A vacationing Officer Alex discovers a different type of police vehicle
I was visiting a municipality to the south of us recently and noticed that the local constabulary were driving pick-up trucks.
Single cab trucks with average bed lengths, replete with lightbars on the roof and grills and smothered in custom graphics clearly stating what they were and who they worked for. I raised an eyebrow that is normally reserved for pregnant strippers (God bless them) and fatal injuries I hadn’t seen before.
My first G-ride was an ’88 Caprice with a slick front bench seat and air conditioning that could have cooled down 2001 Britney Spears. It was carbureted, which means I could flip the breather lid upside down to make it sound even more badass when I revved the engine, and I was a happy (albeit immature) camper until the advent of the 1992+ Crown Vic’s which set my gold standard for driving and off-road capabilities.
Bear in mind, I didn’t start The Job in 1988, much less 1992, but these were the cars on hand given local government priorities and a complete disregard for OSHA rules for coppers driving emergency vehicles with in excess of 250,000 miles on the odometer.Now…where was I? OH! Trucks.
I was a four-door family vehicle-driving piglet and the concept seemed otherworldly to me. We are motor cops, sure…but they were this whole different animal.
I always assumed they were incapable of driving a sedan because only direct high velocity wind could temper the cynicism of a Traffic Cop and all the nonsense they had to digest on fatality wrecks and roadside ticket excuses, but then again I was a city cop and they themselves are their own subset in the po-po world.
Upon further reflection, I realized that these truck-cops weren’t tasked with 20 domestic violence/car crash/robbery/suicide calls a day; they were designed physically for a beachfront terrain (literally), and calls more oriented towards the naked drunk man/fighting drunk man/burglar alarm end of the policing spectrum in an oceanside environment.
Don’t get me wrong, my department had a golf cart and a weird three-wheeled thing designed for upright-driving in an urban and festival type environment, but the guys driving those were usually soft-palmed “make everyone happy/take pictures with elementary aged minority kids for P.R.” types that the average street cop mentally wrote off as a professional aberration.
These truck-cops though…it just never occurred to me that there was anything between “Patrol Cars” and “Police Helicopters” when it came to geography and demographics.
This could lead to a likely more interesting story about the time I was in a conference in San Diego and wound up hanging out with—and up with—an ex-Navy Air Unit cop, but that’s material for another issue.
Driving around on a beach, window down, left hand ready to wave as needed…sunglasses strategically darkened to act as if you aren’t staring at the sun baked 21-year-old wearing what manufacturers label the “St. Barth Thong” as they flirt with the guy at the personal watercraft/umbrella shack.
I simultaneously marveled at the concept while also acknowledging I was incapable of such a line of work, having been conditioned to working in urban environments that did not involve beachfront communities and entirely different tax strategies.
No, I respected the different skillset instead of holding it in contempt, because I had simply been born to a different life, just as a child born in a Brazilian tribe would not be able to relate to a child born in Hell’s Kitchen.
But still. “Damn.”
Whatever you do in what is most likely a more lucrative if not less psychologically destructive profession, step out of your geography now and then and see your professional counterparts. It may not be so profound a difference as comparing notes with a cousin living in the People’s Republic of China, but still…take a walk elsewhere now and then.
Unless you’re a cop in a beach front community, that is. If so, just never leave. Ever. Trust me.
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.