Too many cops in PTC? Consider this ...

From time to time, I hear negative comments about police officers in the local community.

One recent statement that I overheard was in a fast food restaurant in Peachtree City, Ga., where one person said to another, “There are entirely too many cops in this town. You can’t go anywhere with seeing a police officer.”

The other responded about how cushy a job being a police officer in Peachtree City must be.

Last week, one of these officers was on patrol when an alarm call came in. Alarm calls are fairly routine and most of them are false, but they have to be checked anyway.

This particular officer, a lieutenant, started out to investigate the situation as he had so many times before. It wouldn’t be a pleasant task: the rains were coming down in the aftermath of the recent tropical storms and hurricanes and, while the rain wasn’t as severe as it had been the past several days, the officer knew he would be soaked before the call was over.

On the way to the scene, however, something caught his eye. He slowed to make certain of what he was seeing and spied flames shooting through the roof of a large home in Kedron Hills.

He knew that no fire call had gone out and called dispatch to cancel his alarm call and reported the house on fire. Within seconds, the fire department would be notified and would be on the way.

Fearing the worst, the officer ran to the house and began pounding on the door to determine if anyone was inside. As he made his way around the house, looking for an entry, he heard a dog barking wildly from inside the home.

Returning to the front door, disregarding his own safety, this husband and father of three broke down the door and began to search for potential victims.

“It was just like they tell you,” he told me the next day. “The smoke was so thick, I could barely see. Except for the fairly clear space about two feet off the ground, the house was completely filled with smoke.”

Perhaps thinking about his own son and two daughters, the officer made his way up the stairs calling out as he went. After frantically but carefully searching the bedrooms and closets, he made his way down to the basement. Children are sometimes known to flee to “safe spots,” as he well knew.

Finding no one there, he returned to the main floor to continue to search for anyone that might have been overcome by the smoke.

Finally, certain that no person was left in the house and fearful of being overcome himself by the acrid smoke as the house continued to be engulfed in flames, he grabbed the barking dog and stumbled out into the rain.

After sucking in the fresh, moisture-laden oxygen and coughing some of the smoke out of his lungs, he took the dog to a neighbor’s house.

He was pulling on his raincoat as the first fire truck arrived.

Not much time had elapsed but it must have seemed like a lifetime. Moments later, the roof caved in.

The fire fighters and paramedics treated the young lieutenant at the scene in an ambulance for smoke inhalation. Later in the evening, after the fire was out, a firefighter emerged from the smoldering house with a cat that had somehow survived the inferno.

“What did you do?” I asked the officer, expecting him to tell me he went to the hospital or, at least, had gone home.

“Well, I tried to make myself useful,” he said. “The fire department was on the scene now so that part of my job was over. I found a neighbor that would take in the cat and dog then worked with other department personnel to attempt to locate the family, who, it turned out, was on vacation.”

I asked, “What about after that?”

“I went back on patrol,” he said, and worked another five hours. All in a day’s work, he said.

Lieutenants don’t usually answer alarm calls, so I asked why he was the officer responding.

“We were short-handed. All the other officers were answering calls and we were so busy we didn’t have enough officers to even back each other up.”

So much for too many cops in this town. The officer coughed for the next two days, the result of smoke inhalation suffered on the “cushy job.”

All in all, it was a good night. Nobody died and when the family came home early from their time in Florida, the reunion with the family pets somewhat eased the tragedy of losing their home.

After all, homes can be rebuilt but pets become part of the family.

He’s out there tonight, this officer and the hundreds of thousands like him who patrol the streets day after day and night after night. These men and women who rush into danger when others rush out.

Some of them work the mean streets of the inner cities while others stand solitary watch in the rural communities of the country.

Every day they will face the potential for catastrophe and, each year, some 150 to 200 of them will die in the line of duty. Every year, over 65,000 of them will be assaulted or otherwise injured before their shift is over.

They know they are misunderstood and are unappreciated but, still, they serve and still they protect.

Most of them see what they do as less of a job and more of a calling. They are police officers, and when you need them, they will be there.