Weather-110

We’ve covered it plenty of times in our pages, and we’ll cover it again, and maybe even point fingers if needed — equipment is often overly complicated. Sometimes things that don’t need flashing LEDs, high-tech materials and words like “tactical” associated with them get ‘em all anyway.

About 100 years ago when I was working a graveyard traffic “crash” car taking accident reports, I got tired of trying to document scenes on soggy report forms. There was talk about having special forms printed on fancy paper that wouldn’t fall apart, and we could use special space pens to write on them, even in the rain and upside down (if you happened to be upside down in the rain). It would take some months to get it all done, but by then the rainy season would be over and we would have lost interest in getting it done anyway.

So, the first thing I did was buy a bright orange umbrella ($8 at K-Mart). The next time it rained I pulled out the umbrella, rested it over my shoulder and took notes in the rain. Other motorists could really see me too. I took plenty of crap from my buds on-scene, but I gently reminded them I was dry — and they were standing in the rain. Pretty soon any crash in the rain looked like a rainy NY street scene in a 1940s movie: umbrellas everywhere. Then I had an epiphany, which you shouldn’t have on-duty since you generally spill your coffee when it happens.

It was raining. I found an office supply store and bought a box of those clear plastic page protectors and some good old-fashioned grease pencils. I slipped a set of accident report forms into sleeves, stuck a piece of tape over the opening at the end, clipped ’em to a plastic clipboard, grabbed a grease pencil, then stood in the rain and actually wrote right on the plastic sleeves. It was a miracle. And yup, soon everyone had report forms in sleeves and grease pencils, which helped if it was too windy for umbrellas. I did happen to notice the old guys on the squad were quick to use the umbrella option, while the younger guys tried to maintain their cool quotient, in spite of their grimaces now and again as another cold rivulet trickled down their umbrellaless backs.

Recently, Suzi wanted to see an accident report form from a police agency, so she called a buddy there to get him to fax her one. He said, “Um, we don’t have any forms printed anywhere, and the office printer is down right now.” Now I don’t care who you are … that’s funny. The Accident Investigation Bureau didn’t have a printed accident form anymore, since they do all the reports on the computer, which is fine if the computer works and the printer isn’t broken — which it was.

Today if it rains, some lucky cops use $2,000 waterproof laptops with touch-screen displays, $300 all-weather LED flashlights with strobes and 500- lumen things of light, $200 worth of foul-weather gear (laminated, with breathability and stuff), and an SUV full of crime scene documentation gear like lasers and digital imagers and sonic range testers and other things our high-tech guy here at COP understands. Then they take it all back to the station and print out an accident form. Unless the printer’s broken, that is.

We did it with $25 worth of stuff we bought at K-Mart and the office supply store. I ain’t saying the modern stuff isn’t good, doesn’t allow us to do our job better and isn’t worth the cost, not at all. I just wonder: do we really need to “high-tech” something just because we can? I know it answers the “what’s new” question companies need to answer every year, but let’s keep our feet on the ground and ask now and again, “Am I better off just going to K-Mart on this one?”
By Roy Huntington

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COP August 2013

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GUNS

HOLSTERS

SOFT SKILLS

OFFICER SURVIVAL

WEAPONS TRAINING

EXPERTS

TAC-MED

KNIVES

STREET TACTICS

LESS LETHAL

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