Keep Going

Writing is a lonely experience.

Sure, if you’re lucky, you’re able to cultivate a group of friends and colleagues who you trust but more importantly, trust your voice enough to provide clarity — that helps.

When you’re in the trenches of your story — it’s daunting.

Those trenches are dark, scary, filled with ghosts of your past, filled with spirits that you’ve never met — but all unified to tell you that you should turn back, you should stop, you should get a job.

Though, in that darkness, once in a (long it seems) while, you finally hear a voice that says…

Keep going.

You’ll never know when that voice is going to speak up, and it’ll never be on a day of significance - instead, it’ll be a particularly ordinary Tuesday.

Time Zone, my TV pilot script, has recently made it to Number 4 on Coverfly’s The Red List for Thriller Television, and it comes in no small part on the heels of Time Zone becoming a Semifinalist in the Austin Film Festival’s Script Competition.

I’m very humbled.

For those unfamiliar with Coverfly’s The Red List, it’s a ranking of unproduced screenplays that have done well in reputable competitions. It’s an honor to have Time Zone listed alongside some truly great work. The list is a wonderful resource for writers, helping scripts get visibility in the industry.

Honestly, it’s the voice that keeps me writing and, for anyone reading this that is knee-deep in the muck of ones own trenches, let me be the voice reaching out in the dark for a moment —

Keep going.

ALWAYS GO HOME

This originally appeared as a two-parter in issues 23 & 24 of “Open Door” — A now defunct UK-based screenwriting e-magazine. I took part in the ride-along in the summer of 2017, and in retrospect, my tone on police might come across as glib.

Since 2020, our eyes have been opened to the unjust workings of the criminal justice system, and this article should serve as a time capsule of one persons opinion.

The names of the officers have been changed.

In 2009, the US aired a TV drama called “Southland”. For five series it followed the day-to-day lives of beat cops and detectives in Los Angeles. Unusually for a scripted show, it lacked all sense of procedure, all notions of enigmatic murderers and the haunted officers that tried to bring them to justice. It was a show about treading water, displacing or delaying criminality, and for every happy ending, there were two or three gutwrenching losses.

I had just moved to the US from the UK and so it was an eye-opening exposure to the world of American policing. I found it fascinating, a show stripped back to human emotions in believable —if disturbing—scenarios. Between 2007 and 2016 there has been an average of 2.4 officers killed a day in the line of duty in the US, and these officers bravely put their lives on the line for people who they don’t know and might not even respect them.

When I recently decided to shift my writing focus to true crime, focusing on real people in real dangers, I felt it was time to see the real Southland and to live life from the police perspective. This spurred me to reach out to my local cop shop, the Avondale Police Department, for what is known as a Civilian Observation (a C/O) or more commonly referred to as the ubiquitous ride-along.

No Guns Allowed

A simple liability form filled out and submitted with a copy of my ID and I was given a rundown of the rules of the day by the sergeant: ‘Collared shirt, long pants, closed toed shoes and unless you’re an officer in the State of Arizona, no guns.’

Naturally.

My day began on a Sunday at 6am. The day was set to hit 47 Celsius, which isn’t unusual for June, but my officer would be hauling around 18 kilos of gear. In the back of my mind, I had been told of ‘the curse of the ride-along’—a quiet day would be had by all. I thought to myself that, over the next nine hours, it would give me plenty of time to ask my questions and get a feel of the job.

Unlike the UK, there is no PR office involved, no oversight or review of conversations—just me, my notebook, and my assigned officer. I was riding with Officer Smith in a very robust police cruiser, a Chevy Tahoe SUV kitted out with a laptop, radio, and all other manner of gear. The back section was caged in with metal and Plexiglas and seating looked to be of molded plastic, because it can get messy back there.

Smith, who I’d describe as a mix between Oscar Isaacs and John Cena, had been on the force since August 2016 and had a prior career with the TSA, the Federal department that sprang up post-911 to screen travellers in America’s airports. ‘This was a dream of mine,’ he beamed. Before we had left the station parking lot, Smith told me what to do if a situation got out of hand, and he was in danger.‘Press this button, speak into this receiver’, and provide details of ‘the guy beating down on me’, where we were, etc. For every call, I was told to stay in the car until ‘code 4’ came over the radio—all clear.

Unknown Trouble

Within twenty minutes, we got an Unknown Trouble call. This is a 911 call where the phone has been disconnected before the caller has said anything. It’s treated as a high priority, second only to a call to respond to an officer in distress. In our situation a woman had screamed down the phone and hung up. Officer Smith and I left his beat to answer the call on the other end of town.

On route, he explained that ambushes have been common of late nationwide, so officers will park a few houses down from the location and approach on foot; it can also be a good tactic to help de-escalate a situation. Smith stopped the car by the top of the street and approached a cookie cutter house in a quiet suburban neighborhood. He turned into the driveway and I lost sight of him. We were a mere four streets over from my house.

