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Before the Badge | The Stories I've Never Told · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a murders to music snapshot.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: 10 minutes of something fun, entertaining, stories, I don't know, just something I want to tell you, and hopefully you'll want to listen to.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to start off back in the beginning of my policing career.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't want to live in the past, but I do think a couple unique things happened at the beginning of my career, and this is what it looks like.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I started my career in Kenai, Alaska.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a police department of about 18 sworn officers, and it's a department that I grew up in.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: I spent a lot of hours as an explorer there.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking like, I don't know, 4,500 hours in a uniform.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a lot of history with this department, grew up around it, and now I get to go back as a police officer, right?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's like fulfilling that childhood dream of working in small town Alaska.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, working in a small town has got its pros and cons.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's cons.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're not chasing murder suspects every day.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have a million armed robberies and all the cool stuff that you see on TV, you may never get to do.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the pros is you have to be a jack of all trades.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: If a death investigation comes in, you're running it.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing the death, you're doing the body palpation, you're writing the reports, you're doing the interviews, your uh case comes in, and you take it all the way from start through the trial process, even federal court.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: If there's a crime scene investigator that needs to come out, and guess what?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: You that's you.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: You go out, you dust for fingerprints, you lift foot impressions, you do tool wear impressions, you testify about your training experience.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: That is the prose of working in this small town.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the stuff that I was looking forward to.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking forward to going out and just writing tickets.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I would go out and as a patrol officer in my early days, I'd write 60 citations a day in a town of 7,000 people.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't take long before they write Turnage as a dick on the Safeway stall wall, and I'm a hated person in town.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, at the different restaurants, I go in and people refuse to serve me.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't take long before I pissed off the community.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: But before we ever got to that, let's talk about day one.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Day one on the job.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I get sworn in, and as I'm walking back across the parking lot, the chief is out there and he says, Hey, Aaron, uh, where's your gun?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're a cop now.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Yeah, sorry, chief.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's in the locker.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Am I allowed to wear it?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Well, you've got a badge on.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: You may want to put a gun on with it.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I go into the locker room and I've got my own locker in there, which is pretty cool.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: I open up my locker and there's my gun.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And my gun is on a paddle holster.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And a paddle holster is the type of holster that the the there's an inside paddle, and it just slides down the inside of your pants, and the gun is on the outside, the paddle's on the inside, and the two, you know, kind of sandwich your pants in between, right?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got my gun and I it's in the holster, and I'm trying to put the holster on, and I do, and I draw my gun out to check it to make sure there's a bullet in it.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And when I go to put it back, my hands are sweaty, and the gun slips and it spins.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like I drop it.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's super slow motion.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: The gun is like as it spins, like a matrix moment.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I see it going for the gang around, and I'm like, no.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I go to grab for it, but then I'm like, well, if I stick my finger in the trigger car, that's gonna suck.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I just let it bang, it drops and hits the ground.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, holy crap, super embarrassed, but nobody was around except me.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the first time I've told this story publicly.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I pick the gun up and I like patch up my ego and I put the gun away and I'm nervous as hell.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then I go outside, we do a car seat check, and I've got a picture of me on day one holding the baby while my FTO does a car seat check to make sure it's installed correctly.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: That is small town policing.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: But now I go through the field training program.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when I go through the field training program, it's not the academy because the academy only starts every four to six months, and they run a couple sessions a year.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going through the training program at the police department.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I go through my three field training officers, I get checked off.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And now by department policy, by department training standards, I am a sworn police officer that has been trained to the department standards.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, I can go out and police and be a big policeman now.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I did.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: For seven months, I was a police officer in my city without ever attending the police academy.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm out writing tickets, answering all the calls, patrol, testifying in court, making arrests, writing search warrants, all of that stuff in my town without ever attending the police academy.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when it's time to go to the police academy, I am weighing in at a prompt 2, I don't know, 75 pounds.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I go to run, and everybody says, hey, go get ready for the police academy, start working out, start lifting weights, start running.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I got this.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: I go to the police academy, and uh that morning when we showed up there, we get on the plane and we have to fly to Sitka, Alaska.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's myself and another physically fit stud who got hired about the same time I did in my department.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as we land in Sitka, Alaska on the Alaska Airlines flight, he has got a water bottle and he says, Hey, are you gonna get off the plane first or am I?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, he's like, I'll tell you what, I'll get off first.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: You just carry my water bottle.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we get off the plane, we're the first two off the plane, and as we come around the corner, there is uh, there is Helgo, Lieutenant Helgo.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he's standing there and he's got a big smile on his face, and we walk up and we're all in suits, and he's like, Hey, uh, you know, recruit, what's your name?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Turnage, sir.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Oh, recruit Turnage.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Here you go.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Here's your name badge.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just put that on the left side of your lapel, and and there's people waiting for you right around the corner, and he's super nice.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, This is like a camp counselor, Boy Scout style.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be great.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: So then I step around the corner, and that's where we meet Hightower.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hightower is a sawed-off little short guy who has got an ego the size of his Stetson, and his Stetson is down low, marine, the shirt is tucked, it's tight, it's starched.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: You could bounce a quarter off of his tight shirt, little sleeves are you know tight and tailored around his little arms, and uh he's running around, you know, yelling and screaming, and before you know it, we're getting our asses kicked in this airport.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: We got to get all of our luggage, we gotta run them outside, we gotta stack them up across the parking lot, we're sweating.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, so then we're all standing in line, and finally we think we're like, okay, we're about to get on the bus.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's one of these big school buses, but then they make us run our bags one at a time across this parking lot to the bus.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have to load them in alphabetical or all this other stuff.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Finally they get back and they're like, Did somebody leave their water bottle?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Oh, thank God it's not me.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And my buddy was like, Bro, did you get my water bottle?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, son of a bitch.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they come out with a water bottle and I'm like, it's mine, sir.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they throw it at me and like, turn and you owe me 20 push-ups.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So now they're yelling and screaming all in paramilitary style.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then we run our little selves over to the bus, get on the bus, go to the academy, and that was the beginning of 18 weeks of hell and what they refer to as Black Monday.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that was the beginning of my police career.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: First seven months dropping a gun, making some arrests, and getting our ass kicked in an airport parking lot.