On my first day in the traffic detail in 1999 my training officer told me to keep a log of every report I took. He suggested I get a steno pad and write down every report number by the month and keep a running total.

Over the years this number has grown and is sometimes the subject of conversation with other officers, who ask how many I’m up to now.

Today was my first shift of the new year and I added up my yearly total for 2020. The total was four hundred collision reports for the year. That was a little down from 2019 when I took four hundred thirty five and four hundred thirty eight in 2018.

Here’s what make my 2020 stats significant.

In April of 2020, we stopped responding to non-injury accidents, along with hit and runs with no suspect info. You’d think my numbers would be down significantly from the years before, but they weren’t.

It’s also significant because that doesn’t count the reports that trainees took when they rode with me. Who knows what that number would’ve been had I been solo those nights.

So, what does it all mean?

It means there are some careless MOFOs out there and you don’t want to end up in my log, which is 8,202 and counting as of tonight.