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BPD Confidential (#2)
Yesterday morning, the Blackberry buzzed early in the wee hours and the hubby rolled over in bed, checked the message and told me, “Patrol’s been placed on fixed positions - the roads are way icy. Guess I’m working from home.”
There are times when the radio cars are not rolling on the streets of Baltimore. Yesterday morning was one of those mornings. The whole state was a sheet of ice and the Baltimore Police Department decided the cars should stay in fixed positions on posts unless it was necessary to roll.
But now, our second installment of BPD Confidential is a story of a car not rolling when it was meant to roll. See, there are always times during some shifts, some days, when a police wants a little break. I’m not getting into the whole judgement thing - that’s not what I’m about and I could never know what it’s like to be out on patrol on the Baltimore streets, so I’ll take that as I’m told. There are always some times during some shifts, on some days when a police wants a little break.
But then there are “humps.” In BPD lingo, a hump is a police who is ALWAYS on break. Always holed up somewhere tucked away, most likely on lone patrol, snoring somewhere and definitely NOT rolling through the streets.
Meet Officer Hump. He’s an old-timer, knows his post, which encompasses a few city blocks, knows it like the back of his hand, and knows exactly where he can go to catch a long peek at the back of his eyelids. There’s this alley, see. It’s real narrow, just wide enough for a radio car and it goes way back between two buildings. And then there’s a little spot of heaven - an alley off that alley, which backs itself up to a drop-off of a dozen feet.
The perfect spot. No back way in, so narrow and so isolated that no one could possibly come up on you without coming nose to nose with you.
So, it’s winter, like it is now, and Officer Hump knows where he’s heading on this bitter night that makes it laughable to think Baltimore is south of the Mason Dixon line. It’s a clear, dry kind of cold, without the moisture in the air that might mean snow, but still, it’s cold enough that anything that decided to percipitate would powder-coat the city.
More important to our story, the other police in his wider sector know where he’s heading too. And - I don’t know why - maybe it was just the perfect night for it, but they make the call that this is the night. They wait a while after the shift begins and then they head out on foot down the alley off the alley. They see his radio car and, sure enough, Officer Hump is asleep inside, out cold. Nothing but the dispatcher calling his shift and post numbers through the radio will wake him; he’s trained himself to hear them and only them. After all, he’s been doing this for years.
His fellow police move up on the car. Two of them let heavy cinder blocks drop to the asphalt. Out from under coats come spray cans of snow bought on clearance after Christmas. The cinder blocks get wedged up under the front tires of the radio car. The fake snow is liberally sprayed on every glass window.
Then they wait back down in their own cars on the clear, cold street down the alley off the alley.
It doesn’t take long. Maybe a half hour later they hear it. Engine turning over. Wipers swishing madly. The zuzz-zuzz-zuzz of tires spinning, trying to get traction. And then the sweetest sound of all coming over the radio of every police in the district.
“Uh, Dispatch? This is Baker 34. I’m going to need a tow-truck. My unit’s got stuck in this snowstorm…”
