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Copyright November 4, 2017 Art Labrousse

Chapter Three

Still have a lot to learn

The open door was at one of our schools.  I radioed I had and open door, and proceeded to check the building out.

I had checked the doors in the building and all were secured inside, so I was heading back to the car when Sarge came down the hall.  I told him everything appeared secure, it just appeared that someone had left the door open.

Later I stopped off at the office for a break.  Dorthea asked me, “how badly did the Sarge chew you out for going into the building, alone?”

I said he hadn’t.  The rest of the shift was quiet and I left thinking I had done a great job.  I even found an open door, so the Sarge should be quite happy with me.

I was ready to patrol, on my own.    

The next night I came into work fully thinking I would be assigned a car and area.  On duty was the Sarge, Norm, Dorthea and me.

He told me that I would be riding with Norm that night.  Frankly I was a little bit disappointed and piqued.

I mean didn’t I do a good job and prove myself last night?

We got into the car and the first thing Norm asked me was why I went into the school by myself the previous shift.  I told him it was just a school and didn’t appear to have been forced open.

First Officer Safety Rule learned:  Never investigate open doors by yourself, always wait for backup.

Norm had good relations with the kids in the City.  He was active in sports and helped coach both baseball and football.

He had many ‘informants’ and since the majority of our burglaries, thefts and vandalism crimes were committed by juveniles – and they tended to brag about their ‘exploits’ - he was able to break a number of cases.

That night he saw one of the ‘usual suspects’ out and about.  He stopped and talked with him.  I learned a good lesson on treating people, he said he always treats them with respect – unless by their actions they don’t deserve it.

He said take that guy for instance.  He might have been planning a burglary, but I don’t know that, I talked with him about how things were going – typical conversation – and let him go.

The guy knew that anything that happened that night would come down on him.

Norm then told me the time one of our officers found an open door at a business, a restaurant.  He radioed it in and then waited for backup.

They went into the restaurant and found two juveniles that had broken in and were hiding.

Later, one of them told Norm that they had seen the police car checking out the building and when he stopped they figured out that he knew they had broken into the building.

They grabbed a couple of knives from the kitchen and hid near the door so that when he came in they could jump him – when they saw the second car, they decided to try and hide.

The lesson was never to put yourself at a disadvantage.  You want to control, as much as possible, any contact or situation, especially in a possibly dangerous situation, and you never knew which situation would turn dangerous so you had to always be careful.

Even though I knew that putting on a uniform, badge and gun could be dangerous and didn’t make you impervious to injury, I had not taken it seriously enough.

I had a lot to learn; a lot.

Frankly, as disjointed as the department may seem in the training of officers, The Dalles Police Department was pretty well organized in its training compared to many departments its size at that time.

John, my assigned Training Officer, had been on a backpacking trip in the mountains with the Juvenile Director and several teenagers who were at risk.  He had been doing this every year for several years.

It was a chance for the kids to get out of town and to relate with authorities in a positive experience.  John made many friends and helped save many kids through the years, helping them to understand there is a world out there that didn’t require getting into trouble.

John was an Evangelical Christian.  Although not the first one on the department, he was far more committed than any of the others.

While he helped me a great deal in learning how to do my job, he helped a great deal more in learning how to be a Christian and be a police officer.

When I joined the department I was quite surprised at the reaction from friends both in and out of the church.  One of the businessmen came up to me and said my potential was so much greater, why did I want to be a Police Officer?

He said if he had known I was not happy with Safeway he would have tried to hire me years before and tried doing that then.

I had Christians ask how could I be a Police Officer, carry a gun and possibly having to shoot and kill someone?

Honestly, I never understood the reactions.  I would ask them, what they were looking at in their Police Department.  What did they expect from their Police Officers?

A police officer is in an incredibly important position.  He and now she (not slighting women, many of whom I have been in charge of and have rarely been disappointed in their work) is at the cutting edge of the justice system.

It is the police officer that makes first contact.  It is the police officer that is carrying a gun and may very well have to use it.  It is the police officer that makes the decision to arrest or not.  It is the police officer that can make or break a person when making that decision.

