I had a very interesting weekend that turned out to be nothing like I expected. I had plans for Saturday night, but otherwise had a quiet weekend of watching Twin Peaks planned (yes, I’m about 20 years behind!). But on Saturday morning at about 9, my boss called me. When I answered, he asked what I was doing. Now, on 9 AM on a Saturday, I’m usually not too active, and that was true this weekend as well.
He told me that he and his wife were helping with the law enforcement academy at the university where I work – which is something they frequently do – and they were short a “role player.” When he asked if I would be able to volunteer to help them out, I immediately recalled all of his stories of injuries he’s received doing these scenarios with the officers-in-training, but I still said that I’d love to help. After all, it’s not everyday a single girl like me gets the opportunity to be frisked and handcuffed by two dozen or so young officers … it just seemed like a chance I didn’t want to pass up.
So Saturday afternoon I showed up in the 30 degree weather, and was basically told I’d be acting as part of several different scenarios involving us – the role players – being pulled over (in a parking lot) for various felonies. In some cases, we were suspects in a known felony. In others, it was a routine stop that developed into a felony arrest. I should probably add that everything is as real as it is in the field, except for live weapons. The officers use rubber guns, and we had a huge rubber knife and cap guns. Oh, and the drugs weren’t really drugs! But the use of force, the handcuffs, the pat downs & searches, and everything else was pretty much full-on real.
The first stop I was involved in was set up to be a felony high-risk stop. The officers stayed back at their cars and yelled commands through the speaker. After the driver was drawn back, handcuffed, searched, and put into a patrol car, the order for me to exit the vehicle came. At this point, I had the six-inch hunting knife and a bag of “marijuana” on me, but it would be up to the “officers” to find it. I followed all of the commands with little resistance, got spread out on the pavement, cuffed, and hauled back to the back of the patrol car. At that point, the “arresting officer” looked at the instructor and said, “It’s a female.” The instructor snorted and informed the officer that he would in fact encounter females – some of them dangerous – in the field. The “officer” asked for guidance, and the instructor told him to conduct a weapons search of me as he would any other suspect. He timidly patted me down, missing the subtle bag of drugs and missing the not-at-all-subtle knife. When I realized how uncomfortable he was (never mind the fact that I was on the receiving end of the groping!), I decided to start really talking him up. Through nearly every “arrest” the rest of the weekend, I talked lewdly to the “officers,” asking him if they were enjoying themselves, telling them they owed me $5 for certain search areas, asking if they weren’t getting enough action at home, offering to settle things “unofficially” in the back of patrol cars. Some of them couldn’t keep from laughing, some smarted off right back, and others got so riled and shaken that they could barely speak.
I have never laughed so hard in my life.
These poor guys – most of them barely in their 20s – had no idea what to do with me, but after half a dozen of them missed large, bulging weapons on me, they started to get serious with me. We all were having a good time, but I think it also helped them really start to notice potential situations they may encounter on the streets. A couple of errors, though, led to one “dead officer” and one “dead abusive husband” at my hands. (I stabbed one of the “officers” who found my knife, then proceeded to lay it on the trunk directly next to my open, undetained, dominant hand. I shot my “abusive husband” as they were arresting him and failing to control me).
But over the course of two days, I also got thrown onto the trunk of a car, tackled on a grassy hill, and forcibly taken to the pavement after I ran from a “scene” and refused to voluntarily go to the ground. At the instructors’ directions, I took off while wearing handcuffs (but not detained or watched by anyone), and was horrified that I might get tackled or fall with no hands to catch myself. I made it across the parking lot on that one, but when I saw the “officer” close behind, I just sort of crumbled to the ground so as not to go down face first.
And on Sunday, when I was supposed to be quite intoxicated and being arrested on a felony DWI warrant, I managed to get one young man so flustered and worked up with my slurred discussion during his REALLY thorough search that he touched the knife three times … and it didn’t ever register. He literally checked my back pockets three times (and I, of course, pointed out that he must really love it back there since he was getting handsy so frequently), but didn’t find the bulging crack pipe that I had in there. His buddies were sitting five feet away literally rolling on the grass with laughter as I kept on getting him more and more flustered. It. Was. Hilarious.
So while I did have the hands of a large number of complete strangers all over me this weekend, and I am grotesquely bruised and sore from being manhandled by guys two times bigger than me, I had a really good time.
And while I didn’t get to work directly with my boss – he and his wife were role playing at one end of the parking lot with one group while we were at the other end with another group – I did get to see and hear their commotions from across the parking lot, which was quite entertaining. At one point when both patrol cars had their lights flashing on both ends of the parking lot and two guys were being “arrested” as the officers barked orders through the loudspeakers, a crowd gathered on the street corner. Apparently they thought it was all real, and within 10 minutes, a dozen or so people had gathered to watch the activities. They eventually realized that it was all training exercises, but the horrified looks on their faces during a hostage situation involving a baby (doll) and a (rubber) knife was more than a little comical.
It was also really interesting to watch the guys go from timid and unsure at the start of each day to confident and thorough by the end of the day, and I would venture to say that they’re very hands-on training of this weekend will be some of the most effective training they receive during their time in the academy.
Oh, and I can with absolutely certain that after the events of this weekend, I will NEVER, EVER consider actually committing any kind of crime beyond speeding. Because you know what? Crime is painful!
