boot check

If you do this job long enough, there comes a time when you are asked (read told) to train new people. There is no getting out of it no matter how hard you try. Almost everybody gets stuck doing it.

Normally, a new officer rides with you for a few weeks, attached to your hip and your schedule. If the officer is brand-spanking-new (fresh out of the academy) you begin with equipment checks… for some strange reason new people seldom have a flashlight that is any good. This happens so frequently that those of us who train, almost always have one or two extras in our gear along with other extra “stuff” (my nickname was bullets Choate).

You also concentrate on getting the “boot” to know where you are at all times. Regularly asking them…. O.K. where are we now?

Once those two things are well begun, you start having them write reports, traffic tickets, and conduct field interviews. 

If all of this goes well, you might even let them drive part or all of a shift. 

After two or three weeks have gone by, and you see progress, then the “boot” gets assigned to another officer who evaluates these basics and begins instructing the new person on more complicated aspects of the job, like which charges to file, how to conduct themselves in court, how to escalate and de-escalate situations. All the while, you observe the “boot” and how they react in difficult situations under stress.

Such was the case on this beautiful Saturday evening. I had just been assigned to a “boot” who had spent three weeks with my best buddy, and who was now sitting in my unit for day one of phase two of his training.

He was nervous and had some trouble expressing himself for the first couple of hours but that came as no surprise. My partner (his first three-week instructor) can be a bit firm and intimidating (read grumpy) so I was prepared to ease up on this kid a bit.

One hour, two hours, three, he would not relax. Nervous as a cat. Jumpy, jittery, actually flinching every time we got radio traffic.

As much as this was bothering me, it all came to a screeching halt when we got a call from dispatch of a bar fight with shots fired at one of the well-known biker bars in my sector.

Here we go…. lights, siren, and hauling the mail.

I must pause the story here to explain that my six-year-old, two hundred thousand miles marked car, one of the “shift” cars that went months without ever being shut off, could not generate much power with the air conditioner on. 

So, A.C. off. Windows halfway down. Radio up to max volume and screaming down the road we go.

Several units radioed that they were coming to help, but it was clear that me and my “boot” were going to be first on the scene.

About two minutes into this mad sleigh ride, I turned to “boot” to tell him exactly what I wanted him to do once we came to a stop.

I did not like what I saw. His bottom lip was quivering violently and he was mumbling something to me that sounded an awful lot like … well hold on. That can’t be correct. You heard him wrong. Not even a possibility that could be what he said. No sir!

All of these thoughts happened in about two seconds, which was plenty long enough for me to decide to back off, turn off the lights and siren, and call dispatch saying that we could not continue and would one of the other units please take up the call.

As I pulled off of the road, came to a stop, and put the boiling, panting, ancient, out-of-breath chariot into park, I took a breath and calmly turned to “boot” and said to him that the reason I called us off of the call was that I thought it sounded like he had said… no that could not possibly be right, could it? After all, it was very loud in the poor screaming old car, the siren, the loud radio, and all the wind noise… I heard you incorrectly….. right?

My “boot” turned to me, took one large panic-induced gulp of air, with accompanying tears, snot, and gyrations, and said with no pauses or inflection changes, and seemingly all in one breath…

“During the academy, the range master said  NEVER load your gun until you are told to do so and ONLY when you are told to do so and I kept waiting for Officer D to tell me to load my gun and he never did for the whole time I rode with him and then today I thought you would for sure say I should load my gun because you seemed nicer than Officer D but you never said load your gun and now here we are going to this call and people are already shooting and I kept waiting for you to tell me to load my gun and you didn’t say load your gun and you seemed so focused and busy getting us to the call that I thought I should say something just in case you forgot or something”… followed by several big breaths and blowing his nose.

Very seldom in my life have I experienced the level of surprise I felt at that moment. Other English words now come to mind, astonished, gobsmacked, thunderstruck, dumbfounded.

The rest of the story of this “boot” is far less interesting except that two days later after I explained the deal with making sure your gun was always loaded and checking his to drive the point home, he nearly shot a tiny yapping mini-dog during an interview of a break-in at a house. He pulled out his gun and pointed it at the tiny snarling dog. In that fleeting micro-second I thought, oh crap, this is all my fault!

I asked him to wait in my car and when I cleared the call I drove him to the station whereupon he went home and resigned the next day.

I was told, a couple of years later, that he went back to college and is now a vice-something at a good-sized bank in Cleveland. Good for him.

Getting to tell my buddy that his “boot” of three weeks was riding around with an empty gun for the entire time was priceless.