Police Officer Interview Report

On October 6th, I participated in a ride-along with the Raleigh Police Department; the ride-along lasted a total of 4 hours, from 2:00 to 6:00 pm. While on the ride-along, I had the opportunity to ride with two different police officers, given that the first policer officer had to leave around 4:00 pm to help out with the Sam Johnston concert in town that night. His name was Officer Johnson*, and the second police officer’s name was Officer Lee*. Both of the police officers assigned to me were obviously male. I do believe that the gender of a police officer can have a significant impact; people seem to be more open and willing to cooperate with females. However, I think that for the particular district we were in, male police officers were

Before going on the ride-along, I used to think that police officers were always doing something high-profile or dangerous, such as investigating a robbery or something similar. Nonetheless, after going on the ride-along, I realized that police work can be mostly boring, with only a few interesting instances. For example, we spent the majority of the time simply driving around the district without doing anything in particular. In the total of the 4 hours I was there, we only stopped 2 people, both of which were for expired registration tags. Yet, like mentioned before, there were several exciting moments. For example, we were called to a scene at which another police officer had stopped a 26-year-old Hispanic male. The young man had been stopped for expired registration tags; however, when the police officer went to ask for his license and registration, he stated that he smelled marijuana in the car. Thus, Officer Johnson was called to confirm the smell, which he did. The young man was asked to step out of his car, searched, and then instructed to sit on the curb while his car was searched. Yet, after no marijuana was found, the man was let go only with a ticket for his expired registration tags. Another moment came when we were called to a local McDonalds in the area; apparently there were several teenage boys smoking drugs outside. However, by the time we arrived, the boys had