Checking 3622

 

I was in a meeting at church the other day and the topic turned to the advent of the computer age.  We take for granted that our cellphones have many built-in conveniences to include a fully operational computer with more capabilities than the computers used to place a man on the moon.

(Image of Touch Tone Telephone courtesy of Bing)

Back when I was a young police officer in Houston working the street, if we wanted to have a detailed background check on a suspect, we’d ask the dispatcher to check 3622, for us.  If we were at the station, we’d simply dial 3622, that being the last four numbers of the phone number for the folks who had the only computer hooked up to the national system. 

It might be hard to comprehend how different access to the computer room was in that period.  The room was basically a high security vault and only rare few individuals were permitted to enter that room. 

‘Old Head’ police officers knew two numbers, 3622 and 3611, to check for outstanding warrants.  The newer crop of officers might not have heard of the antiquated means of accomplishing this task since every police car has its own computer tied into the national system. 

That part of the history lesson leads to the next part of the story. 

It was somewhere in the mid-70s when I had to work light duty due to an injury.  They put me behind a desk doing menial paperwork.  The Department was in the process of installing computer terminals in most every office, a decided break from having to contact 3622 for such tasks.

My first day working light duty was the same day the computer terminal was installed at the desk where I was to work.  The fellow invited me to become acquainted with all the features and explained, “Don’t worry about damaging anything, just have fun figuring what it can do”.

Wow!  This was neat, getting to have hands-on experience with new technology.  (I can hear the younger generation giggling since they grew up in a different era.)

I set about pushing the keys that ran across the top row and found there was an application built in for creating letters up the chain of command, something I’d become familiar with much more than I would have liked. 

Most officers, when they needed to explain an incident which might lead to disciplinary action, wrote out their thoughts on a yellow legal pad. That information was then handed to the division’s secretary who’d type it out, the officer would then sign that letter and submit the finished version up the chain of command.

With the word processing function available to officers, they could, if so inclined, write and edit their letter until it best matched the desired way it would be received as it went up the chain of command. 

Curiosity took my attention to the last key along the top row of buttons to push.  It was a large Red Button.  Offhand I couldn’t say if it had anything to indicate its function. The invitation offered by the technician came to mind, “Don’t worry about damaging anything, just have fun figuring what it can do”.

(Image courtesy of istockphoto dot com)        

It might have been two, perhaps three minutes before two technicians came hurriedly toward me, a panicked look on their faces indicated the building was about to explode. I’m guessing they came via the stairwell rather than having to wait on the elevator.  My hitting the large Red Key to find out what it did shut down the entire computer system of the Houston Police Department.  Every single computer terminal had been returned to the Stone Age, to include the folks working 3622. 

The technician, the same one who’d earlier been so pleasant as he’d explained, “Don’t worry about damaging anything, just have fun figuring what it can do”, carefully adjusted that to include, “…but never, under any circumstances, touch the Red Key!”