Two more units pulled up and two other officers made for the house. In what felt like the longest five minutes of my life I waited in a squad car for code 4. Holding my breath, reading the neighbourhood, listening for shots fired. Eventually, the doors unlocked. I was snapped out of my petrification as Officer Smith approached. He opens the door— “Didn’t you hear the code 4?”

No, Officer Smith. No I did not.

In abject fear of playing out the worst case scenario, I had completely shut down to reality, something that if an officer did in a real situation would lead to trial by media and protests in the street. It hit me in that moment, as Smith explained that it had been nothing more than a drunken argument between two family members, that being a cop is neither as dramatically glamorous, nor as easy as armchair detectives proclaim. And our day had only just begun.

42nd for Safety

The city of Avondale, with a population of close to 80,000, is ranked 42nd out of 59 cities for safety in the state of Arizona. We were in beat 3, an economically depressed part of the city. It’s an area where condemned homes share walls with occupied dwellings, whose residents live hand to mouth, or cheque to cheque, in predominantly blue-collar, working class Hispanic neighbourhoods. The officers encounter mostly transients in this neck of the woods and the heroin that led most to that existence isn’t too far behind.

Coming from the UK, my only knowledge of American policing was akin to action movies or TV shows. Tales of John McClane or Don Johnson, where the bad guy is always the bad guy and the good guys wear white. I also viewed it as rough touch — while the average bobby on the beat in the UK couldn’t reach for a gun to diffuse the situation, American policing seemed on the opposite spectrum. I was curious to know the mentality of the officers, how they coped day-to-day, their background, how and why they were on the force today.

Discussions were tense with Officer Smith at first. Similar in age to me, he was keen to figure out who I was and why I was really there. I copped fairly soon into the morning that I was a writer, that I would keep details in a notepad and if he didn’t want me to write something down, not to say it. He respected the cheeky delivery and that I was there to find out what made the policeman and the man behind the badge tick.

At 9:11am, after spending most of the morning learning the call signs and running plates, we got a burglary/trespassing call. Moving over there at speed, the guy who called in, with dark shades and long wispy gray hair looking like Edgar Winter, frantically waved us down. Officer Smith parked a safe distance from the scene and let me hang back.

I hopped out of the car and crouched behind a half wall, so I could spectate and make sure I could still call for back up if needed. Edgar showed Smith the building, a condemned row of two or three room homes that looked like they could fall down like a house of cards any second. On the far side of the building, another squad car pulled up containing Officer Garcia, Smith’s beat partner. To cover more ground, the officers take separate squad cars and stay in touch via instant messengers on their laptops.

They regrouped on the closer side of the building to me, sent Edgar back to his house in the adjacent row, and drew guns.

Standing a mere 20 yards or so away, it hit me that this was real. I was not watching actors play a part — I was watching modern policing in the United States. Both officers drew Glock 40s, the standard handgun for Avondale PD, and began to circle the building.

Why do guns need to be drawn with a simple trespassing? Police treat this situation as going into the unknown. There could be a little old lady in there, or there could be a guy whacked out on PCP armed to the teeth. The officers were prepared for the worst, hoping for the best, and I had forgotten this was supposed to be a simple research assignment.

Survive

I heard the officers call into the building, asking the trespassers—now determined to be transient squatters—to leave. No answer. Two more officers arrived, Officer Jenkins and Sergeant Roosevelt, and help to cordon off the building. Smith shouted one last time and then tried to kick down the door. He doesn’t succeed as something is blocking the entranceway. After about another ten minutes of trying to enter there came a shout from the far side of the structure and two Hispanic transients were escorted around to the front. Smith gave me a quick nod and gestured me over.

Myself, Smith, Garcia and Edgar waited as the two squatters gathered their things while Roosevelt rode off into the sunset to fight crime elsewhere in the city. The first transient, a woman who looked in her 40s with a haggard look, climbed out. She had a black oversized knock off purse with various belongings, including a neon green beanie baby. The cuddly toy stuck in my mind. Was this the only comfort she had? Perhaps a reminder of time before the downward spiral of circumstances led her to squatting in a rotting house on a 46+ degree day? It was the sort of detail I would never think to include but now gave so much more weight to her narrative.

By now, the second transient, a man, similarly ashen with a San Francisco Giants ball cap, was out and picking up his belongings.

Jenkins cried out, ‘Leroy! How you been, man?’

Officers and transients have a strange, symbiotic relationship. The same transients are involved in the same crimes and the officers get to know them. Officers have to play the part of enforcer andhand out bottles of Gatorade to individuals, making sure they were staying hydrated in the hot Arizona sun. Jenkins followed up Leroy’s muffled reply with a simple statement—‘I want you surviving, not breaking the law.’

Moving past the midway point of the shift, Smith, Garcia and I went on a wellness check at a local apartment complex. A guy was passed out in the back of a car. A few moments, a knock on the door, and the near naked individual sprawled out on the back seat of a Nissan Versa explained he’d had ‘a good night at Lake Pleasant’—a local water attraction—and his friends who lived in the nearby unit left him to sleep it off with the A/C running.

