#cop procedural

I know its a crime show the episode is about a woman who fakes her daughters kidnapping with her best friend

I recently started rewatching the TV show Dexter and stopped five episodes in because, as it turns out, casually exposing myself to my own trauma triggers does not make for an enjoyable watching experience. It gave me something to think about, though.

One of the results I’ve noticed from my decade and a half of therapy is that there are things that bother me now that didn’t bother me in the past. As far as I can tell, it’s a result of me being more in-tune with my own emotions and removing the callouses that had formed around my trauma so I could actually process it and properly heal. All of which means that certain actions in video games…

The Good Cop (subtítulos) | Avance oficial | Netflix España

De la mano del creador de Monk, llega The Good Cop, la nueva serie original de Netflix, protagonizada por Tony Danza y Josh Groban. Disponible el 21 de septiembre.

# TheGoodCop #SeriesNetflix #NetflixEspaña

¡Suscríbete al canal de YouTube de Netflix España! Los estrenos del mes en Netflix:

Síguenos en nuestras redes sociales: Facebook: Instagram: Twitter:

VÍDEOS QUE NO TE PUEDES PERDER

Mi vida…

What is happening with the Lethal Weapon television series?

https://youtu.be/5KIl005BOEk

Actor Damon Wayans has announced he is leaving the show this December. Wayans divulged after his 13 episode commitment he would be leaving due to the 16-hour work days. Wayans revealed he’s a 58 year old diabetic who can no longer deal with the strain of working on a series as demanding as Lethal Weapon.

This…

Twenty minutes later we reached the park. I could already see the flashing of blue lights and an emergency vehicle. The street had already been taped off, my mind moving to the worse possible scenario. We quickly got out the car and approached the perimeter, the officer on scene recognizing us and holding the tape up for us to pass. I saw several more officers, CSI who were already taking notes, one photographer and.....

“The detectives haven’t made it yet,” said Brent canvassing the area like I was. It meant that we had made it early and could make some sense of things before the detectives tried to pull some type of rank on us and booted us out. He headed over to the CSI unit to try and glean some information. It was a subtle hint at giving me space to approach the actual crime scene itself.

Ten feet away I saw a white sheet and the medical examiner crouched over it, writing notes into a notebook. My heart pounding in my chest, I made my way over. “They have you out here too Newton?” I asked on the approach to not surprise her.

Olivia Newton looked up from her notebook, obviously still deep in thought, but paused when she saw me. Her expression swiftly shifted from surprise to disappointment, the exhaustion in her eyes and creases around them being very telling. “Hey Charlie. I see you actually were called out.” She stood up to face me.

“Seems like everybody knows what’s going on except for me.” I couldn’t hide the irritation in my voice any longer. “Be straight with me Newton, what’s going on?”

She simply sighed. “I’m like you, I hate beating around the bush. So I’ll go ahead and let you see.” She bent back down at the head of the sheet and pulled it, revealing a familiar face. It was indeed Gabriel Downs.

My heart plummeted into the deepest recesses of my stomach.

Gabriel Downs had been a fourteen year old kid that I had caught shoplifting out of a local gas station a few months back. It was outside my jurisdiction but I stopped to fill up at the pump. He seemed a lot like what the news would paint. Young, impulsive, and no manners. But there was an intelligence in his eyes that sparked something in me. I gave him a ride to his home in the passenger seat of my car instead of in the back in handcuffs. His mom was extremely grateful. His grandmother and aunts even more so. He had a caring family but lacked direction. Everyone was so busy trying to make ends.

I stopped by at least once a week to check on him. I don’t know why I did it. Something just told me to keep coming back. My intuition had been correct on the intelligence. With some focus he could breeze through Geometry and History and English. He just needed a bit more constructive attention. Marissa said that he just lacked a male role model. I made sure to never wear my uniform when I came over and kept it casual. Soon enough, his grades started improving. He was playing on his school basketball team (those days at the gym had been helpful) and was even considering volunteering in a mentoring program himself. Before I knew it, I kinda started to see him as another son. Two days ago I missed stopping by his house because I was working an additional shift for the overtime pay; and now this.

I could feel my eyes starting to well up. What in the world would I tell his mother? Olivia watched on in concern, not sure what to say.

“Don’t worry Officer, we have it from here.” A voice from behind brought me out of my head. I turned to see two men, dressed very casually. Both had on bomber jackets, but the one on the right wore a loose white polo with blue jeans. The one on the left, who had spoken, had a red and blue button up with khaki’s. Plain clothes officers, definitely the detectives. I could smell the douchebag in the air.

