My Birthday and the Cops

So the 17th was my 25th Birthday and it was a pretty good one. I had to work but, eh, you can't win 'em all. While I was at work I got FLOWERS... more flowers. One from my work and one from Matt. Nothing brings more attention to someone than flowers and a big pink balloon. After work I headed out to BJ's with friends to celebrate. It was so much fun and I had a really great time with all of them. Emily even made me a banner! All in all it was a good birthday :)

Last night I went out on a ride along with our local PD. My sister is an LAPD cop and I've always wanted to do one just so you can understand a bit better the job that they do. And I got to do exactly that. With every stop we made from 6pm till 2am the officer I was with did his best to explain to me why they stopped someone, what the situation was, and what the next step would be. Here are some of the highlights:

Drunk Hobo:

Our first call is to a liquor store were we have a report of a homeless man drunk in public. Only wearing his 76ers basketball shorts and a wooden cross around his neck, the officers ask the man questions and we take him to the station because he has a warrant out for unpaid tickets. So the officer puts the drunk man in our car and we head back to the station. Along the way the man repeatedly tells the officer "I hate cops" and tells me "Your pretty" only to change his opinion 5 seconds later and tell me that I wasn't pretty at all. Nice guy!

The Man Who Whore Women's Panties:

We stop a man on a bike who said he was on his way home, or rather that's where he said he was going. He spoke very little english and the officers spoke very little spanish. So the officer pats him down and finds that the man had the top button of his pants undone and he's WEARING WOMEN'S UNDERWEAR!!!! We try and get his name and the reason as to why he's wearing women's panties but he doesn't understand. We log him in the system and the area in which he was in case he might be a "peeper" and it's good to have those people on file.

Meth Van

The next call later that night was for back up that one of the other officers had called us for. None of the cops have partners in the shift I was on, so they call another officer for backup once they feel it's needed. We pull up and the other officer already had two men in the back seat, they're gang members. Gang tattoos, shaved head and wearing gang attire (and in the dust on the window of their ghetto van was their gang letters... Classy). Every time we go to a call the officer told me I could come and stand next to them and listen to what was going on, unless he didn't feel it was safe, then I would stay next to the car and observe until he called me over. So on this one since the guys were already cuffed and in the car it was ok for me to come and look with them as they searched the van. The officer tells me to hold out my hand and he places what looks like a Chinese popper in my hand... But it's METH and he tells me "Just hang onto that for a sec". So now I'm holding METH in my hand and really trying not to drop it. They search the rest of the van (which was a wreck!) and find the meth pipe they had been smoking the drugs with and now we have our evidence. I give the officer back the meth and he takes them into be booked.


Pretty interesting night. The officers were really nice and the officer that I rode around with all night was really awesome. Just an average guy, who could be your worst enemy or the nicest guy depending on the call and the people who where involved. I didn't think they would let me be so involved with the calls, but obviously they were and I never thought that the night would have me holding meth in my hand for 20 minutes. I'm tired now but it was totally worth it.