Patrol

I’m no coach, but I’ve been given a pup for the night. He is energetic and young, and my few words of instruction bounce off his eagerness. I’ve spent nine hours of a ten hour shift teaching the pup how to patrol. Patrolling is a slow creep along the back ways to see what the street gives you. Patrolling requires one to look and linger and drive slowly enough to see a problem let alone engage. The pup drives fast and clings to the main streets.

As I guide the pup back to the dark, less travelled streets for the long winding trip back to the barn, I see a man in the street, angry, and larger and younger than me. He is walking down the middle of the street with a hard stride. I can feel his anger. Hearing the rush of the approaching car, he glares back. Seeing the patrol car, he stuffs an item in his jacket.

We need to talk to him.

The pup, eager all night for anything, despite my words, keeps driving. The pup can smell the potential for a fight, but he is still a pup and freezes.

We need to talk to him.

Alpha dog wins. The car stops. We hop out.

The angry man doesn’t want to be stopped. He looks at the pup, then me, and wisely begins barking at the pup. The pup takes a step back. Mistake. He lost his show.

I step in, low growl, and engage eyes. I talk him back to standing on the curb. He is angry, but wants no fight.

He missed the bus out of the little town he was visiting a friend in, and has walked five miles only to miss the last bus in this section of town, so he will have to walk another 5 miles to his apartment downtown.
The man is old enough to have been arrested a dozen times, if he was trying to cause trouble, but when I pull his record. He has skirted problems, but has yet to be pinched.

I make him an offer to the next transit station. He’ll make his bus downtown. All I require is a pat down, to prove he isn’t carrying a weapon.

His eyes pop. His face lights. He is all grins. He cannot believe his luck. He empties his pockets, details the contents, consents to the pat down, and off we go.

I drop him off at the transit station as his bus pulls up.

So why did we do that?

Pup scratched his head and says weakly, “uuu, community policing?”

No.

He was pissed and in my neighborhood looking for a fight. Now he is happy, halfway home, and we won’t have to deal with him again. Maybe next time, he might give another officer who stops him the benefit of the doubt or may even help. At least, the next time he sees me, he won’t want to fight from the start.
It is the first time all night his eagerness is not getting the better of him.

Comments

[Bunny&Claude]

:) That makes me all warm and fuzzy.

[Peter]

Glad you started a blog! This is a great start. I look forward to reading more.

[Jim]

Your first post reminds me when I was training as a psych tech at an inpatient hospital WAAAAY back in undergrad. Myself and a senior tech were escorting a patient who had been discharged from the hospital to the local Greyhound station - he was planning on catching a bus to a treatment facility one state south, where he had finally been admitted to a rehab facility that took folks with major mental disorders. As we waited for the patient to get on the bus, he struck up a conversation with another gentleman, and they got to talking about some clubs in the city in which they would transfer buses. As he was boarding, I mentioned to the other tech that he would never make it to the facility. He'll get drunk and miss the bus. I'll never forget the response:

"Sure, but [city name here] is out of our catchment area".

That's when I learned about "Greyhound therapy".