Trooper Down! (17 page)

You're away from the house at night, you're always meeting new people, and you don't have to explain your time. Then there's the uniform. It's an icebreaker.

You can say almost anything in uniform and get away with it. Things you can't say in civilian clothes because you'd look like a jerk or like you're trying to pick up a girl.

You say things and she doesn't know if you mean it or not—but you really do. She also knows you're “safe,” not some weirdo she's likely to catch a disease from.

*

There are many reasons women go for the uniform. I think the main one is because they believe there's something macho about men in uniform. Also, men's dress and demeanor have changed in the past decade. We're an organization that promotes a clean-cut, neat appearance and a lot of women no longer like men with beards, long hair, and unkempt clothes.

And who else is out in the middle of the night other than the milkman and a patrolman? Besides, a woman knows the trooper won't tell anyone about it because if he does, he'll lose his job.

*

Badgers are worse in small counties. If you're a young trooper, the women literally chase you around. I've had mothers,
daughters, mothers and daughters
together 
after me. In places like that, where there's nothing else to do for entertainment, the women will run you crazy. You realize it's the uniform they like and after a while you learn to accept it as part of the job.

*

The opportunities are out there, no doubt about it. You get the phone calls, the remarks, the flirtatious looks.

A girl I had given a ticket to kept calling my house. Finally, my wife answered the phone and told her, “If it's the uniform you want, he has six hanging in the closet. I'll be glad to give you one.”

*

I remember one woman in a rural county who always came through our traffic checks with her blouse pulled up. Another was so bad about wanting to get stopped by a trooper that she deliberately busted the headlights on her car. When we'd walk up to ask for her driver's license, she'd show us a picture of herself in the nude. Her husband would fix the headlight but next time she was out, she'd bust it again so she could keep getting stopped. She just loved us to death.

*

I know a first sergeant who was always telling me, “If I see you on duty with a woman, I'll fire you or have you transferred.”

Then one Friday night he was speeding through the county and wrecked. He had a woman with him.

My point is that troopers aren't the only ones who get into those kinds of situations. It happens throughout the ranks. At meetings you'll hear supervisors stand up and say, “All right, boys. If you're gonna do anything, be discreet. Don't get caught with your zipper down.”

He is addressing his remarks to everyone in the room, including himself.

*

You could always tell when a trooper had had a woman in his car. You looked in the back and—hell, it hadn't rained in two months—but there's his raincoat on the seat. That's what he'd use to hide his girlfriend.

*

I know a trooper who got caught with a woman after another officer walked up on them.

“I'll have your job for this,” the officer said.

So the trooper went home and woke up his wife.

“Honey,” he said, “I just found the prettiest piece of property you ever laid eyes on. Let's go look at it right now.”

It was the middle of the night, but somehow he convinced her to go with him. He took her up to the place where he'd been caught a few minutes earlier.

When the complaint came through, he told his superiors, “But that was my wife! I took her to show her some property.”

As far as I know, he got out of that one and is still on the highway patrol. But I don't know if he's still married.

*

I don't think the “womanizing” is as common as it used to be. Some of the older troopers, for instance, would say that if you got a new patrol car, it was bad luck if you didn't break it in with a woman. I'm sure a lot of that was idle talk.

But now, we stay so busy you wouldn't have time to do anything like that even if you wanted to. I've set things up while I was working—arranged to meet someone later—but I've been too scared to actually try anything on the job. It's just not worth the risk.

*

I met a girl who worked with us in law enforcement. She'd flirt with all of the troopers but most of them just let it slide. With me, though, she kept on and on. I finally agreed to see her one night while I was on duty.

We arranged a meeting at a deserted pull-off near the beach.

I'm not very big on doing things like that in the car because I knew somebody could come along. So I said, “Let's pretend you're stranded and I'm helping you.” She put the hood up on her car and I unhooked my blue light so it wouldn't attract attention.

Then we had another problem. She was wearing slacks. I knew that wasn't going to work because you can't have your pants off if someone drives by.

So I told her, “Here, I've got a pair of pull-on shorts in my gym bag. Put those on.”

After that, we proceeded to have a big time—kind of on the car, over the car, so we could watch for anybody coming by.

I met her two or three times after that. And I worried about it.

I thought, “Somehow I'm gonna get caught. And if I get caught, I'll be fired.” Because I probably would have. It was stupid. A stupid thing to do.

*

You overhear a trooper tell a story about a woman he met on patrol and the next week you hear another officer repeating the story to someone else, only he adds a few details. That's how one little incident turns into a big deal.

I'd say women are definitely a main subject among troopers. The guys will say, “Hey, have you been by so-and-so's store? There's a good-looking girl working there.”

We pass tips like that along to each other. But we try to keep it respectful. Most of us have a high regard for women.

*

I was called to witness a breathalyzer test one night for a young woman. The first test went over the legal limit and the arresting officer left the room to wait the required time for the second reading.

This girl, early twenties, very attractive, came over to the cabinet where I was standing and said, “Isn't there something you can do?”

I played dumb and said, “What do you mean?”

“Well, I know you guys can manipulate these tests to make them read whatever you want. I'll do anything,
anything
.”

By now she was standing three inches from my face and looking right at me. I knew exactly what she was talking about.

I was tempted, but I remembered what my training officer told me when I first came on the patrol.

“This badge can get you a lot of women,” he said. “But it just takes one piece of ass to get the badge.”

*

When I first got to Robbinsville, I was twenty-three, single, and almost every teenage girl in the county would call me or knock on my door. I was the “new blood” in town.

