With Sam still in the hospital, the squad hit the streets a man short the day after his shooting. All of the preliminary information indicated that it was a clean shoot, but agency protocol required several things to happen before he could come back to the street. First, he had 72 hours of administrative leave that he was required to take. In this case, that would be easy. The doctor had said he’d have at least a 30-day convalescent period until his shoulder was in good enough shape to work, and his broken clavicle would take another two weeks past that. Sam would likely be on light duty for as much as six weeks AFTER he was cleared to come back to work. Getting cleared for duty meant that the agency’s internal affairs guys had to provide a finding of “justified” for the shooting and the agency psychologist had to declare Sam mentally and emotionally fit for duty. On top of all that, Sam had to ASK to come back to work.
Max was pretty sure that Sam wouldn’t have any issues with coming back. Some police officers had trouble dealing with the moral implications of shooting someone, especially if they died (as the suspect had in this case). Sam, on the other hand, was a combat veteran Marine. He’d been in plenty of combat situations while on deployments and he’d shown no signs of stress or emotional instability as a result. Max didn’t think this one shooting would suddenly push him over the edge. The sergeant, Eddie Presser, didn’t think so either. Eddie was eager to get Sam back as soon as he jumped through all the agency hoops and was sufficiently healed.
For now, Sam was still in the hospital for another two days before the doctor would release him. It was mostly for observation since he’d undergone minor reconstructive surgery on his shoulder, but it also served the purpose of keeping the media hacks away. No one was allowed in to see him but family and officers from the agency that were either there on formal business or cleared by the Chief’s office to visit.
So, the day after his shooting, the squad was working day work, one man short, but not overly concerned about it. Dave, Sam’s senior partner, was a competent officer and the units closest to his patrol sector modified their own patrols so that they stayed a bit closer to Dave’s area. That would make response time shorter if or when he needed back up. Eddie made it a point to hang out in Dave’s sector for most of the day. Dave noticed and knew it wasn’t because “the Sarge” was keeping an eye on him; at least not from a micromanagement point of view. If The Sarge was hanging out it was because he wanted to insure that Dave had adequate backup when he needed it. Eddie was big on the squad being a family; and family takes care of its own.
- - - - - - - - - -
At headquarters, Sgt. Saul Panadopolus, the agency’s Director of Communications & Records, was just leaving the Chief’s office. While Saul had made a strong case for using Quantum as the agency’s sole source provider for the needed upgrades to the agency’s video storage and management system, the Chief hadn’t bought it. He still insisted on going through the Proposal and Bid process; a process that Saul knew could take months and he viewed it all as a waste of time. He’d done the research. He’d be the one that reviewed and made recommendations on the proposals that came in. He knew that Quantum was the best he was aware of when it came to video data storage and management. Shaking his head, he continued on to his own office and idly thought about his academy classmate, Sgt. Eddie Presser. One of Eddie’s guys had been in a shooting just the day before and the video from that was considered of “high value” to the investigative team. It was just one example of how video mattered to the agency and why it should be given priority consideration. Saul understood budgetary concerns and Quantum was strong in that area as well. Their pricing structure was more than competitive. Mentally, Saul shrugged. There was nothing he could do to change the Chief’s mind, so he might as well just deal with it and do his job as best he could.
- - - - - - - - - -
Max and Sean were in their patrol sector, but they were hanging pretty close to Dave’s area. They were discussing what they knew about Sam’s shooting. Neither of them felt bad for the suspect and neither was complaining about the amount of time they had spent with the IA investigators. Everyone had a job to do and they understood that. It sucked that the on scene investigation had taken so long, but they understood that too.
Max had found it funny that IA spent so much time asking him about the medical attention he provided to Sam and why he had ignored the bad guy. Max had started to say that his partner, Sean, had already checked the bad guy and found no pulse, but instead he did what he could to keep Sean out of it. He explained that, based on his experience with gunshot wounds as a Combat Medic on multiple deployments, he visually assessed the bad guy, identified two center mass injuries that looked like they’d done heart and/or liver damage, and were not treatable with what Max had available. So, he had focused his attention where it could do any good.
The IA investigator questioning Max gave him a hard time about it, obviously worried about what the public’s reaction would be to a police officer taking care of another police officer before providing medical attention to a member of the community who was obviously more gravely injured. Max’s reply to that was quite blunt and honest: “I didn’t care about him then and I don’t care about him now. He shot a member of my squad after he’d robbed that store. My first priority was the care of my squad member.”
- - - - - - - - - - -
Read the rest of this exciting episode as part of the e-book now available in Kindle format on Amazon. See it on Amazon.
