Police Ride Along - 3rd District St. Louis
As part of learning about law enforcement in the region the Leadership St. Louis class had the opportunity to ride along with either the city or county police. I signed on with both interest and a bit of trepidation. After all, I grew up in the 60’s when the police did not seem particularly friendly.
I chose to ride in the city. The station was right across the street from where I work and even though it had been there for many years I had never before entered. (Which seems like a good thing.) My guide, an officer in his first year out of the academy was involved with a case and it took a while for him to arrive. He had not had any warning that he would have a passenger nor did he know of our group. Nonetheless he took me under his wing.
We talked about his experiences and job and how he had gotten into force. We drove around in the third district (the Soulard area) and he explained what he could and could not do. He apologized that there was nothing really exciting happening and that I had missed a shooting earlier in the evening. (I was just as happy to have missed that experience.)
What struck me was the amount of time officers spend just driving around looking for problems - it seemed like a much more boring job that I would have ever imagined. We did, however, have enough action for my taste. We pulled someone over for making an illegal left hand turn (the also got a ticket for driving on a suspended license), went to investigate a reported burglary (it seemed that the reporter was not quite "with it" and had over reacted), dealt with a serious but non life threatening accident caused by someone running a red light, and finally pulled another car over (they got off with a warning). Yet most of the time we drove about the city quietly.
I met a variety of other officers during the course of the evening. Each introduced themselves and treated me with respect and interest. Each wore a black band around their badge in respect and morning for their fallen brother from University City.
What impressed me most? Well the lights on the roof sound like grating sand, the computer that gave the officer information was old and the different state’s databases it accessed presented information in idiosyncratic formats making it difficult for the officer to find what he was looking for. He had to spend a lot of time hand writing tickets when it should have been quite simple to have a computer generate the forms automatically. It seems that we need to be spending more money, which I am sure is money that we do not have, to make our officers more efficient and improve their equipment.
But the most important thing I learned I did not understand until a few days later. I read in the paper about an young officer being shot on the east side. I wondered if that was my young officer. It was then that I realized that from now on I would put a much more personal face on those that are protecting us and enforcing our laws. Seems like a good outcome for an evening ride.