Always Burning in California

Hello everyone!

Yet again this week was another action packed one!  The week started relaxed with a law enforcement meeting.  The meeting was held to refresh everyone on what facility to take apprehended individuals to.  As I have talked about before, jurisdictionally Santa Monica can be fairly complicated and it is a spread out park.  Therefore, a ranger must know his/her jurisdictional boundaries and which holding facility to take detained individuals depending on where they are apprehended.  It was an interesting conversation to sit in on.  The end of the meeting was then the supervisors asking what resources the field rangers thought that they needed.

The cover of the packet that we used to guide our meeting.

After this, I tagged along with Brandon and Jess for running traffic.  The motto of the week was still "click it or ticket" which refers to fasten your seatbelt or get a ticket.  We contacted four vehicles during our time.  Jess wrote one ticket for the lack of wearing a seatbelt and the rest they gave out warnings for rolling a stop sign.

The next day was quite an interesting day.  The day started off normal with Brandon and I collecting the data on the camera at the waterfall.  However, not too long after we got a call that there was a fire in progress a couple of miles away from where I live.  We responded to the call and sure enough, there were flames at a nearby ranch.  Brandon and I had the job of making sure people were evacuated out of the nearby trails and making sure no one enters while the fire was going on (you would be surprised how many people try).  Luckily, there was not much wind and the surrounding fire departments were all over the fire.  The fire never got too out of control and it was put out within the same day.

A view of the fire when it was fortunately getting under control.

The last day of work this week was noteworthy.  It started with Brandon and I witnessing more than 20 motorcycles blowing through stop signs on a four-way.  Brandon then flipped on the sirens, got in front of them, pulled them all over, and had a talk with them.  Brandon said he would have written them all tickets if he had enough tickets with him and the time to write them all.  After that fiasco, me, Brandon, and another employee Armando decided to stick around solstice canyon for the first half of our shift.  We ended up writing four tickets for people jumping the fence and going into the waterfall (it was right in front of us and there are a million signs so there was no sympathy).  We also wrote two tickets for people having their dogs off of their leash.  After this, I got to truly experience the side of law enforcement that Criminal Minds and CSI: Miami doesn't show you.  Paperwork.  For every ticket that you write as a law enforcement officer, you have to write a report and upload it to a database called IMARS which I had the pleasure of experimenting with last week.