Yesterday my officers ran a tag that came back to a different vehicle and they got out with the driver when he stopped at a restaurant. They had me run the vin of the vehicle and the drivers dl. The tag, vin, and dl all came back to different people but the driver didn't have any active warrants. What he did have was some drugs so they ended up taking him to jail.
About an hour later I got a message from my bestie
"What happened at *restaurant name*"
Turns out she was literally sitting at the table next to the guy who got arrested. But what's most interesting is the difference in our perspectives.
From my point of view it was all very clinical. Wrong tag on the wrong vehicle and neither the tag or vehicle are in the name of the guy driving it who is suspended and shouldn't be driving to begin with, plus he had drugs. Of course he's going to jail.
From her point of view a man was having lunch with is teenage son (who I never even knew was there) when some officers came in and made him go outside. One of our officers is on the short side and she described him as "a squirrel with his tail puffed out" because he was acting much bigger and badder than he was 😂.
When the father and son went outside she (being very nosey) acted like she wanted to get something out of her vehicle (which was shockingly also parked next to the other vehicle). The first time she went out the poor son seemed very distraught and was on the phone with someone, presumably calling for a ride. The second time she went out the son was gone and the father was being put in the back of the officer's vehicle.
There's a kind of disconnect from the world when you work dispatch. You can rely only on second hand information from the public or records from DMV and criminal databases. In some ways it kinda sucks. From my perspective this was a sketch dude and from hers he was a father.