Justice!
I am running on about three hours of sleep right now after having worked a ten hour day, and with barely any food in my system, so holy shit am I exhausted, but I don't care, because today has been amazing.
First off, I attended the community event on the site where our Officer was murdered. The turnout was excellent! I was so pleased to see so many people there, all in good spirits. We sure did kick off the celebration of his life in a really great way. I really didn't get any good pictures, except for one, which I titled "Band of Brothers," because that's what we are. And the picture shows only a handful of people, when really, we had dozens of uniformed Officers show up, and even some of the Tampa Police Department. It really put a big smile on my face to see how much the community cares about honoring his memory.
Bunch of great looking guys!
So the event was a rousing success, and then I went to work my regularly scheduled shift.
Work was work, as usual, business as business goes and I was really starting to feel my lack of sleep (and food, I am still broke), by about 2200hours, only three hours into my ten hour shift. But right around 2300hours, we got word.
The lowlife piece of shit punkass kid who shot our Officer in cold blood a week ago has been arrested on the charges, as well as others.
The kid is sixteen. Sixteen. I am twice (okay nearly twice) his age. This kid threw his whole life away, and for what? I know what the murder was about, but I can't say, suffice to say it is gang related and we all know how much sense that shit makes.
I got the pleasure of taking the phone call from our director of Internal Affairs (IA), who advised me to brodcast the news over the net to all of the Officers on shift.
"With pleasure," I said, and immediately got to work, advising of the great news to all five of our currently active radio frequencies with a noticeably gleeful tone to my voice. (When you consider that I've been mistaken for Daria once or twice, sounding chipper is highly unusual.)
I immediately got phone calls and texts from guys wanting details - details I didn't have! But I was thrilled that there was an arrest made and I know that everyone who worked hard to help TPD with their investigation felt really damn good to have this piece of shit thug off the streets. I feel partially like I helped find this guy - I have been running Operations a lot lately, and many of the incidents I typed up and took intel on were passed directly to the police. And (sorry, I just can't say more than I already am!) I have it on good authority that the residents we brought forward were part of the puzzle. So while I'm laden with sorrow that we lost an Officer, I felt like I was on an episode of pretty much any detective show - matching up faces from our database to the grainy surveillance pics, gathering intel and passing it along - it felt like I was truly in some part responsible for putting this little bastard away for a long time.
Tomorrow we continue the funeral process so that we can lay him to rest. But it feels damn good that we'll be putting him to rest with the knowledge that his killer is not still at large. Closure. Justice.
First off, I attended the community event on the site where our Officer was murdered. The turnout was excellent! I was so pleased to see so many people there, all in good spirits. We sure did kick off the celebration of his life in a really great way. I really didn't get any good pictures, except for one, which I titled "Band of Brothers," because that's what we are. And the picture shows only a handful of people, when really, we had dozens of uniformed Officers show up, and even some of the Tampa Police Department. It really put a big smile on my face to see how much the community cares about honoring his memory.
Bunch of great looking guys!
So the event was a rousing success, and then I went to work my regularly scheduled shift.
Work was work, as usual, business as business goes and I was really starting to feel my lack of sleep (and food, I am still broke), by about 2200hours, only three hours into my ten hour shift. But right around 2300hours, we got word.
The lowlife piece of shit punkass kid who shot our Officer in cold blood a week ago has been arrested on the charges, as well as others.
The kid is sixteen. Sixteen. I am twice (okay nearly twice) his age. This kid threw his whole life away, and for what? I know what the murder was about, but I can't say, suffice to say it is gang related and we all know how much sense that shit makes.
I got the pleasure of taking the phone call from our director of Internal Affairs (IA), who advised me to brodcast the news over the net to all of the Officers on shift.
"With pleasure," I said, and immediately got to work, advising of the great news to all five of our currently active radio frequencies with a noticeably gleeful tone to my voice. (When you consider that I've been mistaken for Daria once or twice, sounding chipper is highly unusual.)
I immediately got phone calls and texts from guys wanting details - details I didn't have! But I was thrilled that there was an arrest made and I know that everyone who worked hard to help TPD with their investigation felt really damn good to have this piece of shit thug off the streets. I feel partially like I helped find this guy - I have been running Operations a lot lately, and many of the incidents I typed up and took intel on were passed directly to the police. And (sorry, I just can't say more than I already am!) I have it on good authority that the residents we brought forward were part of the puzzle. So while I'm laden with sorrow that we lost an Officer, I felt like I was on an episode of pretty much any detective show - matching up faces from our database to the grainy surveillance pics, gathering intel and passing it along - it felt like I was truly in some part responsible for putting this little bastard away for a long time.
Tomorrow we continue the funeral process so that we can lay him to rest. But it feels damn good that we'll be putting him to rest with the knowledge that his killer is not still at large. Closure. Justice.