Document text
Night Patrol Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Medford police officers James Sprenger, left, and Tony Young take handcuffs off a belligerent and intoxicated man, whom they are dropping off at the area's detox center for an overnight stay. By JILL BRISKEY If you take a walk along Main Street at 3 a.m. some weekend, you won't be lonely. It's almost guaranteed that a Medford cop will stop to talk to you. And these guys aren't necessarily your friendly, neighborhood police officers. Then again, the cops who work Thursday, Friday and Saturday from sunset to sunrise aren't dealing with very friendly neighbors. "We're getting a ticket for this s---? That's f----ed up," 18-year-old Medford resident Mandie Sarratt informs Medford officer Richard Renfro as he fills out a citation. "Do you have nothing better to do than harass people who are out having fun? There's somebody walking through the parking lot right now. Go give him a ticket." Sarratt, along with seven young adults, was being cited and released for trespassing Saturday night in the parking lot of Iron Dragon Martial Arts Karate on South Central Avenue. The fine is $75, the routine familiar. "Are you guys broke? Do you need money?" Ryan Bohnert, 21, asks. "Do you like having people pay you money? Does this pay for your salary?" Renfro - who will fight this same battle countless times during his regular weekly three-day, 12-hour shifts - once again explains that hanging out on private property is illegal at almost every business in downtown Medford. "It's the same excuse I get every other time," Renfro says. "Do you own this property? If you don't, you're trespassing and you guys know it." "It doesn't matter. If you're out here at night, you're f-----," says Medford resident Steve Schlafke, 18. "This is so stupid." Stupid or not, trespassing and belligerent teens aren't the only angry customers Medford police meet on the weekends. They also get the drunks. "You guys are a bunch of bastards," a Medford man tells police officer Greg Lemhouse at 4 a.m. on the porch of his Peach Street residence. Swaying back and forth and reeking of liquor, the man tells the cops to take a hike. Now. Lemhouse - responding to a report of a 911 hang-up call made from the man's studio apartment - is not amused. He doesn't want to leave until he is sure that a victim is not trapped or injured in the home. "Hey, you called us. Why?" Lemhouse asks. "Go away. Get out of here before I make you," the man shouts, jamming his face an inch away from Lemhouse. Lemhouse responds by going nose to nose. "I am an officer with the Medford police and you will stand down! You will step back, now!" Lemhouse roars in an excellent imitation of a drill sergeant. "Step back, now!" The man, startled, backs down. Dissolving into a fit of giggles, he allows police inside his home. Lemhouse picks his way over a floor littered with gin bottles and overflowing ashtrays. Conversation, difficult because of the man's intoxication, is made impossible by a television that is cranked up full blast. "You broke my TV. That's another one on your list," the man tells Renfro after watching him turn the set off. "Do you know my cousin? I know you do. His name is Richard," the man says, once again friendly. "I just bet you do." The officers - who find a cat inside but nothing else - hang up the man's phone. They give him a stern warning about calling 911 again without an emergency and advise him to stay inside until morning. They leave without issuing a citation. "I told you I didn't call. It was that woman," the man tells the officers as they leave. "You guys had better now just quit it. ... Why did you all guys come here anyways?" Meet the Reservoir Dawgs They come because they are Team 5, a group of eight police officers working their beats along the streets of Medford from 6:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. According to their sergeant, Dave Ryder, they are the best of the best. His team doesn't wait for an opportunity to fall into their laps. Instead, they go out and make it happen. It's one of the reasons he calls the officers of Team 5 the Reservoir Dawgs - a slightly modified term borrowed from Quentin Tarantino's violent cult hit film "Reservoir Dogs." Minus the bloodthirsty, gangster aspect, Ryder adds. "They are aggressive, enthused and very motivated. They'll stop short of nothing to get the job done right," their sergeant said. "They are the best. This crew, they can handle anything." And most of the time, the individuals who are walking the streets of Medford in the early morning, weekend hours aren't happy to see the cops. "Why are you harassing me? Is it because I'm black?" a man walking along Fourth Street at 2:30 a.m. asks Lemhouse. "Man, this is bulls---." Lemhouse, who stopped the man to ask him if he knows anything about a report of a fight in progress in the area, repeats the question. "Man, I don't know. I'm staying out of trouble. Why don't you leave me alone?" the man replies. Although he questions others on the street, Lemhouse is unable to find the reported fight, saving him the possibility of breaking up a brawl. But breaking up fights is a job requirement. It's fairly common for a member of Team 5 to be injured during their shift as they chase down a fleeing suspect