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First day of the two week burglary detail.
I was up at the crack of dawn, slightly earlier then the most insane rooster, which isn’t a good thing.
5:30AM my alarm went off and with me definitely not being a morning person it took more then the usual muster of motivation.
I arrived at my station around 6:40AM, 20 minutes prior to my shift.
My roll call was supposed to start at 0700 so I had 20 whole minutes to try and get some last minute shut-eye to compensate for the 2 hours of sleep I got the night before.
That didn’t happen. One of the guys on this new squad found me in the parking lot and defeated any further attempts of snoozing.
Fine fine fine, I walked with him into my temporary Sarges office and he moved us to the main roll call room. I haven’t seen the inside of a normal roll call room for a while, so this was refreshing. My Sarge sat across from us at the big press board table and the four members on the squad were all accounted for.
The Day shift LT walked in and sat down next to the Sarge.
LT : “Gentlemen, you’ve been hand picked to man this burglary squad. We’re expecting a lot from you guys. Devildog (was moved from CST) is the designated Undercover unit and will continue his normal function as an ‘eyeball’. Dash (Me, moved from the Jumpout unit) knows all the faces and hot spots that aren’t on our comstat maps, so he’s going to pick the areas to work and as for you two (LT pointing at the two guys picked from the road), take this as a learning experience and follow what the other guys tell you and you’ll do fine.”
Sarge : “Alright guys, heres the plan. I want you responding to all burglaries in progress, suspicious people/cars calls and anything you think will stop burglaries in the district. When you’re not responding to those calls, I want you out on the streets stopping everyone you see that looks like their up to no good. I believe Devildog is only supposed to be here a week and the Jumpout unit gave us Dash for two weeks. Lets see if they can train you two so you can keep up the work when they rotate out.”
We nodded in unison.
Sarge : “That’s pretty much it, good luck out there and happy hunting.”
Hmm. That was more brief then I expected. Basically they want us doing exactly what I thought they’d want us to do.
With that, the four of us left the station and decided to go eat at a local breakfast diner. Man oh man are Eggs/bacon/sausage/pancakes a great way to start off your day. I shouldn’t eat those too often but I can honestly say I enjoy a well rounded breakfast. Normally I wake up around lunch time and only eat Lunch and Dinner, skipping Breakfast all together. I could get used to this day shift thing.
After we ate I picked a ‘box’ to work based on the trends of burglaries last week and the places where I knew the most kids that were out of school would congregate. We started working an area just next to a large park which was also near a few drug holes.
Now, I knew that we weren’t going to catch any people stealing big ticket items like washing machines and Air conditioning units because those normally happen at night. The burglaries we’d see would most likely be kids walking up to a house they live near because they know the owner is at work and can’t protect whatever item of interest the kid saw the owner bring in the house once, way back when.
Cruising around the ‘box’ I saw a house with the side door ajar so of course I radioed it over the Tac channel and we surrounded the house. After making sure we had the points covered I walked up to check it out and it turned out to be an abandoned house that some crack heads went into to smoke their ‘fix’ and there was nothing but empty cocaine baggies all over the place. Lots of baggies, no bodies. Next.
We drove around for a few more hours, alternating the ‘box’ north each time we felt we’d covered everything. We did that all the way up until we hit the top border of our county. Nice.
I decided to sit back from a main street and just watch a block with my binoculars. I watched the cars go by, people walking to and from the corner store and a kid riding an orange bicycle.
I watched the kid on that bicycle cross my field of vision not once, but four times.
He was literally circling the block, possible ‘casing’ a house waiting for the owner to leave.
I started up my car and started driving slowly up to him, like a shark to prey. When I got next to him he immediately got the ‘deer in headlights’ look. Bingo.
Me : “Hey partner, hop off the bike for a second. No no, you’re not in any trouble. Say, whose bike is that?”
Him : “I dunno man, my cousins. He lives around the corner.”
Me : “Which corner?”
Him : “Ah, well, that one.”
Me : “Right, whens the last time you were arrested partner?”
Him : “Like in April. It was nothing. I don’t remember.”
I was now looking down at his waist band through my Terminator sunglasses and a long thin bulge in his left jean pocket caught my eye.
Me : “April? That was only a few months ago, how’d you forget that already? Tell you what man, put your hands on my hood and back up, widening your stance.”
He complied slowly. Just then Devildog rolled up in his Unmarked vehicle and got out to assist me in checking this fine citizen for weapons.
I started immediately for the pocket I knew had some sort of knife in it when our friend decided he didn’t want to have his hands on the hood anymore. He attempted to go for the object in his pocket and both myself and Devildog literally picked him up by the arms on each side and threw him into the hood, cuffing him. Once cuffed I pulled a 5 inch Balisong (butterfly) knife from his pocket.
Hmmm.
After a Record check to see his past history, he’d been arrested for Burglary and Felony possession of Marijuana (over 20 grams) and he was on probation for another 2 years.
Good for him.
After being arrested I asked him all sorts of questions as to why he was in the area, whose house he was going to visit, the whole nine yards, he had no real reason to be there. I believe he was going to commit a Burglary at the very least. I charged him with the Loitering and Prowling and Carrying a Concealed Weapon. I also Violated his probation so he’ll be going away for at least 2 years.
After that I didn’t do much for the remainder of the shift. The squad seems like it’ll be fun and at least I have the weekends off for the time being.
More to come soon!
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