The other night, I found myself raising my voice at every call that I went to. Not good.
First shake out of the box, we had a domestic disturbance which turned out to be a felony assault. When the mother-in-law (whose house the couple was staying at) entered the room where I was interviewing the victim at the critical moment where the reluctant victim was beginning to give me the most important information, I ordered her to
leave. I was firm, but not yelling. When she protested that it was her house (it absolutely was, but I was standing in the single room that was a felony crime scene), I yelled at her. She left. I didn't like doing that, but I liked the prospect of losing a statement from a timid victim in front of her mother-in-law even worse.
Next, I went to a fight in progress. One man, intoxicated, had a bloody nose. The other man had fled the party. The victim's wife was fainting. Her friends and family insisted on keeping her on her feet, walking about over a tile floor. (Why do they
do that?) When I invited the staged medics in to check on the woman, the man stood in the doorway of the venue (not his house), and told us that there was no need for medics to look at her. I yelled at him, and told him to shut up. I probably should have been more gentle with that, but I don't like seeing people interfere with the medics on other adults' behalf.
A few minutes later, I saw the probable actor who had fled from the fight, running away. I gave chase. Like a ninja, he disappeared into the neck-high grass of a fallow hayfield. He wore black and ran like I had shot at him, when I yelled for him to stop. After a merry romp through the fields and local neighborhood, I cleared.
Awhile later, while on a traffic stop in the parking lot of a convenience store, a vehicle pulled up beside me in the parking lot. "My friend's been stabbed," the driver said. I went to his friend, now standing in front of the vehicle, (again, why was he
standing?), and found that one of his lower jeans' legs was
completely saturated with blood, despite a bandanna tourniquet above it. I almost had to wrestle him to the pavement to get his leg elevated. It was quite a stab wound, probably administered by the guy whom I had chased earlier. When he raised his boot, about a pint or so of dark
venous blood poured out onto the pavement. At about this time, a deputy arrived as Dispatch warned me that the actor was probably on scene with me. We began to handcuff the occupants of the car to sort stuff out. The clerk from the convenience store came out yelling about something or other. I told her to go back in and not interfere. She stomped over and began to demand questions as the medics arrived, only to see the large amount of blood. She gasped heavily, and ran inside. After the medics had the man in the box, I checked what she wanted. She first asked me how she was supposed to clean that blood off the concrete. I said, "Use cold water," and began to walk back to my business. She began to argue, and I found myself explaining, again with raised voice, that if she interfered with my duties during a stop or a call again, that I would put her in handcuffs as well.
I wrote a couple of tickets and took my butt to the P.D. for paperwork. I had had enough yelling for the night.
Labels: day at the office, dumb cop tricks, police, social conflict
