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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. When I was in college, I did a ride-along with my local suburban police department to write an article for the school newspaper. That was a long time ago, in a small town that saw very little crime, and true to form, the most excitement we had was stopping a couple of speeding drivers. Well, just this past week, I got a chance to go on another ride-along, this time with Eugene police. Let's just say we had a lot more excitement. We made several stops at the jail to deliver suspects, and one of them was quite eventful. Before that night, I didn't even know what a spit hood was. Now I do. So today on the show, I'll bring you along with Patrol Officer Alan Kawasaki as he took me on his beat on a late Friday night. That's next on Oregon on the Record.
I've never worked in law enforcement, and what I know about cops is colored by what I see on TV and in the movies, and by what I see and read in the media when a police officer does something wrong. But it's a truly strange profession that requires a lot more skills than simply arresting bad guys, and it requires a genuine need for multitasking that most of us would find well beyond us.
I recently went on a ride-along with Eugene police, and I'm going to bring you a conversation with a patrol officer as he drove me around the city during a particularly busy Friday night. After that experience, I think I can best describe the role of police officer in the following ways. One, it's a customer service job where the vast majority of customers don't like you and don't want to have anything to do with you. Two, it's a professional driver job where you have to pay strict attention to the road while also having your head on a swivel at all times. Three, it's a technology job where almost all your tasks are tied to the computer at your side. Four, it's a counselor job where you're interacting with people having their worst day. And five, it's a law enforcement job where your badge, your gun, your handcuffs, your radio, your knife and your pepper spray may all come into play at any time. So with that, let's step inside Officer Alan Kawasaki's office: his Ford Explorer patrol vehicle. So tell me, how long have you been a police officer with Eugene?
Alan Kawasaki: I've been a police officer with Eugene for a little over four years now.
Dunne: OK. And did you start here in Eugene, or did you work for another department before this?
Kawasaki: I started here in Eugene. I came up to Eugene for the University of Oregon and just kind of never left the city.
Dunne: So you went to the U of O. What was your major?
Kawasaki: I majored in psychology and communication disorders and sciences.
Dunne: Did that help you with law enforcement?
Kawasaki: I'm finding that it does in a lot of ways. In essence, it's two majors on how to talk to people, which is inherently what we do.
Dunne: I'm curious about that, because I've had a great opportunity to interview the chief a few times, and he's talked about the fact that learning law enforcement is certainly one set of skills, but sometimes those softer skills of being able to communicate are really what separate great officers from others. Do you find that that's a big part of it?
Kawasaki: I do. We talk to people of all mental states and all moods. We talk to everybody, essentially, and it's important to build rapport with people as best we can, because inherently, we're there for them.
Dunne: What made you want to become a police officer?
Kawasaki: Pretty much every job I've had has involved some level of customer service. I started when I was 16, working as a day camp counselor. Then I worked in retail. When I came up here to the U of O, I also worked as a line cook. So this was essentially the highest level of customer service I can think of.
Dunne: That's interesting, because the chief also told me this is kind of a customer service job, and I know most people probably don't think of it that way. Explain the customer service aspect of what you do.
Kawasaki: We respond to calls, inherently. People have complaints or issues in the community. People are going through rough times, and it's our job to make it as safe as we can and hold people accountable if they're doing harm to the community.
Dunne: One thing I'd like to talk about: I think most of us understand police officers through fiction, through movies and TV. If we couch it as myth-busting, what are some things about the job that people don't understand, or don't see in Hollywood depictions of what being a police officer is all about?
Kawasaki: Being a police officer, as it's been explained to me, is equal parts talking to people and being a professional information gatherer. When we take reports on things, that's inherently what we're doing: gathering information. But it ultimately comes back to being able to talk to people and interact with people. It's not all car chases and things like that. It's a lot of just talking to people.
Dunne: Last question before we get going. Obviously, it's an inherently dangerous job, and you're married with a child. What's the mindset you bring to the job to make sure you stay safe doing it?
Kawasaki: I would say the biggest thing for me is trusting my coworkers. There have been plenty of times when I've been in a fight with somebody and called for emergency cover. Within minutes, every coworker who's working comes to help me, and that's a good feeling, knowing we all have each other's backs and will all help each other. I think that's our safety net: each other.
Dunne: I'm going to break away now from the conversation with Officer Kawasaki to bring you some sound from the stops we made during the ride-along. At around 9 p.m. we responded to a noise disturbance in east Eugene. So we've made our first stop. We're outside an apartment complex. There were complaints of juveniles doing some reckless driving through here. So he went to check it out with his colleagues, and I stayed safely in the car. While he could have issued a ticket to the kids, he instead just talked with them, and they left without further incident. It would be the last calm interaction of the evening. Now let's get back to my conversation with Officer Kawasaki. When you first started out as a rookie, what were some of the things that were hardest to get used to? It could be anything from the uniform to interactions with people. What were some of the things where you thought, wow, this takes some getting used to?
