ride-along with 330 charlie

Enough of the farmers markets, festivals, alpacas and bluegrass.  It's time to look beyond the quaint restaurants and small town charm of Loudoun's wine country.  Yes, it's time to unveil the seedy underbelly of LoCo, to learn about what truly goes on behind the walls of a gated community or on the well-lit streets of suburban housing developments.

Spoiler alert: nothing really happens.

On Sunday evening, from 6:00pm until 2:00am, I had the opportunity to venture out on a ride-along with Jason, a Deputy Sheriff (you may remember him teaching me how to use a firearm in last week's entry) with the Loudoun County Sheriff's Department.  Jason has worked as a police officer in Loudoun since 2006 and has recently created quite an impressive reputation for himself.   Last year, he was awarded the Washington Regional Alcohol Program's award for the highest number of DUI arrests.  He possesses a real knack for nabbing intoxicated drivers and noting the "odor of an alcoholic beverage" (because alcohol has no odor, but a beverage does, says the court system).

If you're interested in doing a ride-along, be prepared to fill out a bit of paperwork and undergo a background check.  Jason, whose sector is Ashburn Village, has done about ten ride-alongs in his career, and he enjoys them.  Typically, they are granted to individuals who are interested in a career in law enforcement, or students enrolled in criminal investigation courses.  Of course, my intentions for this ride-along were a bit different: I craved a scoop.  I wanted to witness someone getting arrested.  It would have been great to observe a gang fight, or maybe a high-speed chase.   I would have settled for a stolen vehicle, or a non-life threatening stabbing.

Jason's cruiser, where I sat (shotgun!) for eight hours.

6:18pm.  My hopes were high when he picked me up in his cramped Ford Crown Victoria and, after driving for about ten minutes, we stumbled upon a car flashing its hazards and facing the wrong way in the left lane.  Maybe they have drugs! I thought optimistically.  In reality, the driver was from Manassas, turned too quickly, and misjudged.  I got a kick out of watching Jason flipping on the flashing lights and observing the official, controlled way he handled the situation, flashlight in hand, approaching the vehicle from the side like I had seen officers in Cops do.  

6:24pm.  While driving around the quiet, nearly empty streets of Ashburn, we notice an unusual sight.  A truck hitched to a large boat is parked on the side of Gloucester Parkway and is sticking out onto the sidewalk near a townhouse community.  Humorous, but a parking offense nonetheless.  Jason writes a $40 ticket and  I think briefly of asking him to take my picture next to the odd scene, but decide against it.  (Professionalism and what not.)

6:37pm.  We drive around--I don't want to ruin anything here, but basically, that's what we did for eight hours--and investigate some local parks.  Any cars with steamy windows or shady people?  None.  My disappointment was obvious.  "Do you want to try night-vision?" Jason asked in an attempt to cheer me up.  Aha!  Things were looking up.  I patrolled around the parking lot a bit, searching for miscreants while my adjusting to the green light of the night-vision.  I was surprised to realize that it wasn't goggles like I'd seen in the movies, but more akin to a small hand-held periscope.  The area was deserted;  I can only assume Loudoun's criminals were all cuddled up on the couch watching Home Alone and getting ready for the Christmas robberies.  Then, we get a call--finally, a call!--to inspect a loud noise complaint.  Maybe it's a domestic dispute! I hoped.

6:52pm.  Jason and I approach the home.  "Oh, fiesta music!" he laughs as he pounds his fist on the door.  A frazzled-looking woman in pajamas answers and apologizes to me, who she thought was the complainant.  "Oh, she's with me," Jason corrects her, and I feel pretty awesome right about now.  The power!  The prestige!  She forgets to turn off her home alarm, so what began as a noise complaint for blaring Latin music is now amplified by the almost comedic screeching of her ADT system.  He inspects her ID; she fumbles for explanations.  Case closed.

7:45pm.  Jason demonstrates how to use the radar in his cruiser, and we search ruthlessly for people to pull over.  The radar shows a car going the opposite direction at 69mph in a 45.  "That's reckless," he says, shaking his head, and proceeds to make a drastic u-turn and gun it to 92mph to catch up.  I feel very cool, and a few high-speed chase scenes from The Bourne Supremacy flash through my mind, but I am simultaneously also very nauseous while I clutch onto the seatbelt.  My excitement dwindled quickly as Jason confessed he wasn't sure if this was indeed the car he meant to pull over a mile back.  In the dark, it's difficult to pick a car out of a group--taillights and the size of the vehicle don't always aid in identifying it accurately.  He let the female driver go with a warning, as disappointed as I was at our failure to catch a reckless driver.

8:45pm.  Dinner.  Much to Jason's chagrin, Panera is closed, and so is Foster's, so we head to Chipotle with another officer.  In a twelve-hour shift the officers are only given a single 30-minute break, which seems unfair to me.  Other diners glance at me strangely, probably wondering why I'm sitting here eating a burrito bowl with two popo.  I hear a barrage of kooky stories recounted about Jason's unusual encounters with some of the prize characters of eastern Loudoun, some of which I was asked not to repeat.  Once, he was called out to a home for a complaint of disorderly conduct.  It concerned two elderly men who were fighting over whether or not the wood in a Mercedes' station wheel was authentic.  The argument escalated until one of them followed the other into the bathroom.  On another occasion, he noticed a man jogging near the Belmont Country Club in the wee hours of the morning wearing a see-through mesh top and covered in vaseline.  Sure, there is the occasional gang fight or drug bust, but they are few and far between and usually don't happen in his sector.  I'd never considered a career in law enforcement before, and this ride-along and Jason's anecdotes certainly didn't change my mind.

9:27pm.  Over the radio, dispatch informs us that there is a mentally disturbed person at Loudoun Hospital who will need police escort to the mental hospital.  I begin to feel uncomfortable and voyeuristic; this woman's sad situation really isn't any of my business.  As we walk into the emergency room, a nurse hands me a piece of paper and asks me for my name and identification.  Jason looks confused.  "She's a DWI, right?" the receptionist inquires, and Jason and I burst out laughing.  "You're not intoxicated?  Ohhhhh!  I was wondering why you weren't handcuffed!"  So, I was mistaken for an arrested drunk.  Ha.  Two other officers arrive and take the situation off of Jason's hands, and we leave to patrol Route 7.

It was all downhill from there.  A couple of traffic tickets, a suspended license, a possible DWI that turned out to be nothing.  Jason did let me play with the siren, which may have easily been my favorite part of the entire ride-along experience.  By 12:15am I was exhausted, tired of sitting down in a cramped car with a shotgun magazine pressing into my left arm, but I was determined to finish the late night shift.  We drive around, and make a u-turn, and drive back again, and I notice that the only other people on the road are other police cruisers.

Turns out, Ashburn's pretty safe.  Who knew?