A Post reporter and photographer spent Saturday night in a police cruiser with the Athens Police Department
Athens looks a whole lot different from the back of a police cruiser — mostly because thin black bars mar your vision and occasionally dizzying red and blue lights flash in front.
Oh yeah, and all this is going on when you’re zooming down West Union Street at 60 mph.
The Ford Crown Victoria decked out as a police cruiser also wasn’t that comfortable — not that I expected it to be. The seats are a hard gray plastic, with little legroom to speak of. There are small drains at the floor of the car, where Officer Thomas Simpson, my APD tour guide for the night, said he instructs the most intoxicated students to vomit. They rarely do, he added — more on that in a minute.
Overall, the ride along — something any citizen can experience by asking the police department ahead of time — was an eye-opening experience of a typical night for Athens’ finest.
11 p.m.
I took the front seat next to Simpson for the first half of the ride, where we talked about his growing up in Athens, his recent vacation to Texas, the crimes he sees most often, suspended Athens Sheriff Pat Kelly’s trial, and how he never once attended a fest until he joined APD.
“You can spot the underagers because they’ll freeze up,” he laughed when we were making our way down East Washington Street, where students paused and took a few steps back as the cruiser approached them.
Post photographer Seth Archer joined me; he hopped in the backseat.
Simpson said he gets about six participants in the ride-along program for the Saturday midnight shift a year.
12 a.m.
Our first call came just before midnight, leading us to speed with lights and sirens across town.
A male had entered the side door of Chipotle, 41 S. Court St., and had taken all of the employee tips resting on the counter. One employee had separated roughly $15 in tips into six plastic cups, and left to go in the back of the restaurant, which is when the criminal seized his opportunity.
Simpson looked at the restaurant’s security footage and took pictures of it with his smartphone.
1:50 a.m.
Around 1:50 a.m., Simpson received a call that a man couldn’t find his white Volkswagen in the city’s East Washington Street garage. The man said it might be stolen, though Simpson was willing to bet he had parked it somewhere else.
“We deal with it quite a bit, where someone goes Uptown, gets completely hammered, forgets where they parked their car and we find it two blocks over,” he said.
After a few minutes of searching for the car, Simpson was dispatched to Chipotle again. Trash was strewn outside and we were informed the restaurant’s alarm had gone off. The same managers we had seen earlier waited inside, tired and annoyed.
The side door we had entered earlier had been tugged open by a few girls walking down the alley beside Chipotle. According to security footage, they heard the alarm and promptly ran away.
Also around this time, Seth and I switched spots in the car. He moved up front to catch a different vantage point for his photojournalism needs, and I moved to the back to get the full cop-car experience.
For the next two hours, after Simpson explained that the small drains in the floor where intoxicated passengers are asked to puke, I couldn’t stop thinking about whose bodily fluids I was sitting on.
2:20 a.m.
About half an hour later, we were responding with lights and sirens to a few intoxicated people at Jimmy John’s, 16 S. Court St., causing a scene. Simpson was instructed to look for a man with a pink shirt, who might have been hurt during an altercation fueled by alcohol at the store.
He was eventually found outside of Hudson Health Center, blood covering half his face and hands.
The man swore he wasn’t intoxicated and had just been punched in the face. Simpson retrieved materials from a first aid kit in the back of his cruiser and instructed him to “keep pressure on it” the entire walk home.
Simpson started to head back to the department for the end of his night shift. Right as we were pulling in to APD’s parking lot, he was informed over radio that he had to go check the surrounding roads for ice.
3 a.m.
While Simpson was checking local roads and bridges for ice, dispatch radioed in requesting police presence outside of The J Bar, 41 N. Court St., where a few men had been fighting. The fight apparently had begun at Wings Over Athens and had progressed down Court Street.
3:05 a.m.
For the 10th time that evening, APD received a call to respond to roommates fighting at a Palmer Place apartment. This time, some Palmer Place residents had damaged their own front door to the point that it could no longer open. The residents corresponded with officers through the shut door, unlocking and locking the door to show its inability to open.
“How did you get in there?” Athens Police Department Officer Jeremy Emerick asked.
From inside, one male responded with: “I was asleep.”
“Well, how do we get in there?” Emerick asked, laughing. The man inside asked the police to come around to the back door.
Inside, two male roommates were arguing. One had apparently gotten in the other’s face repeatedly throughout the evening and was disorderly and intoxicated, with the other continually calling the police.
“If we have to come back here, you’re going to jail,” Emerick said.
As the officers were leaving Palmer Place, they realized an open window at one apartment. Pulling the curtain aside, Emerick shined his flashlight into the dark residence.
“Police, anybody home?”
One male groggily lifted his head from his pillow and looked at the officers.
“Your window is open.”
The male continued to look at the officers, sleepy-eyed.
Emerick and Simpson shut the window slowly, without the male responding.
“Night night,” Emerick laughed.
EO300813@ohio.edu
@EOckerman