Kawasaki: I think for me, the thing that took the most getting used to was the multitasking. When we're driving around, I'm always listening to the radio. We're always monitoring the calls. I'm always monitoring what's going on around me, and not just with driving, but what's happening. Am I seeing crimes in progress? Am I seeing violations? Just taking everything in. So that took a little getting used to.
Dunne: It's interesting. We're talking in your vehicle, and I'm realizing there's not a lot of room here because there's so much technology. Talk about that. You're a fairly young police officer. What's it like, both the positives and maybe a few of the negatives, of having so much technology and having to use it and implement it in everything you do?
Kawasaki: So, kind of what you're mentioning, the thing that takes up the most room, as you can see, is the computer. This is the main source of information we have as we go through our workday. I'm looking at the call screen right now: the calls that are holding, waiting to be dispatched. That's one thing we have to pay attention to. There's also the radio, right underneath the computer. What we hear in the car is the same thing that's always going on in my ear. So essentially, I'm listening out of my left ear for everything else, and in my right ear, I'm listening to what dispatch is telling me and what all my coworkers are doing. So again, it comes back to that multitasking, monitoring all of that at the same time while also driving and going about my day.
Dunne: For most of us, obviously we're very used to computers, but we're also not driving a 3,000- to 4,000-pound vehicle while keeping our eyes and ears open for people doing bad things. How long did it take to get used to the multitasking? When did you feel like, OK, now everything clicks?
Kawasaki: I would say it took me about a year, year and a half, and a lot of it is just practice. This car is my office. This is where I work. I'm in this car at least 10 hours a day, sometimes more. Eventually, I just got used to it.
Dunne: So maybe take us through what a typical shift looks like. We're at the very beginning part now, or even before we got in the car: talk about when you get to police headquarters. Take us through how you get ready and what a typical shift looks like.
Kawasaki: For me, I usually get in a little early to work out. We have a gym here at Eugene Police Headquarters that we're allowed to use, so I'll usually go on a run before work. Then I'll put on my uniform along with all the accouterments, as you can see here. Following that, I'll come out and set up my car. We share police cars here at the Eugene Police Department. We don't have take-home cars, or at least not those of us on the patrol level. So the cars are just in this lot. I'll bring out all my gear, which consists of a patrol bag, my patrol rifle and my lunch. I'll set all that up. I'll function-test the car, make sure everything works, make sure the lights work, make sure the siren works. Check the tires. Make sure the car's functional and ready to go. Following that, I'll log into my computer, where I'll see what's going on in the city and what I'll end up doing. After that, I'll go to briefing. That usually takes 30 to 45 minutes, where our patrol team will come together. We'll get briefed on anything going on for the day, anything to be aware of. Following that, I'll clear and start taking calls for service.
Dunne: Do you have a specific geographic area you're assigned to?
Kawasaki: Yes. I work on the east side of Eugene, which, looking at a map, is between Washington Street and I-5. That's not necessarily a hard boundary here at EPD. We'll go wherever we're needed, because as the night progresses, there may be more calls on the west side where they just don't have enough officers at that time. So we'll end up going there, and vice versa for the east side. But when it comes to being dispatched, that's where we'll be dispatched to: calls on our side of the city.
Dunne: So obviously you're having a lot of communication with dispatch. Do you also have a lot of communication with other officers? Do you check in and share experiences or notes about what's happening through the shift?
Kawasaki: Of course. As you'll see when we start going on calls, we generally don't go alone. There's usually at least one other officer with me, so we'll chat, because we work together and we like each other, but we'll also talk about what happened, even just small talk, as we work through calls. We have a separate channel on our radio we can use as our talk channel, where we can have direct communication as we're working a call together. Occasionally we'll just call each other on the phone as needed, like if we have a question for another officer, if they got a statement from somebody, or just a question about how to do a particular thing they may have more knowledge of.
Dunne: Have you also worked day shifts, or have you always been on nights?
Kawasaki: When I was on field training, I started on day shift. When I first went solo, I was on swing shift, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Following that, I worked a later swing, 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Now I'm working 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. So basically, as my career progressed, I've worked later and later in the day, now that I think about it.
Dunne: Again, I'm going to break away from our conversation to talk about our first arrest of the night. At around 10 p.m. we responded to a noise complaint that led to the arrest of a person known to Officer Kawasaki on outstanding warrants. Someone with six warrants out, and we pulled her over, and he's talking to her right now. It's interesting how, in a midsized city, police officers know the people they come into contact with often. He was able to spot her from across two streets and know exactly who she was. With this arrest, Kawasaki also found pills in the woman's possession. He would later take me to the police lab, where he did a field drug test and found she was in possession of Schedule II narcotics. Let's get back to our conversation with Officer Kawasaki during our ride-along with Eugene police. Is there a shift you prefer? And along with that, what are the inherent challenges of working both day shift and night shift?
