Page 296 - NIXBOOK

As a professional crime fighter, I frequently had to drive fast and jump out of my patrol car quickly. It’s a skill and habit that
carried over to my personal life, in my own personal cars. Not the driving fast part, but the part where I park my car and get out
quickly. I was usually out of the car and waiting impatiently before my wife or kids even had their seatbelts off.

Seen on the window in the police department lobby, a handwritten sign that read: “POST NO SIGNS HERE THAT OBSTRUCT
THE WINDOW”. Was it a joke? Was it serious? Turned out to be a joke, especially when several more variations of “POST NO
MORE SIGNS THAT OBSTRUCT THE WINDOW” by other officers wound up completely covering the whole window. I’ll take
credit for a sign that I taped over the chief’s door, about 8 feet off the floor: “ATTENTION: NO SIGNS SHALL BE POSTED THIS
HIGH UP” – that one actually lasted a few weeks there and was seen by more than one other visiting police chief from other
departments. And somebody posted in the chief’s office a sign that read “THIS OFFICE WILL TOLERATE NO REDUNDANCY
IN THIS OFFICE”. That one also stayed there for a few weeks.

When I was the K9 handler, I’d sometimes throw the dog’s ball into the police chief’s office like a hand grenade. The dog would
of course go barreling into the office to get the ball and if he crashed or bounced off a wall or desk that would be even better. I
was usually rewarded with the chief getting caught off guard and he’d yell out some combination of surprise and/or irritation.

The first police station I worked in had a holding cell. The walls became covered with shoe prints (from people kicking) and
graffiti scrawlings from bored prisoners. Sometimes we’d give them pen and paper to write confessions and sometimes they’d
write on the walls instead. Or they’d use little bits of gravel from their shoe treads to carve initials in the walls, or use other hard
things. You’d be surprised what bored prisoners can come up with to write on walls, and that was not unique to our holding cell
– every jail cell I’ve ever seen in person at the “real” jail and at the juvenile jail all had walls completely decorated with all kinds
of carved and scratched sentiments, from initials and dates to names of loved ones, names of hated officers, gang signs, swear
words, and my favorite; names of people labeled as snitches. Our holding cell was eventually painted dark brown to cover it up
and make the mood in there a little calmer, but eventually the walls were all vandalized again with scribbling and scrawling. I
never knew what to make out about the “I Love Officer Hoke” I once found carved into the wall there. That was a little.. different.