This Means War

I guess it all started with my visit to East Town. I had just gotten off of an overnight, but the night had been busy and I was still wired. Too wired to sleep, and fearing that my bumping around the apartment at seven in the morning might disturb the Saturday morning rest of my roommate Elle (who very rarely gets to sleep in), I decided to pay a visit to a friend.

I happen to live in East Town, and their police department is only about five minutes from my house. So, I make a habit of dropping by when I know Linda is working the morning shift. Today, I had passed by the East Town firetruck heading out for a call, so I knew she'd be busy. Sure enough, when I walked in and picked up the receiver to call into their dispatch office, I wasn't surprised when nobody answered. What I did hear instead, though, was the click-click, click-click of the front door as it was unlocked remotely. 

Grinning, I stepped inside and made my way to Lin. She was finishing up with the call when I settled in, and we launched effortlessly into our usual chatter. 

"How you are you guys liking your new Chief?"

I smirked. "If you're wondering if we feel guilty for poaching him from you guys, the answer is no." 

"We miss him," she admitted. "But it was an upward step for him, so we understand."

"Well, he's very popular right now. I think his sense of humor is going to bring an energy of fun and playfulness that we've been sorely lacking."

Talk of our new Chief turned to some affectionate anecdotes from back when he was East Town's Captain, my favorite of which details his exploits as resident prankster. Apparently, our Chief was the ringleader of much of the shenanigans.

"We had this giant cardboard cutout of Buddy the Elf," Lin explained. "He used to make his rounds around the station, people moving him around and scaring each other by putting him in unexpected places."

"And... he was in on this?"

"He wasn't just in on it," Lin laughed. "He was usually behind it!" 

Apparently, Buddy wasn't universally liked among the officers, and this was a fact the Captain regularly exploited. In a bit of station security camera footage Lin showed me, I watched the solemn, dignified figure who would one day become our Chief of Police sneak out into the garage bay, Buddy tucked under one arm and a huge grin on his face. I watched as he raced to set the figure up in front of the garage and then run away, just in time for the bay door to open. I swear, I could see the man giggling.

The officer who pulled up was less thrilled, and after a moment he emerged from his cruiser and delivered a punch to poor Buddy that sent him flying across the garage. 

"A lot of the pranks sort of... fizzled when he left," Lin admitted. "It was like he took that energy with him."

"Well, I can't say it's transferred over perfectly. I mean, the Chief has a good sense of humor, but our department is a lot more serious than some of the other small towns' around here." 

I thought for a moment to the description that Kara had given me of her other department, where she dispatches part-time. Chair races across the floor, long-running inside jokes-- all of the things I love about closely-knit workplaces. "But... you know, it doesn't have to be." Turning back to Lin, I asked, "Where is Buddy now?"

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "What are you thinking?"

"Well... when your Captain left to become our Chief, he probably figured he'd left all of this behind him. He'd never expect it to show up at his new workplace, now, would he?"

Lin threw back her head and laughed. "My god, that's perfect," she said. "I'll ask around."

And that's how, a few days later, I wound up trying to disguise a life-sized cardboard cutout of Will Ferrell in a green elf suit in under blankets in the back of my 2008 Toyota Corolla, in case the Chief wound up parked next to me before I had the chance to set the plan in motion.

The introduction of Buddy the Elf to our town's department, and more importantly, his reintroduction to the Chief, brought about some well-needed laughter. First and foremost, on his first day with us, Buddy was set up to scare the Chief himself in his office, right next to the light switch so it would be the first thing he saw when he came in. Upon his arrival, he went straight to  his office and opened the door. A second later, his loud, booming laughter could be heard throughout the station. 

Later that morning, a frightened scream came from the women's locker  room, where Buddy scared the daylights out of our SRO. A few minutes later, she came into Dispatch and asked to see the camera footage from the morning. 

"I want to know who's responsible for this," she said, holding Buddy aloft. 

Later, Buddy made his way into EOPs, where he took Officer Crabby (whom you may remember from my interview) for a good scare, and then around into the dispatchers' lockers, where it gave me a fright. Last I saw Buddy, he was wreaking havoc in the men's locker room, and I'm sure I haven't seen the last of him yet. 

Over breakfast one morning, after a particularly taxing overnight, Kane (one of the officers I'm closer with) told me that long ago, the department had been a different place. Pranks and practical jokes ran abound, with one particular highlight being the head of one Lieutenant (remember Baldy from my interview? Yeah, that would be him) being printed out and stuck all over the department. After a closer look, I was able to find a few of the remaining heads, the ones he was never able to track down and eliminate. There's at least one in the hallway among the memorial photos, and a few in the Detectives' offices-- including a large one glued to a popsicle stick like a mask, high up on a shelf.

