I am a Vernon County Deputy on patrol, I am Batman

When you work the night shift, you get to know the perfect places to sit and watch; maybe a side road where you can see a busy intersection, or an alley where you can see down a street full of houses or commercial buildings, or an area of the county where there has been suspicious activity reported.

You sit in the night, quiet, windows down, so you can hear the sounds from the neighborhood, radio turned down just low enough that only you can hear it from inside the car. Watching, waiting, for that moment when you are needed to spring into action and do what you do best, find and apprehend someone trying to commit a crime against another person or their property.

On a deputy's shift, calls vary from high priority and high call volume to lower priority and fewer calls. During the times throughout the day, evening, or night, when call volumes are lower, deputies start doing patrol checks on towns, houses (that have requested them), and randomly patrol areas of the county. It can be difficult at times for a deputy to switch from that adrenaline rush on a high priority call, to just patrolling and watching with the patience that it requires.

I have found there is a great benefit from patrolling areas of the county on a strictly pro-active approach. This is not hard to get eager deputies to do, because after all, they are cops, and they like catching bad guys. They want to constantly be moving and looking. But I have also found that sometimes you can be moving so much and trying so hard, that you miss something going on in the background.

There is another approach that can be taken from pro-active patrolling and it is what I have begun to call "Batman mode." I remember watching the old "Batman and Robin" show when I was a kid and at the end of the show, you would see batman sitting on top of some building overlooking the city, quietly watching and waiting for something that caught his attention. Then he would instantly come to life and be gone, heading directly toward a sound of distress. It is the idea that sometimes we can be so caught up in what we are doing, that we can miss what is right in front of us.

I had a deputy from another county tell me a story about a night when he was patrolling and had to slow down and wait on an old farm truck to get out of the road. He was impatient because he was "in a hurry to patrol," and almost drove around the truck. But as he started to drive around it, he noticed a feed sack fall off the truck to reveal a flat screen television and several other items hidden behind the feed sacks. They had been stealing from a building right in front of him!

Sometimes you have to take a breath and slow down to see what could be happening right in the midst of everyone. Learn to be alert, but patient. Deputies cannot be Superman, and I do not want them climbing buildings, but they can be just a little like Batman, ready to jump when danger calls.