I wiped the tears forming in my eyes away, quickly trying to regain the situation. “Do you have to puff out your chest at every crime scene Caldwell?” I hadn’t missed the subtle jab at simply calling me officer as if I didn’t have a name.

That’s Detective Caldwell. You have some years in. I figure you would get with the program by now,” said Caldwell looking past me to the body. He eyed Olivia. “I got the cliff notes on the way down here with Bobby, motioning to the silent man beside him. What do we have here?”

“Definitely more than a hit and run,” Brent came from behind to approach the group. “CSI is flagging this as a homicide. Not a 10-57 by any means.”

I looked back surprised. How in the world had they come to that conclusion?

“That’s conclusive to what I found,” Olivia agreed. She peeled back a page of her notebook. Gabriel had all the injuries indicative of a collision with a car, but there was something else. Three stab wounds in the abdomen. They appear to be older than everything else.”

“You’re saying he was stabbed and then ran over?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Gabriel stayed to himself and didn’t really have any friends. Who would do this? Was it random?”

“You know the deceased?” Caldwell asked, surprised at this. No one had told him. I quite enjoyed him being clueless. But I knew I had comply with his questions for the sake of the investigation.

“He was previously a perp in a minor shoplifting. I let him off cause he seemed like a good kid. Met his family and I’ve stayed in touch to check on him.”

“Interesting, because I have some conflicting information that I received.” Caldwell must have called into the precinct for someone to run a search on him on his ride over.

“I know that he’s been arrested prior but it was mostly petty crimes.”

“What about gang affiliation?” said Caldwell in a knowing way.

I paused at this accusation. I had never heard anything about Gabriel being in a gang. Did his mom know? What about his grandmother? Did they keep it from me to ensure that I kept coming around and didn’t distance myself or turn him in? My thoughts were racing at the new information and it must have shown on my face.

“Looks like you didn’t know him as well as you thought Charles.” Caldwell loved being the one in the room with the most information.

“So this was some type of retaliation?” Brent brought us back on track.

“The puncture wounds were jagged, done in a struggle. They were not expected. Some type of fight had to have occurred first. Then the stabbing and then the hit and run.” Olivia chimed in.

“We’ll correspond with CSI and get their report. We’ll pay the family a visit in the morning. Hey Bobby, see if CSI will email us the files,” said Caldwell, sending Bobby off without a word.

“I’m getting in on this,” I said, taking a step towards him.

“I don’t recall asking for your help or needing it; and I definitely don’t want a guilt tripper muddying up my work.”

“I know the family personally. They’re not going to talk to police. But they will to me. Or do I need to file an injunction with the Sergeant for you obstructing the case?” I knew Caldwell’s picture in the dictionary was next to brown nosing and didn’t want any type of negative marking on his record or to be on the bad side of the Sergeant. He would have to bring me along. His face was already saying yes, albeit extremely reluctantly.

“Fine, but you follow my direction. I’m overseeing this. You know how seriously the precinct takes gang related cases. We’ll be working around the clock non-stop. If it goes deep, we may have to call in ATF. May force you to have to unholster that weapon. You sure you want it?”

Caldwell’s word rang deeper than he was aware of. There was nothing I wanted more than to head back home and curl into bed next to my wife and my soon coming son. I wanted to take the next three days off and enjoy spending my time with them.

But Ms. Downs wouldn’t get that opportunity. Her son was never coming home and I had to explain that to her tomorrow somehow. I was delving into a side of police enforcement that I never had before and it could get ugly. Marissa’s words of being there echoed in my mind but I couldn’t shake the feeling of responsibility I had for this kid who wasn’t given a proper chance. His father hadn’t been in his life to steer him properly. But I planned on being in mine; and I would do whatever it took. But first that meant doing right by the mother who had tried as hard as she could with the circumstances handed to her.

I looked back at Caldwell, my decision internally made but now it would be verbalized. “I’m in.”

I love taking earlier written work and polishing it off. My attempt at a two-part crime thriller.

Explanation of the flash fiction challenge is HERE.

“There is a car waiting for you outside your house. Get inside. You don’t want to ignore this.” The voice was even toned and quite professional, almost pleasant. Their steady demeanor made me question the seriousness of this call.