Kawasaki: With where I'm at right now in my life, I actually very much enjoy night shift. I feel like I spend more time with my family than I would if I were working day shift. I say that because I have a 17-month-old at home. What I've found working day shifts, and I see this when I do training, because trainings are always during the day, is that I'll leave right after he gets up, or even before he gets up, and I'll get home as he's winding down for the day, or as the case may be, already in bed. Whereas working nights, I get home around 6:30 or 7 a.m. He's up and ready to go. He'll greet me, and I'll usually spend an hour or two just hanging out with him and my wife. Then I'll sleep, and when I wake up, he's still up and ready to go. So for family life, I actually enjoy night shift. In terms of challenges, probably the biggest one for me is my weekends. I work Wednesday night through early Sunday morning, so on my weekends, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, I have to adjust to being awake during the daytime, again for family life. Sundays are usually a tricky day for me because I'll get home, get a little sleep, and then wake up and essentially just be up. So I guess the sleep schedule is the biggest challenge.
Dunne: What's more of a challenge: being a police officer, or having a 17-month-old?
Kawasaki: It depends on the day. It depends on the day.
Dunne: Another break from my conversation with Officer Kawasaki to talk about how we joined other officers on a call, looking for an individual doing some pretty disturbing things around Skinner Butte sometime after 11:30 p.m. It would become our most challenging incident, involving a man running into and out of the street, threatening passersby. It would also become a call I won't soon forget. Now we're stopped, looking for a person who's been running out into the street and threatening people, and they're searching for him in some brush right now. They found him, and it looks like he's in handcuffs, and they're loading him into another officer's vehicle. So we took the disorderly conduct suspect to jail, and it was a sad situation. He's someone who's probably on intoxicants, but he's also known to the officers as having schizophrenic tendencies, and he was very uncooperative. We had the chance to bring him to jail and see the transfer of what's called an uncooperative subject. The sheriff's deputies had to come out en masse, probably eight deputies, to remove him from the car and put what's called a spit hood on him because he was spitting at the officers, then place him in handcuffs and in a special chair to bring him into the jail. It was eye-opening to see what happens a lot in Eugene with people who are suffering, whether from intoxicants or mental health issues: some really unusual and scary behavior. But it was a successful transfer, and he's now in jail. Back to my conversation with Officer Kawasaki. About the disorderly suspect we took to jail: talk about dealing with somebody who's dealing with intoxicants but also mental health challenges, and having to keep doing your job with a pretty volatile person in the back of your car swearing and carrying on. What's it like to continue doing your job with a volatile person back there?
Kawasaki: That one was kind of easy for me because I didn't have to transport him. But with folks like that, at the end of the day, it's just words, just sounds, and like we were saying, it's a lot of the same stuff I hear on a fairly regular basis. So at a certain point, I just tune it out. It's just words. It doesn't really hurt me.
Dunne: And then there was the other case, where we were driving and you recognized someone right away and knew there were warrants out for them. You've talked so much about multitasking: just being able to spot that person and know exactly what was going on. Talk a little about that stop and how your instincts clued into it.
Kawasaki: So the original call we were sent to was a male-female verbal dispute coming from the south side of South Eugene High School. As we're coming down Patterson, I see a man and a woman walking north, away from the area of the dispute. So I'm already thinking they're the people we're there for. I happen to recognize both of them, and I remembered talking to the officer who took the original burglary report, in which the woman was the suspect. So at that point, I had to turn around and coordinate with other officers, because I was on the radio saying, it's this person, here's where they're going, here's what they're wearing, so that if they decide to run and we have to set a perimeter, people know what they're looking for. But I have to give all that information out while still flipping my vehicle around. I ended up undershooting it a little, too, because I was trying to cut them off since they were going up a one-way street. I ended up having to swim upriver just to prevent that escape, which is what the red and blue lights are for. There was minimal traffic, which was nice. But I still had to manage all that while maintaining observation of this person, so they didn't get away and I could actually stop them for the warrants and the burglary.
Dunne: Well, it's been very enlightening for me. I really appreciate you taking me on this ride-along.
Kawasaki: Yeah, thank you. It was a lot of fun. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Dunne: Before we go, I wanted to take a minute to talk about this experience. Members of the public can go on ride-alongs with Eugene police and other departments, and I highly encourage you to do so, especially if you have negative feelings about police or have had negative interactions with them. I believe the general public should have a better understanding of the job of police officer, and better understand the men and women who do it. After my experience with Officer Kawasaki, I can say clearly that he has a job I don't want to do, but I'm glad he's there doing it. That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Monday on the show, you'll learn about a relatively new nonprofit helping siblings separated by the foster care system maintain their connections. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