But I'd just gotten engaged and thought, “Well, this is a place where everybody knows everybody else, so if I do something now, I know that before long, it'll be all over town.”

That's what kept me straight.

*

Another trooper and I were working one night and decided to go by my house in order to meet two girls. At the time, we were the only two patrolmen on duty in any of the three counties around us.

We turned on the TV, fixed some popcorn, and were waiting on these girls to arrive when we heard a car pull into the driveway.

“I guess they're here,” I told the other trooper, and went to the door.

There stood two troopers from two counties away, out of their district, who were also on duty.

They had sneaked off the job, knew where to find the key to my house since we were friends, and came by to see if
they
could meet two girls.

So they caught us and we caught them.

*

Several years before I came on the highway patrol, there was a young woman I wanted to date. I thought she was beautiful but she wouldn't give me the time of day. I tried a number of times to get to know her but she wouldn't even say hello to me.

I'd been on patrol about three years when I clocked a car one night running about seventy miles per hour.

I walked up and asked for a driver's license. There sat this same girl—with her blouse opened all the way down to her waist, nothing on underneath.

She didn't recognize me at first, just thought I was another trooper.

I took her license number, went back to the patrol car, and positioned myself at the front of it, so she could see me writing the ticket. By the time I got back to her and handed her the citation, she had that blouse buttoned all the way up to her chin.

I said, “You don't remember me, do you?” as I gave her the ticket. “I tried to go out with you years ago and you'd have nothing to do with me. Now here you sit, exposing yourself, when you don't know me from Adam.”

She left after that, with very little to say.

*

Two troopers on duty met two girls one night at an abandoned road near a railroad crossing. They parked parallel to the railroad, one behind the other.

The trooper in the back heard a train coming, panicked, and
got out of his patrol car with nothing on but a T-shirt and a hat, went up to the other patrol car, and began “checking” for a license.

Afraid somebody on the train would see him fooling around in the car, he wanted to make it look as “official” as possible. But all he managed to look was ridiculous.

*

I know a trooper who had a girl with him when her husband drove by. As the man was turning around to come back, the trooper put the girl in the trunk of his car. About that time, his first sergeant called on the radio and told him to meet him, so he had to take off. The poor woman had to stay in the trunk until the conference with the sergeant was over. Fortunately, it was winter. So at least she had a warm place to hide.

*

I've found this to be a good policy. If you're going to stop a woman who's alone, be sure to write her a ticket for something, even a warning ticket. Don't give her a verbal warning because if she files a complaint, accuses you of coming on to her, or anything of that nature, at least you'll have some evidence to back you up.

*

Women will chase you, but only if you want to be chased. I know a trooper who met a girl at the same time every night. Me and one of the local deputies would hide and watch them. We weren't spotted because we were smarter than they were.

He never got caught and we never told on him. There are a few things I would tell on a trooper, but that's not one of them. I don't care what he does on the side, as long as he leaves my wife or girlfriend alone.

*

It's more image than anything else, this whole idea of women coming on to men in uniform.

It makes some troopers go crazy. Swells their head. Sends them on an ego trip. They've come from nobody out on the street, then they get in this patrol car, rub shoulders with attorneys, judges, politicians, and other big shots who might not otherwise give them the time of day.

A lot of them begin to think they are “Mr. Wonderful.” Then they find out it's just the uniform that people are impressed with, and that's when they take the big fall.

“If anything happened to my husband, it would be hard for me to marry another trooper. I've gone through so much with him and the patrol, I'm not sure I could do it again.” —
Highway patrol wife, married four years

Worrying about “badgers” is only one of the problems highway patrol wives face once they marry a state trooper. Many of them learn to accept the idea that other women are attracted to their husbands in uniform and don't allow it to disturb them. Others have more immediate, day-to-day concerns that must be dealt with first: Who's going to care for the couple's sick infant, for instance, when she has to work and he needs to sleep after a night on patrol. How to explain attending her son's high school graduation alone. What to do when the basement floods and he can't be reached. Then there's the scheduling; she's working days and he's working nights. When he wants sex, she's dead to the world, and vice versa. She wants to go out and he wants to stay in. On weekends she's off, but he's still on duty and won't be free till the middle of the week. So little time, so many demands.

Even in the strongest of civilian relationships, conflicts are inevitable. But in trooper marriages, the pressures are likely to be greater and the discord more intense. That may explain why highway patrol officers, along with law enforcement personnel in general, have one of the highest divorce rates in the country.

“We know there's resentment among wives and families because of what we do,” said a ten-year trooper. “In my opinion, this isn't a job for a married man. If you are married, you've got to have a really special relationship just to keep it going.” He says out of his half-dozen closest trooper friends, all but one are divorced.

Yet wives have always been and always will be an integral part of the highway patrol. In the organization's early years, trooper wives were expected to wash, starch, and iron their husband's uniforms because there was no money allotted to the officers for dry cleaning. They also served as secretaries, relaying messages between the highway patrol and their husbands. Often they were awakened in the middle of the night to cook meals when a trooper brought his colleagues home to unwind. Moving from town to town whenever their husbands were transferred, these women not only reared their children virtually alone, but managed a household on trooper salaries that seldom exceeded $500 a month—even as late as 1966.

Today, there's a “new breed” of trooper wife. The modern highway patrol wife is more independent, less involved in her husband's work, and more likely to have a career of her own, which, in its own way, may be just as stressful as his. Unfortunately for her, she still carries the major share of responsibility for running the house and rearing the children.