February 5
Set a personal record last night:
Most Calls, Hotel: 29
You might be tempted to think that with a PB being set one or two of the calls would stand out; maybe a naked Persian girl or hot-tubbing bachelorettes or at least a dog in the room.
You would be wrong. Sure, we were busting hump all night, but all 29 calls were so run of the mill, so routine, it wasn’t even funny. One dipwad did cop some attitude on a noise complaint and I wanted to smack him around just to liven things up, but I had another call waiting.
I spent a lot of time on the lower floors. While Fred was on 482 everybody on floors 3-12 inclusive must’ve said, “All right, Fred’s at 482, so let’s lose our keys” because he had barely picked up his plate when the guest assists started. In fact, I spent so much time down there I set up a command post in the third-floor maids training room, which has a sweet executive chair to sit in and is conveniently located near the guest elevators.
We are so shorthanded there are – and I am not making this up – only five Charlie units on the schedule tonight. What with pit drops and 482’s and whatnot there will be many times when there are no officers on routine patrol and you better hope nothing worse than somebody needing directions to the bathroom goes down.
February 9
Here was your Dispatch lineup for last night:
David 1 – moi
David 2 – Ted
I walked into the briefing room all set to be Henry 1 when 77Rick asked me if I wanted to work dispatch. Junior had called off (for the second straight night) and 77Rick was faced with putting me up there (for the first time) or putting Schempp up there with Ted and – as 77Rick put it – seeing which one came out alive because those two do not get along. So I was thrown up there despite the fact my dispatch experience consists of a couple of hours training last fall, all of which has been forgotten.
If you know your way around a computer, it’s not that hard, because most everything anyone on the crew does, including 10-10’s and 482’s, has to be logged in, but the program is easy to use and I picked it up in short order.
The fun part is playing with the surveillance cameras. Not all cameras in the casino can be viewed from dispatch, and of those, not all can be controlled from dispatch, but a lot can be and it’s great fun and soon enough I was stalking, er, surveilling, like a pro although Ted warned not to spend too much time staring at cocktail waitresses.
With the camera at the sports bar, it is even possible to see inside of purses. This was funny. We zoomed in to look inside one hooker’s purse and there several IDs in there, as well as a generous supply of condoms and Ted made a tasteless, funny remark about how they appeared to be ribbed for her pleasure.
Later, I’m watching the slot area near the e-core. There’s a hooker pretending to play slots when a middle-aged, chubby white guy walks past her and makes eye contact. Ted wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention, so I filled him in, which was easy because in another life I did some sports announcing.
“Ted, we have eye contact. Oh, wait, he’s walking past, no sale evidently. Wait, he’s stopping; he’s taking out his cell to check his messages; he’s looking at her out of the corner of his eye; he’s glancing at the phone, at her, at the phone, whoops, no sale, again! He puts the phone back in his pocket and walks away.”
By now Ted is following along on his monitor. The guy takes a couple of more steps before stopping and taking out his phone again to see if there had been any calls for him in the past five seconds.
“He’s looking back, again, Gaylon.”
“He could be looking for that quick hummer before breakfast!”
“Aren’t we all?” Ted said.
The guy actually walked away and stopped a couple of more times before deciding a hummer wasn’t on the menu.
I also did a couple of hours OT on day shift as a Mary unit, marking the first time I actually carried a weapon on the job. There are new holsters and they’re these triple retention deals and when I tried to unholster my gun so I could shoot some jaywalkers on north drive, I couldn’t get the damned thing out! You have to push down and in and even then everything has to be perfect and when I turned the gun in I needed two hands to get it out. If I ever need the gun right now I will probably be up shit creek, though if I have, say, five minutes notice, I should be all right.
Here is your Henry lineup for tonight:
Henry 1 – moi
Henry 2 – Shaggy
Henry 3 – X-Ray
This is another example of 77Dwayne fucking with the goddamn schedule. Lee is scheduled for the casino, though he and Shaggy will probably trade.