“Your mom still loves you”

Posted on November 21, 2015 by Badge415

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“Unit involved 902T.”

I was loading my patrol car up when I heard an officer broadcast over the radio that he was involved in a non-injury traffic collision. He gave his location and asked for a sergeant and a traffic unit to respond.

“729 en route,” I said as I drove out of the police department parking lot.

I arrived a short time later and saw a patrol car in a parking space next to a black car. John, the officer I heard on the radio, got out of the passenger seat and shook his head at me.

“Where’s the other car?” I asked.

John told me his trainee had side swiped a parked car while backing up. That’s when the trainee got out of the driver seat and walked up to us with his head held low. He looked like a guy who lived in a one-bedroom apartment that just found out his wife was pregnant with octuplets.

I wanted to laugh when I saw the look on his face. Not because I wanted to make fun of him. It was because I had that same look over 20 years ago when I crashed two weeks after getting out of training.

The damage on this call was nothing compared to my first traffic collision where both cars were towed away and the other driver was transported to the hospital in an ambulance. Now that was a bad day in 1995.

There’s also another reason why I remembered the day so well. It was because of the traffic officer laughing at me as he tried to make me feel better when he said, “It’s OK. Everyone crashes.”

Nothing was going to make me feel better that day because I was at fault, Of course, that didn’t stop him from joking around a lot. Looking back, that was his way of telling me this wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

After everything was cleaned up I got into my sergeant’s car so he could give me a ride back to the station. As we drove down the street he said, “I’ll buy you a soda.”

He pulled into the Burger King drive thru and said, “What do you want?”

“I’ll take a root beer,” I said with a dejected look.

“Don’t worry, everyone crashes.”

“Have you ever crashed?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said with a smile.

I got back to the station and walked in with my tail between my legs. At the end of shift I got a good dose of humor thrown my way from my co-workers.

I remembered all of this as I stood in front of the trainee, who recently graduated from the academy. Of course, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to make a joke as I said, “Don’t worry. Your mom still loves you.”

I laughed as an uneasy smile came across his face. I took his statement and told him the same thing I heard all those years ago when I was new to the world of police work. “Don’t worry. Everyone crashes.”

“Yes, sir,” was all he could say.

When I was done I handed him a collision card with the report number on it as I said, “Here’s a card.”

It was the same card I give out to regular people at collisions. “Keep this so you can look back and laugh one day.”

He smiled and took the card. Hopefully in a few years he’ll think the card was as funny as I did.

Where’s his foot?

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Badge415

_DSC4559-2 The other night I went to an injury traffic collision involving a motorcycle and a car. The first officer on scene got on the radio and said it was a possible fatality. He also needed more traffic control to shut down the street. I was on a car stop at the time and gave the driver a break because I had to go.

As I drove away with my lights and siren on, I thought how this guy got a huge break on an expensive ticket because the other guy crashed. Kind of weird how one person’s misfortune was another person’s luck.

When I got to the scene, I saw the rider down in the street with fire personnel around him. There was a large group of people standing on the sidewalk watching.

His femur was sticking out of the skin above the knee in wound that looked right out of a war movie. There was also a large piece of flesh in the middle of the intersection that looked like a slice of cheese pizza.

After looking at the injury, I walked around to where his head was. That’s when I did a double take at the victim’s leg. It didn’t look right. From my angle the end of his leg looked like a pointy stub. The first thing that came to mind was, “Where’s his foot?”

I then looked around the area for the missing foot. I didn’t want anyone to trip over it or kick it around. As I did that, I thought how bizarre it was to be looking around for something like that.

I walked around the victim again and guess what I saw? His foot!

Thank goodness it was still attached, but it didn’t look the way it was supposed to. His shoe was off to the side and his foot was pointed down in an unnatural angle. It’s kind of funny now. I just hadn’t seen it right the first time.

One this is for sure, it’s not every day you get to say, “Where’s his foot?” I’m glad the victim survived with both feet still attached.

“I have an ID card.”

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Badge415

The other night I went to a call that was a little different. When I got there I saw two crashed cars at a three-way intersection in an industrial area. It was actually an unusual spot for a collision because of its out of the way location.

