Cyrus Cassidy #45437

15.2

Hey pard, I was born and raised in Iowa, and I've played baseball on the Field of Dreams. That movie was a big deal to us little people.

Nope. What I said was applicable to retirees. You were done when you walked out, unless your contract had some time in the Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR) tacked on to the end, but it wouldn't have been more than 2 years.

A military retiree -- whether medical, 20 + years, or otherwise -- retains their rank for life. They become a member of the "retired reserve," meaning they collect their retirement pension AND are subject to recall to active duty until the day they die. Medical retirees will never see that, but the 20+ guys do occasionally. I ran into a few working at the pentagon when I was there, and more than one got called back for combat operations.

J-bar, I'm just outside of Black Forest by about 1/4 mile.

Every driver should be fully aware of what is happening in EVERY direction. That's why they give you mirrors. People who stare straight ahead without looking in their mirrors are some of the most clueless drivers on the road.

I remember that too. I became a part-time Sheriff's Deputy when I was 21, which was the minimum age in Iowa, where I was raised. I went to the active duty army after that, then switched to the Army Reserve to become a full-time cop. I was 28 when I entered law enforcement full-time, and looking back, I don't think I was mature enough even then!

Oh, by the way, it's funny to see myself with facial hair. I've been in the army since I was 17 years old, so I've never known what it's like to have facial hair. With the lockdown I've been teleworking, so I decided to find out!

Our radio callsigns were also based on geography. We had seven divisions -- four patrol divisions (geographic regions of the city), and three others. The others were "central," which included SWAT, K9, motors, the academy, communications, etc.; "investigations," which included homicide, sex crimes, property crimes units, etc. The last division was "Vice, Narcotics, and Intelligence," the undercovers. They were large enough to need a whole division. Of the four patrol divisions, a radio call sign identified the division with the first number. The second digit identified the type of patrol unit -- single officer, two-officer, special assignment, traffic, etc. The third digit identified the sector within the division to which the unit was assigned. The fourth digit identified the shift; because we had five 10-hour shifts within each 24-hour day, the shifts overlapped and we had more than one cop assigned to a sector. So there was a need to delineate between them. Example: 3A18 is assigned to the Sand Creek division (southeast), one-officer car, sector 1, midnight shift. That was my call sign the night my friend was murdered, 4 DEC 06. Police use a different phonetic alphabet than the military, so this would be "Three Adam Eighteen." Swing shift was on still the street when I went to work, so I worked with 3A15: Sand Creek division, one-officer unit, sector 1, swing shift. 3T04 is the Sand Creek division (southeast), DUI unit (which is traffic), no sector because it's a division asset, fourth officer in the DUI unit (not a regular patrol shift). This was my permanent callsign in the DUI unit. "Three Tom Four." I spent three years as 5A75: Stetson Hills division (northeast), one-officer unit, sector 7, swing shift. "Five Adam Seventy-five." We were significantly undermanned, so rarely did we ever get a two-officer unit. If we did, the "A" changed to "B." I was one-half of 3B88 the night we caught three armed robbers fleeing the scene. Sand Creek division (southeast), two-officer unit, sector 8, midnight shift. "Three Baker Eighty-eight." I worked a special gang task force once. My whole job was to do "pro-active policing" (i.e. I'm not responding to radio calls; I'm hunting bad guys) and find gangs, drugs, and illegal guns. I was 3S95 -- Sand Creek division (southeast), Special assignment, 95 to delineate me from other "S" units; we couldn't use the sector and shift for the last two digits because we weren't assigned to a sector and had our own shift. "Three Sam Ninety-five." 4A51 is the Falcon division (northwest), one officer car, sector 5, day shift. This was my last assignment, "Four Adam Fifty-One." On my last day, they wanted to make sure I didn't get into any drama or get killed just before walking out, so they assigned me to sector 1. Sector 1 of the Falcon division is where all the rich people live, and nothing ever happens there. Because we are so undermanned, the sector almost never has a cop assigned to it. So I was 4A11: Falcon division, one-officer unit, sector 1, day shift. Happy retirement sector!

