solace

An 83-year-old man, burned to death, lay under white linen on the front lawn, alone.

Less that 15 feet away we huddled around the Cocker Spaniel, a breathing mask fed by oxygen around his snout, trying to encourage what little signs of life were present.  Each heave of his chest was a defiance of failure over which we had little control.

It’s part of the human condition to flock to hope, even if it be small or insignificant.   We will cling to the smallest victory, even when all else is lost.

At our most primary, we are all optimists, praying for the improbable.

Intelligence

In school we are taught that the measure of intelligence is how much we know.  But we have this almost precisely backwards.

The true measure of a person’s intelligence is how aware they are about how much they do not know.

 

 

no news

The Russian and the Nazarene were dispatched to a domestic disturbance- the bi-polar daughter was off of her medication.  I was around the corner, so I swung by to assist if needed.

The 20-year-old girl sat on the concrete porch, an almost indiscernible stream of babble bubbling from her lips, high-pitched chatter interspersed with rare phrases of clarity- profanity and threats and allegations of abuse among the screams.  The Russian and the Nazarene spoke to her like someone speaks to a kitten, soothing, almost child-like tones as she cried and screamed back.  I thought surely this was heading towards a use of force.  But rationalizing with the irrational, they talked her into an awaiting ambulance, despite her prior threats that she absolutely wasn’t going to go.

No one stood around with iPhones raised, recording the incident.  It won’t play on the evening news.  No headlines tomorrow will read, “Cops calm bi-polar woman down, no force needed”.    It was a routine call, like a thousand cops handle a thousands times a day.  Professional.  Compassionate.  And unremarkable.  And I wish it was the image of police officers that came to most citizens’ minds.

 

anniversary

15 years ago today I became a police officer.

So far I have much to be thankful for.  All the same, I wouldn’t recommend the career in today’s social and political climate.

see jane run

Outside, two gang members sat handcuffed in separate squad cars.  A loaded gun lay in the garbage can where it was found, waiting to be photographed and recovered.

Inside the small, 3 bedroom ranch, I noticed the alphabet, lower and upper case, handwritten on white paper taped knee-high to the wall like a poor man’s primer.  A sippee cup sat on the glass coffee table in the living room, next to mostly empty Bud Light bottles and an ashtray full of cigarette butts.   Our victims, 2 strippers, lived together at the rented home, but obviously at least one of them had a small child, and it was painfully clear that their lifestyle of carefree young adults collided with their role as mother, an odd contradiction of nurturing instincts and self indulgence.

In the cramped kitchen, multi-colored magnetic letters were scattered over the face of the smudge-covered refrigerator.  One could imagine that a few more colorful letters could be found under the fridge, dropped by chubby little hands that had not yet mastered fine motor skills.  But up higher on the face of the freezer the letters were arranged neatly to spell, “weed is good”.

One could argue that  a child growing up in this environment is doomed to failure by circumstances beyond their control.   I’d agree the situation is far from ideal.  But life’s lesson has taught me to forgo predictions on any outcome.

She will

The Russian proposed to his girlfriend
and then took her to the Big Easy for
French Quarter Fest.

I needed a new suit anyway.

 

translation

NASA and the Russian went on a 10-37 call.  They found two Mexican nationals drinking cold beer and scarfing down warm Beggar’s pizza in their illegally parked car.  No one had a valid license.   I rolled up to watch.

NASA found a replica Luger bb gun in the car, and the Russian held it up and tried out his Spanish.

“Por que?”, he asked, meaning to question them as to why they had a bb gun that looked like a real gun.  But it sounded more like he said, “Pour Kay” with a south side Chicago accent, and it didn’t matter that they didn’t understand his meaning, because he wouldn’t have understood their answer.  He doesn’t speak Spanish.

In the end NASA let them go with a warning and the bb gun confiscated, and the two walked off, happy to have had the cuffs removed and their freedom restored.  “I’m so proud of you”, one said in a thick Mexican accent before walking away, apparently professing his thanks to NASA.   He knew what he wanted to say, and NASA knew what he meant.

Meissa’s Song

Catch yourself
when you begin to say, “I can’t wait until…”,
followed by the future.

The time will come when you would
gladly
take back every
monotone moment between life’s
bursts of marvelous, if only to
cherish the commonplace, the over-looked, the

spectacular concealed in the seconds that
slip unnoticed.

Do not miss Orion’s hunt,
waiting for the sun to
rise.

storage

After all was said and done,
Hugs and Poland recovered
over 2 grams of weed
and nearly 3 grams of crack

that she had removed from her vagina.

Surfer’s Cathedral

Huntington Beach, California.  July 2011.