What a great day, and the sun shined in our neck of the woods, too.  Enjoyed the day!

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Chapter 17

Catch up!

As I send these out I occasionally get a response from a brother officer.  I was sent the following by one of my favorite co-workers.

“20+ years have passed and you can still write faster than I can read. lol  I am enjoying the reading of your memories because many of them are the same as mine with a twist, same circumstances, different perpetrators and victims.

My biggest concern was the children at those incidents, especially if one of the parents was going to go to jail.   I can seldom remember a domestic that didn’t have some poor little kids in the back ground and scared to death.  Why oh why didn’t those type of people wait until they grew up themselves before having kids to suffer (many for the rest of their life) in one form or another.   I spent a lot of time trying to convince those kids to stay strong and eventually everything would work itself out.  Not much of a chance but we had to try and do what we could..

I covered John on a domestic one night and saw a perfect example of how an officer should deal with kids in that situation.  He got the kids out of sight (not sound unfortunately) of the parents but they continued to yell obscenities at each other.  John then stepped to where the kids and the parents could see him but not each other.  In a forceful voice (didn’t yell) he “asked” the parents if they would please be quiet for a few minutes.   He told them their fight had seriously scared their children and he would appreciate a few minutes of quiet so he could talk to them and make them feel better.  It worked like a charm on all parties involved and things went smoothly after that.  Evidently the dad had said he would go to jail when the wife called the police and that really scared the 6 year old.  He had the impression if dad went to jail he would never see him again.  The frosting on the cake was when John took dad to jail and as they went out the door the 6 year old told dad to be good and they would let him out of jail in the morning.

I was so pleased with John’s performance that I put an “at a boy” in his file.

One of my frustrations was that we never received Academy level training until recent years. It had to evolve but I still think of all of the lessons I had to learn the hard way and how much more effective I could have been as a police officer if I had that training sooner in my career.  Oh well we did the best we could with what we had.  It was sure a lot better than what our predecessors had.”

The State is doing much better about training officers for the real world.  The reason, of course is a 16 week academy instead of the 5 week academy the two of us, and many other officers, attended.  They have more time.

A lot of our ‘training’ was experience, both good and bad.  We learned on the job. 

I was fortunate in that I had some good training officers, worked for a pretty good department and we were serious about doing the best job we could.

A good example, for me anyway, was a day we received a call of a young man holding a gun to his head and saying he was going to commit suicide. 

We couldn’t rush the house; it could very well set it off.  We tried talking to him on the phone, but we weren’t getting anywhere.  Fortunately, there was no one else in the house, so he was endangering anyone else.

I go the bright idea of calling The Center for Living and asking to have a counselor come to our location and try to talk to the young man. 

I was refused, the reason being is that they didn’t go into scenes like this that were explosive, they always dealt with the people in the office after things had settled down.

I was upset with them, but it really wasn’t their fault either.  There just wasn’t any training for any of us to deal with this; and their policies were not to go into dangerous situations.

I don’t remember how we did it, but we eventually got the young man out of the house and placed him in the hospital as a danger to himself or others so he could get help.

I look back on situations like this and realize how fortunate we were and how fortunate the citizens were that our officers had good common sense and really did want to help people.

We may not have had as much training as we needed, but our heart really was in the right place.  Not that we were perfect, but we did our best and tried to learn after every incident and share that with our fellow officers.

Those of you that know me can probably sympathize with the comment, “you can still write faster than I can read.”

When I worked for the City my fellow officers called them Labrousseagrams.

After I was elected I wrote to a number of Sheriff’s requesting information on their jail policies.  I became known as that Sheriff that writes a lot of letters.

Our secretary was one of the most efficient people I have ever met.  She managed her time very well.

It was a good thing too; often we were short on clerical staff that manned the front desk during the day.  The secretary and the clerk responsible for the Civil Service of papers split day shift.

Both ladies had enough of their plate without being on the radio for four hours, but they did it.  However, the clerk who did the civil papers could do a lot of her work at the front desk; the secretary could not because it was confidential.

