Foot patrol.

Walking a beat.

When’s the last time you saw a police officer walking, patrolling a business area?

For me, it’s been awhile. That’s too bad, too, because foot patrol was a very effective technique. An officer assigned to a foot beat became very familiar with the everyday people in his assigned patrol area, the shop owners, the residents and even the crooks and undesirables. He/she knew whether or not someone belonged to the area. He/she knew the trouble spots. He/she knew what belonged and what didn’t.

Business people generally loved when the beat cop walked into their shop or restaurant, because they’d know there wasn’t a chance of trouble happening. Neighborhoods got to know the cop on patrol because he wasn’t gliding on by in an air-conditioned cruiser behind tinted glass. He was real and he was present. He was personable, a cop you could actually hold a conversation with.

Back in the day we had foot patrol, but even then it was a dying assignment. We’d have guys/gals walking assigned beats on ‘all-hands’ days; those days during the shift cycle where no one was on scheduled days off. We’d have plenty of two-officer cars because we didn’t have enough cruisers for all the personnel who were working. Even then, though, the department was beginning to feel the budget bite; that was one reason we didn’t have enough cruisers. I always looked forward to all-hands days, because I knew there was a good chance I’d be assigned to downtown foot patrol, and I enjoyed it immensely.

You were assigned in pairs; back in the 50s and 60s, guys would walk a beat alone, being dispatched to calls via blue-painted call boxes mounted on poles seemingly on every corner. The call boxes generally had a red light on top that would flash if the beat cop needed to contact the station for a call, and the copper carried a key that would unlock the call box door, where the phone awaited use.

Call boxes were long gone before I started my career, replaced by big, boxy, heavy portable radios. Between the radio on one hip and the .38 revolver on the other, well, that leather gun belt rode low on your hip bones, which could become painful.

Anyway, we walked in pairs, making it a point to stroll several times through the bars that were known for trouble, like ‘showing the flag’’; you wanted the mopes to know that you were around and could appear unannounced at any moment.

We didn’t just stroll the streets, either. Oftentimes, we’d get up on top of a building and just watch activity below us. I remember one particular instance where my pal Keith ‘Biscuit’ Coleman and I were on top of the Reed’s Building on the square, just watching. We noticed a car come around the corner, pause in front of the store and then back in to a parking space. It was a Sunday, late afternoon, and Reed’s department store was closed. Why would a driver do that? No one ever backed in those spaces. The guy never got out of his car. We waited about fifteen minutes and then decided to pay him a visit. Keith and I climbed down the rear fire escape and approached from an alley that ran between Reed’s and the Olympic Lounge; the car was parked in a space near the mouth of the ally, so the guy couldn’t see us approach. We walked up to him on the driver’s side and he never saw us. In his lap he had a Frisbee, loaded with loose marijuana, and he was rolling joints. Every so often he’d raise his head and look around, but he never looked behind his car, so we stood, just back of the driver’s door, watching him through his open window. Finally, I spoke.

“What’s up?”

The guy’s head snapped around, seeing two policemen standing right beside his door, a look of surprise and horror on his face. Then his chin hit his chest, realizing he’d been caught red-handed, and he just handed that marijuana-laden Frisbee out the window to us.

“You got me”, he said dejectedly. It was priceless.

I miss the old days.