“May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.”


"This report is maybe 12-years-old. Parliament buried it, and it stayed buried till River dug it up. This is what they feared she knew. And they were right to fear because there's a whole universe of folk who are gonna know it, too. They're gonna see it. Somebody has to speak for these people. You all got on this boat for different reasons, but you all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, 10, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people . . . better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave." ~ Captain Malcom Reynolds

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Public Issues

One of the facts of working on a bomb squad is that the vast majority of our calls are false alarms - a simple abandoned bag, a package sent to the wrong location or whatever. While it's somewhat of a downer in terms of not dealing with live stuff, that's the nature of the beast. However, it also is a fact that we still have to treat EVERY call as if it IS live - because as soon as you get complacent thinking "oh, this is just another nothing incident" it will end up biting you. 

What this means is that, once we get on scene, we treat things very seriously - from controlling scene and traffic access, to possible evacuations, to the whole robot/bomb suit/special equipment game. This tends to be time consuming, and disruptive and everything else. Because my concern is the safety of me, the community, the other officers and everything else - not whether or not this is "convenient" to everything else around. 

Usually everyone is pretty understanding of this and realizes why we do things. But this past week we had Captain Sarcasm on board - because we had to block off the entrance to his commercial area in order to deal with a suspect package, and he just couldn't see all the fuss going on for what ended up being nothing. So, while I spent an hour resolving this situation, worrying about potential risks and countermeasures in my head, and everything else involved, he spent his time on the sidelines yelling out smart-assed comments, suggestions, and even going so far as to complain to the patrol supervisor on scene about all of this "nonsense." 

Fortunately for my temper and my career I was able to get things done and leave in a different direction, so that my mouth didn't add to the problem in a direct encounter...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You have the same guy when you're trying to park, load, and unload semi's in a downtown area, too. I had to grow a pretty thick skin when that was part of my job.

Wandering Soul said...

Seems like there is always one of them in every town. *shaking my head*

Gladorn said...

My mouth has been very detrimental to my career. Unfortunately it also means that I'm the next one sent in when admin won't listen to the Sergeant.

On that note, I don't think it's always a good thing when all the Captains and Majors know your first name.