Now no one is perfect, and I would be the first to admit I sure wasn’t, but I know the importance of that position and took it very seriously. 

Police are faced with some of the foulest human conditions around.  They see people at their worst, many times dealing with people that are high on alcohol or other drugs and doing things that turn the stomachs of any person – but the officer has to deal with it.

We should require high standards for Officers.  We should demand the tests and backgrounds be done to insure we can find the best possible person for the job.

We should be encouraging smart people, people who could have a future in other endeavors to be police officers.

We should want someone that our children can look up to as role models; someone that can be depended upon to stand up for those that cannot stand up for themselves.

There is no other profession that gives the life and death power over the civilian population.

What did they want in an officer?

Choosing men and women and allowing them to wear the uniform, badge and gun with all that authority is serious business.

It takes time and a lot of energy to find the right person, and even then mistakes are made.

You want people who are serious about the position and will do everything they can to serve the citizens they work for; you want the best.

While I would never claim to be the best, I did the best I could and tried never to let those standards or my citizens down.

And that was true of at least 90%+ of the officers and deputies I worked with; if they weren’t we weeded them out as quickly as possible.

When John was hired he was harassed by the other officers.  He had made it clear he was a Christian; so they tried doing things to make him angry and especially to get him to cuss.

John never let down his witness about his relationship with God.  It wasn’t long before the harassment stopped and John’s faith was accepted as who he was.

John had broken the ice for me.  I am not sure I could have withstood all the ‘attacks’ he endured those first few weeks.

AND he was a highly respected officer, they knew they could depend on him.

I was never challenged by anyone in the department about my faith, they just accepted it.

I could ask John questions that others in the department wouldn’t and couldn’t understand.

I was told by one officer that the only person you could count on to have your back was another officer.  Now, when you are taking down a criminal that is pretty true, however, he was also talking about life in general.

Part of the problem is the reactions many officers receive in a social situation.  There are the jokes about don’t arrest me I have only had two beers, or I didn’t do it, or some other comment that the person thinks is funny but becomes old after the officer has heard it dozens of times.

Then, of course, partly because of those kind of encounters and the fact the officer is working swing or graveyard, doesn’t have Saturday or Sunday off, doesn’t have holidays off tends to make social interaction difficult. 

While there are other careers that have that same kind of scheduling the police officer is more comfortable with ‘his own.’  He can tell stories and share incidents that most people don’t understand and can’t relate to – thus further separating the officer from the rest of society.

However, I couldn’t accept the officer’s statement.  I had many friends, mostly through the church, and once we were past the why did you become an officer with some of them, I could depend on them giving me the benefit of the doubt and I knew they ‘had my back.’

It talked with John about it and he agreed.  Christians have a bond with other Christians that centers on their faith and those that are not Christians don’t fully understand that.

Officers relate with officers from a common bond, which is similar, but far too many of them cut off others and never give them a chance to know them.

John had incredible observation skills.  He always tried to pass that skill along to those who worked for him.

In the winter time he would stamp out messages in the snow; in YOUR assigned area.  If you hadn’t found it by 0300 he would ask you a question and you knew you had better go on a search and find it by the message by the end of shift.

It also helped insure that all businesses and schools had been checked, at least once.

I was told that I would learn to see things that were different from normal and that is what we were looking for; after a while you could tell if the business had moved their garbage can a foot, among other things.

So what is up with that?  You begin to understand that if something is different there may be a reason – more than one garbage can has been used to gain entrance to a building through a high window.

You learned to look through the glass of a business, not just at it.  More than one burglar has gotten away because the officer wasn’t alert enough to see something more than just a window.

It isn’t just for business security, of course, that an officer needs good observation skills.  He needs to see what a suspect is doing, how is he carrying himself, is that bulge a gun or just package, what cars are on the street and do they belong there?

For most of us it is an acquired skill, I was okay, but never close to John’s skills.  Neither were most of the officers on the department.

John had several tool boxes full of tools that he found on the street, it isn’t unusual for a mechanic to be working on a car, put his tool down inside the engine compartment and forget it.  The driver takes off and then some time in the future the tool falls out onto the street and no one else sees – except John.

