DEEP NIGHT SHIFT, DALLAS POLICE

AM12:00

About 40 uniformed officers gather in a classroom at the Northeast Substation of the Dallas Police Department. They are rookies. Most appear to be under 30. Our tour guides are officers Lacie Darnell, 26, one of two females in the room, and Scot Ansley, 30. A sergeant takes roll call and warns, “The call load is crazy.” There was a drug-related shooting at an East Dallas apartment complex. “We expect some sort of retaliation.” Dallas is a few days away from implementing new open carry gun laws, which will allow citizens to openly carry holstered handguns. “Watch the video,” the sergeant says, directing the officers to an informational video on the police website. They take up a collection to buy a Christmas present for Cecelia the custodian.

AM12:15

Darnell and Ansley check their squad car for damages incurred during the previous shift. They stop at their respective personal vehicles to grab gear — gas mask, rain jacket, rain hat, for instance. “I hate the rain hat,” Ansley says. “It looks dumb.”

AM12:23

They head north on Audelia toward their assigned patrol area, sector 105, beat 213, which includes what they call “5 Points,” also known as Vickery Meadow. The assigned section is like home base, but they travel all over the subdivision — which includes Lake Highlands, East Dallas and Preston Hollow — answering calls as needed.

AM12:24

There is a non-emergency disturbance near Casa View — yelling and a loud bang. They turn around.

AM12:26

Darnell says she had a pretty rough childhood. “I wanted to do something no one else in my family could or would do,” she says. She majored in criminal justice at University of North Texas.

AM12:29

The caller, a middle-aged woman with dark hair pinned atop her head, answers the door. The noises came from the neighbors, she says, pointing. Next door, a man, woman and Doberman pinscher materialize from the shadows. The man says he’s car- rying a gun and raises his arms so Ansley can pat him down. He shows his Concealed Handgun License. Darnell scratches the dog’s head. The officers separate the couple and hear their stories, which coalesce. Back in the car, Darnell says, “There’s nothing, really, that we can do. We had to make sure there was no family violence, because we would have had to make an arrest.” But both parties assured officers the fighting was over, that the loud noise was simply a truck door slamming.

AM1:04

Darnell lives in North Dallas and has always been a night owl, she says. She can’t imagine patrolling days, with all the traffic. Ansley spent a year on days and wanted to come back to nights. “I like the sense of camaraderie. There are more people my age range. I just like it,” he says. They get off at 8 a.m., unless they are in the middle of something and have to work later. Darnell kind of enjoys shows like “Law and Order.” Ansley says he thinks all those cop shows are ridiculous. Darnell says she especially likes SVU. “I might have named my dog Benson,” she adds, smirking.

AM1:15

Darnell and Ansley respond to a non-urgent call that came in 90 minutes earlier. A woman who lives on Fair Oaks says someone is shining bright lights into her front window. They peruse the perimeters of the residence in question, a spacious two-story abode with big bay windows — it sits mid-street, at the top of a hill, facing a stop sign and three-way intersection. Because it’s late, Darnell calls the complaintant in lieu of knocking. But the caller wants the officers to come inside — she thinks she saw a shadow in the backyard. Wearing a bathrobe and slippers, she tells Ansley and Darnell she doesn’t sleep much. Spends most nights sitting on her upstairs deck, smoking. She says she has cancer. Darnell hears the woman’s concerns about the cars driving up and down the street that intersects her property, and their god-awful lights. Ansley suggests the blackout curtains he installed in his own home. They help him sleep during daylight hours, he offers. The woman snaps at him. “I do not want blackout curtains! I want people to stop shining their lights in here.” Ansley inches backward, letting his partner reclaim the conversation. “OK, ma’am, he is just trying to offer a suggestion,” Darnell says. “Because there isn’t anything we can do right now.” The woman relaxes. They remind her that her neighborhood association has its own paid patrolman who is parked right up the street. Leaving, we pass his cruiser.

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Parked at the stop sign, its headlights illuminate the caller’s living room.

AM1:38

Red Bulls are purchased at QT on Skillman at Northwest Highway. “I’ll only use the bathrooms at QT or Race Track,” Darnell confides. Her other public-bathroom options are gross.

