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Street Stories The Call Box

The Call Box: I Saw A Woman Cry…

By Ed Meckle, Retired LAPD

Recently a short story on TV prompted this:

I saw a woman cry this morning. She was a young mother of two, sitting for a TV interview.

She was a nurse who has been working 12-hour shifts at a NY hospital. She hadn’t seen her family for weeks and had been staying over in the city for fear of infecting them.

She was crying because she was bone tired.

She was crying because she had seen so many around her die. She cried because her youth and inexperience with death of this magnitude had not prepared her.

She cried for the very young and the very old. She cried for those who had no one to cry for them and died alone.

She cried because she was confused, because she did not know which way to turn or what to do next.

I wish I had a happy ending for this tale, but I don’t. All I could do was cry with her because I, too, had no answers

Some people cry not because they are weak but because they have been strong for too long.

If you have never sweat, bled, or cried for someone you do not know, then you do not have even the faintest idea of what we are all about.

Some people spend a lifetime wondering if they “made a difference.”

First responders and LEO’s do not have that problem.

No, my friend you really didn’t have a “job,” it was a calling. Not 9 to 5 but 24/7.

You lived it, you breathed it, you loved it and would die for it.

It was your passion, your mistress even on the worst of days. Your time on the job were the “best/worst” days of your life. 

You were “alive.” You lived for the nights you can’t remember and for the friends you can’t forget.

It is not that we can while others can’t. It is because we did when others did not.

It was not the sweltering days, endless cold nights, nor working while others slept or celebrated. It was not the lies, the mindless hatred, indifferent public nor the verbal abuse.

It is not the misrepresentation by the press, nor betrayal of the politician. It is not the senseless violence seeing the unseeable, doing the undoable.

It is not running to the sound of the gun nor dancing with some dirtbag.

It is not walking into darkness seeking the unknown. Not for love of my partner, the high-speed chase the foot pursuit nor facing down an unruly crowd.

But it is how much we loved it and that dear God, that is what makes us who we were.

THE POLICE: Winston Churchill said it best. “Never in the field of human conflict, has so much been owed by so many to so few.”

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Roll Call

Roll Call: The Calling

By Mikey, Retired LAPD

Today is June 15, 2017, a day after the shooting in Virginia and the near massacre that was thwarted. Everyone there, the politicians, the aides, the whosevers, and the coppers heard their calling. Our politicians are huddled in a dug-out knowing that “this is it.” The last good byes, the argument not finished because the point was not made, the question about a bill to in act, the next appointment, a staffer you’d like to complement and now this, the end? The end of your calling as a politician?

NO, one of you said, “a gun stopped a gun.” Let me rephrase that, a “calling” stopped that. The coppers,’ CNN calls them LEOs or Law Enforcement Officers–but they are coppers, true and blue. Trained like no others. You go into the valley of death because that is what you do, trained to do, and you don’t look for an exit, the way back, or the cavalry. You are the cavalry, the troops, or just the one solider. You may ask for back up, or you don’t have the time, but it doesn’t, matter, the whole thing just landed on you.

AdobeStock_102706188So now you work the problem and everything that implies. You face it head on, frame by frame, still shots, video, very little audio because all your adrenalin is focused on viewing what you are up against. When those coppers put the shooter down, it wasn’t over, in their minds things were still being processed: “Is he the only one, is there a lay off shooter, why here, why now,” and on and on. If being a LEO was easy, everyone could do it, but it’s not and not everyone can.

Why the bonds are so tight among coppers says reams about the calling. And it does not end after you “pull the pin” (retire).  Back in ’08, the year I retired, Rick Alatorre along with Joe Gonzalez and Art Placencia and I started meeting for breakfast once a month at a local restaurant in the Inland Empire. Hal Collier and I started one at about the same time in the Glendale area. As time went on, the “gathering or roll call,” caused both groups to seek larger haunts. Work, (yup, couldn’t stay at home) caused me to focus on the local gathering and Hal ran with the valley group. The local group now has 85+ attendees and we meet the fourth Thursday of the month.

policemag
From policemag.com: to run or not to run photo by policemag

There are coppers in attendance of Ed, Hal’s and my generation and our common thoughts and conversations are the exact same! Just read Ed’s stories and compare them to Hal’s and mine, different incidents and years to be sure but the calling is interred woven in the “Themes.” I have a commercial pilot rating, multi-engine and helicopter. Yup, was gonna be a zoomie for life. I got to do what I wanted to do with that, but ended up doing what I was supposed to do. I answered the calling, my calling. What was, is yours? How fortunate to have been chosen to do and be something bigger than yourself, to mean something to so many and still, today be able to share that others who heard and surrendered to it.

