In the picture below, you'll notice that half of the trip to Tate City involves driving through another county.

We don't have to respond to Tate City often. Since I've been with this department, I've only been there twice. Both times were regarding guns. We recently responded to Tate City when a man purposefully shot his brother in the arm.

The worse part about responding to Tate City, is that there is no cell phone or radio service there. On a good day, dispatch might be able to hear static when you try to speak on the radio. If you need help, too bad. Also, depending on how many are working at the time, when an officer responds to Tate City, it might leave the rest of the county to be covered by one officer.

I'm not complaining about Tate City. I'm just constantly amazed at how remote some places still are, and I wanted to share it. I grew up in Hiawassee and I never even knew where Tate City was. If you had told me about Tate City when I was working for Cobb County Police, I probably would have laughed and been in awe. Now, when I'm told I have to go to Tate City, I just cry a little inside.

From the article:

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8117619.stm

Also, I was involved in a serious accident while at work yesterday. I hydroplaned and struck a stopped vehicle at 60 miles per hour. I'm incredibly sore, but no one was seriously injured. I'll also write more about this incident and post pictures of the vehicle once I get approval from my department.

A self portrait from 2:00 am. I felt as tired as I look.

It’s nice though. I use to get terrible headaches everyday and I lived on migraine medicine. Since moving back to Hiawassee, I haven’t had any bad headaches. That either means that the headaches were stress induced, or the tumor that was causing them miraculously disappeared. It’s also been greet to be able to stop at home and eat with Michelle or stop at my parent’s house for coffee.

There are some drawbacks to moving back to Hiawassee though. I took a 50% pay cut. This blow was softened with a take home car, a county cell phone, and a free house (provided by Michelle’s grandmother, not the county). It’s also difficult to police in the town you grew up in. I’ve had to arrest a former classmate, and I know most people I pull over. If I don’t know the people I come across at work, then they either know me or my family. I’ll be talking to someone, and they’ll suddenly say, “Are you Stephen Smith’s son? He taught me algebra when I was in high school. He was the best teacher I ever had, and the best thing to happen to the school.” It’s hard to write a ticket to someone after they say something like that, but I manage anyway.

I responded to a report of an accident with injuries one afternoon. When I arrived, I found this Honda wrapped around a telephone poll. The teenage driver was miraculously not injured. The telephone poll snapped in half, and the top half came to rest feet from the car, still standing. It took the EMC hours to fix the problem.

On February 28th, I was dispatched to a call where a 24 year old male had fallen unconscious and stopped breathing. One of his friends, Friend 1, called 911. The other friend, Friend 2, started CPR. I had been at a coffee shop nearby when the call went out, so I arrived quickly. Typically, the fire department arrives at medical calls before the police do. They're usually dispatched first, and they are usually on scene doing what they can do before I ever roll up. When I pulled into the subdivision, I heard the fire truck behind me. I pulled up to the house and Friend 1 ran outside. I took the stairs to the front door three at a time and ran in the house. The Friend 2 jumped up and ran to me, telling me what happened. I'm not sure what he said, because I immediately took his position on the floor next to his dying friend. His face was deep blue. I started with chest compressions. After 100 compressions, the man took a breath. At that time, the fire department came in with all of their medical equipment. I did 30 more compressions and he took another breath. The FD checked for a pulse and found one. He still wasn't breathing well, so they began pumping air into him and monitoring his pulse.

I caught my breath and went to talk with Friend 1 and 2. They said that they hadn't seen their friend in a couple of weeks. He came by the house today randomly. His lips were blue when they answered the door, and he asked for a cigarette. After he put the cigarette in his mouth, he passed out and the rest of his face turned blue. They said that he was a heavy drug user, but they weren't sure if he was on anything at the time. While the FD started an IV, I searched his pockets, but didn't find anything that would have killed him. I asked dispatch to have a detective call me, and I started searching his car for any clues.

The ambulance pulled up while I was searching the car and brought a stretcher to the stairs. I spoke with the detective and told him what was going on. He said he would notify the family, and asked that I call him if there were any major changes in his condition. By the time I finished speaking with the detective, I saw the paramedics wheeling the stretcher back to the ambulance, but there was noticeable lack of a body on it. I went back into the house and the dead guy was standing up, rubbing his chest and scratching his head. I went back outside and called the detective. Once I convinced the detective that I wasn't joking, the fire captain came outside and told me that the guy was refusing to go to the hospital. Unfortunately, we can't force someone to go to the hospital unless a doctor or judge orders it. The fire captain called Kennestone Hospital and spoke with a doctor while I went inside to talk to the no-longer-dead-guy.

