After my wife participated in a ride along with the Kirkland Police (and blogged about it)I figured I would do the same. Kind of a follow up post to see if my experience was similar--or even better. So I filled out the form and dropped it off. I got my appointment scheduled and I was excited to go!
It's not the first time I have been on a ride along. Several years back I went on a few ride alongs with the Sacramento PD. Why Sacramento? Well, my cousin is Sgt. Susan Feenstra out there. The ride alongs were exciting and I went for the entire shift (from night into the wee hours of the morning). There was lot's of action...calls into housing projects, gang related calls, a few stops for food, and lots of domestic violence calls. Even saw a few arrests and bookings back at the jail.
I have a ton of respect for police and their work and love hearing the stories whenever we are fortunate enough to spend time with my cousin and her husband. Oh, I forgot to mention that my cousin's husband, Jim Hyde, just took the Chief of Police job at Antioch PD.
OK, so back to the Kirkland PD ride along. I was scheduled to have my ride along last Thursday night from 7:30 to 9:30 pm. It doesn't sound like a lot of time, but I was still excited and wanted to see first hand how our police keep Kirkland safe.
I arrived about 7:25 pm (you should always arrive for an appointment early, right?). I picked up the red phone outside the lobby--which by now was closed. I told the operator I was there for my ride along. She said "Great! I will buzz you in, please wait in the lobby and will tell them you are here. Someone will pick you up from there."
So there I sat, and sat, and sat and then sat some more. I watched as police officers came back from one shift and left for the next. Some officers looked at me as they walked by outside the lobby and just kept walking. Then I sat some more. Nothing but a camera pointed at me in the lobby and some forms sitting on a desk. I read them all. At about 8:25 (almost an hour into my two hour ride along) I just decided to leave.
They had my info, but no one called. I thought they might want to know what happened to me (what if I was kidnapped?) or even apologize (I know...wishful thinking, huh?). Hey, I am the first to admit that having a visitor tag along isn't a high priority and may even be an unwanted distraction for most officers. That said, if you are going to offer a program for ride alongs my feeling is that you should run it properly and have some respect for the people who are carving time out of their schedules to participate.
Nobody likes to have an appointment and be blown off. Whether it's a dentist appointment, an appointment for a tattoo, a dinner reservation, or a ride along. Why couldn't an officer just pop into the lobby and say they are "running late", or that they "had an emergency". Anything would have been better than the cold shoulder!
After getting home and telling Janis the story she confirmed that the same thing happened to her, although she waited it out (about 45 minutes). Maybe 7:30 pm is just a bad time? Maybe they should either kill the program or tell people to show up at 8:30 pm. Of course that doesn't leave much time to get into the squad car. Anyway, I hope they take steps to improve the program. It works well in other cities. Does anyone else have a ride along story to share that's more exciting than mine? Steve
Recent Comments