I’ve been known to squawk about our police force from time to time (and am probably about to do so again when I post about a tiny New Hampshire town’s force trying to buy a tank for crowd control) but lately we’ve been seeing them here for our problems, not the other way around. And they’ve been great.
Today my mother wandered away for awhile. Pal Nancy found her safe and sound downstairs in Nancy’s house, two doors away, but despite searching there twice, we missed her for 2 1/2 hours. And during that time we had a flood of police officers searching for her – around here, at Binney Park, in Old Greenwich, all over. And they weren’t just cruising around, they were out of their cars, showing her picture to people and just doing everything they could.
When the excitement was over I tried to apologize to one of the officers for causing such a ruckus but he said, “it had a happy ending – that’s all we wanted”. He said that with complete sincerity, so I thank him, all of his colleagues and the EMTs who arrived to check Ma out. And she’s fine – looked around at nine of us clustered around her in her living room and asked, “how did all these nice people get here?” I assured her that all she need do is call 911 and the nicest people in the world would appear. And I meant those words as sincerely as the young officer did his.
These guys’ behavior has improved considerably since I stopped using my cellphone while driving.