He told me that he felt fine, and didn't need to go to the hospital. We tried to explain to him that whatever he had taken that killed him was still in his system. When the medicine from the IV and whatever shots they gave him wore off, he would likely die again. He continued to assure us that he was fine and didn't need to go to the hospital. The captain came in and said that the doctor said that he would order the committal. When faced with a three day committal, or a voluntary visit to the hospital, the no-longer-dead-guy chose to walk to the ambulance.

The fire captain told me that it was because of my effort with the CPR that the man lived. He later emailed my lieutenant, informing him of the work I did.

When I left the scene, one of the first thoughts I had was, "This would make a great Facebook status update." So I updated my Facebook status to say, "Paul just brought someone back from the dead. CPR works wonders."

Since then, I've had a great excuse for getting out of chores I don't want to do. I simply hold out my hands and tell Michelle, "Honey, these hands give life. They don't do dishes." When she presses me further to do the dishes, I again hold out my hands as if in awe of them and say, "Honey, these hands give life. They can take life too." She laughs at me and I end up doing the dishes anyway.

]]> http://amipow.com/2009/03/these-hands-give-life/feed/ 4 http://amipow.com/2009/01/back-online/ http://amipow.com/2009/01/back-online/#comments Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:48:28 +0000 amipow http://amipow.com/?p=711 Happy New Year!

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I switched my web site's servers over the past couple of days. For the most part, everything went smoothly. Unfortunately, all of the photos that were in my posts are now gone. I'm not sure where or why they went, but they're gone. I don't intend to get them back. The ones that were hosted on other web sites are still intact, but mine are gone. The Photos page was unaffected because it's just a portal to my Picasa pictures.

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Michelle and I went to Hiawassee for Christmas. It was the first time since I've started this job that I've had Christmas off. We love going to Hiawassee. We love it so much, that we've decided to move back at the end of March. We're going to finish Michelle's grandmother's basement, and make it our home. The planned layout for the basement is pictured below. I used floorplanner.com to create it. The left side of the picture is the front of the house. That is the only wall of the basement that is underground. The basement is completely unfinished. The only walls are the cinderblock walls on the perimeter.

We plan on framing, insulating, dry walling, and carpeting. There's only one bathroom in the house, and it's upstairs. We'll install a bathroom in the basement underneath the existing bathroom so we don't have to do too much plumbing work. We may or may not put in a kitchen. We don't plan on the basement being completely independent from the rest of the house, but it would be nice to have a small kitchen in case it was needed. The area in the diagram labeled "Storage" has no floor. It's just dirt. Since we'll be living on a farm, complete with vegetable gardens and fruit orchards, we'll line that area with shelves for storing canned fruits and vegetables.

Click on the picture below for a larger view. Click here to take a 3D tour of the floor plan.

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I've always enjoyed a good cup of coffee. When I was little, my mom would make us what we called "coffee milk". It was coffee, milk, and a lot of sugar over ice. Whether or not she knows it, my mother is responsible for my addiction to coffee. After high school I got a job at the Mystic Mountain Coffee House in Hiawassee. This only fueled my addiction. Not only was I introduced to a whole different world of coffee, but I learned how to prepare these coffees. 

Anytime I go into a store that has kitchen appliances, I always linger in the coffee maker aisle. I own a four cup coffee pot, a 12 cup coffee pot, an espresso maker, as well as an assortment of coffee presses. I've been intrigued by the single serve pod coffee makers. The idea of just popping in a pod, pressing a button, and having an instant cup of coffee seemed like a great idea. Unfortunately, the coffee makers and the pods were too expensive for my taste. Taste was another thing that I was worried about. How good would the coffee be? Would it be worth the cost-per-pod? I decided that I would put off on buying this new coffee toy. 

A couple of days ago I was at BJ's Wholesale and saw a special edition Keurig. Not only was it discounted from its regular price, but it came with 88 pods. I did some research and found that Keurig makes a reusable pod. The regular pods are use-once-then-throw-away. The reusable one is basically a small filter that you use in place of the pod. The research (which was conducted on my iPhone) also revealed overwhelmingly positive reviews of the Keurig products. 

I've been very pleased with the purchase so far. The drinks have all been enjoyable, and it makes them incredibly fast. As soon as you hit the button, the drink begins pouring out. The water pump is a little loud, but bearable.

Michelle doesn't drink coffee, but she was pleased that it came with tea pods and hot chocolate pods. 

When I knocked on the door, he came out and said, "It's the stucco house on the corner!" I asked him what was going on, and he said that they were shooting fireworks, and we never do anything about it. He then said that if we didn't do something to stop the fireworks (which were not going off at the time) that he was going to take a baseball bat to his neighbors.

