Back on the auxiliary police beat, after a two-week break away from the uniform. Another way auxiliary policing is kind of like medicine: you risk losing the details you study so hard if you take too long a break away. Especially on those things you need to be instant recall for, like dispatch codes. The radio crackles the first call of the night, “Respond to a 911 call, neighbours reporting a 10-95 in progress at [address]” Uh… sure. What’s a 10-95 again? Oh right – domestic disturbance.
(10-codes vary from department to department, which can make that memorisation all the harder if you start getting into shows like Cops or Law and Order and they’re using different radio protocols than here. At least if you’re in medicine and a House or ER junkie, a tumour is still a tumour and leprosy is still leprosy, whether it’s in Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital or County General or the Dr Everett Chalmers here in Fredericton.)
Guess I could’ve figured it out by the address – not the first time we’re heading out that way, and definitely not the first time for the same thing, a 10-95. I guess it’s a sort of reassuring welcome back after holidays – no matter what happens in the world, the N family will still be at it, tearing themselves apart. Not so much a “family”, but a “situation”, really. Things haven’t changed the past fortnight, I haven’t missed an episode.
“10-4″. We start making our way over, following the posted 50km/h limit, stopping at every light along the way. No blues and twos – it’s actually surprisingly rare how often we use the lights and sirens to respond to a call. If you saw us on the road, the only way you could tell we were actually going somewhere is that we’re not like heads bopping at a tennis game, scanning every licence plate and doorway as we drive – which is how patrol usually goes, trawling for anything suspicious.
It’s a tough spot, that N family. If they were my patients, their charts would be a textbook of socioeconomic challenges: single unemployed mum, measures her days in cigarettes and beer cans. Non-supportive estranged father – with an alleged history of abuse, his very absence is probably the most supportive thing he’s done. 10- and 11-year-old boys at home, both with extensive records of behavioural problems; both with features of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder and ADHD, but neither interested in or compliant with social or medical assistance.
Neighbours report screaming; not an unusual sound to come across their paper-thin duplex walls, they’re finally moving away at the end of the month, not a moment too soon. Tonight, sounds like the 10-year-old is swinging a pair of scissors at the 11-year-old, because he didn’t share his cigarette. Or is the other way around? Last time it was the elder attacking, but using the cigarette itself and lunging at his little brother’s neck.
I like to think I’ve been in medicine long enough not to be shocked about situations like this. You see the same across the country, whether it’s on the buzzing streets of Downtown Toronto, the chilling solitude of Arctic Inuvik, or the lush greenery of west coast Masset: the vast majority of disease and illness affects the segment of society that can least afford it. So it goes with crime and violence too – part of the appeal of both medicine and policing, the opportunity to try to be there for people who need it most. To bring justice.
We pull up, slide out across the iced-over driveway, and let ourselves in through the open front door. The 10-year-old is in the backyard, visible through the back door, smoking away. The 11-year-old is sitting in the living room, watching Entertainment Tonight. He nods welcome. Where’s your mum? “I dunno, what do you want?” We heard there was fighting. He nods again. “I want to watch TV, go away.”
Mum comes down. Apparently everything is “under control”, we can leave now. The 10-year-old got his cigarette, so all is well in the world again.
And that’s pretty much that. The social workers will come and do their rounds again Monday afternoon after school. Kids look healthy, well-fed and, most importantly, unbruised and unscratched. We make sure the month’s heating assistance credit and welfare cheques are still working out. We ask if mum’s found a job yet: “no”, because then she’d lose her welfare and have to find a sitter. We ask if the kids have seen the psychiatrist they’ve been planning: “no”, because there’s no transport, and even if the doctors could do anything there’s no money for meds anyway, and even if there was, the kids wouldn’t take them.
We wish the Ns the best.
And we’ll be back again next weekend.
Add it to the list, more ways policing is just like medicine: you can engage, advise and hear out your patients as best you can; try to earn their trust through a repeated, long-term supportive relationship; elicit their Feelings, Ideas about the problem, the problem’s Functional impacts, and their Expectations from you; keep your door open to them, and be at their call when they ask; offer to tap them support, try to connect them with other resources, and show them a path forward – but actually taking those steps, it’s all up to them.
Pleasant surprises happen, sometimes, and you’re on top of the world when they do, but they’re few and far between. Now I’ve only been with the police for a few weeks now, but the general trend is looking not all that different from medicine – every time you see your “regulars”, week to week or month to month, you’re more likely to be disappointed than not.
And whether you look at it through the eyes of a doctor, or an auxiliary police constable – you lose sleep over it.
You wish you could do more.
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