Our motor sergeant is a great guy. He goes to bat for us when a complaint comes in about one of us (which is more often than not).
Well our motor sergeant was the newest member to the motor cop profession. The rest of us have been doing the motor cop job for years. Now when you see our entire motor unit together, you'd think "now there's a group of dedicated officers, highly trained accident re-constructionists who love their job."
We actually look like adults, the majority of us sport mustaches (with a hint of gray) and with thinning hair (must be from wearing the helmet most of the day). Looks can be deceiving because we have to be one of the most juvenile group of men around. This distinction doesn't belong exclusively to our department as its been my experience that other department's motor units are just as juvenile.
So to break in our new motor sergeant, we'd always turn on his motorcycle siren. The siren would only sound after he turned the ignition switch on and believe me it is loud and an attention getter. Needless to say for about the first six months he never checked it. Every time we'd leave our favorite coffee place the sound of his siren would pierce the morning silence followed by our loud laughter.
Eventually our sergeant caught on and learned to check his siren and emergency lights before turning on his ignition. What we started doing next was to turn on his heated hand grips as high as they would go.
He was catching on quick and we were running out of pranks to pull on him. Well not to let a funny streak end, I decided it would be funny to put is motorcycle in third gear and watch him stall as he began to take off.
Typically us motor cops will put our feet up on the foot boards as soon as the bike starts moving and do a sharp turn which we refer to as a pull-out. We tend to pull out very sharply hoping to bump the front tire of the motorcycle next to us with our saddle bag.
On this particular day the sergeant parked his motor to the right of the rest of our motors. So after we all were mounted on our steel steeds with the V-twin engines low rumble we nodded to our sergeant to pull-out first and we'd follow.
It was hilarious to hear his engine rev up as the motor started to move forward. The handle bars turned hard right, the motor lurched forward then stalled. As we expected, he did the usual feet up on the foot boards as he fell over in the parking lot.
I thought I had broken a rib I was laughing so hard. All of us were in tears. Of course the Harley being a heavy bike we absolutely felt obligated to help the sergeant pick up his motor......after we had taken out our digital cameras and taken several pictures. We motor cops do love a photo opportunity!
Needless to say we never pulled that prank on the sergeant again.
What the hell is a heated hand grip? Pussies...
ReplyDelete:)
I can't seem to see the picture on the blog. Will you be uploading it soon?
ReplyDeleteHA!
HM
Meow!
ReplyDeleteAnd to prevent embarassment to myself, as rumor has it there is a video somewhere "out there", where ever "out there" is, of my attempted barrel roll on a Harley. $300 dinaro's later (purely cosmetic) and a letter from the patrol division commander where I had to acknowledged that I had damaged "South City" property, all "foolish" acts on motors will remain anonymous.
I think this sort of behavior is unprofessional and unacceptable. Your sergeant could have been injured. As well, this behavior can be witnessed by the public and sets a bad impression for your department. Hijinks and horseplay are for when you're off duty and out of the public eye. When you're in uniform, on the clock, and in public, act professional at all times.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment. Yes, as unprofessional and unacceptable our behavior can be to certain people (usually humorless), the prank you are "not amused" about was done in an empty parking lot at "0-dark-thirty hours" which means most of the public were still in their safe warm beds sleeping.
ReplyDeleteI chose this profession and accept the good and bad that comes with it. Unfortunately there is more bad than good. So the juvenile things we do often are therapeutic to us.
Many Peace Officers deal with very traumatic events which change their lives forever. Our profession has a higher suicide, divorce, and alcohol abuse rate than the general public. All too often I would suspect that it is caused by some traumatic event the Officer experienced on the job.
Many Officers are able to avoid the above listed pitfalls of our profession but probably pay for it in ways such as depression, and post traumatic stress disorder and become one of the "silent walking wounded".
Spend some time wearing my boots, see the broken bodies, lives and devastation caused by careless drivers. Witness the autopsy of a young child and tell me your outlook about life wouldn't change.
I'm not trying to justify a prank which you correctly point out could have caused injury, but understand our making light of a situation is a protective mechanism as well as our pranks.
My blog was meant to give the public (of whom some are ignorant) a little insight or peek into to my world. I'm proud to exercise my 1st amendment right which I proudly protected during my years of service in the military, and by the way nobody forced you to read my blog. I'm sure the daily news is much more humorous and cheery.
We get complaints for frivolous things like having a cup of coffee with fellow motor officers, or eating lunch together in a PUBLIC restaurant. How quick too many people are to point out our faults.
GET A SENSE OF HUMOR AND GET OVER IT!
One last statement and I'll get off of my soapbox, you sound like you work in a cubicle and don't look at the lighter side of things in life or you're a police department administrator.
Amen, 2 Wheel....... better to relieve the tension by pranking your motor buddies, than to bottle up the stress and go 'postal', or to get orally intimate with your sidearm. Thanks for the entertaining blogs.
ReplyDeleteCophawk
CopHawk,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post. Only those who have experienced life through our eyes will understand our sense of humor.
2WT
No, I don't work in a cubicle and I don't work as police department administrator.
ReplyDeleteYou want to compare war stories? How about prying a dehydrated infant covered with her mother's dried vomit out of her dead crackhead mother's arms. How about entering a closed room where a corpse explodes because it's been sealed up for a week. How about coming on the scene of a bleeding rape victim who was sodomized with a broken bottle. How about finding, weeks after they were left, the dismembered sections of a dead honor student sealed in plastic bags and dumped in a pond.
And autopsies? How about a burned child. A thing you're not even sure is a child, could be an adult, it's so decomposed. How about learning the dead nine-year-old boy on the table has been raped for at least the last several years. How about an 86-year-old woman whose teeth were smashed when she was forced to fellate her attacker.
And what's a real kicker is when you bring the scumbag to justice who did it and the jury waltzes in and says "not guilty."
So tell me about trauma son. I saw trauma before you had your first wet dream. I've been a police officer for more than thirty years. I've seen a lot of brothers in blue buried in my time. I've walked up that front walk, knocked on that door more times than I care to remember. It's been said cops live in the worst hour of other people's lives. I've lived that hour a long, long time.
So get off your high horse and spare me the sob sister act. I'd be willing to bet I've seen things the like of which aren't even whispered in the darkest corners of your imagination.
There are ways to deal with that stress without acting like a clown in public. You want to deal with your stress, you do it in private on your own time. Some of us can handle it without running around bemoaning "poor me" in a public space.
You never know who's watching.
WOW and Whoa!
ReplyDeleteOkay, you win in the war stories and autopsies catagory. You have seen and experienced some crappy moments as have I. You sound 100% cop to me as you are a great shit talker, and that is meant in a good way.
You and I may not see eye to eye on the pranks topic, but I bet we see eye to eye on many issues which our profession deals with.
We can agree to disagree on one thing. You didn't agree with the prank pulled on our Sergeant in public. And in hind sight I also did as stated "we never pulled that prank on the Sergeant again"
I will continue to deal with my "ghosts" with my type of humor and sarcasm and share them in this blog.
BTW, you killed me with your "first wet dream" and "sob sister act" comments. I'm going to try the "sob sister act" one of these days.
As one of our sayings goes in our line of work, "Stay Safe"
2WT