One day, towards the end of the month, when she had to do payroll and a million other things and had just spent half her day on the front desk, I could tell she was more harried that usual.

Now, I knew there wasn’t much I could do for her, but I asked anyway – her response, “quit writing so “expletive deleted” many memos.”  (Since she never cussed, that emphasized it more.) 

I really appreciated this lady.  She kept me on track on many issues, I really did listen to her on everything else, so I paid attention this time also.

We had just received a computer in our office.  It was hooked up to the mainframe, but, we hadn’t been taught how to use it, yet.

They did have a word processing program on it, so I learned how to use it, and from that point on I wrote my own letters and memos. 

Her replacement thanked her profusely!

One of the things that I didn’t include on my chapter regarding the City Manager was when he retired.

He had given outstanding service, many many extra hours; he had been innovated and did a good job of getting the most out of the money that formed the City’s budget.

I covered my appreciation of his work and leadership concerning the County wide 9-1-1 center, in my book Elected Through Terror he made it a lot easier for it to come into being by convincing the Council they needed to listen to and work closely with all of the emergency agency within the county – even if they were volunteers and could not contribute financially to the program.

When they began their search for a new manager, the council decided they needed to increase the City Manager’s salary by almost 50%.

I thought that was a slap in the face of the man who had led this city for a couple of decades.  If they had that kind of money they could have paid him more to show their appreciation.

The manager that replaced him, as far as I was concerned, couldn’t tie the man’s shoes, let alone do the job.  He didn’t last long – only a couple three hours as I recall; can’t remember why he left, but from where I was standing he never really clicked with the citizens.

The Councilman that was on the negotiating committee also helped me in many ways.  When I was in the City I had little contact with him.

He was a local businessman with a delivery company.  He had been on the City Council for a number of years and carried a lot of weight with the other members, as the passing of that contract shows. 

I respected him and knew he did what he felt was best for the City; I never saw any self-serving orders coming out of the Council for him – that wasn’t necessarily true of others.

The City Councilmen were 100% volunteers.  They were not paid for the many hours they served the City.

A year or so before I became Sheriff he was appointed to the Wasco County Board of Commissioners and then later elected to the board.  

The Commissioners are given a stipend, but it doesn’t begin to cover the hours they spend in serving the county.

In that capacity I worked with him on several projects had learned to admire and respect him even more.  He had good ideas and good advice.

As I write this I am winding down from spending Thanksgiving with a couple of my children and a son-in-law and having talked to the others by phone.

I am reminded of many holidays where I did not sit down to a normal dinner or gathering.  I was working.

I was fortunate, usually, to be able to spend Thanksgiving with the family.  For several years I would take a few days off both sides of this holiday and spend it with Carla’s family in Redmond.

I had covered enough accidents and the emotional aftermath during holidays that I never went anywhere on the day, or the one before or after. 

Especially Christmas.

When I became the shift supervisor I would let an officer have one of the two off, but not both UNLESS no one else wanted it.

Both are very family related holidays and I never considered it fair to allow someone to have both off, while someone else had to stay and work both.

The City was very good, though.  When we worked days, we divided the shift up according to how many were working.

Those of us with children got to go home for a couple of hours so they could be there when their kids opened presents.  We had portable radios and were subject to call out, but it didn’t happen all that often.

Those would then go back out and patrol while another went home and was with the family for a couple or three hours.

That way we always had a patrol out, backup ready to respond, but we could also enjoy the day a little bit.

Unfortunately we couldn’t do that for the rest of the group, the dispatchers had to stay on the radio until their shift was over.

Ours, of course, is not the only profession that has learned to adjust holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions.  Hospital staff and fire fighters, to name a couple, also remain at their station while their family tries to enjoy the day without them.

Copyright November 23, 2017 Art Labrousse

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Psalm 100:4-5  KJV  “ Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

⁵ For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”

I am thankful for my family and friends; for a wife that has put up with me for well over 50 years; for the country in which I call home; but most of all for the sacrifice Jesus Christ made on my behalf and the acceptance of that sacrifice by God.

Later, Art (-: