Police Ride Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Police Ride - Assignment Example Officer Franz explained that he loved his job and that he loved people, and that he planned to stay with the police force for as long as possible. His career choice was to gain about 3-4 more years of experience on patrol. After that, he would take the civil exam and hopefully move up the ladder in rank. Officer Franz then took a break from answering my questions to explain the numerous safety rules for me to follow, which in all honesty I did not mind, as he truly did seem to have my best interest and safety at heart. I had to wear a standard-issue bulletproof vest, which brought home the reality of the ride-along immediately due to the heaviness of the garment. Officer Franz also explained that I would not be allowed to get out of the car at any time during the ride-along, and again stressed safety above everything else. The area he would be patrolling (with me along) was known as Zone 104, which was primarily a college area, with burglary and robberies being somewhat common calls received. He explained that though anything could come up, most often other than those two types of incidents were calls in which adults were possibly taking advantage of college students, college students throwing loud parties and breaking the local noise ordinances, and local juveniles making mischief. Since it was not a high-crime area, he explained that he would be patrolling alone, as was department procedure, though he did emphasize that two officers patrolled together in the high-crime areas. The shift then began with a roll call for all officers, which lasted about 15 minutes. Most of this involved a report from the previous shift, letting the officers know what to be on the lookout for. Areas of interest, including any to watch closely, are passed on from one shift to another for continuity and continuance in investigations. During the ride-along, I had the opportunity to see police procedure in action three times. Two of the incidents that occurred were minor traffic viola tions, yet they gave me an opportunity to ask questions about procedures behind them. The third incident of alleged gang-rape was not minor and in fact caused me to have to remain with Officer Franz an hour longer than my shift was originally scheduled due to its nature, however, upon explanation, I believe you will agree with me that there was no way to avoid this happening. The first incident was a traffic accident involving two vehicles. Officer Franz handled this quite speedily and professionally. He took the car information and licenses of both drivers and ran it through his computer, which turned up nothing in the way of background information that would cause either of them to be placed under arrest. Given this information, Officer Franz then gave both drivers their information back along with a police report number and an incident number and sent both on their way. I found it interesting to learn that there was a keyboard printer in the patrol car. Officer Franz explained it s uses, which the main use is for printing out tickets and citations. He also explained that there was a central computer program used by the police force, Intel, which kept them informed about data available from crimes in the surrounding area. For example, there was a car stolen in Colony and had he pulled over a car with the same make or model.