Backstage for an Evening with Saginaw's Finest

Enable frames

RIDE THE NIGHT:

Backstage for an Evening with Saginaw's Finest

By Rob Young

Special Features

The first call of the shift came in over the police radio just as Saginaw

Police Officer Adam Clayton* had finished the mundane process he goes

through each night before beginning his tour of duty.

He had checked the sirens, the lights, the horns, the laptop computer, the

hidden rifle release. There was no contraband in the backseat; sorry,

anything found back there during his shift could not have been there before

he took over the car for the night. Officer Clayton and his assigned car

were ready. Duty called.

Apparently, a tenant was supposed to be out of a rental unit on Cherry

Street that day but had failed to vacate. The landlord called the police.

Officer Clayton and I were sent to respond. Each dispatch call is logged in

the officer's shift log, so after Officer Clayton made note of the call, we

sped off towards Cherry Street. Officer Clayton was on duty. It was 4:25 PM

on Friday, March 1, and I was along for the ride, to sit tight and observe,

to record a day in the life of a Saginaw police officer.

When we got to Cherry Street, another officer was already on the scene and

dealing with the situation. Officer Clayton joined him on the porch, where

the landlord was waving a yellow slip of carbon paper imploringly at the

officers. She claimed it was an eviction notice, but it was only a court

order from a judge stating the eviction notice could be granted. The tenant

wasn't there, and the officers couldn't do a thing about it, so the

landlord was told to go to the court house and get a proper eviction

notice.

As Officer Clayton and I got back into the car moments later, we noticed the other officer speaking with a female passenger in a car parked up the street. He waved for Clayton to join him. I followed close behind.

Apparently, it was the evictee, who also happened to have outstanding warrants for her arrest. The officers asked politely for her to get out of the car. The male driver of the car insisted she was sick and couldn't go to jail. He waved a paper bag full of medication at the officers, who politely informed him he had nothing to do with the situation and instructed him to shut up.

The evictee was intransigent. She wasn't budging. After asking, then

ordering her to get out of the car many times, Officer Clayton said

forcefully, "This is my job, this is my time and you're on it!" The

officers grabbed her and pulled her out of the car and into the snow and

slush that lined the curb.

Back in the car, Officer Clayton informed me that we were going to the

County Jail to complete the arrest of the woman and check her into her home

for the weekend. "She could've made it easy," he said casually as we sped

through the decrepit neighborhoods of Saginaw's east side, "but now we're

getting her for obstructing an officer on top of her felony warrant."

Over the course of Officer Clayton's shift that Friday, we made numerous

trips to the County Jail.

The process of booking a suspect is slow and tedious, and officers seem to

maintain a practiced air of detached indifference to both the suspects and

the austere surroundings of the jail.

Prisoners -- some of whom were visibly irate, while others looked as if

they could have been on vacation -- peer through the glass doors of the

cells that line the office where new arrivals are booked. The officers

remain oblivious as they fill out paper work. It's a strange, often jarring

change of pace from the world outside, where an officer can never be

certain what's going to happen next, to the controlled environment of the

jail where uncertainty is relatively nonexistent.

"It's a fun place to work," Officer Clayton remarked later as we cruised the streets, "I mean, I interviewed in a lot of places But this city's got everything. You've got murders and suicides, so you get to work that sort of thing, which is always gory. And you've got rapes, you've got armed robberies, you've got regular robberies and felonious assaults all the way down to barking dog complaints. For being such a small town, it's pretty dynamic."

"So you never know what your shift is going to be like when you get in your car each night?" I asked.

"Exactly, that's why I wanted to be a cop to start with. Every day is different; no two things are the same," he replied as we sped past City Hall and the next call came in over the radio. He made a quick turn and informed me that we were off to answer a domestic violence call near Saginaw High.

We were the second car to arrive at the scene. The first officer was

already inside talking with the suspect. Officer Clayton hurried past the

group of children on the muddy lawn and into the house. The children were

there to celebrate a birthday, but things had gotten out of control at some

point.

I watched as they scraped snowballs together from the sparse patches of

snow and tossed them at the house.  One of them turned and asked if I was a

cop. I said that I wasn't, that I was just along for the ride. They thought

that was funny. Another officer arrived, walked hurriedly past the kids and

into the house. I decided to follow.