There was a witness driving westbound and saw a vehicle approaching from the opposite direction with no lights on. The witness was going to flash his high beams at the car to get its attention, but decided against it in case the car was full of gang members. The witness kept going and passed the car with no lights on. He then looked in his mirror and watched the crash happen as a car pulled out from a side street.

I next spoke to the driver and asked, “Were your lights on?”

“They were dim.”

That was a new excuse I had never heard before. He probably meant they were so dim you couldn’t see them on.

After that I went to speak to the woman, who made the left turn from the stop sign. She also said the other vehicle did not have its lights on. At the end of the interview, the translator asked if she had a license.

The woman replied, “I have an ID card.”

“Do you have a license?”

“No.”

“Have you ever taken the test? I asked.

She replied she had, but failed it.

“When did you fail it?”

The woman said, “In 1989.”

After hearing that, I told the translator I was impounding the car. The driver heard this and asked, “Why?”

Her husband then interrupted and said, “But she has an ID card.”

Was I missing something here? I thought it was pretty self explanatory. She last took the test and failed it 26 years ago! Since she failed the test, we’ve had four different presidents in office, the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended.

In my head I wondered why I was even here. An unlicensed driver crashed into a car with no lights. Then the unlicensed driver had the nerve to ask why when her vehicle was going to get impounded?

The only thing missing on this call were clowns and a monkey playing with a jack in the box on the corner.

Here’s the best part. This isn’t unusual for me. Something like this happens almost every night at work. Well, except the clowns. But one day that will change when a clown crashes on the way to a birthday party. It just has to happen because this is police work and anything goes. Even clowns.

The night Uber needed a taxi

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Badge415

Last week I pulled up to a collision call and saw three disabled vehicles in the road and one parked at the gas station on the corner. It seemed like there were a ton of people standing around being treated by fire personnel or speaking with officers. It was as if the cars threw up people all over the place.

Everyone was calm except for one loud mouth drunk who just liked to hear himself talk. He pretty much yelled the entire call and was downright obnoxious. His dumbness wasn’t directed at us, but he certainly was the fart in the elevator.

After a few minutes I figured out who was who in the zoo and started interviewing the drivers. One driver was stopped for a red light when his truck was turned into an accordion with four wheels. He was the first to get rear ended and was pushed into the car in front of him. The truck’s rear end was smashed and its front wheel broke off like it was a small Lego piece. One look at that poor truck and you knew it was going straight to car heaven.

I next spoke to an Uber driver, who told me the soon to be accordion was stopped behind him when they were rear ended. The impact turned his poor Uber mobile into a metal paper weight. The damage on that vehicle was bad. It was also getting a trip to car heaven.

I went on to interview the fourth driver and asked him what happened. In a weird twist, he was also an Uber driver with a carload of passengers.

The two Uber drivers were unrelated and just happened to be Ubering in the wrong place at the wrong time. At least they didn’t crash into each other. That would’ve been too weird.

I learned that both sets of Uber passengers had been drinking and did the responsible thing by getting a ride. Unfortunately, there was an unlicensed DUI driver behind them who wasn’t responsible. What are the odds of drunk people getting rear ended by a DUI driver?

And in the final twist of irony, we had to call a taxi to pick up some of the Uber passengers because they needed a ride.

You can’t make this stuff up.

“Was he in the crosswalk?”

Posted on November 2, 2015 by Badge415

There’s a certain detachment that I have about my job as a traffic cop. It’s simple. A crash goes out and I go. Whether it’s a minor fender bender or a fatal traffic collision, you go and do what needs to be done.

Once at the call we handle it, clear and move on to the next. There’s no time to get emotionally invested because of the nature of the job. I’m like a band-aide. Just a temporarily fix on the wound.

Later on I finish the report and staple the pages together. I walk over to the inbox in the traffic office and I toss it in. My role in that particular collision is over.

I never see the physical or emotional scars that were inflicted by the collision after I clear the scene. I’m not there for the pain and suffering, nor am I there for the funerals or physical therapy the injured have to go through.

