By Hal Collier, Retired LAPD
This is not the last Ramblings about eating Code-7.
Most cops need a break from the usual stress of being a police officer. Admit it—every time you see a police car you look to see what they’re doing and if they’ll notice that you’re not wearing your seat belt.
With everybody having a cell phone, Joe Citizen is recording your every move on duty—you’d better watch where you scratch. If they saw a UPS or mail truck they wouldn’t give it a second look.
That’s the life of being a cop!
So you get that break and sit down to eat. Your meal is served and you don’t want to be bothered. You just want to unwind. Some good intended citizen comes up to you as your putting that first fork of dinner into your mouth and says, “I don’t want to interrupt your meal but,” then they do just that! Ten minutes later they say “Well, I’ll let you get back to your meal.” Unfortunately your 23 minute Code-7 is almost over.
By the way—that code-7 is on the officers own time. In the LAPD if you worked an eight hour shift you worked eight hours and twenty-three minutes. If you’re on a twelve-hour shift you worked twelve hours and forty-five minutes. If you didn’t get Code-7, you could put in for overtime but then you had to listen to the wrath of your sergeant for abusing the system.
You would’ve thought that the overtime was coming out of your sergeant’s pay check.
Next week , a few examples of my interrupted code 7’s.