"I don't know what happened to that sense of humor," Kane told me.

As Buddy makes his rounds about the station, gaining details such as a printed-out goat face (for the benefit of the officer who spent much of a Saturday morning chasing around a goat), I've been hearing chatter about a retaliation. I have a suspicion that my well-known fear of large insects (specifically roaches, after my first apartment turned out to have them) might come back to haunt me. It's starting to look like an all-out office prank war.

Perhaps it should bother me, the thought of my phobia being used against me. But really, I'm pleased. A wink and a, "Strong work, Diz," from one Sergeant made me think that this really might be the beginning of a new era for the department. 

With a new chief with a great sense of humor, and a cardboard cutout of Buddy the Elf making its way around for all to be spooked by, maybe this means a new era is dawning, one full of laughter and the sort of camaraderie every workplace needs to maintain a sense of fun when things get really dark.

Don't Eat the Charms

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In 2007, after spending many long decades on the United States military's menu, a particularly unpopular brand of candies, seeming otherwise innocuous to the uninitiated, were yanked from supply lists rather unceremoniously. Though no official reason was ever given for the change in MRE supplement, a keen observer may deduce it had something to do with the prevalent negative press the candies received among soldiers, especially after World War II. 

"Charms" were but ordinary tropical-flavored hard candies. They were the first of their kind to be individually wrapped in cellophane, ideal for sending overseas into combat zones. Charms had the potential to take the candy world by storm-- and they did, if not in the way their inventor had perhaps anticipated. 

"Don't eat the Charms" became a popular nugget of wisdom, passed from soldier to soldier. Marines involved in Desert Storm reported that the Iraq ground invasion and every bad turn it took as a result of these ill-fated confections. 

Sampling the yellow Charms, harmless little lemon-flavored snacks, was rumored to be the reason many vehicles broke down. The green ones, innocently flavored as lime, might as well have been rain-sticks, causing sudden storms that flooded the desert paths. And if you touched the ominous dark red ones, tasted the sugary raspberry sweetness-- well, that was the taste of death.

We'll never know if raspberry Charms were the true killers, cursing soldiers with fatal bad luck. There's no rational, scientific way to measure juju. Even so, the belief permeated the armed forces. Some veterans tell stories of commanding officers ordering the candies be disposed of, on threat of disciplinary action should any man be caught with them in his mouth. So when the candies were removed in 2007, there wasn't much outcry from the enlisted.

It can seem silly to those of us far out from the front lines, hearing about grown men and women fearing candies because of some supposed back luck. But the thing you have to understand is this is what human nature is. 

Our species rules the earth. We've built towering cathedrals that reach up into the heavens. We've put ourselves on the moon, and learned how to cut each other open and slice out diseases. We wage wars and write epics about journeys across the seas. Many of us won't know death until well into adulthood, at far lower rates than those our ancestors saw. It feels at times like we're on the brink of invincibility, one miracle drug away from immortality itself. 

But the humans who know death intimately may see things in a different light. It's true that the end is just one accident, illness, or chance encounter away from us all. But when those situations are as unlikely as they are to most of us, it can be easy to dismiss thoughts of them as "irrational fears" or "paranoia."

Soldiers avoid Charms. They have been known to carry coins whose dates can be added up to equal thirteen, engraved pocket-watches or cord bracelets with the names of loved ones woven in. Sailors refuse to whistle onboard ships, lest it tempt the wrath of Neptune, and tankers avoid apricots at all costs, a tradition carrying on from World War II. After a vehicle supposedly carrying, among others, a guy with a white lighter in his pocket, went off a cliff, those too became as notorious in military circles as with believers in the "27 Club."

Emergency room staff, many of whom are doctors and nurses with extensive scientific education, are known to tout their own superstitions. "The q-word" is a taboo in many hospitals, as any acknowledgement of a lack of activity is bound to invite an influx of it. Some refuse to order Chinese food while on the clock, believing it will portend disaster. Saying the name of a regular patient will draw them in, and tying a knot in a patient's bedsheet will expedite their fate, speeding along their recovery or bringing about more quickly the end of their suffering. 

First responders, like soldiers and E.R. staff, are notoriously superstitious creatures. We have rites, rituals, and rules, and tokens that we believe (with varying degrees of seriousness) will protect us from danger. Many of the rules in Dispatch are mirrored in other fields: don't invoke the Q-word, don't say the name of a frequent flier unless you want them to make a sudden appearance, and beware the full moon-- those nights, as well as the Fridays that land on the thirteenth of the month, will be the longest of your career. I also have it on good authority that most firefighters will be extra sure to put their turn-out gear in exactly the same place every time. "Goodbye" is an underutilized salutation for both fire and police personnel, with many preferring the more optimistic, "See you later."

