Logan Ramsey
Editor-in-Chief
Ride-alongs with your local police department may sound dangerous on their own, as they are a front row seat to your community’s criminal activity, but the stakes are higher when you’re trying to impress your girlfriend’s father at the same time.
I decided to up the ante with my ride-along experience by asking Deputy Chief Roger Schei of the Pocatello Police Department, who also happens to be the father of my girlfriend of eleven months, to show me the streets.
In addition to this column, I’m going to write a feature article about the experience for the Bengal’s summer issue, so I approached the ride along different than how I’ve approached other stories I’ve written. I tossed and turned the week before wondering how to manage writing a balanced article while also impressing a man that I want to impress.
I was lucky though because as an objective journalist, I couldn’t find a reason to believe that Schei is a bad cop and what I saw tells me he’s good at his job.
My ride-along was on a Saturday night from 4:30 p.m. until 2 a.m., but it seemed to be an uncharacteristically slow night for the police department. It seemed like Pocatello decided to be on its best behavior for my feature article.
However, even that slow night gave more than enough information to write about, and what I saw told me that Schei has a good handle on his responsibilities and legal limitations as an officer.
The first instance when this became clear to me was when we answered our one and only call for the night, a public disturbance call that that Schei handled swiftly.
We showed up to a man screaming from behind a fence at a woman on the front porch of her house. The man, a divorcee, had gotten in a fight with his ex-wife’s new husband that ended in him getting thrown out of the house. Apparently, they were all drinking beers together, and the confrontation started after the ex-husband was getting out of the shower. These people are repeat customers with the police department, and because of this, Schei seemed to know just how to handle them.
That’s the short of it, but the scene was strange and heated enough to make me take a step back. The man was red in the face and screaming up a storm when we arrived there, but Schei was commanding and cool with him.
The man seemed angry enough to get physical if something set him off, but Schei talked him through his story and by the end had calmed him down enough to send him on his way. The officers made it clear to both parties that they could either both be charged for a civil disturbance, or neither of them could be, and they chose the latter.
I found it impressive how quickly Schei was able to diffuse the situation without having to use force or put him under arrest. The officers at the scene decided to give them an option to take accountability for their actions, and hopefully, they’ll take it.
The second instance when this was demonstrated to me was when we were searching for two people who were seen casing cars for a possible theft. We began to look through alleys that I’d never been down in Old Town trying to find them, and finally, we passed by three different couples walking down the street who fit as much of the description as I could gather from the scanner.
However, we passed them, and before I could even ask, he explained that he had no probable cause to stop them because they were all just walking down the street. This spoke volumes to me, because he was right, and it showed that he isn’t a police officer who abuses his power.
One interesting thing that I found in my conversations with Schei was that the primary calls the police answer aren’t narcotics-related, but service-related. From 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. the police department took 40 calls for service while I was out on my ride-along.
Schei said that many of those service calls are mental health crises, so even under a service call, a police officer may have to handle the situation with grace under pressure.
By the end of the night, I wasn’t sure if I’d impressed Schei, but I had learned a lot more about him and gained respect for the job that he does.
On one night, Schei may have to respond to call after call of civil disturbances, all different than the last one before it, and then the next he could be apprehending dangerous criminals. A police officer never knows what they’ll get on a patrol, but what I saw from Schei showed me that he’s ready for whatever gets thrown at him.