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More Street Stories Writer's Notes

4 Rules of Writing Cops: Avoiding The WRIAMY (Wouldn’t Read in a Million Years) Pile

New-Picture

re-posted from Lee Lofland’s The Graveyard Shift

If you have any accuracy pet peeves, add them to Lee’s list in the comment section below. I’d particularly like to hear from law enforcement officers, dispatchers, etc. What makes you want to throw a book across the room? –Thonie

1. Use caution when writing cop slang. What you hear on TV may not be the language used by real police officers. And, what is proper terminology and/or slang in one area may be totally unheard of in another. A great example are the slang terms Vic (Victim), Wit (Witness), and Perp (Perpetrator). These shortened words are NOT universally spoken by all cops. In fact, I think I’m fairly safe in saying the use of these is not typical across the U.S.

2. Simply because a law enforcement officer wears a shiny star-shaped badge and drives a car bearing a “Sheriff” logo does not mean they are all “sheriffs.” Please, please, please stop writing this in your stories. A sheriff is an elected official who is in charge of the department, and there’s only one per sheriff’s office. The head honcho. The Boss. All others working there are appointed by the sheriff to assist him/her with their duties. Those appointees are called DEPUTY SHERIFFS. Therefore, unless the boss himself shows up at your door to serve you with a jury summons, which is highly unlikely unless you live in a county populated by only three residents, two dogs, and a mule, the LEO’s you see driving around your county are deputies.

3. The rogue detective who’s pulled from a case yet sets out on his own to solve it anyway. I know, it sounds cool, but it’s highly unlikely that an already overworked detective would drop all other cases (and there are many) to embark on some bizarre quest to take down Mr. Freeze. Believe me, most investigators would gladly lighten their case loads by one, or more. Besides, to disobey orders from a superior officer is an excellent means of landing a fun assignment (back in uniform on the graveyard shift ) directing traffic at the intersection of Dumbass and Mistake.

4. Those of you who’ve written scenes where a cocky FBI agent speeds into town to tell the local chief or sheriff to step aside because she’s taking over the murder case du jour…well, get out the bottle of white-out because it doesn’t happen. The same for those scenes where the FBI agent forces the sheriff out of his office so she can set up shop. No. No. And No. The agent would quickly find herself being escorted back to her guvment vehicle.

The FBI does not investigate local murder cases. I’ll say that again. The FBI does not investigate local murder cases. And, in case you misunderstood…the FBI does not investigate local murder cases. Nor do they have the authority to order a sheriff or chief out of their offices. Yeah, right…that would happen in real life (in case you can’t see me right now I’m giving a big roll of my eyes).

Okay, I understand you’re writing fiction, which means you get to make up stuff. And that’s cool. However, the stuff you make up must be believable. Not necessarily fact, just believable. Write it so your readers can suspend reality, even if only for a few pages. Your fans want to trust you, and they’ll go out of their way to give you the benefit of the doubt. Really, they will. But, for goodness sake, give them something to work with—without an info dump, give readers a reason to believe/understand what they’ve just seen on your pages. A tiny morsel of believability goes a long way.

But if you’re going for realism, then please do some real homework. I say this because I started reading a book this weekend (notice that I said “started”) and I’d barely made it halfway through the first chapter when I tossed it into my WRIAMY pile (Wouldn’t Read In A Million Years). This was a ARC a publisher sent me to review, by the way.

It was obvious the author was going for realism, and it was also painfully obvious the writer’s method of research was a couple of quick visits to the internet and maybe a viewing of one or two of the Police Academy movies.

So, is there a WRIAMY pile in your house?

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