AM1:44

En route to the site of a reported theft at an apartment on Whitehurst, Darnell, who weighs maybe 115 and looks like she could be a high school student, coolly recounts her recent encounter at a neighborhood apartment complex with a man’s mutilated body. “They cut his throat and pulled his tongue through the wound. He was so bloody, I didn’t know that was what it was until later,” she says. “It is a thing the drug cartels will do.”

AM1:46

A tenant of the Las Brisas apartments says a man she hired on Craigslist to help her move stole some of her clothing, including a dress. Her one-bedroom apartment is stuffed floor-toceiling with boxes. The hired man helped her pack and wound up staying for a month, she says. She let him borrow her car yesterday, she says, which is when he removed the shopping bags containing a $200 dress. Darnell listens to the whole story, nods and asks questions. She explains that the theft is a civil case now, because the man was living with her. “He did not live with me,” the woman barks. “I barely knew him.” Darnell asks, “You say he slept on your couch since Thanksgiving, right?” That’s right, the woman admits. Darnell explains that this constitutes cohabitation in the eyes of the law. The woman rants that Texas is the worst place she has ever lived. Her laundry has been stolen three times from the apartment’s laundry room. The officers listen and nod and tell her to call them if the man comes back. “Do not let him back in,” they say. Before leaving, Darnell asks the woman about the other man, the one who was here last time she came. The woman says she doesn’t know what Darnell is talking about.

AM2:21

Back in the squad car Darnell says she is positive she was there recently and that the caller had a similar story the last time.

“We see a lot of repeat customers on nights,” Ansley adds. Sometimes her job is simply to lend an ear or to comfort someone who is anxious, Darnell says. Sometimes, if the caller seems especially troubled, these types of visits lead to contacting Adult Protective Services.

AM2:25

As we pass The Haven apartments at Lake Highlands Town Center, Ansley says he found a naked guy sitting in his car there the other night.

AM2:34

The security guards at Valencio apartments in Vickery Meadow need assistance — trouble with a belligerent drunk. The complex is silent and dark, aside from impressive holiday light displays on several porches. The guards explain that they found a man sleeping in the passen- ger side of a car. When they attempted to wake him, they say, he began swinging. “When you startle a drunk person, that tends to happen,” Darnell says. Ansley approaches the vehicle containing the unconscious man and attempts to stir him. The man is disoriented but calm, at first — but a language barrier breeds confusion and soon he is yelling things in Burmese, and people emerge from nearby apartments. When the man begins howling and hitting, Ansley cuffs him and escorts him to the backseat of the police car. That’s when his bawling wife comes running from a downstairs apartment. A youngster from upstairs translates. The couple fought earlier, we learn, which is why the husband was sleeping in the car. Through the teenaged interpreter, Darnell explains to the woman that her husband will not be locked up for long. She hands her a piece of paper with the number and address to the Dallas Marshall’s office, where he will spend the night in the drunk tank. A back-up cruiser drives away with him.

AM3:13

Idling at Vickery Meadow park, Darnell types the report. She can’t do it while the car is moving — she gets carsick. If needed somewhere, they would switch places so she could drive and he could type, but things are quiet now.

AM3:45

The young officers agree that the worst parts of the job include any crime involving children. Just last week they discovered a deceased infant. The caregiver reportedly had rolled on top of the baby, who suffocated. Ansley recalls the recent case of a 13-year-old impregnated by her own father. Darnell lies awake some nights thinking of a kid she picked up walking down a residential street in his pajamas. It was a nice neighborhood and he was just wandering alone. No one knew who he was. Finally they found his house through the homeowners association. Inside they discovered a filthy, chaotic mess of a living situation and the boy’s father naked and inebriated inside a closet. “He was the sweetest kid,” Darnell recalls. “He drew me a picture that I still have. Thing was, inside that house, there were photos that had been taken maybe a year earlier, and the dad looked OK. They looked happy and OK. What had gone so wrong?” It all brought her own dysfunctional childhood to mind, Darnell concedes. It’s also hard because, once her part is done, she leaves the case behind. She doesn’t know what happened to that little boy after leaving him with Child Protective Services. “We don’t get closure,” she says.

— Christina Hughes Babb

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