Welcome Rookie Diaries fans. I hope this new site will be better for everyone. I decided to go to this blog format so people can check in when they want to. I think its better that way you don't have to get a stupid email and be forced to read as I babble on and on about boring work stuff if you don't feel like reading a novel every few days.
Just a couple of house keeping rules before we get started. For confidentiality reasons I've decided to keep my name annonymous as well as my department. You know who I work for and I'm a little paranoid that this blog might not be kosher. I'll try to generalize my thoughts and for obvious reasons not be too detailed concerning particular cases or events that I may or may not talk about.
That being said please be courteous and not spread the site address around to people I don't know and I would ask that you contact me if someone wants to check out the blog. This is especially true for all the Snocom'ers out there as you all work pretty close with my department etc. I'm not trying to be a jerk just discrete thats all.
Also I'll reiterate for all you grammar peeps out there I apologize. I'll try to spell check when I can but really I just try and type fast and sometimes spelling etc goes out the wayside!
I tried copy and paste to post a few of the old entries so people can get caught up but the website didn't seem to enjoy that too much. Anyway, I figure I'll just start by where I left off. I appologize for not getting this thing going earlier. I kept saying to myself I'll do it this weekend or that weekend and already a few weeks have passed before I even knew it. For that ...my bad.
Anyway the past few weeks have been pretty good. I hate not writing right away because I often forget about "the cool stories" but I'll try and remember a few to get started.
So I had my first week on my own. It was great being out there on my own. As you probably remember it was wierd sitting in that car myself for the first day or so but I'm starting to get the hang of it little by little.
My first week was on the night shift and I have to admit I like nights better than days. I'm on dayshift for another few weeks. They plugged me in for about a month before going back to nights. Nights are a little more fun. A few more interesting things seem to occur and more interesting people seem to be out during vampire hours. But for now, I'm stuck on dayshift and that's okay with me.
My sleep schedule is totally screwed up. Its one of the joys of shift work. Going back and forth just eats you alive. Its been my first week on dayshift which runs from 0600 to 1800 hours and right now its 1am and I'm up. Yesterday I woke up at 2am bright eyed and bushy tailed and just stayed up cause I couldn't get back to sleep. I thought I would sleep for like 10 hours after I got home. I fell asleep around 7:30pm and just woke up around midnight.....sucks big time but I feel pretty good. Its my friday today (later today anyway in the morning) and hopefully I'll have a chance to catch up on some sleep on the weekend! For now though....It sucks.
On my friday (still working graves then a week ago or so) I was sitting at an intersection winding down a bit. I was excited because I had all my tickets and paperwork caught up and I was just kind of riding out the last few hours of the shift. All of a sudden I see this car coming down the hill. It was this older Subaru station wagon. One of the headlights was broke and hanging down by the bumper and the windshield was caved in and totally broke (spider-webbed across the entire surface). It was bad and it definitely caught my eye...something was up. I pulled the car over and the driver was completely drunk.
I could smell a ton of alcohol on his breath. I must admit I wasn't super nice...instead of my usual "good evening sir" I think I greeted him with a "what the fu** happened here". He said that he had hit some kind of highway roadblock barrier sign and was just trying to get home...I asked if the road was blocked why he went through it and he couldn't give me a very good explanation...it was a little funny. Also something of note he had all these elaborate chains and handcuffs connected to the "oh crap handles" above his doors inside the car. They strung up all over the place. I asked his buddies about them and they just smilled and was like "yeah he gets laid alot". Creap factor 10! Hello! Luckily there was chained up sex slaves in the back so that was good.
I ran him through the standard sobriety tests etc and he blew into my PBT (portable Breath Test) and he was over the limit but not by much. I hooked him up for DUI and brought him to the Lynnwood jail. Unfortunately in this state you have to go through alot of BS for DUI's. The portable tester out in the field is not considered good enough for prosecution so you have to bring them to the jail for the "official test". It was nice being on my own because I really felt like I could talk to this guy how I wanted to talk to him and not how a trainer or someone else would want me to talk to him etc so I got to spread my wings a bit. I'm pretty cool with people...I dont get into giving them a lecture like they are 5 years old like some other people do and generally if you treat people with respect you get it back in return and that was the case with this kid....he was a young guy that just made a poor choice....in fact he was pretty cooperative and cool with me so after we got done with the test I scratched out a ticket and gave him a lift home (didnt have to book him into jail for cost reasons). He was so happy about it he thanked me afterword....anytime you can arrest someone and get a thank you out of it, its pretty cool.
I switched to dayshift this week and its been pretty slow which is nice. Less stuff to screw up on! I've been just working on my traffic stops and trying to dig things up as best I can. Last night I was getting ready to go home when I got 2 accidents one after the other. What a pain in the rear...it was mostly do to the slick roads with all this rain and people being dumb. I was standing out in the rain for a couple hours directing traffic. I can't beleive how dumb people are.....I had my car blocking an entire turn lane with my lights on and my yellow arrow in the back flashing to people "cant use this lane jerks". I don't know how much clearer of a sign that could be that people should try and find somewhere else to turn. I had probably 4 people try and turn down the road (that I was blocking along with 2 others cars and a large red fire truck)...they all had that look on their faces "I need to turn there can i turn"? NO! What a bunch of tards seriously. It just amazes me sometimes how self serving people "need" to be.
Yesterday nothing much happened. Near the end of the day I was driving along and almost got T-boned by this lady....she didn't stop behind the stop sign and white stop mark on the street and another half a car length and she would have smashed me to bits.......so I turned around on her and pulled her over. She got right out of the car talking on her cell phone and started walking toward a house. She made it about one foot before i blocked her and ordered her back in her car.......she got a puzzled look on her face and said "I'm going up to this house right here" I told her "no your not you're gonna get back in your car right now". I told her why I had pulled her over.....she was not having it...she called me a liar and completely denied any wrong doing and flat out denied any fault at all. She went up and down about how she knew the x-mayor and this person and that person etc etc. I asked her for her license and she said she didn't have one cause it was expired...I ran her name and her license was fine, it wasnt expired. I was so sick of dealing with her that I gave her a warning.....now most people would be happy with that and just shut their yapper and go on with it....but NO she started running her mouth again etc etc...I said mam your ahead right now and I suggest you keep it that way......she finally shut up after a few minutes and I was done with her and I took off but I couldn't beleive that...some people I tell ya!
Well anyway...I feel like I'm forgetting a bunch of other cool stories but thats it for now, I'm gonna try and get a few more hours of shut eye before 4am rolls around. Now that I have this started I should be posting more frequently so stay tuned.....for more of the Rookie Diaries!