"Horseshoe, Dice, and Four-Leaf Clover." 2024, ink on paper.
Okay, so I'm not an artist. Sue me. Anyway, that's the pen.

I have my own superstitions, too. I have a favorite pen, and if for any reason I can't find it, I just know that today is going to be a long day. Gabe's old EMS patch, a token of his confidence in my ability to succeed, lives in the left leg pocket of my uniform pants, only being taken out long enough to move to a fresh pair. When I take notes on the yellow legal pads in the Dispatch office, I never write on the back of a page, even though I detest the waste of paper.

Do these rituals actually do anything? Will losing my pen really cause the day to spiral into chaos, or is the added weight of its heavy tactical design merely a comfortable familiarity to which I have assigned some meaning?

One of my oldest friends was a girl named Rosie, with whom I had attended first grade. As with all long-term friendships, we would occasionally fight. But no matter how angry we got with each other, she would never let me leave the fight until she had said, "I love you," and heard me say it back. For years, I never understood why she was like this, until one day in high school when she finally told me.

One day, when Rosie was only ten or eleven, she had gotten into a big fight with her mother. Just before she stormed off, she'd called out over her shoulder, "I hate you, Mom!"

None of us had seen it coming when she died. It was a freak accident. One of those things you never see coming. And the last thing Rosie had ever said to her was, "I hate you." 

Suddenly, my friend's fixation made sense. She'd been traumatized by the death of her mother, and it had been made worse by the last words she said to her.

Robert Meganck, "Superstition"

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the rituals exist in some extra dimension where the dates on coins are cataloged and the carriers of ones adding to thirteen shielded from danger. We carry our superstitions for a reason. High-stress jobs like those in public safety spawn superstition because amidst the chaos of crisis management, there's comfort in ritual.

We've all  been traumatized by something terrible happening on the one day we couldn't find our coin, our lucky pen, the bracelet with our girlfriend's name on it. Made mistakes when writing on the back of yellow paper. Lost someone after a fight gone unresolved. And so we all find comfort in the things that give us a feeling of control, illusory as it may be. They allow us to feel as though there's some pattern, some meaning behind all the seemingly random ways in which life can go terribly wrong.

My house burned down on the one day I didn't have my purse; now I carry a backpack with everything I might need if I have to spend a night somewhere unexpectedly.

Rosie always ends a fight with, "I love you."

Firefighters don't say goodbye; only "See you tomorrow." Nurses never comment about it being "the Q-word," and you'll be hard pressed to find a soldier willing to carry a white lighter.

And all of us agree: never, ever eat the Charms.

Routine Stop

There's a strangely soothing rhythm to traffic stops. They tend to be very formulaic, following the same steps in roughly the same order every time. 

As soon as my officer has flashed his blues, before he even gets out of his cruiser, he calls me over the radio and advises me of his location and the vehicle's plates, and usually the reason for the stop.

From my desk, I run the plate out in the state it's registered in. My software will check it against DMV records to find vehicle information, including its R.O. (registered owner), whose information it will then run through the DMV and CJIS. I'll be shown results for their information, criminal history, and any open warrants they may have in the system. All of this I can backfill to the call in my CAD.

A few moments later, the officer might tell me, "Operator is the R.O." (registered owner), which I can also backfill through this page. If another person is driving, the officer will give me their license number. Run that out in their state and I'll get much of the same: criminal record, driving history, past traffic violations. I can then attach this to the call as well.

Whether the officer writes a ticket, issues a written warning, or lets them off with a verbal warning, it will be assigned a "CN," or citation number. This too gets attached to the call before I clear the officer and close it out.

Some officers do a lot of stops. Some will often be out with another before I've finished clearing the last, again and again until you wonder why anybody speeds in this town anymore. Others will avoid them at all costs, going so long without writing a ticket that they forget how. (True story-- she'd been going 45 in a 25 school zone, and had been so rude to the Lieutenant that I can't imagine she'd have gotten away with it under any other circumstances.)

But whether they do a hundred stops a day or barely one a year, every officer follows the same general pattern. Each stop is the same, with very few exceptions, and I always know what to expect next. 

Alarm calls, the kinds we get from security monitoring centers or as a response to medical pendant activations, are like this too. Pick up the phone. It's coming in through the 9-1-1 phone, but through the 7-digit number, which means it's likely from a call center. They tell me they've got a medical pendant activation, or a commercial burg alarm, or a telematics notification from a vehicle that may have been in an accident.

From there, I collect the following data, in this order:

• Address
• Nature of the alert
• PTN (person to notify) or patient's name and date of birth
• Case number or the caller's company-assigned operator ID

"If anything changes or if you get any further calls about this case, give us a call back. ...You too, thanks."

