Editor's Note: This is the last episode in Season 3. Season 4 kicks off with its premier on January 4th!
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Get caught up:
“All right, folks, settle down.” Eddie’s voice wasn’t at his usual ‘command’ level yet, but it was raised just enough to be heard by the squad as they all chatted in various groups around the room. At Eddie’s direction, a few minutes before Roll Call was actually supposed to start, they all quieted and found seats. With some sergeants on some squads, a LOT of complaining would get done if the sergeant started Roll Call early. Not so in this case. First, the squad respected Eddie and wouldn’t complain even if he did start early. Second, there was nothing usual about this shift or the assignment the squad would be handling, so an early start was par for the course.
Once everyone was seated and quiet, Eddie got started. “As you know, if for no other reason than we’re sitting here at 1830, we’re working a special shift and special assignment tonight. Since it’s New Year’s Eve and the city has a history of a high number of gunshot related calls for some reason,” (a small chuckle went around the room at his obvious sarcasm), “we’ve been chosen to provide a deterrent as much as we can. We’ll patrol the high drug corridor and a couple other squads are patrolling the beachfront as well as the park.” The ‘park’ referred to the city’s central park area comprised of fifteen acres of wooded land surrounded by another five acres of ball fields and playgrounds. The city didn’t call it ‘central park’ simply because they didn’t want to copy New York. Although it was named for a retired Navy SEAL who had been a Vietnam War hero and had been born in the city, everyone just referred to it as ‘the park.”
The ‘high drug corridor’ was a five block section of East Pacific Avenue. (Who the heck named a street that when it was within four blocks of the Atlantic ocean?) That five block section held seven different apartment complexes and all of them seemed to be inhabited by drug dealers or the families of drug dealers. Some of the apartments were vacant but occasionally someone would set up a drug kitchen and start cooking in it until the apartment management reported it and called in the police to clean it out. Maybe 20% of the apartments were listed as vacant in the management office, but in reality only about 15% of them were actually vacant. The others were used by anyone brave enough to brake in and use the space. On at least one occasion, members from The Breakers had moved into one of the apartments and managed to stay for over three months. When the apartment management reported the apartment as having been broken into, the resident Breakers member had been able to show an electric bill, in his name, going back three months. Given the amount of time that they’d occupied the apartment, the management company actually had to go to court to have the Breakers member(s) evicted and then had to give them 30 days notice of the eviction order from the court. It seemed pretty silly to most people, especially on the police department, but it was how the landlord & tenant system worked.
That same five block corridor was infamous for having a drug dealer on every corner; sometimes three or four. There was, after all, four corners for every intersection. The playgrounds in the apartment complexes were also usually sales turf. There was a small section of wooded lots next to one end of the five block area and it too was often occupied by a drug dealer or three. The Oceanside PD made a point of patrolling the area as much as possible and they were diligent about answering calls there, but thanks to the wonder of scanners, the drug dealers often knew the police were coming before they showed up. Then when the cops arrived, they found nothing.
“Our mission tonight,” said Eddie, “is to try to keep as many people as possible off the streets in the drug corridor prior to midnight.
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Read the rest of this episode, part of Season Three, in the anthology ebook available exclusively on Amazon for kindle: http://amzn.to/2jcbPVB
