Rural/ Quiet Town LEO's... How do you do it?

[jmwilso3]

Hey All,

I've spent some time out on patrol with my internship in an inner city. It has been great and I enjoy every minute of it. I've probably had a minimum of 5 or so calls in every 8 hour patrol shift.My question is to LEO's in areas with little to no crime, in quiet communities or rural areas. How do you do it?

Do traffic, B&E alarms, and accidents get old? I Don't honestly think I could do this job is an area with little crime. It would be to tetious. I would no doubt take a job offer in a small town or low crime area, but it would def. not be my first choice.

I'd appreciate anyone's views.

Thanks.

[paternoster2012]

I've had days when I can't get a break between calls. I've also had days that were so slow, I wished anything would happen.

When it is slow, I wish it was fast. When its fast I wish it would be slow.

The grass is always greener...

[manahmanah]

I've had days when I can't get a break between calls. I've also had days that were so slow, I wished anything would happen.

When it is slow, I wish it was fast. When its fast I wish it would be slow.

The grass is always greener...

+1

As was said above, there are days when you look at the clock and you say "Geez, it's only 0900?!!!"

There are other days when you look at the clock, and it's 1900 already, and you're down 4 reports.....

For the days that tend to be slow, I do a lot of foot patrol, business checks, ped checks, and traffic stops.

Sometimes I'll get a big case soon after going 10-8. When that happens I'll finish my report in my vehicle before I do anything proactive, unless something very blatant happens right in front of me.

My city has about 35,000-37,000 people in it. There are 4 officers (One of which is an SRO) and a Sergeant on duty at any given time. I think we're busy enough not to be bored most of the time, but we're not so busy we can't do self initiated activity when we want. It's a good balance.

[phantasm]

Hey All,

I've spent some time out on patrol with my internship in an inner city. It has been great and I enjoy every minute of it. I've probably had a minimum of 5 or so calls in every 8 hour patrol shift.My question is to LEO's in areas with little to no crime, in quiet communities or rural areas. How do you do it?

Do traffic, B&E alarms, and accidents get old? I Don't honestly think I could do this job is an area with little crime. It would be to tetious. I would no doubt take a job offer in a small town or low crime area, but it would def. not be my first choice.

I'd appreciate anyone's views.

Thanks.

5 calls in 8 hours IS a very slow day for us. lol.

I work in a urban area and a lot of my jobs are burg alarms and accidents.

[jmwilso3]

5 calls, as the primary, in the winter, non property damage, I think 5 is decent in 8 hours. Most of the time it is closer to ten. This city is 5 times the violent crime rate than the national average. So I've been busy.

[retdetsgt]

My call volume varied, but I worked areas in the city where I found plenty to do when I wasn't on calls. The neighborhoods usually teemed with crooks so it was easy to find people to "chat" with. Fortunately, we have a traffic division so I didn't have to screw with traffic wrecks or even have to work traffic all that much.

I love living in a little town. They put all the crime reports taken in the newspaper. The whole dept takes about as many crime reports in a week than I did in any two given night shifts.

[Darin]

You go out and make your own calls. You get proactive with your patrols and traffic stops. You stop crime BEFORE it happens.

That's how you roll in Mayberry.

[RT302]

You go out and make your own calls. You get proactive with your patrols and traffic stops. You stop crime BEFORE it happens.

That's how you roll in Mayberry.

+1 Proactive enforcement! Kick over a few rocks, dig a little deeper, see what is around the next curve, etc... You would really be surprised at what is out in the rural areas. I can't remember the last time that I responded to a true call for service (actually, yes I can, and it was a good one!), but that doesn't mean that I haven't been busy;)

[TXCharlie]

You go out and make your own calls. You get proactive with your patrols and traffic stops. You stop crime BEFORE it happens.

That's how you roll in Mayberry.

Yep, the town I reserve in rarely has any serious calls, but we do a lot of pro-active patrols and security checks.

One service that we're rendering to business owners is waiting outside the businesses while they're opening and closing. We'll also follow them to the bank's night deposit if they request it. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback from that.

The one thing I don't like about it is having to run traffic. That never did excite me very much for some reason, unless it's a genuine safety issue like drunk and reckless drivers,no trailer lights, etc.

Some of the other officers get excited over stopping cars to give warnings for burnt out license plate lights and such. Pffft, I could care less about stupid stuff like that, but admittedly we get good number of warrant arrests from Dallas and Fort Worth drivers that way.

