The city of Boca Raton is a Palm Beach County seaside city sandwiched between Delray Beach on the north and Deerfield Beach on the south, which is in Broward County. (The town of Highland Beach is to the immediate north of Boca Raton on A-1-A, but doesn’t extend but a couple of blocks west). To the locals, it is known on a first-name basis. “Boca” has always been a city of affluence. In 1980, the official population was 49,447. It was home to Florida Atlantic University and the College of Boca Raton. It was also the southern home to IBM. The facility was immense, occupying several blocks of buildings and recreational facilities for their employees to include baseball fields and picnic-style areas. It was the place to work. In fact, there were police who were hired from IBM and police who worked security for IBM.
Many affluent folks called it home. There was a busy small airport that was quite convenient for business and tourist travel. There was the Boca Raton Hotel and Club which is still a five-star resort. And there were several exclusive private communities, many with private security. Yes, it was an aesthetically beautiful community. Among other selling points was the fact that there was a comparatively low crime rate. So, there I was, staring at Paradise, only now from the inside of a police car.
I was introduced to my Field Training Officer (FTO) by way of my Shift Lieutenant and Sergeant. I had a full complement of issued items: uniforms for all occasions, a gun (a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum), leatherworks, police radio, tons of police forms, traffic citations and probably a stupid grin that said “rookie”. On the plus side, I was 30 years old as I began this gig, so at least, theoretically, I would minimize the effects of “rookie-itis”… a mental power trip one has when suddenly given authority. I was briefed by my sergeant, who laid out the ground rules in no uncertain terms. Sgt. Seeque was a black man who had my respect from day one. He was adamant about his level of tolerance when it came to doing things that were done stupidly. There wasn’t a whole lot of flexibility.
At any rate, Jeff, my assigned FTO, was a 10-year veteran in police work. He possessed lot of patience (a prerequisite when dealing with trainees) and was fully capable of knowing how to critique one’s work. He would have me doing radio transmissions from our 100-plus signals and 100-plus codes after a brief rehearsal and then keying the radio and talking on the air. There was finding street locations from the map, and then the actual road. There was a metric ton of stuff to gather about which forms to use, how to write correctly in police lingo, how to handle dealing with the public and when and how to conduct traffic stops, and how to put bad guys in jail.
Unlike some of the other field training officers, Jeff didn’t throw me under the bus. There were those who, on day one, would take their trainees and drive quickly to a location that had no street signs, and tell the rookie to give his location. Being clueless, the rookie had no response. Then, he would be given the “always know where you are” talk-off. All of us had a shot at directing traffic at 20th St. and Federal Highway…a five-way intersection. The traffic lights were disabled and the new officer would do a 15-minute stint moving vehicles through the busiest intersection in the city during rush hour.
Then, there were the practical joke varieties. The FTO would introduce his rookie to a particular veteran officer, who had mastered the art of the “boomerang nightstick”. When encouraged by the FTO, the rookie would approach the veteran officer and request a demonstration of the nightstick that would be tossed and return on its own. Initially, the officer would refuse, but would, on request, provide a demonstration. Then, with an obligatory approach, the veteran requested the nightstick of the rookie. After carefully sizing and analyzing the long black stick, he would go into an Olympic-style approach, and launch the stick as far as it would go. The stick (needless to say) would land the better part of a football field away. No return. No boomerang. No nothing. The veteran would look down field, just shake his head and mumbled something about how he must have done something wrong. Meanwhile, the rookie would walk the distance to retrieve his night stick, realizing he had been scammed. Oh, well.
I had been on the job a whopping 2 days, ingesting all that I could about being a Boca officer, when my FTO and I were dispatched back to the station. On the previous night, a man approached his estranged wife and shot both her and a female friend of hers. The wife had survived the attack, but was in the hospital with serious gunshot wounds. Her friend had been treated for minor wounds and released. The shooting subject had eluded the police and had telephoned the station, stating that he intended to “finish the job.” Our Lieutenant told him “Yeah…go ahead and try it- we have something for you if you do.” He then assembled a 24 hour police security group to be at the hospital for the victim’s protection. No one knew exactly where the shooter was, so the game was on. I was taken from my FTO, and placed in the hospital as part of the security team. I was assigned to the evening shift.
On arrival at the hospital, I was escorted to victim’s room. There was a chair outside the room for us to use. It was something I really didn’t use. Instead, I spent my time pacing up and down the aisle outside the room, with an occasional peak in the room to insure the suspect hadn’t managed to parachute in through the roof or crawl in through the air vents or windows. I began plotting the best places to shoot from, so as not to strike oxygen tanks, other people and objects that weren’t com