ticket to ride

cold blue steel..

well, I went into Santa Barbara Friday around 12:15 PM and it took me 20 minutes from Carp! 20 MINUTES!! traffic is heavy all day and all of the night..all day and all of the night..so I'm thinking as I'm dawdling among other drivers if my slacks are ok..if I look ok enough to ride in a cop car..yes I do..

so I get to the police station at 1:00 PM and wait in the lobby and a tall cop comes out and greets me..hey it's Officer Mark Corbett...the News-Press can't stop writing delusional fiction about him and his wife!

so we enter the cavernous police headquarters...this place is cool..it's got everything...if the world ends I'm heading here to hideout...they'd never find me!!

Officer Corbett gives me the dime tour.... he gives me a sticker to put on my jacket alerting everyone I'm the "ride-along"..then I meet the gal who I talked on the phone with....Oh Oh Pretty Woman!! then we check some other places out..the command and control center, a lab.... little rooms.. big rooms..crazy rooms...freezers..lockers...computers and monitors..the dispatch center....I COULD RULE THE WORLD FROM THIS ROOM!!

next we looked at the little city jail that reminded me of Alcatraz...had to be careful what I photographed due to the sensitve nature of this particular operation...

then some cadets were coming down the stairs and addressed Corbett as "sir"...this was just after I met the Range Master...that's right.... the SBPD has a range master...he asks Corbett if he wants to shoot...Corbett says yeah..so we all go to the shooting gallery....

now if you saw the movie Magnum Force when Clint shoots targets in the gallery with the younger cops, then you'll know how I felt....before we entered I got issued safety glasses and hearing protectors....the range master set up the scenerio for Corbett...it's how the cops train for dangerous situations when lethal force may be necessary...they use a simulated crime scene with posters of fake criminals with guns...the bad guys and some pictures of cops with guns, the good guys...

then the shooting started..yeah baby... that's what I'm talking about!! Corbett pulls out the cold blue steel and... bam bam bang bang boom boom!!!

I was in a little booth/control room and I heard it loud and clear....Jesus it was loud like a cannon!! then we went to check out the targets to see what he hit.....spent shell casings everywhere and holes in the bad guys..the good guys had no holes in them.....wow, that was a cool demo...

the police station has a lot of things going on...it's a cool building but obviously needs to be bigger and better.....for the cops and the citizens.. move them out of the basement!

Santa Barbara would be crazy to deny the funds to upgrade the site... preventing the Granada garage fiasco could have paid for it..maybe instead of pissing money away on redoing local creeks that don't need more than a cleaning once a year, or redoing sidewalks every week, or spending money to turn around some benches on State St, the focus should on getting a new police station....let's see some real leadership on the council!! and not one member of the Santa Barbara City Council has done a ride-along..Dale... Frank..Mayor..where's the commitment??

ok...geez, an hour's gone by and we're not out of the building yet! look..more pictures on the wall of cops...new cops, decorated cops, smiling cops..proud cops..professional cops...not the kind of cops that Noozhawk or the News-Press write about...those cops are a figment of Steepleton and Lance's imagination....take a tour and see what these folks deal with on a daily basis...

yes... tomorrow, let's take a look at what the cops deal with..on the street..the good....and the bad...