Page 196 - NIXBOOK

I was at a police training once, a special course about how to conduct comprehensive background checks on police applicants.
Or in my case, since I was in charge of the volunteer reserve officers, how to screen potential volunteer officer candidates. The
instructor started talking about these two brand new websites that could yield some information. The term “social media” had
not been invented yet, so he just told us to check out these sites call “My Space” and “Facebook.” Those two were so new, that
was the first time I had ever heard of either of them. So at his instruction I dutifully wrote down “check out:
http://www.MYSPACE.com and http://www.FACEBOOK.com.”

Woman comes to front police counter to file a complaint. She had gone to a local restaurant with her 7 year old daughter. Found
a nice table outside by the waterfront. The restaurant owner’s dog – a large old golden retriever – took a liking to the girl and
knocked her down while humping her. Woman was very upset. It was one of the few times in my career when I laughed out
loud when I shouldn’t have. The woman was, uh, more upset when I laughed. When I went to talk to the dog’s owner at her
insistence, he laughed, too.

About 15 years before I started my career in Poulsbo there was a little incident one night involving a Poulsbo Police Officer and
a Kitsap County Sheriff’s Deputy; they had gone to one of the local family restaurants in Poulsbo; a place called Henry’s. The
guy who owned it (yep, Henry) liked cops and he had told all the local LEO’s that they could go into his place in the middle of
the night and make themselves a sandwich if they wanted and leave a couple bucks in a jar. So it was common at 2 or 3 am to
find a cop or two or three in there in the dark, because the place closed at like 9 or 10 pm. Keep in mind this was in the days
when nothing was open at night, and there were no cell phones or internet invented and yes, the town got pretty damn quiet at
night. Especially when it was raining. Anyway, one night, two of the officers there were practicing their quick-draw techniques
to see who could get their revolver out of their belt holster the fastest. And in the spirit of the Old West classic duel; they faced
each other about 20 feet apart. Well this one time, the Poulsbo cop neglected to take the bullets out of his gun first, and his aim
was unfortunately right on, and his finger was on the trigger and he pulled the trigger and he shot the KCSO deputy and
paralyzed him for the rest of his life. The PPD cop lost his job of course and although he stayed in Poulsbo he became a full time
alcoholic and died in his 60’s. Fortunately, I never saw or heard of any of my contemporaries every doing anything even half that
stupid. By the way, for somebody to get accidentally shot, at least two of the inviolate firearms safety rules would have to be
broken; you can’t do it by breaking just one rule.