I stood in the middle of the kitchen not knowing where to put my eyes. Bags

of groceries were scattered around the room. A mother stood holding an

infant in each arm. An old television played cartoons in another room. A

young boy poked his head around a corner but was told immediately to go

back to the basement. I glanced down a hallway, where the three officers

were questioning somebody in a bedroom.

Finally, a man emerged from the room followed by the three officers. He

appeared calm, but the look in the officers' eyes said they were ready for

anything.

Domestic violence suspects must spend a mandatory 20 hours in jail if the

officers conclude that the call is legitimate after talking to both

parties. In this case, the officers decided the man should be taken to

jail, because witnesses corroborated the victim's story.

Officer Clayton walked the man out to his car and informed him that he

would have to put cuffs on him at that point. The man nodded and as he was

being helped into the car he yelled to the children still on the lawn,

"Happy birthday! Y'all eat all the ice cream y'all want!"

After dropping the man off at jail, we headed back to police headquarters

in order to file a report of the arrest. The Saginaw police department is

moving towards computerizing their system, and the standard arrest reports

are already fully automated, so officers need only fill in the blanks on a

computer screen. Once a report is complete, one button-click sends the

information directly to the state's police database in Lansing.

After we had responded to a several uneventful calls, Officer Clayton was

dispatched to a prowling call at the Farwell Market. We were the third car

to arrive on the scene, and the situation was already under control.

It was just a few kids who were said to have been causing trouble in the

parking lot. After some questioning, it was decided that there was nothing

the officers could do. While they were letting the kids go, a call for a

"code 00"* came across the radio.

One of the other officers walked over to the car, where Clayton and I were

both sitting and said, "Did they just say 'code 00'?" Officer Clayton

looked up and said, "Yes" as he slammed the car into reverse.

And like that we were speeding south across the east side. I asked Officer

Clayton what a "code 00" is. Not taking his eyes off the road, he said

casually, "A bomb threat."

Later, he explained that certain incidents, such as rapes, murders and

bomb threats, were always referred to in code over the police radio.

Braking only briefly at stop signs and running through red lights, we made

it to the Ameritech building on Washington in less than half the time it

would've taken had we obeyed traffic laws.

We parked across the street and hurried along the back side of the

building. Officer Clayton shined his flashlight into bushes as we walked

towards the back door, where a woman was smoking a cigarette and chatting

casually with a security guard, waiting for the police to arrive. We were

the first car on the scene.

The woman introduced herself as the one who had called the police and

explained the situation as several other officers began to arrive. She

invited us in and led us upstairs through a maze of hallways and into a

large room where the night shift operators were busy talking into headsets.

There was no sign of panic or confusion. After weighing the facts, the

responding officers decided it was up to the night manager to decide

whether to evacuate the building. However, given that the threat was made

via a private phone, Ameritech was able to trace the call to a name and

address in Detroit.

The man who made the call couldn't tell her where she was located, saying,

"You know where you are." She reasoned that the threat wasn't credible and

so we headed to the car and back to the station to fill out more paperwork.

On the way, I asked Officer Clayton what was going to happen to the man in

Detroit. "The FBI are probably knocking on his door right now," he replied.

By the time the paperwork was done, it was around 9:30 and things began to

slow down. There were a few domestic disputes where police were called in

to moderate. One woman called to report that people were trying to break

into her house and that she was seeing shadows and hearing voices and even

this rather dubious incident was treated with the same sense of urgency as

any other call that night.

As we answered these calls, Officer Clayton pointed out liquor stores that

were known drug dealer havens, numerous crack dens and a motorcycle gang's

headquarters. It's their neighborhood as much as it his.

After mediating a dispute between two neighbors that included a fist fight,

a cracked windshield and a missing gold chain, Officer Clayton looked over

at me as he got back in the car and said, "OK, that's it."

Back to headquarters. As we neared the station, I directed him to where I

had parked nine hours earlier. He pulled up next to my car, and I thanked

him for letting me come along for the ride.

Before driving around the corner to park his car for the night, he waited

until I was safely in my car with the engine running.

After all, you never know what's going to happen.

Enable frames