Welcome to October and having the fall season officially underway. We all know what that means right? Yep… football, firepits, sweatshirts (making it easier to hide your off-duty weapon), Halloween, Thanksgi… Wait—did I just jump from October to the holidays? Yes, yes I did. Don’t flinch away from it. It happens every year and we cringe, at least a little bit, every year.
Some of us love the fall season and others among us tolerate it until we get to the winter holidays. Interestingly, Thanksgiving seems to be the oldest holiday man celebrates but Halloween dates back there pretty well. What we can’t escape is the fact that there are already big box commercial stores touting their sales and pushing out gift wrapping, Christmas trees, twinkle lights and more. For us in law enforcement, it’s the season of fights between shoppers, underlying criminal activity during Halloween, short-staffed shifts as people take leave to celebrate Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa and the general craziness of “silly season.” It also includes the busiest hunting season of the year, fall camping season and, often, bonfires with intoxicated friends sitting around watching the fire burn higher and higher.
In this month’s issue, since it’s October, we’ve tried to focus on things that are fear related. After all, Halloween is all about haunted houses, scary costumes and trick or treat, right? Okay… so two out of three of those things can be scary. In our feature articles you’ll find the underlying themes of “scary” or “haunted.” In our special section on computers you might find a few things that are even more scary than haunted houses or ghosts, or maybe you’ll find out about “ghosts in the machine?”
For many of us, few things are scarier than serial killers and in this issue we have part 2 of Deputy Rodella’s article about a traveling serial killer. For administrators, budgets can be very scary and we have an article about budget shortfalls from Chief Harvey. Anyone who has worked the street long enough knows how scary it can be to fight for your life and we have an article from Lindsey Bertomen about exactly that. For me, I’ve always had an underlying fear of being unprepared and that’s why you’ll find a short article about having an emergency survival bag as our closing recreational column. It might be something you take with you on the hunting trail or it might be something you keep in your personal vehicle for unexpected emergencies.
Whatever it is that scares you, or even if you’re one of those people who celebrate vampires, werewolves, mummies, Frankenstein and haunted houses, we hope you find this issue informative and entertaining.
Stay safe.
