HITTING THE STREET

 I had an opportunity recently to ride with Yuma Police officer Kyle Dandoy  in 3Adam30 in Area 30 of the city. He'd been on the force for two years. The evening was interesting but no very exciting.

We first responded to a home near Pacific Ave. in regard to a car that left a minor accident earlier. The fellow, when contacted, didn’t remember hitting anyone. It took him a long time to find the necessary papers in his vehicle. He was a Vietnam vet and while waiting for the initial officer I talked with him about his work as a SeaBee in Vietnam.

Back patrolling on the westside 3Adam30 got a call about an accident at Walgreens on Avenue B. This call apparently came into the 911 center as an injury accident because shortly after we arrived on the scene a fire truck and two ambulances came roaring in. The officer said that if he had been further away he could have used his siren too.The people whose care had been hit on the parking lot wrote what they thought was the other car’s license plate on the dirty back window of their SUV. They got it wrong, however, and Kyle could not find it on the computer.

Shortly after this we got a call on an alarm going off at Pueblo Elementary School on the west side of Yuma. After another officer arrived and the custodian we walked into the middle of the large ground level complex only to find out that one of the teachers was working her room and had forgotten to deactivate the alarm. This was about 8:30 p.m.


Then there was the call from a worried mother who said that her ex-husband had not returned their daughter at the time promised. Before we could get to the home, however, a call came back that the girl was home maybe a half hour late.

There was a call about graffiti which keeps police busy. This was in the area in the west, 21st Lane, and was nothing. There were a couple of unreadable scribbles on the caller’s fence. She did not want to make an official report. Kyle took photos of the scribbles and said he would put it in a database to be looked at by the department’s graffiti expert.

The most time consuming incident, domestic violence, came at the end of the evening in the 4800 block of 19th Lane. It involved two neighbors, both Hispanic. An officer who spoke Spanish had to be called in to handle the interviews. What it boiled down to was that one neighbor had apparently made a sexually oriented remark to the woman next door. Her husband went next door and confronted the man and apparently struck him in the face. The assailant was issued a citation for assault.

Officer Dandoy expressed regret that we didn’t have any “codes” (running to incidents with sirens going) during the shift. As it was on most of the ride alongs I've done it was evident that a big part of police work is done with people who just can't get along. It's been my experience that Yuma officers do a good job of this.

As I was leaving police headquarters about 10 p.m. I noticed a strange sight at the gas station across from the PD. I young lady who had just come out of the store was wearing a pink bathrobe and fluffy pink slippers. I’d like to know the rest of that story.