I decided at this point that this man needed to go to jail. He had already made a threat in the presence of the 911 call taker on a recorded line, and he made a threat in front of three officers, who were all recording as well. We were standing on a porch that was about four feet wide. The man was about six feet tall and 300 pounds.

We then attempted to place him in handcuffs. He immediately said that he was claustrophobic and began resisting arrest. When a 300 pound man doesn't want to move, he doesn't move. During the process of arresting him (which took about five minutes) each of us had been thrown off of him. My parter ended up tearing his ACL in the process and is going to be at a desk for several months while he heals.

In the end, we were able to trip him and dog-pile on top of him. I charged him with two counts of terroristic threats (felonies), three counts of obstruction (felonies) and one count of aggravated battery (felony) for tearing my partner's ACL. Aggravated battery on an officer carries a minimum of ten years in prison. This guy is going to jail for a long time, and all because of fireworks.

I later spoke with the neighbors and told them not to shoot fireworks anymore.

Arresting someone means a lot of paperwork. There was the arrest report, the warrant, the jail papers, the use of force report, and a report of injury report; plus, each of the other officers wrote supplemental reports. 

I clocked out at 4:00 am, after 14 hours of work.

If I'm lucky, the most that will happen will be a letter of reprimand placed in my file. The next best thing would be a day off without pay.

It's good that there was no damage to the truck. At least the county will only have to fix one vehicle.

Here's some pictures taken with my iPhone.

Written and posted from my iPhone.

At the same time, we received a call from an alarm company stating there was a burglary in progress at a closed business. They had a live video feed of the person breaking into and exploring the store. The other (almost) half of the precinct responded to the burglary while the alarm company gave updates on the burglar's whereabouts.

That left me all alone to handle the entire precinct, so I found a shady spot and parked my car. Just when I started working on a report, I was dispatched to a call where a 12 year old had his mother at knife point. Having no one to back me up, I asked the dispatcher to send an officer from Marietta. I was about 10 miles away from the call since it was nowhere near my beat. When I arrived I met with the Marietta officer who was talking with the mom. The kid was sitting in the ground.

Here's what happened:
Mom was trying to get son to clean his room. When son refused, Mom said she would take his new school shoes back to the store and grabbed the box. Son snatched the shoe box and then tackled his mom. She couldn't get him off of her (he was just as big as her) so she bit him on the side. She then went downstairs and he followed. He went into the kitchen, grabbed a large knife, pointed it at his mother and said, "I'm tired of you. I'm going to cut you." She grabbed the phone and ran outside.

The son's excuse: an anger management problem.

This brings me to the title of this post.

A few years back, children everywhere were being diagnosed with ADD and ADHD. Having ADD was more popular than iPods. Soon, it seemed like half of the population had trouble paying attention, and they now had a medical excuse. "Kid can't pay attention in class? ADD!" "Kid bouncing off the walls? ADHD!" Being diagnosed with ADD seems to have slowed. With the advent of the iPhone, Apple is once again more popular than ADD. In it's place: anger management problem.

Most of the time when the police get called to a house, it's because someone got very angry and did something very stupid. When it's a young person who has committed the stupid offense, the parents are always quick to jump in and blame "his anger management problem." Most of the family's I come across have a family psychiatrist who has informed them of their child's anger management problem. The parents then inform the child of their diagnosed excuse for being an asshole. It's so annoying when the parents tell me, "I don't want to press charges, because he has an anger management problem." It's even more annoying when the kid tells me, "It's not my fault, because I have an anger management problem." I just want to smack them and tell them to take responsibility for their actions.

I do not mean to offend anyone who has been diagnosed with ADD, ADHD or an anger management problem. The problems exist and they are real. This is the only time I'll ever quote Dr. Phil: "ADD is the most over-diagnosed, and under-diagnosed conditions in the U.S." Meaning that people who do not actually have ADD are being diagnosed, and the people who truly have the problem are not being diagnosed. I'm not sure why there's a sudden explosion of anger management problems, and it doesn't really matter. What concerns me the most is what the next big psychological frenzy will be...

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The 15 year old on the scooter was more or less killed on impact. He was transported to the hospital where he was pronounced deceased. I feel terrible for his family and friends. His parents will forever blame themselves for buying him the vehicle that caused his death.

The burglar got away before our officers arrived. The alarm company's cameras didn't cover enough of the store, and they lost sight of him.

The 12 year old was charged with Aggravated Assault. (Take that anger management problem!)