Blog 17
A snippet from My Book; A View From The Street/ River City Policing; coming out this winter
A day in the life of The Corporal

I was minding my own business on a warm fall day. Our Corporal had been dispatched to the scene of a car-deer encounter. The Corporal was one of those tender-hearted souls who had a hard time with gun play. He had been involved early in his career in a shootout with a robbery suspect in which his training officer was wounded.

After I cleared a call, the Corporal called me to assist him. I pulled up and the conversation went like this.

“Hi Knocker, I have situation here. There is this deer, and it has been hit by a car, and there is no animal control unit on duty now, and I was thinking you’re good at this sort of thing. I just can’t do it.” “What am I good at?” I asked. “Well you know the deer is hurt? It keeps looking at me. I just can’t do it, do you mind?”

I know you’re thinking Officer Knocker was screwing with the Corporal, and you would be right. I was playing stupid with him, letting him dangle. He was a corporal and could order me to shoot the deer, but he could not bring himself to shoot the deer or to order me to do it. I am of the belief that if you are confronted with a situation like this and you don’t take the opportunity to screw with the “do the minimum” office poge, you are just not being reasonable.

You have to have fun with this job or drink heavily. I chose fun. I kept obfuscating until he walked me over to the deer. I looked at it and said,” Yeah, you should just shoot it when there are no cars in view.” “Well a I well I can’t a would you mind a.” “Oh! Do you want me to shoot the thing?” I asked. “Well, yeah!” came the somewhat annoyed response. “Oh, ok.” I said.

All the pent up tension that the Corporal was experiencing was released at that moment.

I pulled my weapon and fired one round hitting the deer between the eyes and re-holstered. The Corporal jumped straight up in the air and yelled, Dang it, Knocker! You were supposed to wait till I was ready.” All the tension that was previously released was back. “You can’t do this to me Knocker.” “Why not? Isn’t that why they pay you all that extra money? Do you want me to leave a note for animal control, or do you think you could do that? Yah I can do that. Oh I’ll need around to replace the one I fired? Here take one of mine says the corporal. Gee did you have to do that he asked? Well I’m off. See you later I said
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Some people are cut out to be cops and some are cut out to be insurance agents. We had a lot of insurance agents and not enough Real cops. Just something I like to muse about.

S. Henry Knocker
theknockerblog.com