Cop
by Doug Dahl—Age 36—Blaine, WA
Minutes after my wife joined me in the car for her first law enforcement ride-along, we got the call. With my patrol car straddling the centerline of the busiest two-lane road in the county, I accelerated to speeds approaching 100 miles per hour, weaving through what felt like two rows of parked cars. Gripping the steering wheel with one hand, I managed the lights, siren and communications radios with the other. I barely noticed my wife’s rigid silence, but I could have measured in heartbeats the time it took to travel the eight miles to the apartment where the victim, still on the line with dispatch, reported her own rape.
For some unexplainable reason, the suspect remained at the scene. He pleaded his innocence, but the bruises on the victim convinced me he was lying. I arrested him and secured him in the back of my patrol car. My wife sat in front, a quarter inch of plexiglass separating her from a suspected rapist, while I returned to the scene to gather evidence and statements.
We made an uncomfortable trip to jail, my wife not sure if she was more satisfied that I put this predator in custody, or upset that I left her to watch over him while I investigated the crime. I spent the remainder of the shift in the report room documenting the crime while my wife contemplated the previous two hours. She never rode with me again.
Maybe I didn’t even realize it until after the shift was over, but at some point I understood. I possess a screwed up idea of “normal.” It’s been there a while, but it took the contrast between the two of us seeing the same event to figure it out. For the first time in her life, my wife witnessed someone in the immediate aftermath of surviving a brutal crime. Moments later, she sat in the same vehicle with the man who committed the crime. For me, it was just part of the job. In fact, the only unique thing about the event was that I had someone riding with me.
I don’t remember my first arrest anymore. It has melted into all the others. At some point the butterflies that the rookie cop denies even having really do go away, and the tragedies that I once thought I’d never see became normal.
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