I am so wretchedly alone in my new town/county. One of my senior offices chewed my bottom out the other night, as he said I'm too nice to the officers and that it could reflect poorly on the department. It was my own fault, though. I do say things such as "thank you", "please" "you're welcome", "my friend", and "sweety". Per this senior officer, I'm not to use any of that type of language with anyone in the department nor am I to initiate or encourage friendships between myself and any of the other personnel. He advised me to leave my "niceness" at the door. As such, I've sincerely tried to distance myself from the others. I only go to the gym now if it's empty. I didn't attend the party last night. I no longer ask anyone about their day. I try to refrain from speaking of anything that is of a personal nature.
I find myself in a situation which I consider to be untenable. If I go against my senior officer, I run the risk of losing my job. If I continue to abide by his strictures, I will successfully alienate myself. The others, too. People have started to look at me as if I'm snobby... I just know that as it stands, I was already in a new place with new people, working more hours than I should, but even so, I had the others around the office to help gel that bit over, but that has come to an end.
Honestly, it never once crossed my mind that treating people with common courtesy was justification for people to believe an inappropriate relationship may be brewing. The courtesy I extend to one is not limited by gender or sexual desire. It blows my mind that someone managed to arrive at that conclusion. I admit that I spoke more freely with those with whom I have worked the most, but even so, I say please and thank you to everyone, even people I diklike.
I'm left wondering what to do about the people of whom I have become genuinely fond. There's an older lady named Terri whom I admire greatly. Previously, we'd joke and talk. We were in the process of alligning a day off so that we could go out and do something. Bryan is one of my EMTs. He's a charming and amusing companion. That kid always has something in the way of witty banter. Witty banter is good on the days when people die en masse or it seems like a million or more things are going wrong.
Let's take last night as an example. I had a hit on a missing person out of Georgia. My officer requested a criminal history to be ran on the subject. Mind you, along with the original hit for missing person, a hit for a wanted person out of Florida was also listed. I couldn't help but pick up on the fact that the aliases and alias dates of birth listed for the missing person matched the wanted person. Last known addresses were both the same. All the major stuff was the same. I'm talking one or two minor differences (i.e. one letter off in the spelling of one of the middle names). So, I printed the documents, highlighted the similarities, took 'em over to my other co-worker, who promptly told me that I was wrong. It was not the same guy. Okay. I tried several different times before I just logged that I felt this was the same guy, but I was not allowed to inform the officer of such, as my other co-worker's word was final, as I'm still the "new" person.
Now, let's talk about the criminal history. When I ran the subject, I found that he did indeed have a criminal history. I once again printed out my documents, noted the exact matches (FBI assigned number, state ID numbers, name, social, last known address, finger print classification, known tattoos/marks, date of birth, etc...) and took 'em over to my co-worker. He rather emphatically told me that it was not the same guy and that I should just let it go because he knew more than I did. Okay. I relayed my concerns to him several different times. Each time, he advised me I was mistaken. I logged my suspicions and made a note of the fact that he pulled rank again, which therefore placed the responsibility on his shoulders and placed the documents I had printed with the other documents pertaining to the case. While I was working on something else, he took my documents out, marked as a non-match and did away with 'em. I waited until he left, printed the documents yet again, and placed them in the file. This wouldn't have been an issue, but we can get in trouble for these types of mistakes and then there's the safety of the officers to consider. This subject's criminal history indicated that he was prone to violence, with several charges of assault and battery with the intent to kill. Add to that the fact that I had reports of gunshots several times throughout the night and the bit in which the subject's son advised me that his father was diabetic, in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and was known to be combative and mayhap you can understand why I viewed it as a concern.
It's on nights such as last night that I truly appreciate the witty banter of people like Bryan and Terri. Maybe I can pursue my friendship with these two completely outside of the office. I don't know. I'll figure something out. For now, I'm off to rent a video, as I haven't much else to do.
