I chose to take part in a ride along with Lake Charles Police Department’s Officer F. White. I began my ride along around 7:30 P.M. and ended around 12:00 A.M. Officer White is one of many patrol officers on the L.C.P.D. force. His supervisor is Lieutenant Smith. He supervises Officer White and many other patrol officers by radio contact and video surveillance from inside the police station on Enterprise Blvd.
Our first event occurred at approximately 7:50 when we pulled over an old Chevrolet pickup truck for illegal placement and lighting of his license plate. As Officer White approached the vehicle he made sure to leave a finger print on the tail light of the truck for safety reasons and to make identification of the vehicle easier in case he got hurt and the truck drove away. Officer White ran a background check on the driver and found no warrants for his arrest or unpaid tickets, so he let the man go with a warning to get the placement and lighting of the license plate corrected.
After the man drove away, a disturbing call came over the radio, “A black male is holding a gun to the head of a black female and threatening to shoot.” Officer White hurriedly threw the car in drive and raced to the scene. Upon arrival, another officer had already gotten there and had the man by the arm dragging him out of the house and into the driveway. By the time White got out of the vehicle, five other L.C.P.D. units (including a K-9 unit) with nine officers, one S.W.A.T. unit with three S.W.A.T. members, and an ambulance with two medics arrived on scene. Three officers wrestled the man to the ground and hand cuffed him while S.W.A.T. and the other officers searched the house, backyard, vehicles in the driveway, and bushes around the house for the weapon the man had. The medics went inside the house as well and found the woman beaten on the floor crying and carried her to the ambulance for medical attention and questioning by an officer. The Officers and S.W.A.T. members never found the weapon, while the K-9 sniffed out a bag of drugs inside the house. After everything and everyone was cleared out, Officer White got back into the car and we drove away like nothing had happened. He did inform me that the officer that had arrived before him had the duty of writing up the report. No lights or sirens were turned on by any of the units that arrived at the scene. I asked why so and White explained that, although any emergency call involving a gun is a number one priority call, usually the only time that lights and sirens get turned on other than traffic stops is when there is a call for back-up from a fellow officer. Officer White drove us to his favorite spot to watch for people running stop signs, he asked me not to include the location in which I speak of, we parked in the shadows and he turned off all his lights. He calls this, “Going Black”. After waiting and watching for about five minutes, a red, single cab, ford truck runs the stop sign. Officer White immediately flips the blue lights on and pulls the truck over. As White approaches the vehicle he again places the finger print on the tail light and then proceeds to the window. I was unable to hear the whole conversation between Officer White and the driver, but from what I understood, both the men were being very calm and collecting in the confrontation. Again, White ran a background check on the driver and found no warrants or unpaid tickets and let the man go with a verbal warning. We returned to his hiding spot and waited for a few more minutes before a call came over the radio reporting a “signal 9” call about a females boyfriend unplugging things from the wall outlets and making her nervous. A “signal 9” call means that the caller is mentally handicap in some way. But every call must have at least one unit dispatched the scene, so White and I made our way over to check it out and found that nothing was wrong and Officer White told the woman she just needed to calm down and if it bothered her to much that she should go to the women’s shelter and stay there for the night. As we left the scene we turned onto Kirkman St. and spotted a tall white male carrying what seemed to be an injured female across the street. White quickly pulled over and stopped the man. The female in his arms looked up and then stood up on her own as the man set her on her feet. White asked if everything was alright and they reassured him that everything was fine. White asked for their ID’s and quickly ran a background check on both of them. Both the man and woman were clean so Officer White filled out a “Field Intelligence Card” with all their information, why he stopped them, what they were doing, where they were going, and why they were walking the streets after dark. The couple said they were just taking a walk to talk about personal subjects about their relationship and that her feet started hurting so the man carried her. Officer White put on the card he stopped them for probable cause in the assumption that the girl was injured in some way. After participating in the ride along with Officer White, my feelings changed a little about how I feel about police and the way I saw them. I felt like policemen were only out there to right tickets and stop wrongdoers. I was wrong. Policemen aren’t just out there to do just the things that people don’t like and label officers as, they are also out there to help people just like Officer White tried to see if the female being carried was injured and if she was, he would have helped in any way possible. What I’m attempting to explain is that cops aren’t the bad guys out to get us; they’re the good guys out to protect us and give us the peace of mind and comfort that we have that lets us sleep at night knowing there are people out there that solely dedicate themselves to protecting us.