely yell things at drunk kids from my loudspeaker, so I guess it's good that I wasn't allowed to touch anything in the police car.
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