Internship Reflection # 10 April 22, 2009

Today when I got into the police station it was 7:30. I first went into the patrol department. When I got in there a lady asked me what police officer I wanted to do the ride along with. I told her the officer's name, it was a friend of the family. then she sent him an email to his police car asking him if he would do the ride along. then she sent me to the sergeant and he set it up for me. within a half hour the officer came to pick me up and we were on are way. he told me what we were going to do for the day. first we went over to meet another officer that was doing a detail. then we headed over to a sub station because he had to meet with his lieutenant. after that we drove around for a little while and then we got a call over the radio. the officer put the sirens and lights on and we started racing through traffic. it was a domestic disturbance. a women and her boyfriend had been arguing, but by the time we got there he had left. while i was in the police car he showed me how to run a person's license plate, how to look up someones record, and i got to see how you receive dispatches on your computer. when he got dispatched to a location, the address and all the information popped up on his computer screen. he also showed me what the buttons in the police car do. after that we got another call over the radio, it was a guy complainning abouty his neighbor leaving food all on his sidewalk which was causing rodents. so we went over to talk to him about the cituation. then for a while it was quite so we were just driving. we had to keep stopping at the sub station a few times. Then we went to lunch and i met up with officers from the BCI department. they asked me if i wanted to go see some pictures of people who had been murdered, committed suicide etc. so the officer brought me into the police station to the BCI department. at first the pictures wernt bothering me. then after seeing almost all the photo's i had almost passed out because they were so nasty. Bodies were just burnt, stabbed, shot dozens of times, a person who had jumped off a 14 story building and someone who jumped in front of a train etc. these photos were so horrible. after that we went back in the car and started to patrol the neighborhood again. we got two more calls over the radio one was a lady who had called because a house next to her was robbed and there was a bag of stolen items in her yard that she wanted to report in. the last call was a traffic accident at the stop and shop on manton ave. when we got there he showed me what information you have to get from the people and how you have to take the reports. you need there name, addresses, car vin number, insurance policy numbers, date of birth, time of the accident, and the date etc. he had to give the driver of one of the cars a citation for not having insurance . at the end of the day he brought me back to the police station and i was done. I learned a lot of good information today and I had fun. I think the job is pretty cool except for the photos.