Wow – another day as a policeman and another astounding ‘WTF moment’ to remember for a long time. And this one didn’t even involve a criminal.
I get to the station for the 13.30 briefing before our 8 hour afternoon shift. We sit and chat in the Briefing Room before our Top Sergeant walks in and brings us to order. No Officer today, there is a meeting on the 2nd floor with the local area commander so all officers, and for some reason, all the chairs, will be gone for the rest of the day.
Easier for us. Let’s go get some criminals.
After the briefing (there are new threats of: stabbing, kidnapping, shooting, blowing up and generally not being nice to us Police Officers. And our stats are down – get more criminals) we all traipse down to the garage to get our different vehicles as the previous shift come in.
Some people light up their cigarettes, I sip on my coffee, the latest rude jokes get told and then Top Sergeant asks me to chat with him. This is the unofficial of the unofficial here, in front of everyone, but our backs turned, in the station but in a dark corner, no notes to be taken, ‘a word in your shell-like’.
‘Sure Top, what do you want?’
‘Well’ he says ‘this is very serious’. I’m thinking that they found out that I’ve been wearing non-standard weatherproof gear. Or, like my wife, they think my driving is shit and they need to take away all privileges. No, its not one of them.
‘HS has complained to me that you sexually harassed her on the morning shift on Sunday. Or close to sexual harassment actually.’
Lights flash in my head. I feel slightly dizzy.
I want to say “What the hell are you talking about? This is absolute rubbish. Made up nonsense” but I have to be calm under stress so I only say ‘go on’.
‘HS said you asked her to your apartment for coffee’
‘Yes I did’
‘She said that during lunch you asked her if she wanted your pickled cucumber’
Again ‘yes I did’
‘She said you touched her thigh’
‘No. not really - Okay Top, lets go through this one at a time;
I asked her to my apartment for coffee, at 10 in the morning after we’d been standing outside in the rain for 4 hours and we’d already finished my thermos of coffee. Oh, did I forget to mention to you that I told HS that my 9 month pregnant wife would be in the 2 room apartment when we had a coffee? I told her twice!! (We’d already dropped off the rookie somewhere).
‘What about the pickle?’
‘Simple. HS and the rookie went to buy a snack. I thought it would be something different to what they bought. I don’t eat spicy pickles. I also don’t waste food. I asked her and the rookie if the pickles were spicy and they said no. I ate the first pickle and it burnt my lips. She was sitting next to me in the vehicle, eating one of her two pickles so I offered her mine. She said no so I offered it to the rookie. End. Of. Story.’
Admittedly, you try offering anyone a pickle without a little smile creasing across your face…
‘What about touching her thigh?’
‘Again, simple. As we had no computer in the car she was doing all the reports with pen and paper. I’m driving as smoothly as possible but we still have to get from incident to incident and there have been loads of roadwork in our area recently so I’m really concentrating. She loses her pen. I see it balanced precariously on her thigh and realize that by the time I tell her where it is and she fumbles for it it’ll be on the floor and we’ll have to pull over. So I pick it up and hand it to her.'
Very simple.
Top nods and walks away. I know if this goes 'official' he'll be up to his eyeballs in paperwork and he really does not need that.
So what the hell is she up to? For the first 4 hours of my shift I was pretty miffed but didn’t want it to show so put on a good face. At one point my partner went to interview a witness and I made a few personal phone calls to other officers who might know HS.
I didn’t want to appear biased so I asked the first one, YP, what he thought of HS generally. ‘She’s a bit unstable actually and no-one really takes what she says seriously’. Wow, what a weight off my shoulders. We chatted for a few more minutes, agreed to meet up on Saturday night, and I phoned another, trusted officer.
I posed the same ‘how do you rate HS generally’ question to ST. Even though he was in a pretty serious car crash last week he came straight back with ‘I just don’t trust her’.
I can now sleep tonight.
So what next? I tried to work out why she made up this nonsense and precluding any previous trauma she may have had I can only assume that she thought she’d look good to Top Sergeant if she came across as all politically correct and downtrodden, and that I as a volunteer would never answer back. Maybe just fade into the background even more than I do now.
What she didn’t realize is that I have been working with Top Sergeant since way before he even got a rank. We are definitely not ‘Best Buds’ but he is straight and honest and I respect that.
She also may not have realized that I know half of the police officers in the Station. I used to know more but they all quit or moved. A quiet word in the right ears will definitely cause trouble for her. But I’m not going to do that. Instead I am going to write an unofficial letter to Top Sergeant answering her complaints. This letter is not to be shown to anyone until she tries to label another officer in a sexual harassment case. And then she’ll be proven to be a liar.
I’m guessing that this is a rather unique time, when the evidence is admitted before the crime takes place!!
Actually, its just been put in to contention for the US's next armored vehicle.
