Writer's Workshop

(4) I remember...

the very first person I arrested for DWI. I don't remember all the details, but I remember the overall feeling of the night. Sadness. Intense sadness. And not really on my part as I was too nervous. I was new to the job of policing, riding with my training officer-an ancient specimen and a drunk himself. We saw her driving her minivan through the parking lot of an abandoned mall leaving a Whataburger.


I can't pinpoint why I stopped her. It seems odd now, but my cop memories are either bright and shiny like the pain of slamming your shin into an open dishwasher, or dull and faceless and dominated by an emotional echo like this memory is. She was meek, an unusual thing for a drunk being arrested. Most seemed to know how it would end, and that would make them angry and argumentative. Maybe her demeanor was influenced by her two small children in the back seat. Whatever the case she was an easy first DWI arrest for me. No resisting.


Other memories of that night include the smell of Peppermint Schnapps. Her beverage of choice wedged near the driver's seat. A memory of the children crying for their mother. A memory of them hugging her as she leaned out of the back of the patrol car. A memory of her tears falling long after the children were taken away.

The quiet time after four in the morning usually left space for writing the reports. Not always, of course, police work is unpredictable. DWI reports were long and tedious. They must be flawless because they will be scrutinized. I had to turn her into CPS, of course.

During my short term as a cop, she was the only case that CPS ever took an interest in from my reporting. I never found out what happened to that family. She was just travelling through town after leaving her husband, taking her children on an all night journey to a relative's house. My memory of this is bitter and sweet. Bitter in that she was not a mother who beat her children. It was clear that she loved them, and that she was simply at the end of her rope. So the fact that her children were likely taken from her is bitter to me. On the other hand I comfort myself by thinking of the sweet. Perhaps without my intervention those children, and their mother, would have become a casualty that night.

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I found a BLOG that gives out writing assignments and so I jumped on this one. And yes it's a true story. And yes it's a departure from my normal blog posts, but I thought it would be fun to play along with another type of challenge...