or wrestle out of control people to the ground. It's all part of the gig. "We're in the bad-guy business. They are dealing with a lot of intoxicated, aggressive, uncooperative people," Lt. Tim George said of the Reservoir Dawgs. "It's not an easy job. But they deal with it, and do it well." Cooling off Not every call carries the possibility of danger. Many involve noise complaints and drunken revelers. "Hey man, let me sleep," a 26-year-old man tells officer Ben Lylte in the parking-lot of the Osprey Brew Pub late on a recent Saturday night. Lylte is forced to physically haul the man - who is on the verge of passing out - out of the back seat of a vehicle and place him inside a patrol car. Lylte and other officers have responded to the bar after receiving a report that an intoxicated man had broken into a stranger's vehicle and had fallen asleep. The man gets snippy when he's forced to answer a few questions at the detox center, where police take the intoxicated to sit until they're sober. Lylte is busy placing his belongings in a basket for safe-keeping. The man's things - which are inventoried - will be returned when he is released in the morning. "Hey, that's my hat and it's valuable. Don't f--- with it. Damn it, it's expensive," he yells from a slumped position in a chair. He snatches his hat from the basket as the night clerk fills out the necessary paperwork, only to drop it on the ground a minute later. "Nighty-night, now," he says to Lylte. "Jesus, man. I can't believe this." Medford police will lodge up to 100 intoxicated people into the detox center every month. But a night of cooling off in detox isn't always an option for some people. Officers are often forced to drag drunken men and women to jail - many times under a hail of curses, screams and bodily fluids. "Get in. Your Cinco de Mayo silliness has gone on long enough," Ryder tells 26-year-old Lymon Young outside of the detox center. Lymon, of Crescent City, Calif., has been charged with harassment and will soon be lodged in the Jackson County Jail. Police were called in after Lymon reportedly started a ruckus inside the detox center by shouting and throwing a roll of toilet paper at the clerk. Bloodied and battered from a previous fight at Ground Zero - and three sheets to the wind - Young balks as officers tell him to get into the patrol car. "I'm not drunk. Let me pee and I'll prove it. My dad's a policeman with the California police," he shouts. "I just wanted to get some water." "Get in the car, NOW!" Officer Derek Parks says. "Enough!" Owning the streets For the Reservoir Dawgs, patrolling the streets of Medford means taking ownership of a beat and knowing the community inside and out. "This is a job that's about taking charge, owning the streets and not waiting for everything to come to you," Lemhouse says. "We stay busy. We look for the bad guys. We don't wait for them to stumble onto us." That means if something is amiss in a neighborhood, they will check it out. "If it's 3 a.m. and you're walking down the streets, you can pretty much bet a police officer is going to talk to you," Parks said. "For the most part, people will talk with you, tell you what they're doing. Some people get really offended. Obviously, that's when you get suspicious." It's a tough task that forces officers to take on the roles of counselor, mediator and peacekeeper, he added. "You've got to have hard-nosed, business-minded cops, but it's important that they are sensitive to the community," Lylte says. "You've got to have a balance of both. It's crucial." Reach reporter Jill Briskey at 776-4485, or e-mail [email protected] Meet your neighborhood police officer According to Medford Police Department officials, patrol work is viewed as the backbone of the entire agency. Patrol officers are often the first line of defense against crime in Medford. They work to keep the streets and residential areas safe from harm or threat. Yet many community members have never met the police officer who works to protect their home or workplace. Medford Lt. Tim George encourages residents to contact the police department and meet the person who serves in their neighborhood. "We would like to see them develop some partnership with that officer," George said. For more information, contact the Medford Police Department at 770-4783. Beat system boosts familiarity The Reservoir Dawgs, or Team 5, are just one unit in Medford's patrol division. Medford's patrol officers work 12-hour shifts, three days a week. Patrol officers are assigned to one of the six teams within the department's patrol division. A sergeant is assigned to each team, which is made up of seven or eight officers. Three teams are on duty during the day, and three at night. The shifts are staggered to provide additional support during peak hours of activity. Each patrol officer is assigned to one of 11 sub-beats within the city, according to Lt. Tim George. Police officers do not rotate the neighborhoods they patrol. The team/beat system, instituted two years ago, allows officers to become familiar with problem areas and the residents in their beat, George said. "It makes for a more constant deployment," George says. "They get to know the area in which they are working, and who the bad guys are." Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.