A. Marie Silver

A. Marie Silver

A little patience please.

>Dear Small Town Police Department,

It was brought to my attention recently that one of your officers filed a complaint against my office, specifically, me, because of a so-called “intentionally slow scene response”.  I would like to take this opportunity to remind your fellow officers of a couple of things.

First of all, I understand how tragic and difficult the night in question was for your officers.  After all, how often does the town drunk manage to be on the wrong side of the cow right before his buddy tipped it?  Yet that being said, the delayed response had nothing to do with a lack of sympathy or empathy on my part.  At the time I received the call I was en route to a traffic fatality that the Metropolitan Police Department was investigating.  I explained to the responding officer in Small Town, that I would be more than happy to wake up my supervisor at 0300 hours and have her respond from home. 

Your officer then asked in a rather inappropriate tone “Well how long is it going to take her to get here?”

“Gee.  I don’t know.  She’s coming from home and, more than likely, has to put clothes on first.” 

“Well can’t you respond?”

“No.  Right now I’m picking up parts of a dead guy scattered all over the freeway.  I’m very sorry, but you’ll have to wait.”

Truthfully, your dead drunk who was found in a field in the middle of nowhere is less likely to get any media attention than the unfortunate individual who’s pieces I had to pick up that night.  I chose him so that his family wouldn’t wake up in the morning and see his bits on the 0600 news.  While I can completely understand that the stress and horror of the evening you dealt with, I would like to bring to your attention that on the night in question the Metropolitan Police Department had to respond to and investigate three traffic fatalities, two drug overdoses and a homicide.  So, between the two police departments, who do you think was having a worse night?  I’ll give you a hint….It wasn’t you.

Also, please remember that every evening for a period of twelve hours there is only one death investigator on duty and that investigator is responsible for every police department, hospital, nursing home and hospice agency in four counties.  I would ask that in the future your officers demonstrate a little more patience please.

Sincerely,

An Investigator who has had a long night.

P.S.

How’s the cow doing?

0 Responses

  1. >Your blog is the most fascinating blog I have ever read! You discuss so many of the things that I attempted to do or wanted to do, professionally and educationally – and someday still hope to do. Please keep writing. You're very good at it and very inspiring!As an aside, I just love the entry where you pronounced the time of death for your cat's toy. 😛

Leave a Reply

POPULAR POSTS
ABOUT ME
A. Marie Smith

Your short bio telling the story of why you are a writer and the things that you think are important.