Joe Cop NW

This has been a long work week. It always seems that way when I do more administrative work. I didn’t get out on the road much this last week. Meetings, interviews and lots of paperwork kept me in the office.

One of the hats I wear as a sergeant is the equipment, uniforms and kind of the logistics officer. We recently promoted two new sergeants so I had to get them set up in their offices, get phone extensions, cell phones, pagers, uniforms, computers, business cards…. the list seems endless. I think I have a pretty good handle on it now but I am sure something has been overlooked.

It’s my weekend now, three days for myself and I am heading out to fire up my Massey Ferguson tractor and get some work done around the property. I also have to haul it over to our friends house as I promised to cut down some brush for them. I hope the weather holds up and it doesn’t rain too much.

Saturday is the Pride parade in Portland. I plan on getting down to check everyone out and hopefully see some friends. Hopefully I will get some good photos to share. Well better get off my butt and get with it…..

Actually it’s not Adam’s rib, it’s my rib but I had to have a title. I went to the doctor today after a fun weekend of little rest and pain even when I took a deep breath, and well coughing was just delightful. I found that one of my ribs is separated where it joins to the sternum. I guess that would explain why that Good Pain I wrote about isn’t so good anymore. In fact it is down right a nuisance, what with not being able to sleep at night and worst of all now I have to go on light duty at work. What is the moral of this story…. at fifty years old it is probably best not to go at it so hard with at thirty year old in much better shape than myself.

Light duty is both a bane and a blessing. It’s great that you don’t have to sit at home doing nothing when your injured. It is good for the department too since they are at least getting some work out of you. If the injury is like mine from a work related event it helps cut down on their insurance costs. If you get hurt off duty its great because you don’t have to burn up a bunch of sick time. The down side, at least for me is that I don’t get to work my cherished “four ten” shift. It’s back to working regular business hours, eight hours a day five days a week. That’s just not right but I think that is part of their strategy to get people off light duty and back to work.

The doc says I should be okay to go back to work in a week or so but it will be several weeks before I am mended. I guess the cartilage will never reattach to the rib but he says my body will compensate.

Ouch… I hurt today. Last night was a four hour (actually only 3 and a half hour) training class on the carry and use of tactical knifes. We meet at the junior high school’s gym for the training and I must say it was some of the best DT training I have been to in all my years with the department. The officer who ran the class was just trained recently as an instructor and he did a great job. I learned a lot and I am re-thinking my use and carry of a knife at work.

The training was very realistic. We were issued exact replicas of a real tactical knife from Benchmade except the blade was blunt tipped and not sharp. We were trained to use the knife with our weak hand which was very strange at first. I have never even considered using or carrying it in that way. By the end of the class it made perfect sense and was becoming fairly easy to do.

The guy I teamed up with for most of the class is a studly tough powerhouse of a man. He is the type of man I wouldn’t want to get into a fight with but I held my own with him very well. Of course we were told not to go 100 percent but I think most of the times we were going at least 95 percent. A couple of time we may have been going all out but it was fun

Later we were told to switch to a new partner and I worked with one of our female officers. That was a little different as she probably only weighs about 120 pounds. She is also coming off an injury to her hand so fighting with her wasn’t very challenging but it was enlightening. Size does matter….. I hope she never has to get into much of a hand to hand fight with some guy. She better just shoot him.

I bet by tomorrow I will show a lot of bruising. My left hand is quite sore and my chest hurts a lot. When I got home and took a shower I had red marks all over my body from the knife strikes. It is kind of a good pain though, the kind that is there to remind you that you made some gains and learned something. I wish we could to training like that more often. Also wrestleing around with the studdly guys isn’t too bad either.