“Hello?” was all I could get out, none of my deductions going past the inner walls of my head. My voice was raspy, my eyes still a third of the way closed and wondering why I had been interrupted from some of the best sleep in the last two weeks. It was my off day. I had no time for this. Especially at three in the morning.

Being the only light in an otherwise pitch black room, my LED screen woke up my wife. She lazily flopped to my side of the bed, her brown skin and features made haunting images with the soft blue illumination in the room. Her eyes were squinted. “Everything okay? Charlie? What’s wrong?” her voice was only a tad bit more sluggish than mine and yet I could still hear the concern.

“I don’t know, I’m still trying to figure it out.” I looked back at my phone and saw the familiar reddish hue of a call that had been ended. I heaved an enormous sigh and dropped the phone back onto the table beside the bed. Sometimes I really hated the rudeness of dispatch. They could be a bit more forthcoming to the people who actually had to respond to these calls. The room back dark and silent, I turned over onto my side. “I’m being called in,” my sentence hung in dead silence for several seconds.

“On your off day? There’s an entire shift on patrol for calls like this. Why you?” Marissa’s voice echoed the same exasperation mine did when I got home last night from patrol. I had been given three days off that I had hoped would result in nights of fitful sleep and wonderfully mundane dreams. Yet that was being dragged away.

“It has to be something important. Sarge wouldn’t ok the call just for me to pop in for biscuits and to say hi on off days. He’s serious about R & R.” I tried to make light of the situation but the tense silence in return let me know that she still wasn’t having it. I tenderly moved my hand up the covers to her stomach, letting it rest there for a second, enjoying the thought of what was to come in the next few weeks.

“I know we need the overtime pay but not at the expense of you not being around. Charles Jr. needs his father to teach him how to throw a football.” Marissa’s voice dropped several decibels of sternness to an even tone, her hand finding mine, tracing its outline for several seconds. “Go,” she said, urging me out the bed. The fleeting seconds of normalcy were over as I rolled back to my other side and sat up, my feet meeting the cold wooden floor.

I heard the soft hum of an engine outside the window. More than likely an expectant driver was waiting and I knew exactly who they would’ve sent to come get me.

                                                      *

Ten minutes later, my uniform on and weapon holstered, I came out the door making my way to the patrol car. I heard the slow whir of the window being let down, the light of the cabin inside the car being turned on, a grim face with a matching uniform looking back out at me.

“Hey Charlie.” It was quick, gruff, and entirely indicative of the situation at hand.

“Brent,” was all I could say in return approaching the passenger door of the car. Without pomp and circumstance I hopped in, plopping down and strapping in The engine turned over and the car pulled away from my house and down the street. For several minutes we rode in silence, even the dispatcher radio strangely quiet. The entire world was holding its breath and it seemed like everyone else in the classroom knew why except for me. “So are you ever going to speak and tell me why the Sergeant called in two off duty officers for whatever we’re driving towards? I assume you know where we’re going?”

“He wanted us because the call was related to one of yours from a few months ago. Wanted to give us a chance to see it first. Especially you.”

As usual, Brent never gave much more than what was needed in any conversation. Forget small talk, the man was a steel trap, ready to batten down the hatches at any sign of intimacy in dialogue. He was a solidly built man, with a decade and some change over me in age. His face usually contained either a grimace or solemn acceptance on it, his early greying hair a testament to a hard life lived at a young age. Marissa was still as perplexed as I was at how he had been married for twenty years. I was praying that I wouldn’t be this closed off in ten years when I’d be knocking on forty. But I decided to play along.

“So where are we going?”

“At the intersection of Navy Way and Everglades Avenue, short of Riverfront Park. There was a hit and run. We’re going to comb the perimeter for a bit before the Detectives get on sight. Sarge wanted us there because he knew how particular you were to this one. Elliott had planned on coming out but I told him that I would come instead.”

As much of a gruff bastard Brent could be at times, he was a damn fine partner in the field. I could always count on him. Calling in on your day off was a big deal. “I appreciate it Brent. I much rather ride with you then Deputy Elliott. The dude is a creeper. Spends more time staring down the women on the scene than questioning the perps. So a code 10-57 over by Riverfront Park? What’s so special?”

“They said it was Gabriel.”

I paused at that information, my eyes wide with shock. I glanced over at Brent, his eyes never leaving the road, his face a mask of grim determination. I knew he was just as crestfallen. No other words needed to be said until we reached the scene.

                                                    *

Part 2 tomorrow.

Explanation of the flash fiction challenge is HERE.