A Right Way and A Wrong Way

 

It’s interesting how the mind works as you review various events that took place long ago. For instance, this past week or so I’ve been remembering things that happened when I was a Rookie Police Officer for the Houston Police Department back in the early 1970s. The other day I wrote about purchasing my sidearm pistol while still in the Police Academy.

That brought up some other memories. The first place I worked as a Rookie was the Beechnut Substation out on the southwest side of Houston.  They had me ride with several different veteran officers, each lending aspects of the job that would be valuable during my time as an officer.

One of the first senior officers I rode with out of Beechnut was Ricky Rice, who eventually got promoted to Sgt and, for all I know, may have gone on to become a Lt or Capt.  Anyway, Officer Rice knew I was uncomfortable wearing the blue uniform and all, so he went out of his way to explain things and simply be a nice guy.

Instead of taking a break to have lunch at some burger stand, Officer Rice welcomed me to join him at his apartment, meet his wife and grab a sandwich there.  Upon arriving at his apartment complex, we walked up some stairs to get to his unit.  He opened the door and was about to introduce me to his wife when I recognized her from being in my home room back in high school, Sharon Thomas; make that, Sharon Thomas Rice.

(The photo was scanned from my high school yearbook.)

“Hey, Sharon,” The look on Officer Rice’s face was hard to explain. Here I was a Rookie about to be introduced to his wife; but I already knew this lady, well enough to call her by name. So much for the introduction; I couldn’t tell you what kind of sandwiches were for lunch.

Then there was a different experience that same week while riding with another veteran officer; I won’t include his name, a little like the opening remarks on the old television series, Dragnet. “The story you are about to see is true, only the names have been changed to protect…”  Let’s just call him Ray, as good a name as any.

When it came time for lunch he drove to a fancy restaurant on Westheimer, Christies. If you’re familiar with this location, it would fall under the listing, expensive and far beyond the average fast food place cops would go for lunch.

I checked my wallet before getting out of the patrol vehicle.  I had around eighteen dollars, maybe enough to get a hamburger if that was even on the menu. Ray assured me that this was a friendly place for cops and was always free, opening the door for me to enter the restaurant.

This early in my experience as a Police Officer, I had yet to learn about ‘Dragging the Sack”.

We were seated quickly and handed menus. I glanced at the prices and knew I couldn’t afford anything on the front page.  I found hamburger listed in the children’s section of the menu and ordered that since it came with fries, all for fifteen dollars.

Ray, on the other hand, ordered half a dozen oysters, a fancy specialty dish and didn’t blink as the waiter took the order.  I figured out in my head that Ray had just ordered about fifty dollars in fancy food.  I felt out of place and didn’t want to be sitting there.

We ate and when it came time to leave the manager quietly approached Ray, lightly touching Ray’s shoulder as he spoke, “Ray, I can’t continue to give you any more free meals. This is the last time.”  The manager stepped back as Ray got up and tossed his napkin in the middle of the empty plate.

I was not prepared to hear Ray’s reply, “I hope you M------F-----rs get Robbed!”, spoken loud enough for anyone within a few tables to hear.

I thought to myself how it would have been nice, being a police officer for more than a whole week, getting fired wasn’t something I wanted as we exited Christies and got back on patrol.  Nothing ever happened, nothing. I don’t remember much from that day’s patrol work; but I never had to explain up the chain of command why I witnessed the event from that day.

I guess you could sum it up by saying, there’s a right way and a wrong way of going about your business as a Police Officer.  May you always choose to do it the right way.