I just got a warrant arrest a week or so ago after I stopped a car to give him a warning because one of his tail lights was burnt out, and the same night we did a warrant arrest on another driver who was speeding with no insurance and expired license. Guess what his warrants were for... Yep, failure to pay tickets for speeding with no insurance and expired license. How dumb do you have to be to speed while you have warrants? :D

[Citicop]

An officer at a neighboring agency just found 2.5 pounds of dope on a traffic stop for no front plate.

Minor violations give you an opportunity to look for something more. You can stop and warn if there is nothing more to it, but every once in a while, there will be.

Citicop.

[greg72982]

You have to understand that both types of departments have their advantages and disadvantages. Yes being busy makes your day go faster but these places also run you a higher risk of getting hurt or killed...

All of my depts. so far have been quiet areas for the most part. I would like to go to areas that are bigger and get more action but sometimes a quiet day isn't a bad thing

[Aussie George]

I have worked in country towns and in our nation's capital (Canberra).

I prefer country every day.

My last country posting was a town of about 3000. We had periods of relative ease, but at other times we were flat out. We often worked solo, and there wouldn't be another cop on duty for 50 kilometres.

Due to our remote location, the state capital was about 4 hours drive away, we had to be resourceful. We had no special ops/SWAT to back us up, we had no major crash to start fatal crash investigations (they would usually attend but it took them at least 5 hours to get there - and in that time we had to get everything pretty well done for them), we had one Detective and he would often take some of us uniforms to target a spike in crime stats and hit certain areas of town, etc etc.

We got to know every crook in town and would see them at the pub every Friday night.

Small towns have domestic violence. Small towns have drugs. Small towns have crime. There was always plenty to do.

And when there wasn't, there was plenty of PR to do. Foot patrols of the main street (visibilty), patrols of the pubs on Fri/Sat night, highway patrol, general patrols around town catching all the dirt bags driving their unreg/unins cars, etc etc PROACTIVE.

In the city job I held, we would spend most our day going to burglaries or minr thefts, and taking reports for crimes that would very rarely lead to a suspect, assaults between family members, picking up mental health patients that were having a bad day, traffic control at accidents until the scooter pigs (bike cops) could get there - which was usually just before the accident was cleared and there was nothing for them to do - and of course, everyone's favourite, shop lifters.

Anything half decent that came along (as far as a good pinch) was usually handed over to the Detectives, but only after we did all the statements and all the leg work. :mad:

[Group9]

I worked in big cities pretty much my whole career until the last five years (Dallas, New Orleans, Baltimore and Miami) when I moved to a much smaller area.

When I got here, the first thing I was told was that there were no big drug traffickers operating here. Since then, in those five years, applying the same investigative techniques that are pretty much SOP in big cities, we have seized over 80 kilos of meth, hundreds of kilograms of cocaine (including an undercover purchase of 16 kilos) and thousands of pounds of weed. We seized about 12 million in cash, and about another twenty million in assets, but actually arrested about a third of the people they had been arresting before, by just moving simply moving up, and working the people that intel analysis (and other investigative data bases like FINCEN) indicated were the largest dealers, instead of just working whoever the snitches who walked into the office told us to work (which always has bugged me really bad as a targeting system).

This is in an area with a population of only about 250,000 people over three counties and ten or so cities (that happens to be within 75 miles of a bigger city, and has a port, and the main east-west interstate running through it). I promise those guys in small towns that there is probably more going on there than they think. It's not going to fall into your lap though and you have to figure out the way to get the training and/or experience, one way or another to really make it work. But, wanting to work bigger stuff is the first step.

[Aussie George]

Would the Oklahoma Highway Patrol be considered country/small town?

Just thinking of the thread about the Trooper who arrested Timothy Mcveigh, who committed the largest mass murder in American history until 9/11 I believe...routine traffic stop. ;)


http://forums.realpolice.net/showthr...28#post1001028

[kels]

One complaint that someone left a road grader running and it was disturbing the neighbors. (but they let it run for 5 hours before they called us)
Turn off grader, and neighbors are happy.

Complaint of someone messing with headstones in cemetery.
(they did quite a bit of damage last week in one-juvie stuff)
Cemetery fine.

Complaint of cattle on highway. Owner called and had them
put up by the time I get there.

Add two hundred miles of road time and checking small towns,
annhydrous tanks and abandoned farms.

Just about a normal night.