Tag Archive for: night shift

Looking Sharp: A Bowling Ball, A Shiny Badge, And … Elephant Poop?

Graveyard shift—those eight long and often mind-numbing hours between midnight and the time your relief signs on to take over your beat. It’s boring. It’s exciting. It’s sleep-depriving. And it’s getting dressed while everyone else in your household is undressing, putting on pajamas, and crawling between the sheets for a good night’s rest in a set and toasty-warm bed.

Speaking of getting dressed … there’s a daily ritual for cops—shower and shave, slip on underwear and t-shirt—rookies will quickly learn that it’s best to put on their socks at this point. You’ll see why in a moment. It’s also important to note that not all officers shave as part of the daily routine. Some simply don’t need to. For example, my wife, if she’d chosen to become a police officer instead of a scientist, would have the luxury of skipping this step.

Next comes the vest. You’ve left the upper Velcro straps in place to allow you to slip the entire contraption over your head like a 7lb sweater. So over the head it goes, followed by pulling the side straps taut and securing them in place. Of course, you never get it right the first time, so you riiiiipp the Velcro loose and do it again and again until the fit is just right.

The shirt is a process all to itself—pinning on the badge and other shiny do-dads in their appropriate places (sort of like decorating a polyester Christmas tree), and inserting a couple of ink pens in the sewn-in pen slot beside the breast pocket. After a quick check to be sure your name tag is not upside down, you slip on the pre-adorned shirt, pulling and twisting to make it lay properly over the vest.

Time for the pants. Out of necessity, you’ve placed them in a spot that doesn’t doesn’t require bending too far, because the vest has already limited your movements just a bit. Now, tuck the tails of the vest inside the waist band of the pants and thread a belt through the loops so your pants won’t fall down. Goodness knows, once you’re fully dressed it would require a huge effort to reach ALL the way to your ankles to pull your pants up again (now do you understand the socks issue?).

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Front and rear vest panels. The top two straps on the rear panel are often left attached to the front panel to allow slipping the entire vest over the head like a sweater, or t-shirt. The material at the bottom of each panel is tucked into the pants like a shirt tail. Obviously, the front panel (with the “U” shaped cutout) is for the “convenience” of male wearers during a trip to the restroom. Use your imaginations to determine the need for the opening in the material.

Shoes … They’re shiny and squeaky clean because that’s how you roll. Look sharp. Act sharp. Be sharp. One last, quick swipe with a cloth just in case a speck of dust has landed on the toes.

Next comes the duty belt/utility belt, with all its bells and whistles already in place. And yes, it’s heavy. Imagine strapping a bowling ball to your waist each day prior to heading off to work.

 

Securely connect the buckle hooks/clasps/snaps and then loop a few belt keepers around the duty belt and the belt holding up your pants. The last step is IMPORTANT. 

 

 

Belt Keepers

Without belt keepers, the thin straps made of leather or nylon with snap closures, the duty belt would easily and quickly fall down to your ankles, especially when running/chasing someone through a dark alley. Embarrassing, right?

Hamilton One 046

 

Hamilton One 094

Two belt keepers positioned between handcuff cases

Time to go to work, and by now everyone in the house is already asleep. So you tip-toe to the back door, with leather squeaking, keys jingling, and Velcro crackling all the way.

Outside, the neighborhood is pitch-dark, and still with the exceptions of a lone cricket chirping in the backyard and the owl who hooty-hoots at random times throughout the night.

The only lights on are a streetlamp at the corner and the sliver of yellow slicing through the narrow opening of the curtains at the front window in the house across the street, where you know the widow Jones is peeking outside. Tomorrow morning she’ll be there again so she can report to the rest of the neighborhood what time you went to work and what time you returned home. After all, they pay your salary and Mrs. Jones is not at all shy about reminding you of it, either.

Time to get into the car so you unlock the door, open it quietly, and then gently slide into the seat. I say gently, because if there’s even a tiny bit of love handle at your waist, that soft, floppy flesh will be severely pinched between the bottom edge of the Kevlar vest and the top edge of the duty belt somewhere near the pepper spray canister or your sidearm—a real eye-opening, tear-inducing way to start the shift.

You take care to gently close the door. Again, I say gently but this time it’s because  without fail, the sound of the door slamming shut causes the eruption of a cacophonous symphony of varying tones and pitches of yips, yaps, and howls from dozens of hyper-alert dogs, all from within a three block radius.