I don’t remember their names or their license plate numbers. My memory only gets jogged about a crash when I drive down the street and pass certain locations. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just better to keep an emotionally safe distance away from the injuries and death that happens every night.

It’s how I can keep doing this job and still feel like a normal person when I’m at home, away from the madness. That’s what works for me.

A few weeks ago I took a major injury collision involving a pedestrian on the west end of the city. He had already been transported to the hospital before I arrived. The only thing left in the street were his shoes, clothes and a lot of blood.

Once I cleared the scene, I moved on and wrote the report just like I always do. There was no attachment because I never saw the victim and I didn’t know anything about him, other than what was on my paper work.

On Friday, I had to call the victim’s daughter because she was trying to track down her father’s identification card. Part of me didn’t want to call because that would put a human voice to the report I had already turned in.

I spoke to her and explained that her father did not have an identification card in his wallet at the scene. The family couldn’t find it and she had no idea where it could be. She then said, “I don’t even know what happened.”

I instantly felt bad for her because he was in the hospital with life threatening injuries and she had no idea what happened.

I then told her how the collision occurred and what the witness said that night. I felt bad telling her he ran out in front of the car because I’m sure it gave her a visual to go with what her father looked like in the hospital.

When I was done explaining what happened she asked, “Was he in the crosswalk?”

“No.”

The word hung in the air like a thick fog that swallowed up everything around it as she took in what I just said.

I broke the silence by asking how her father was doing. I knew the injuries were major that night, but I didn’t have any further information about him. She started crying and told me the doctors suggested they pull the plug because he was in a vegetative state.

She sobbed and took a deep breath as she said, “I can’t do that to my father. God is good and I’m praying for a miracle.”

Her words were hard to hear because of the emotion and deep pain behind them. Even though she was a stranger, I still felt for the family. He was someone’s father.

I wished her luck and we concluded our call. There wasn’t much to say after that.

Before the phone call, the collision was another in a long list of fatal and major injury traffic accidents that I’ve handled. It was report, a piece of paper that I prepared and turned in. It was nothing personal. I was business.

After the phone call, it was different. Now there was a voice of pain and sadness attached to it. That’s just part of the job.

An inside joke that lives on

Posted on October 31, 2015 by Badge415

In Orange County, 901T is the radio code for injury collision. 902T is the radio code for non-inury collision and 901 means traffic collision with unknown injuries. It’s just those three unless it’s a hit and run. Then there are a few more codes.

Last year on Halloween night of 2014, a new radio code was born that no one new about. It’s not an official radio code, but it’s the source of a great inside joke that will go on for years.

On that night a 901T involving a pedestrian went out in the southern part of the city and two patrol officers were dispatched to it. My partner and I were on a different call at the time in the east end of our city. It was raining cats and dogs so we had to seek shelter under the porch of someone’s house just to get away from the craziness. At that point I needed a towel more than an umbrella.

We were standing there feeling miserable when an officer got on the radio and said, “This is a 901 Frank.”

What the heck was a 901 Frank? None of us had ever heard that before. The dispatcher said something on the radio and then the officer spoke again.

“It’s a major and start a traffic.”

“Traffic is 10-6,” replied the dispatcher, advising him we were busy.

“Confirming you conveyed the message to traffic that this is a major.” The tone in his voice told us this was more than just a regular crash.

“10-4,” replied the dispatcher.

After hearing the word “major” it was time for us to drop what we were doing and head to that call. We had a long drive and I knew we were going to have some good natured fun with the officer who said 901 Frank when we got there. How could we pass it up?

When I pulled up to the call, I went up to the cop and we started having fun with him. “What’s a 901Frank?” I asked.

The officer said, “It was bad. There was blood coming out of his eyes.”

He was an experienced officer and a great guy, so if he said it was bad then it was really bad. He meant 901 Frank (901F) to be fatal or possible fatal collision. Either way, you’ll never find it in any radio code list ever.

In the end we finished the call and the pedestrian survived. From that point on the term 901 Frank achieved legendary status among some of us who worked that night. It’s one of the funniest inside jokes around and was the subject of numerous memes that I may or may not have created.

