Yes, this "Wild Old Lady" once worked for the police department in her home town of Niagara Falls, New York! Here is the Official Identification and Badge to prove it! Hah....
In the photo, I am the one without glasses, the long hair hanging down, and the impish look on my face.... On my I.D. I affected a more serious look, with my long locks pinned up into a bun-type bouffant "granny" hairdo.
We transcriptionists (clerk-typists) were assigned to a platoon and worked the same shift they did... We worked crazy shifts... and switched from one shift to another as soon as we became accustomed to one! No wonder so many police walk around with unsettled dispositions... (See how diplomatic I can be? ...)
Seriously, I was always sleep-deprived, and this was not good while raising two daughters.
However, it was a most interesting job, and there are a few humerous stories I will tell about it in future blogs.
How we typed the reports was like this... When the cops ended their shift, they would go in the transcription room, pick up a phone, and read their hand-scribbled reports into the recording system. Once reports were recorded, a red light would go on in the Transcription Room.
In the glass walled Transcription Room, the transcriptionist would put on her headset, as soon as she saw the red light come on. She had a typewriter, with a stack of blank forms at her disposal at all times.
She would type the report out on the official form, word for word, until all the forms were typed. If one typist couldn't finish all the reports, the next typist would start where the previous one left off.... If that red light was "a-blinkin" then she had better be "a-typin"! Amen!
For some reason, the worst reports came in during the midnight shift.... I will never forget that I had to type in "Homicide", then the name of a man I once dated. Later in the report, the "killer" was also someone I had known.. a girl who used to live in the same neighborhood, and we all used to go out together. That was a shock, but it went with the job.
The second time I had to type "homicide", the victim was a very nice man who dated a friend of mine for many years. That crime was never solved.
It was not enjoyable to type those reports, along with the detectives more detailed accounts. When you worked at the Police Department, you were sworn to never divulge details of your work to the outside world, and that was the hardest part. You just had to go home and pretend that Police Department business never existed. I never divulged anything confidential to this day. (Of course, I almost forgot I even worked at the NFPD.... hah!)
So, try to stay on the straight and narrow, folks, or some sleep-deprived cop might have to come and get you!
Love to all from that Wild Old Lady who is in Florida with her art, and her memories!
No comments:
Post a Comment