What comes first - Officer safety or notifying a supervisor?
I'm still pretty pissed over an incident with a "relief" Lieutenant that happened on my shift tonight. Now this so called Lieutenant and I have a hate-on for the ages and it really is best for everyone involved if her and I stay as far away from each other on the two days a week we have to work together. The problem stems from she doesn't like female officers getting any of the attention she thinks she deserves and she doesn't like me because I have went up the chain of command about her bull shit. Ever since I went to her boss she has made my life a living hell.
Unfortunately tonight, I did not have that option and got the pleasure of spending an entire shift in her company. I tried to make the best of it, but she started in as soon as the shift started. In the first incident she was apparently upset that I used her computer to look up information for a member of the public I was on the phone with. Now no other supervisor has ever had an issue with us looking up charges on that particular computer, which happens to be in the middle of the work station floor. I would have just blew it off had she not proceeded to rip my ass about it in front of my entire team. That is the easiest way to utterly aggravate me - Don't berate me in front of my team. It doesn't reinforce your position as a Lieutenant, it makes you look like an ass. And trust me, I am not the only officer who thinks this woman is a control freak, power hungry bitch. She is the epitome of the type of female that makes other women cops look bad. To top it off she is just a badge bunny with bars.
But back to my original post - One of the guys was bringing in a male from the intake section and this male was intoxicated and not very happy about being in jail on Christmas eve. Not a big deal until he started being non-compliant with orders and making threats. At that time I just called for routine back up to intake since a fight hadn't started but the situation was going south very quickly.
A few officers come back just to stand by and as soon as the guy sees all of us standing there he decides he doesn't want to fight anymore. We are able to escort him to a single cell where he can either sleep his drink off or yell until his voice goes hoarse.
Now the trouble is, this Lieutenant gets pissed off at me and rips my ass in front of my entire team because it's "Not your decision" to call for back up.
OK, stop the wagon here for a minute. First of all, it IS my decision if I see a situation that might get one of my guys hurt to call for back up. First and foremost above anything is officer safety. She proceeds to berate me that I should have called for her to come back there and SHE should have made the decision as to whether back up was warranted or not. So I'm going to let one of my team mates get into a situation with no back up because she wants to throw her authority around. Maybe if she would get off her ass and out of the Lieutenant's office every now and then she would have known there was a problem to begin with. Had something happened and this officer had gotten hurt, who do you think would have been the one explaining why I saw a situation like this and didn't do something to help?
So maybe I am missing something, and I'm looking for some feed back on this. Shouldn't officer safety come first before everything? Let me know what you think.