Thanks MW for the laugh. It’s still a great story and it’s hard to believe it happened a year ago.

But really? What the F#$%k is 901Frank?

The funny things people say

Posted on October 24, 2015 by Badge415

Tonight, the same call provided me with two different opportunities to laugh and shake my head. The first one involved a man who was driving with his family when he collided with a DUI in a minor crash.

His girlfriend was in the right front passenger and their two children were in the backseat. They were 5 and 2 years old. His girlfriend had an appointment she was late for. Someone drove up and dropped off grandpa and gave her a ride.

That left dad, grandpa and the two kids. I asked dad what his 2 year old son’s name was. He answered it pretty fast like he should since it was his own flesh and blood. He then ran into some trouble.

“What’s his birthday?” I asked.

“Ah…..”

“You don’t know his birthday?”

He started to squirm as he looked around for help. He looked at me like I was going to save him from the embarrassment rocket that was plummeting back to earth to land on him. He then said the dumbest thing I heard all night. “Ah. June. I don’t know. My wife knows.”

It was like the loser music from the Price is Right started up in the background when he said that.

“You might want to work on that one.” I said.

I looked at grandpa and thought I’d give it and shot. “Do you know his birthday?”

“Ah,” he said as he shifted back and forth. “My wife knows it.”

I looked to the 5 year old brother to save the day. I thought how cool it would be if the kid could throw a strike down the middle and deliver the ultimate game winning performance to show up dad.

“Do you know your brother’s birthday?” I asked.

The child started talking about something else as he dashed my hopes to poke at dad for not knowing his youngest son’s birthday.

“What’s your other son’s name and birthday?”

He told me the child’s name and then said, “October. Ah.”

It was on the tip of his tongue and it was painful to watch since there were only 8 days left in the month. Then by some miracle he blurted out his son’s birthday like he beat the buzzer on a timed test. At least he got that one.

I walked away wondering if he was going to remember Christmas. My only regret was not asking for his girlfriend’s birthday. I’m sure he would’ve crashed and burned on that one too.

I then watched the end of the DUI investigation. The driver attempted to raise a foot in the air for the test, but he kept putting it down like a horse trying to do Morse code with his front hoof. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

He rose the other foot and it came down like the other, but more often and faster as he lost his balance. He was either doing Morse code again or he was bull getting ready to charge at a matador.

At one point the driver just turned around in defeat and put his hands behind his back as he said to arrest him. The officer told him to turn around. The driver did and attempted Morse code again.

There was another test, but the driver turned around and put his hands behind his back as he tried to get me to handcuff him. I gave him a coach pep talk and said, “Go back over there.”

When the investigation was over, the officer told him to put his hands behind his back. He turned around and did as he told. That’s when a big smile appeared on the driver’s face as he said, “See, I told you.” The tone in his voice was hilarious like he knew he was more drunk that we thought.

A patrol unit arrived to transport the DUI to jail. One of the officers in the car only had a year on the job and was young looking.

The DUI looked at him and said, “The fucking new guy is taking me?”

You just can’t make this stuff up.

The Stick Figure Guy

Posted on October 22, 2015 by Badge415

Anyone who has ever worked this job knows you joke around a lot. Some call it a defense mechanism to all of the things you see and hear at work. That being said, there are certain things that I find funny that the regular person wouldn’t. It’s not that I’m uncaring. It’s just part of this job.

I’ve always joked saying the Heisman Trophy looks like a pedestrian right before a collision occurs. Since I can’t put the Heisman in the drawing I have to use a Stick Figure Guy.

Last night I was finishing up a report involving a pedestrian who was hit by a car. The pedestrians in my drawings are always stick figure guys with their hands in the up position. There’s no particular reason why their hands are in the up position. That’s just the way I’ve always done it.

When the drawing was done, I looked at the computer screen and I wondered what the stick figure guy would look like with his hands down. But in reality, what pedestrian has their hands down when a car is about to hit them.

The hands in the up position as the pedestrian says, “Oh shit” was more believable to me.