He also had a few buckets of wheel weights – I didn’t even know they could fall off a car, let alone ever seeing them on the road.

Several years later the department decided to have a psychological test as part of the requirements for applicants.

The company hired to do the tests had a standardized test but they also wanted the department to have several officers from within taking the test.

Each department has requirements for officers in their department.  While one department may not accept an officer another one might.

Now, that is not a reflection on the applicant.  We have had many excellent officers that were not accepted by another department for one reason or another.

What the company wanted was to see what our department personality was so they could better serve the city.

I was one of them asked to take the test.  It was a bit informal and while you wouldn’t allow an applicant to talk with another applicant, we did converse among ourselves, laughing at some of the questions.

I take tests quickly.  And I got to one question a lot faster than John, who was also taking the test, did.

I asked John how he was going to answer the question:  “Do you often see things that no one else sees?”

That could be a loaded question, are they trying to see if we ‘see things’ that don’t really exist?

But, in John’s case he absolutely had to answer yes, he did it all the time.  I don’t know how they judged his answer, but he retired many years later, so I rather doubt it was a concern.

His pastor and I were members of Toastmasters.  An international organization where members help each other in giving speeches, speaking off the cuff or a prepared speech, running meetings, evaluating the speeches of others – it is a great organization and helped my career immensely.

His pastor asked me one day if John ever took a day off, I said no, cops are always working.

He said that John had recovered a stolen car while he was on vacation and he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t shut off that ‘being a cop’ attitude.

Seems that John was heading to the Yakima Valley with his family when he noticed something odd about a guard rail.  He turned around and drove back to the area, looked over and saw a car down in a ravine.

He contacted the state police and met them back there.  The car had been down there a while; it appears the criminal had deliberately driven off the road into the ravine, jumping out before it went over.

NO one else had seen the indicator on the guard rail, even though a lot of traffic and several law enforcement officers had driven by.

I told his pastor that being a cop wasn’t different than being a pastor or a Christian, you are always on and just because you are on vacation you are not going to stop doing the things you do as a pastor or Christian just because you weren’t in your home town.

He understood that; or at least said he did.

Now I have said earlier that the guys could not get John to cuss so they never heard him cuss; I did, once, and the person he directed it to was stopped in his tracks.

To be continued:

Copyright November 4, 2017 Art Labrousse

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Luke 17:9-11  KJV  Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not.

¹⁰ So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.

¹¹ And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.

I am not a fan of participation awards, especially when all the person did was just show up.

Neither am I a fan of patting someone on the back for just doing their job.  Attitude, professionalism, going out of their way are tributes that should be praised, but not just doing what they are told to do, and no more.

As most of you I have been asked by different stores to take a survey on how my experience was at a given day and time.

Most are on scales, five or ten being the top score.  I rarely give someone a five or ten.  They are doing their job and I appreciate that, and I will give them credit for doing so – but not the highest.

It is interesting the responses I receive, they want to know why I didn’t give them the highest score, I tell them they did their job, I appreciate it, but they didn’t do anything extraordinary to earn a high mark.

There was one store in this town that wanted that store to have all fives and if they didn’t the manager got into trouble; AND could actually lose their job – not sure if any did, but the threat was there.

While it is nice to give someone a compliment, it shouldn’t have to be done in every instance.

I can understand telling a 5 year old, or a new employee that they are doing a good job, but I just can’t see patting everyone that does their job on the back.

They deserve respect, they deserve recognition and thanks, but we have gone so far overboard that people get upset if they haven’t been complimented at least once a day.

“we have done that which was our duty to do.”

God is not going to come down and say, you did what I told you to do, what a wonderful job.  We did what He expected us to do and that was our duty.

There are times that people do much more than is expected and they should receive a good pat on the back. 

But, when we do our job a simple thank you should suffice.

I like recognition, I like to be told you did well at this or that – but that isn’t what God is all about.  He commands, we obey and that is our duty.

If we have to have continual recognition for serving God, then we need to re-evaluate that relationship – we are falling away.

Later, Art (-: