With the arrival of spring and summer comes the beautiful weather. It also means an increased demand on my time from work and personal pursuits (my garden is threatening to take over my yard – if only flowers were as easy to grow as weeds).
As such, I’ll be reducing my number of posts to three times a week, down from the Mon-Fri schedule I’ve been keeping. And no, this one doesn’t count!
See you tomorrow!
The idiosyncrasies of law enforcement investigations and our Canadian Justice system dictate that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. This, in my opinion, is a good thing, and represents our society as the democracy it is.
As such, police officers are often unable to comment on current topics we would otherwise have a very strong personal opinion on. When an investigation is in full swing we are unable to tell you how devastating some incidents are, or tell of you of the solid work ethic that goes into every case brought to trial.
Our official “No comment” response to media questioning is not meant to incite anger or to keep the public in the dark during the early stages of an investigation - we share what we can, when we can, all in respect for ‘innocent until proven guilty’.
As to those inquiring after what my opinion is on life as a police officer and dog handler, go ahead and ask. That is what this blog is for. But when you ask what my personal opinion is on events like the recent police involved shooting, you’ll get a prompt “No comment” response.
Not because I do not have an opinion, but because I choose not to voice it.
Many times I have wanted to shout out “You’re wrong!”, or “Yes, that’s really how it happened!”. Other times I’ve wondered where the media found an expert to weigh in with their opinion (good or bad), and I’ve watched with either horror or amusement at the antics of those vying for their fifteen minutes of fame.
Simply put, I’m not going to get into specifics and give my opinion on matters better left to the experts - I’ll leave the investigating to the investigators, and the expert opinions to those qualified to give them.
Vancouver
British Columbia
Canada
Oakland, California, United States
To Sgt. Mark Dunakin, Police Officer John Hege, Sgt. Ervin Romans and Sgt. Daniel Sakai – rest easy, brothers, I bid you godspeed.
Taps from the Oakland Memorial Service, Friday, March 27th, 2009:
BLUtube is powered by PoliceOne.com
Here’s the thing about police work - an officer can go from ‘routine’ patrol to a vehicle or foot pursuit in just moments.
This type of acceleration and deceleration can be hard on an officers body and mental state, and long term exposure to such highs and lows can wreck havoc on an officers health. As such, most officers I know try to combat this with healthy eating, exercise and having a good balance between work and home life.
Here’s an example of how fast an officer’s blood pressure can go up, and how long it can take for the officer’s physical state to return to normal.
Every five years the department sends officer’s off to get a medical check up – blood pressure, mobility, reflexes etc., and I was scheduled to go in the other week while working a day shift.
About 30 minutes before my appointment, a call came in of a robbery at a drug store. The suspect was alledged to be armed with a knife and fled from the scene on foot. Shortly after the robbery, a police unit located a possible suspect, and when the officer got out of the police vehicle to check the male, the suspect ran.
I just happened to be in the same block, saw the entire thing, and gave chase in my police vehicle. The suspect was able to bob and weave through cars and pedestrian traffic, and I was thwarted at every turn by other vehicles and road construction. I could see the fleeing suspect, but was not able to get close enough to deploy PSD Hondo – it was incredibly frustrating. As the suspect sprinted down the sidewalk and through a crowd of people, he was intercepted by another officer.
“Suspect is in custody,” was the update over the radio. Most excellent.
The officers at the scene had it under control, so I continued on to my medical appointment. When it came time for the doctor to take my blood pressure, I told him I had just come from a call so I might have a high reading. In all truth, I expected my blood pressure to be only slightly elevated, so I was taken aback when the doc read out my numbers.
155/80. Yikes!
Doc asked me about the call, and I told him about chasing the suspect all over hells half-acre. Doc just shrugged and told me to get my blood pressure checked when I was not on duty. If my reading was high when off duty, then he would take action. Until then, no worries.
One of my days off the following week I made the trip into the doctor’s office, and this time I was nice and relaxed. My BP reading was back to my normal range.
106/62 with a resting heart rate of 60.
That’s more like it.
If anything, it was a great wake up call to keep active and maintain balance in my life – all with the goal of staying healthy so I can better enjoy my personal life and be prepared for my job as a police officer.
I watched the news last night when I probably shouldn’t have:
We’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.
In Vancouver, our dispatchers and call takers are stationed out of a facility called E-Comm (emergency communications), which services South West British Columbia.
A good dispatcher is an excellent multi-tasker who knows where all of his/her police units are, is able to keep track of multiple calls at once, and has the spidey senses to realise when one of the units is about to be or is in trouble.
The other less realised relationship is between 911 call takers and officers. Call takers are essentially the gate keepers of what calls officers eventually get dispatched to.
Near the beginning of my police training I spent a portion of a shift ‘plugged in’ with one of the call takers. I listened as she answered calls and routed them to the correct agency (police, ambulance or fire). Most of the calls were for theft and break-in reports, but two calls were eye openers.
