Page 419 - NIXBOOK

BOAT PATROL

I was also a state certified marine patrol police boat operator for a few years. In the late 1990’s when we got a new police boat to
replace a much older and smaller model, somebody convinced me to join our department’s small cadre of boating patrol officers.
So I went to a boat training school in Eastern Washington and learned how to operate our boat competently.

Part of the training included going to a swimming pool and learning just how life saving the inflatable life jackets could be,
which is pretty crucial since police officers on boats still patrol with their heavy gun belts and Kevlar vests on. So one at a time
the student officers had to put on a heavy lead weight dive belt and jump into the pool (in swim shorts only, not with our
uniforms!) and once on the bottom we pulled the cord to inflate the life jacket to float us back up to the surface. They worked
great. For better or worse I don’t have any good boating stories to share, just a few pictures.

Fortunately I never had any incidents on the boat. Andy and John did, though; they went out on the boat one evening and turned
too hard and caught a wave wrong; the resulting slam and shudder on the hull was enough to launch Andy right off the boat
into the water. John was able to figure out how to turn the boat around in time to fish Andy out of the water, who learned the
hard way why life jackets are a good idea when one is trying to stay afloat with a full uniform on, including boots. Of course his
portable police radio and cell phone were ruined; everything else was able to be rinsed off and salvaged. In that their boat
patrolling was more like a joyride, the Chief was quite less than amused and a couple of stern disciplinary letters were issued
and filed in their records.

Again, nothing exciting happened while I did my boat patrols, so we only have one page for this part.