Thirty minutes later, at your first call of the night, you find yourself rolling around in the smelliest mud you’ve ever encountered, trying to handcuff two burglars who’d decided to lead you on a foot chase through the fairgrounds where, by the way, you realized the circus is in town and that what you’re rolling around in is not mud. Instead, it’s what elephants, horses, and other animals left behind while waiting for their time under the big top.

New Picture

And so it goes … night after night after night.

Look sharp. Act sharp. Be sharp.

Yeah, right …

 

/by

The Graveyard Shift: Feral Dogs, Mannequins, and The Sandman

The Graveyard Shift

It’s four in the morning, the halfway point of the graveyard shift, and fatigue is slowly gaining control of your eyelids. It’s a subtle move, like grasping the string on your grandmother’s window shades, slowly pulling them down. The Sandman’s gentle action is so gracefully executed that, well, you hardly notice it.

Thinking about your family asleep in their warm beds, you turn onto a side street and then into a narrow alleyway, trying to find a place to pull over. Five minutes. That’s all you need.

Shouldn’t have spent those three hours today playing with the kids when you could’ve been sleeping. Still, that’s the only time you get to see them awake. And, someone had to mow the lawn this afternoon, right? And the leaky kitchen sink drain needed fixing. Not to mention helping with homework assignments.

Oh yeah, tomorrow is the day you’re supposed to go to your third-grader’s class to tell them about police officers. How long could it take? One or two hours at the most, right? Well, there is the lunch afterward. Another hour. After all, you promised. Besides, it’s impossible to say no to those sweet brown eyes and minus-one-tooth smile.

Sleep. You need sleep.

Your headlights wash over the back of the alley as feral dogs and cats scramble out of the dumpster that sits behind a bakery like an old and tired dinosaur who’s mere days away from extinction.

The knot of animals scatter loaves of two-day-old bread in their haste to escape the human intruder who dared meddle with their nocturnal feeding. A speckled mutt with three legs hobbled behind a rusty air conditioning unit, dragging a long, dirty bag half-filled with crumbled bagels.

file00018255783You move on, shining your spotlight at the rear doors of a five and dime, an auto parts store, a barber shop, and the real estate office you used when buying your house. Only twenty more years to financial freedom and the joy of seeing the first AARP invitation-to-join letter in the mail.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe night air is damp with fog, dew, and city sweat that reeks of gasoline and garbage.

Tendrils of steam rise slowly from storm drains—ghostly, sinewy figures melting into the black sky.

Mannequins stare into infinity from tombs of storefront glass, waiting for daylight to take away the flashing neon lights that reflect from their plaster skin.

Desperate to close your own eyes, just for a minute or two, you park at the rear of the next alley, alongside a stack of flattened cardboard boxes. Their labels reflect someone’s life for the week—chicken, baby food, lettuce, disposable diapers, cigarettes, and two-dollar wine.

Four more hours. If you can only make it for four more hours…

Suddenly, a voice spews from the speaker behind your head, “Shots fired. Respond to 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Back up is en route.”

“10-4. I’m en route.”

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And so it goes. Night, after night, after night …

The Other Graveyard Shift

It’s believed by some that the graveyard shift (not this blog) got its name from people who accidentally buried their loved ones while Aunt Sue, Uncle Jack, or dear old grandma were still alive.

Believing the “dearly departed” had gone on to their reward, these folks fitted an unconscious or comatose Uncle Bill or Grandma with a new outfit and a spiffy pine box. Then they buried them in the local cemetery where night workers claimed to hear the dead screaming for help from below the ground.

When the gravediggers pulled the coffins from the earth to see what caused the ruckuses, they sometimes found scrape marks on the casket lids, indicating the person inside had tried to claw their way out before finally succumbing to a lack of oxygen.

He’s a “dead-ringer”

To remedy the situation, caskets were fitted with a long string that reached from inside the buried coffin to a bell up on the surface. This enabled the “dead” person to ring the bell should he awaken after his burial. Workers could then quickly rescue the living dead.

It’s debatable as to the validity of this tale, but it makes for an interesting story, especially for police officers who have cemeteries to patrol in their precincts. This bell-ringing story may have also been the inspiration for early tales of zombie activity.

 

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