It's the same conversation, every time. It's formulaic. Routine.

I like routine. I like it when things go according to plan. It's not exactly a secret that I'm autistic, and when I do refer to my diagnosis by name in front of my coworkers for the first time, most of them seem less than surprised.

"You're autistic?" they'll ask, their faces thoughtful. Then they'll nod as if thinking, Yeah, that tracks. 

Why not a puzzle piece? Tori Morales, autistic writer
and advocate, eloquently explains in this article.
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It almost always happens like that. It's kind of like a routine in of itself. I don't mind; it's not their fault there are few to no authentic representations out there that depict autism the way I experience it. (And if they try to bond with me by informing me that their nephew is autistic, or that their favorite character of The Big Bang Theory is Sheldon Cooper, I usually change the subject.)

But while many parts of this job-- traffic stops, arrest packets, filling in timestamps, paperwork-- are methodical and routine, the job itself is anything but predictable. 

Some nights, the 9-1-1 phone won't ring once. Occasionally, a big event, like a bad crash on the highway or an involved structure fire, will flood the PSAP with calls, all trying to report the same thing. Sometimes the calls will flood in all at once, despite each reporting a different emergency.

The following contains a brief description of a suicide attempt. Discretion advised.

When I was working on a study guide for Reg, I made cards with important questions for different call natures. The hardest one to write by far was the one for a suicidal caller. I started with the basics: location, presence of weapons, best access to the home. After that, I was stumped. This is one of those call natures when you'd want to keep them talking as long as possible. If they're talking, they're breathing, and if they're breathing, they're not dead, and there's still hope.

But what do you say in that situation? A complete stranger calls you and tells you that they want to take their own life. Once you've started help, what's next? 

"What makes you want to--"

"What's going on that you feel like--"

"How did you get to this--"

I kept starting the next question over again, unable to get the words right. Finally, I decided to just move on to another card. 

A few days later, I still hadn't gotten around to finishing that study guide when I got a call that finally taught me what my study guide had been missing.

"I just cut my wrists," the caller told me after the pre-recorded greeting ended. 

"Okay, sir, where are you?"

He told me the address placidly. 

"And the best access is through the front door?"

"Yes, it's unlocked."

Here, I deviated from the script. "What's your name?"

"Eli."

"What did you use to cut your wrists, Eli?"

"A kitchen knife." 

"Okay, and where is that now?"

"Next to me, on the floor." 

I swallowed. "Okay, Eli. Here's what I need you to do. Can you put that knife somewhere safe for me?"

"Like where?"

After some back and forth, we agreed on the kitchen sink. I knew I was losing time, but getting that knife secured was my first priority. Before he settled back down on the floor, I instructed Eli to get some clean towels.

"Do they have to be paper, or will-- will my bath towel work?"

"A bath towel will work fine, just as long as it's clean and dry," I assured him. "Now I want you to press down on the cuts with the towel, applying pressure."

"Hm-- hey, miss? How am I supposed to push down on both at the same time?"

Thinking fast, I asked him, "Can you press your wrists together around the towel, and then put them between your knees?" 

"Ah, yes, I think I can do that."

There was a bit of scuffling as Eli assumed his position. In the few moments it took him to get back on the line, I had a sudden and important revelation.

When I'd shown my trainer the study guide, she'd reminded me of something that is said a lot during training: "There is no script," she said. "Every call is different, and you can't rely on a checklist for every call you're going to get."

I'd assured her that I understood this, that the cards were just a study guide for what information is most pertinent in different types of situation. 

But now, listening to Eli's tranquility lapse into dawning panic, I realized just how right she had been. This wasn't a test, and there was no right answer. 

Eli's voice was small and timid, like a small child's when he told me, "I don't want to die."

My heart ached. "I know, Eli." I wanted to tell him he was going to be okay, that it didn't sound like he was on the brink of bleeding out. But you can't make promises in this line of work. Certainly I am nobody to be making promises on behalf of God.

"My guys are gonna take care of you," I said instead. "They're gonna do their best to help you."

Once the police were on scene, I told Eli that he was in good hands before disconnecting. The trainer, who had been silent monitoring the call, looked over at me with a look of approval.

I looked back at him and allowed myself a deep breath. "There's no script."

He shook his head. "No. There isn't." He searched my face. "You okay?"

"I think so," I told him. "It's just... strange. It came so naturally. I think I forgot for a minute what I was doing on the phone with him in the first place.

That night, I was finally able to finish my study guide card:

There really is no 'average' call. And really, even the most routine parts of this job can turn over in seconds. Any call could  be the one that changes everything. Any traffic stop could be the one where someone gets hurt, or killed. At the end of the day, there's no such thing as a routine stop.