Then I thought about turning in the report with the hands in a different position, like one up and one down. I clicked on the hands and it reminded me of John Travolta in the movie Saturday Night Fever. A Bee Gees song from the movie flashed in my head as my stick figure guy’s arms assumed the disco position.

Of course, this was funny to me for no other reason that just because. I guess some things are funnier at 2AM.

After that I wondered what other ways I could draw the stick figure guy in my report. That’s when I came up with the last stick man with his legs and arms bent in different positions.

I actually laughed when I saw it. That stick figure guy was probably closer to what we see at collisions when people look like human pretzels. Maybe after almost 6,000 crashes I’ve become a little twisted. Like I said, I find humor in stuff the regular person wouldn’t.

Be safe out there and don’t become the stick figure guy in a drawing. Watch for cars when you cross the street.

“Do I have to die now?”

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Badge415

On Thursday night one of our police units was rear ended by a new driver, who just got his license issued a month ago. The damage was minor and there were no injuries, which was good.

The driver was understandably nervous while I did the interview. After I was done I wrote the report number on a card and told him to call his insurance company.

He said, “What do I do now?”

“Call your insurance company and tell them what happened. Give them the report number and let them worry about it.”

“OK, but what do I do now?”

“Call you insurance company and let them know what happened,” I said again.

“But I have so many questions.”

“It was just an accident. Don’t worry,” I said.

I explained to him a couple of times that his insurance company would handle everything from here on out.

The male, who was from Saudi Arabia asked, “Am I going to jail?”

“No, it’s an accident. You can leave now. Just call you insurance company.”

“Do I have to die now?”

Where did that come from? It was something from way out in left field and I never saw it coming. Apparently this guy was really stressed out over this. After some reassuring words and some jokes he started to relax. I then wondered how they handled traffic collisions where he was from.

I told someone, “They must be really take traffic enforcement seriously over there.”

In the end, we shook hands and he actually started to smile. He went up to the officer and apologized for hitting him. That’s when I said, “Since you hit him, you need to give the officer knuckles.”

The officer and the driver gave each other a weird look at first like they weren’t sure what to do. With some encouragement from me, they held up their hands and did a fist bump. It was worth watching because it was awkward and downright funny.

Sometimes you just have to have fun out here.

I got to watch ignorance from a front row seat

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Badge415

Tonight I got to see ignorance in its purist form. Just when I thought I’d seen it all, something else comes up. I always joke around that I keep going back to work just to see what’s going to happen next. As usual, I wasn’t disappointed.

I was sent to a traffic collision involving two vehicles on the west side of the city. When we arrived, my partner spoke to both drivers while I helped out with the paperwork. The victim driver was a Korean male in his 70s, who spoke little English. The driver who rear ended him was a Caucasian female in her early 20s.

Through translation, the male told my partner he was making a right turn into the driveway when he was rear ended. The female driver said the vehicle in front of her was stopped and she never saw it slow down. I asked her what she was doing inside the car at the time to prevent her from seeing the vehicle slow down. She replied she was just driving down the street.

It didn’t take a first grader to know she wasn’t paying attention when the vehicle slowed down in front of her. The points of rest and damage supported the victim’s version of the story.

While I was filling out paperwork she kept telling someone that the vehicle was stopped in front of her. She said it over and over to a point where I wanted to say, “You just can’t go around crashing into people.” I just held my tongue as she whined and didn’t accept responsibility for what she had done.

That’s when the man, who I assumed was her father said, “Asian drivers.”

The woman replied, “Do I have permission to be slightly racist now?”

All I could say to myself was “wow” because I was only 7-10 feet away from them when they said this. It was as if I was invisible. Who would say that in front of a cop investigating their collision?

I couldn’t believe this ignorant knucklehead was actually mad at the old guy she had just crashed into. Never mind the 100 feet of pre-impact locked wheel skid marks her vehicle left before the crash. I just stood there and shook my head as I watched pure ignorance in action.

This was the perfect example of the common theme of the blog, which is, “You just can’t make this stuff up.”

Be safe out there.