The Man With one White Shoe
I needed a neck brace to help hold my head up. I was so sleepy that I felt numb all over. Most of the time on my job it is extremely boring. During the long slow times I get so bored that it is hard for me to keep my eyes open while I drive. I turned the wheel and drove down an empty street and my eyes just kept trying to slam shut. It would be so easy to give into the sleep, so very easy. I rolled the car window down and let the cold night air rush in to revive me. I started to feel a little better. This is the way it usually is on the long night shift. The first couple of hours are pretty interesting and then it slows down. The oncoming headlights began to blur together and I decided to turn into a brightly lit car dealership. After checking the salesmen’s office for signs of a break in, I poked along, up and down the long lines of cars, trucks and vans in an effort to defeat the creeping sleep. I decided to park my car in the middle of the brightly lit crowded acre of shiny vehicles, turned off my engine and stepped out into the brisk night air. The car dealership was closed at this hour or there would be car salesmen crawling all over me, telling me lies to try and sell me a car. I guessed that the temperature was about forty degrees, maybe upper thirties. I have learned that nothing works better as a stimulus than just getting off my butt and walking around for a while. Under the bright lights all the new cars looked like shiny gem stones. I looked at some of the window stickers and realized that they were all priced like rare jewels as well. I was starting to feel like my old alert self once more, when I heard the crackle of my car radio.
A sexy woman’s voice was saying my call sign over and over. “Car 420, car 420”, I walked to the open car door, picked up the radio microphone and responded, “car 420, Washington and Main”. I was required to always answer a radio call with my location. The sexy voice momentarily ignored me and called for car 460. I heard car 460 respond with his location just as I had done. I figured that the dispatcher with the low sexy voice was going to send both of us on the same call or maybe she wanted to find out which one of us would be the closest to an address. After another few seconds of silence there was a high pitched tone that denotes an emergency call. Then she came back on over the radio, “car 420 and car 460, 2618 East Florida Street, apartment 28A, a burglary in progress”. I immediately responded with 10-4 and then George in car 460 did the same. Everyone knows that 10-4 is the universal radio signal for acknowledgement of information. George waited for me to 10-4 before he did since I got the call first. That is what radio procedure specifies and I am big on radio procedure. Well, there goes my boredom. I was wide awake now.
I looked at my watch and it was 3:14 in the morning. I figured that it would take me about 10 minutes to arrive in Morningside Homes and about 5 more to find the victim’s address in the housing project. I didn’t recognize the address, so it wasn’t an apartment where we got a lot of calls. Morningside Homes were a low income housing project not too far from my beat in the downtown area. I knew from the location that George, in car 460 had given, that it would take about 5 minutes longer for him to get there than it would for me. I slid back into the front seat of my patrol car and started the engine. I put the gear shift into drive and slowly drove out of the car lot. As I drove out of the car lot and entered on to Washington Street, I flicked the toggle switch mounted on the dash that turned on my blue lights and then reached down under the dash to the center console and turned the knob to start the loud wail of my siren. When responding to a burglary in progress call procedure dictates to run in emergency mode with blue lights and siren on. When we get near to the victim’s address, we turn off our sirens, so the burglar does not hear us coming. We don’t want to let the burglar know we are approaching and give him a chance to escape. I remember that I was thinking “maybe we can catch this one”, when the sexy dispatcher’s voice crackled over the radio again. “Car 420 and car 460 switch to F-3 for further information”. Man, she sounded sultry. I wonder what she looks like. Any woman’s voice on the radio at 3 in the morning sounds sexy, except of course for Ann Estoban’s voice, that sounds like slow motion chalk on a blackboard at anytime of the day or night.
I turned the frequency knob on my radio and switched to channel F-3 as directed. Once George and I acknowledged being on frequency F-3 a very mature, calm and cool man’s voice said, car 420 and 460, be advised the victim is on the phone with us now and the suspect is still inside of her apartment. She says she can hear him moving around in the next room. She has locked herself in the bathroom until officers arrive. George and I both responded with 10-4 to acknowledge the information. Now if this bastard will just stay there for a few more minutes...
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