Riding along with cop no pleasure cruise

I don’t know how they do it.

I don’t know how they manage to get up each morning – or afternoon if they’re working the evening shift – and put on the same blue gabardine they wore the day before. I don’t know how they put on a bulletproof vest and strap on a gun and walk out the door without sagging under the weight of what happened the day before, or the day before that, but they do.

A person ought to get a little credit for that.

I spent one day in a patrol car last week, riding the streets of Spokane, experiencing a tiny slice of what the police see and deal with every day, and I still can’t shake it. I was lucky. I didn’t ride into anything horrible. Or violent. Or particularly dangerous. But by the end of the day I’d seen enough to cling to me, to stick to my consciousness every time I tried to shake it off.

It was a busy day. We moved steadily from one call to the next. From one little crisis to another. To the next dispute between neighbors. To the next arrest of a felon with outstanding warrants. We drove around looking for an old woman who had wandered away from her home. And, later, for a man with medical issues who hadn’t arrived at the place he’d set out for. (Who, it later turned out, was right where he was supposed to be the whole time.)

We talked to people who were angry, upset and confused. We talked to one or two that I felt pretty sure were lying to us. We responded to calls from people who didn’t answer the door when we got there.

The calls kept coming in, joining the queue. That’s what would wear me down. You answer one call and move right on to the next one. It never stops. You take a bathroom break, you’re keeping someone waiting. And behind every call is a person who is frightened, who needs a little help or is just mad as hell.

Like the mother of the runaway girl.

The girl was only 15 years old, but she’d already seen a lot of the world. She’d made a lot of bad choices for someone so young. She hadn’t gotten into serious trouble yet. But she was on her way.

When we found her she was asleep, in a filthy house full of groggy people. She didn’t argue or resist. She just got her clothes and came with us. Her mother was outside waiting and she let the girl have it.

As I watched the mother and child, and listened to the police officer speak softly and calmly to both of them, I studied the girl. She had the deepest, bluest eyes. And she was smart. I could see it in her eyes. I could see it in the way she looked at her mother and the policeman as she shivered in the chilly air. I watched what she was thinking play across her face.

She wasn’t arguing. I think she agreed with her mother. She was tired of herself, too.

“What do you want to do when you’re grown,” the officer asked her when we were back in the car. It sounded like the kind of question he might ask his own child. The kind of thing I ask mine.

“I want to go to college,” she said without missing a beat. “I want to be a kindergarten teacher.” Her voice softened when she talked about working with children.

The officer pointed out that if she didn’t straighten up, if she really got into trouble and went to jail, she probably wouldn’t ever get that chance.

“I know,” she said, wearily. He eyes filled with tears and she turned to look out the window.

And then, as we watched the girl’s mother get into her car and drive away, he asked her how she would feel if her children did this to her. Behaved the way she was acting.

“My children won’t do this,” she said firmly. “I’ll teach them right from wrong.”

We were all silent.

We drove her to the place her mother had requested we take her, somewhere she could get counseling and guidance, and turned her over. We left her and headed back to the territory the officer covered. For a long time neither one of us said anything.

“Do you think she’ll be OK?” I asked and I watched him think about his reply.

“It’s hard to say,” he said. And then, his eyes never leaving the road, his hands on the wheel, he said, “If she was mine I’d get her away from everything here. I’d take her somewhere far away and help her start over. I’d go as far as I had to go.”

It was the kind of thing a parent says. When there’s danger it’s all we can think to do. Pick up a child and run for safety. But, how far is far enough to break that kind of pull? You have to push hard and fly a long way to escape gravity. And gravity has nothing on a lifetime of bad decisions.

We spent the rest of the day on routine calls. At the end of his shift the officer took me back to my car and we said goodbye. I thanked him for letting me ride along.

Then he went back to take care of the paperwork, to wrap up everything so he could go home to his wife and children. The people he protects and serves after a day of doing the same for us.

That night, lying in the dark, waiting for sleep, I though about the day, about the people I’d seen and the places I’d been. I thought about policeman and the way he’d spoken of his family. I thought about the things he sees, and what stays with him, woven tightly into the fiber of who he is and the uniform he wears.

And I thought about the girl.

The next morning I would get up and go to work. The officer would buckle into his patrol car and make his rounds. The girl would be free. Free to go home, or to school or back to the people who make it easy to be bad.

I felt a little blue. Like blue gabardine. Like a pair of deep blue eyes.