law enforcement ride along, part 3

I went on a Friday night for the evening events with a detective. I'd gotten pretty anxious about going in general, as it would keep me up later than normal, and was sincerely hoping that I would neither be an embarrassment or get in a situation where my squeamishness would make them wish I was not present. Remembering my experiences when working with Head Start program and doing home visits going into places that still make me uneasy when they come to mind all these years later, I was a little fearful about where law enforcers do business.

As soon as the detective picked me up, she said she was headed to an apartment where others would meet her. There as a felony warrant out on an individual they had located, stopped in a rental/moving truck and discovered a gallon bag full of very fragrant weed, which she had in a paper bag in her backseat. We were constantly suffused with that unique aroma: smelling remarkably suspect ourselves. The search for the (alleged) felon started several days earlier with an altercation involving a firearm had brought about the warrant, so they were holding three of the men from the vehicle, one of whom was the brother of the person they wanted.Needless to say, they all denied knowledge of the controlled substance.

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I went along when they searched the apartment, and was secretly horrified: thinking Yikes - they go through some very personal stuff - what if this was Mine?. These guys do a Very Thorough job - looking Everywhere. I stood aside and watched them put on their gloves, and go through all the piles of clothing, all the dresser drawers, all the moving boxes, all the appliances, all the cupboards, all the closets, all the OTC stored in the bathroom, every personal item in the house, all the upholstered furniture, even the crawl space above the ceiling. They found some misc. pills, in baggies, unidentified, plus several boxes of zip-bags, that indicated to the detectives a possibility/likelihood to distribute the gallon of very potent smelling weed.

We went back to the Public Safety building, where the three men from the truck were being held, in separate rooms. The detectives started the questioning process. Naturally each of the guys proceeded to deny everything. The detectives started the process of inventorying each item that was consficated: weighing the weed, identifying the misc. pills, sorting, counting, photographing the $1500 in cash one of the guys had, logging it all into evidence.

I left the building at 12:30, still smelling like a pot-head, and their job/shift was only half over. So you can imagine all the things that particular adventure makes me thankful for. Stuff it never occurred to me to do, like shoot people, sell illegal drugs, hang out with suspects, stay up all night being interrogated all the while expecting to be locked up when the questioning is over. Plus thankful for my dull, mundane, ho-hum, routine, law-abiding life.