The Garden of the Gods is a scenic tourist destination in Colorado Springs, about 45 minutes drive from my house (longer with a horse trailer). Last weekend Mrs. Cassidy and I loaded up the horses and went on a ride through there. One of our boys rode his bike, because we only own two horses. My horse, named Remington, is a papered quarterhorse, contrary to his rather large appearance. People always ask me if he is part draft horse, but he is not. He is a complete idiot, but that's a different story. He is all quarterhorse. Funny, I know his bloodline going back to the 1600s! About 7 years ago, we bought him for $200. His story: He descends from high dollar, well-known cutting horses, and people pay a lot of money to get horses from these bloodlines. That's why he's papered. A high end horse trainer bought him and trained him, and then sold him for profit. But an inexperienced rider bought him. She was thrown once, and tore her ACL, so she decided maybe horseback riding wasn't her thing. So she left him in the pasture. She fed him and had his hooves trimmed, but did NO training and NEVER went riding again. He became what we call a "pasture pet." Pasture pets are nothing but a drain on your finances and can even be dangerous. He lost ALL of his training and was almost wild. That's why we got him for $200. Heck, I paid $450 for a *used* saddle that fit him, more than double the price of the horse. I can stay in the saddle, but Mrs. Cassidy is a no-kidding horse whisperer. She adheres to a method known as "natural horsemanship," the idea of which is to learn how horses communicate with each other and communicate with them in that way. That way they don't see you as a predator; they see you as a partner. The old school methods of force work, but they can be cruel, and they don't work as well. In natural horsemanship, you don't force your horse to do anything; you ask him, and he does it because you are his leader and friend, not because you made him. Go to YouTube and check out Pat Parelli, Buck Branaman, and a few others. Using the natural horsemanship training method, we started him from the ground up. The aforementioned Pat Parelli always says, "the easiest way to ride a bucking horse is from the ground," meaning you have to get a bunch of training in before getting on his back. So we spent 3 months doing ground work. I finally got on his back, and it was a little early still. We had a little bit of a rodeo, but I stayed on. Mrs. Cassidy has done most of the work, because horses are her thing in our house, but Remington is my riding buddy. Despite his high dollar bloodline, he failed out of cutting training and won't really be anything but a trail horse. That's all I want! My days of being 10 feet tall and bullet proof are over. By the way, the bridle and the pommel bags you see on Remington were made by yours truly. Mrs. Cassidy got her first horse when she was 14 years old, and that horse died last year. The one you see her riding is her new one, and she was also trained using the natural horsemanship method. That mare is about average sized for a quarterhorse, so you can see why people mistake Remington for being a draft.

"Division" is typically used out West, "precinct" in the East. My old department in Colorado used Division.

The three state universities in Iowa (Iowa State U., U. of Iowa, and U. of Northern Iowa) are all governed by an elected Board of Regents. Each of them has a certified police department -- *NOT* security; they are academy trained and certified, fully sworn police officers with powers of arrest, etc. The state of Iowa uses a centralized police academy, where all cops attend regardless of who their employer is (except the state patrol, which has their own). The university cops attend the same academy as everyone else. For years, the Board of Regents refused to allow them to be armed. They did everything a regular police department does, but they did it without guns. The most frustrating of all this is, state POST standards require a certain amount of firearms training and range qualification to maintain certification, SO THEY HAD AN ARMS ROOM FULL OF GUNS! They would take the guns to the range, qualify, send the paperwork into the POST board for certification record-keeping, and put the guns back into the arms room. Decades of lobbying didn't work until there was a shooting involving one of the cops, who happened to be a mentor to me. I was a student employee of one of the said departments -- not a cop -- but simultaneously a part-time Sheriff's Deputy for our County Sheriff. Wildly enough, as a barely trained part-time cop I had a gun and he didn't. He came out ok and the suspect was arrested. He just retired from policing a few years ago, but his incident convinced the Board of Regents that these guys needed to be armed like every other cop in the country. At first they balked at the "initial costs of training and purchasing guns and related equipment," until the chief brought them in and showed them the arms room they had been maintaining for decades. Cost = $0 above what they were already doing. They're armed now.

One of my friends was at a gun show back in the mid-1990s when he saw an old man walking around carrying a rifle and a "for sale" sign pinned to his back. He had spent all his money for the day, but figured if they struck a bargain he could visit an ATM (fairly new back then). He struck up a conversation with the old man, and quickly realized he was selling a Volcanic Arms rifle. Whut. The guy didn't even know what it was beyond an "old rifle," but figured "a gun this old oughta be worth about $100." My buddy couldn't say yes fast enough, but the guy wasn't willing for him to wait to go to an ATM at a nearby gas station. Missed opportunity.

In my many travels, I took the opportunity to visit Harper's Ferry, WV back in 2010. I had been called to active duty by the army to work in the pentagon for a year, and spent my weekends visiting the historic sites on the East coast. Harper's Ferry was the site of the army's first arsenal; some of the machinery appears in one of the photos. It is also the site of the famous action by John Brown, who tried to incite a slave rebellion in 1859 in Harper's Ferry. He was accompanied by Harriet Tubman and others. He was captured, tried, and hung as a traitor. The building in which he holed up and had a stand-off with the army is the last photo. The most interesting tidbit of this whole affair was that Colonel Robert E. Lee, U.S. Army, was in command of the forces sent to capture him.

Pard, I don't know if you caught it on the other thread, but I happen to be a huge Shakespeare-o-phile. About two years ago, I found myself in England on official business and traveled most of the central, north, and eastern portions. I had business up in Yorkshire one day. The following day I had nothing to do but drive 6.5 hours back down to London for a flight out the day after. That travel time is counted as my work day, so it was a 6.5 hour work day for me. However, on the way to London from Yorkshire is a well-known little village called Stratford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace and home of William Shakespeare. So, of course, I made the pilgrimage. I have dozens of pictures, but these are of his home. Remember, he made leather gloves as a profession to pay the bills -- writing and acting didn't pay well -- hence the glove making shop.