The first was from a young child whose hamster was dying. The boy called 911 asking for an ambulance, saying his hamster wasn’t breathing. The call taker, trying to soothe the youngster, gave him the phone number to the SPCA and told him to get his hamster to a vet. The boy’s mother eventually came on the phone and apologised – she hadn’t realised her son had called 911 – he had the right idea, just the wrong situation.
The second call was from a mental health patient. The call taker answered with, “Police, Ambulance or Fire?” and was greeted with the yells and shouted ramblings of a man clearly in crisis. I held the ear piece away from my head and was still able to hear the man as he hollered first for the police and then for the army, begging for help as his home was being invaded by bugs. Insects coming out of the wall sockets and falling down from the overhead lights – the fellow was totally freaking out. The call taker was calm and reassuring, keeping him on the line and sending the call over to dispatch. She stayed on the line until police units got to the man’s residence.
To get a good feel of what call takers are subjected to, I’ve included an audio file - what starts out as an ambulance call quickly turns into a police investigation (just for the record, the audio file is a commercial – so, no, it didn’t really happen.)
The volunteers with the Vancouver Police Department’s Citizens Crime Watch are an alert, dedicated group of people, and dozens of stolen vehicles are recovered each year because of them. This past weekend was no exception.
Saturday afternoon was the type of day featured on our city’s postcards. It was sunny and mild, the snow capped Coastal Mountains a perfect backdrop for rollerblading, jogging and enjoying the outdoors. The streets were busy with cars and people when Citizens’ Crime Watch located a mobile stolen vehicle.
After advising their ’supervisor’ (an officer in uniform acting as the volunteer’s go-between) of the situation, the officer broadcast the stolen vehicle’s location, licence plate and direction of travel. Before police units could get into the area, the stolen vehicle parked and the two occupants walked away into a nearby restaurant.
Units were still trying to get into the area when the two occupants came back to the vehicle only a few moments later. They got in and started to drive away. By that time, myself and two other police units were able to intercept the vehicle, and safely boxed it in.
Here’s the thing – I immediately suspected the vehicle wasn’t actually stolen when I went nose-to-nose with it. Instead of panicking and attempting to flee, the driver shook his head and put his hands in the air, with one hand holding an ice cream cone aloft like a white flag. The passenger, his hands also in the air, shrugged his shoulders, gave me a sheepish grin, and pointed at his own ice cream cone, as if to say, “But it’s gelato!”
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call a ‘clue’.
After removing the gents from their vehicle, we sorted out the details. Earlier in the week, the driver/owner had reported his vehicle stolen after it was unknowingly seized by a bailiff. The bailiff got in contact with him and arrangements were made for the vehicle’s return, and the owner never thought to advise police it was not in fact stolen.
The fellow was amicable about the takedown, and said he now had a story to tell his friends.
Once the vehicle was allowed to proceed, officers at the scene chatted about the call in the way most officers do. One officer came up to me on the sly saying he had the perfect title for my next blog post-
“You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream.”
My condolences to the officers of the Oakland Police Department, California, and to the families of the four police officers killed yesterday.
After what started as a traffic stop yesterday afternoon ended with the shooting deaths of Sgt. Mark Dunakin, 40, and Officer John Hege, 41 (Hege passed away this morning).
Then began a massive manhunt. Two hours later the suspect was located inside an apartment building, where he shot at SWAT officers, killing Sgt. Ervin Romans, 43, and Sgt. Daniel Sakai, 35. A third SWAT officer was injured in the shooting but is expected to survive his injuries. The suspect was shot and killed.
More coverage can read at The San Francisco Chronicle.
There are no words to convey the loss to the policing community of Oakland, California.
Yesterday, two Vancouver police officers were involved in a shooting. As this case is being actively investigated and is a case I will not comment on, following is the statement released by our Public Relations Section:
“Something happened this morning that all police officers train for, and all police officers hope will never happen - the moment that they must use deadly force to protect their own life or the lives of others.
As of this afternoon we can share with you what we know.
A call came in to 9-1-1 at 10:30 this morning of a theft from auto disturbed in the east lane of the 700 block of Granville Street. The complainant saw two men take some items from a vehicle and called police as the suspects ran off. He gave descriptions to 9-1-1 and two of our members located a possible suspect in the 500 block of Homer Street.
What we know from call information is that the officers then called for code three cover and advised that the man had a knife. The man advanced on the officers with an extended exacto knife and did not comply with orders to drop the knife. The two officers held the man at gun point but when he advanced further he was shot. Regrettably, he died at the scene.
The 31 and 43 year old female officers are both five year members.”
Chief Constable Jim Chu also released a statement regarding how the incident will be investigated.
In other Vancouver news:
In Canadian News:
Weird News:
I checked around for some weird news, but other than the usual UFO sightings from the mid-west (I’ve always wondered what drugs people are on when they report sightings of little green men), there was nothing too bizarre happening this week.
Cheers, and stay safe,
Sandra
As the nature of police work is a dynamic one, I have been unable to post yesterday or today. I will do my best to try and catch up with ‘This Week in Policing’ over the weekend.
Until then, stay safe out there.
Cst. Glendinning