It was shaping up to be a varied day.

“If I had known it was stolen, I would have changed the plates.”

At 11:50am, a crackle came over the radio and Smith tensed up, listening carefully. Garcia was running plates and had come across a stolen vehicle; the driver was stopped off at a nearby takeaway.

Garcia watched from a distance as we pulled up on the other side of the restaurant, getting a clear view of the guy and gal sat at a table. The suspect spied us. I tried to look as nonchalant as possible. After about 30 seconds, the duo got up and walked to a nearby park. The trap was sprung.

Stopping at opposite ends of a kid’s play area, Smith and Garcia moved in, splitting up the guy and the girl. Officer Andreas arrived and he and Smith cuffed the guy. Garcia asked him some questions and Smith went to secure the vehicle—a well-kept traffic cone orange motorbike.

Sergeant Roosevelt arrived and let me know what’s going on, explaining that they have to only prove beyond reasonable doubt that a crime has taken place and this guy ‘is heading down the pokey’. The sergeant reminded me of a jolly British policeman—career officer who loved every aspect of the job, 60% paperwork and 40% ‘play’, a man born to be in this job. He reminded me that back in the Wild West, ‘if you stole a horse, you’d be hung’, as much to say that this guy was getting off lightly.

Roosevelt and I walked over to the newest resident of the Avondale city jail, who was being searched under the shade of a brightly colored slide and unintentionally bouncing on the spongy floor covering. Andreas and Smith led the search of the unhealthily lanky man with a skull & crossbones tattoo where his collar and breastbones met, unkempt long black hair, and a thin beard and ’stache.

As they checked him, requiring the cuffed individual to remove his trousers and shoes, they removed a small clingfilm pouch, which had contained some illicit substance in the not too distant past. ‘You use, right?’ they ask. ‘Not like I used to,’ he responded, almost cavalier.

Crossbones continued to talk, saying that he bought the bike off a friend for $300 a few days ago and has the paperwork to prove it. ‘You can’t find used lawnmowers for $300,’ Smith chides, shooting down the bullshit like a clay pigeon. Trying to cut a deal, Crossbones told us he knows ‘big people’ in the drug scene in town and that he helped out ‘the DEA in Jersey a few years ago’. Smith brought up a valid point — ‘If he knew about these guys, why didn’t he tell us yesterday, or last week? Why wait until he gets busted for something unrelated to tell us?’ Garcia returned from talking to the girl with word that Crossbones has no paperwork. Time to take him in.

‘One size fits none,’ Smith proclaimed as he loaded Crossbones in the back of our cruiser. Don’t let Hollywood fool you, sitting in the back of a squad car is neither fun nor comfortable. Imagine being sat on a plastic bench in the back of a car with the front seats are pushed all the way back, ergo no leg room. It’s not a pleasant experience for anyone, let alone someone cuffed.

Crossbones lets slip he’s driving on a suspended New Jersey license, which coupled with the charges of possession of stolen property, unlawful means, and the fact that the owner of the bike wants to press charges, he’s not going to be getting out anytime soon. Driving down to the jail was silent save for one thing—before being taken into the jail, he said, ‘If I had known it was stolen, I would have changed the plates’.

Here’s Miranda

As the end of the shift approached, we dealt with a shoplifter at a big box hardware store. A mousy woman in her late thirties had taken drills off the shelf in the store and returned them for store credit, claiming to have purchased them and lost the receipt. She then attempted to use the credit to buy gift cards summing $258 which she would then sell off to ‘pay for bills’. Useful ruse if it had worked.

I learnt during this encounter the correct way Miranda rights are read—these are your rights to remain silent, etcetera. Miranda rights are only used when an officer is questioning someone about a crime that has been committed but the officer has not witnessed it. For example, if an officer witnesses a hit and run and catches up with the perpetrator, they don’t need to read them their rights as there’s nothing to question.

The woman was charged with shoplifting, her court date was set two weeks out and was warned if she didn’t show up, a warrant for her arrest would be issued. Smith offered her help if she needed it, noticing the cuts on her arms long before I spied them, asking frankly if she was suicidal, and if she was, the City of Avondale could offer services to assist.

She declined, affirming that she just cut and wasn’t at risk. Other than that she was free to go and to stay away from the hardware store.

Going 98

During my time with Officer Smith, he demonstrated a wealth of knowledge on the job, despite only being on the force for a year. As a peace officer, as Officer Smith referred to himself, you have to wear many hats. You’re an enforcer, a counsellor, a peace maker, a decision maker, an educator and a guardian. Depending on what calls an officer gets, one or all of these hats need to be worn and need to be kept on until you hear a 4 or a code 98—when the officer is back on duty and not tied up with anything.

It was an eye-opening experience, and I would suggest every writer out there who wants to get to the truth behind the police officer, removed from the idolised or demonized figure on our screens, should do a ride along. After all, the biggest hat an officer has to wear is being a human being, and at the end of the day they always aim to go home.