SOUTHERN EXPOSURE: SATURDAY NIGHT POLICE RIDE-A-LONG PROVES QUIET

Cape Girardeau's streets Saturday night were so safe they were boring. I should know, I went riding with the Cape Girardeau Police Department's Safe Streets unit.

I now know the true meaning of the word "sweep;" as Safe Streets' units rolled through Good Hope, Ellis, Lorimier, Morgan Oak and surrounding areas more and more people would seemingly be swept off the streets.

By 2 a.m. it was a clean sweep with no one remaining but the officers. When the shift was over, called short at 2:35 a.m. by Cpl. Keith May, the most exciting events of the night were: 1) a traffic stop of a recreational vehicle that turned out to be full of extremely attractive women leaving Peppy's; and 2) a fight between two men right at the end of the night.

The first incident, while entertaining, was not criminal. The driver of the RV wasn't drunk and had the lucky chore of chauffeuring all these women home.

The fight looked painful.

The SEMO Drug Task force came through last week and swept away 20 suspected drug dealers. There was some question as to whether that would make this weekend quiet or explosive as the void was filled in the outdoor pharmaceutical market.

It turned out to be quieter than anyone had expected. The weather didn't hurt either with a steady drizzle falling most of the night.

Even though I didn't get a story out of the ride-a-long, just column-fodder, it was an educational evening for me. I got to see how many Cape Girardeans spend their Saturday nights.

It seemed that I got to see how a lot of Cape cops got to spend their free time as well. Most of the officers working Safe Streets that night were working overtime. As one officer put it, "It's too much fun to miss."

It's ironic what a reporter and most officers will call a good night as compared to a bad night. A good night is when there are a lot of arrests, everyone is safe but everyone feels like they were productive. Lots of arrests, lots of activity also means a good story.

But for most people, a lot of criminal activity is a bad thing. The cops feel that way too; they just like it when they catch the bad guys in the midst of doing bad things -- that way they make an arrest and prevent the criminal activity.

Ride-a-longs can be pretty wild. I remember as a cop reporter in Florida I went out on a control drug buy with the chief of detectives. It was about 1 a.m. on an unlit dirt road in the middle of the county. The informant was wearing a microphone that was transmitting so well you could hear the man's shoes crunching leaves as he walked to the buy.

The transaction was taking place at the suspect's mobile home. The man had dogs all over the place to alert him when someone was close.

This particular stakeout was kind of unusual because the detective's back-up never arrived. There we were, me and the detective in the car, the informant, the supplier and the dogs.

The detective looked at me just as the man was nearing the front steps of the mobile home and said, "Ever handle a shotgun before?"

I looked at him and laughed thinking he was joking. Stone faced, he said: "If anything goes wrong I'm going to toss you the shotgun. You run around back -- shoot the dogs if you have to -- I'll go to the front."

That was the only time in my life I've ever wished for a drug transaction to be successfully completed. It was also much too close of an encounter with actual police work.

I just like to sit on the sidelines and criticize.

David Angier is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.