Keeping the Peace

publication date: Mar 24, 2008

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author/source: Daniel Tyree McElrath / STAFF

By Daniel Tyree McElrath/STAFF

Top: Officer Nurse checks the details of a call on his computer. Above: Officer Harrison runs a check on a car that was operating without lights.

We recently got the bright idea to ride with the men and women of the Alpharetta Police Department on a Saturday night. The department, which is under the umbrella of Alpharetta Pubic Safety, is nationally recognized as one of the finest in the nation. It manages to maintain a very low crime rate despite the city’s proximity to Atlanta, a place with one of the country’s highest crime rates.

We contacted Public Information Officer George Gordon, who quickly arranged the ride along.

Ride Along
Alpharetta’s government prides itself on transparency and provides opportunities for close observation with minimal hassle. Signing a waiver is all that is required to ride along with the police.

I was met at Police Headquarters by Lt. Craig Garner, a gracious man who remains enthusiastic about the job, even after 18 years.

“You should’ve been here last night,” he says.

He introduces me to the shift during roll call and shows me the report log detailing recent police calls. One report describes a suspect who, while in custody was discovered in the process of “slipping” his cuffs. He then threatened the officer who had him in custody, requiring an attitude adjustment in the form of OC spray.

Garner also brings me to his computer and shows me dramatic footage of what had transpired the previous evening. The footage was from the camera mounted in the patrol car of the responding officer, Chris Harrison.

Officer Harrison had responded to a call of someone being pistol-whipped at the Waffle House. Upon Harrison’s arrival, a suspect who was standing on the passenger side of a van with his hand on an object in his waistband quickly climbed into the vehicle. When Harrison activated his lights, the man jumped from the van, switched the object – which was now visible as a gun – from his right to his left hand and took off at a run around the restaurant. Harrison immediately gave chase.

Harrison can be seen returning from around the building. He prevents the vehicle from leaving as another officer arrives on scene. The two officers perform what is called a felony stop, taking the occupants into custody.

Garner explains that the suspect ran into the woods. Harrison, per his training, had not pursued an armed suspect into the woods by himself.
A perimeter was soon established and a K-9 unit called in. The dog followed a circuitous track, but officers were unable to locate the suspect.

When questioned, the occupants of the vehicle claimed they didn’t know the person who ran from the van, and there were no legal grounds on which to hold them. The officers believe the men were something less than sincere.

The initial report of a pistol whipping had been erroneous.


Officer Harrison
Harrison, Garner tells me, is a combat veteran of the Iraq War, having served in the 1st Calvary Unit. He was an infantry soldier and is a Purple Heart recipient, having been hit in the leg with shrapnel from a mortar round.

He is also the officer involved in the shooting of a shotgun-wielding suspect several weeks ago, the city’s first such incident in 15 years.

“He’s seen more at 24 than most people will see in their lifetime,” says Garner.

Harrison, when he appears, has a more succinct way of putting it. “I’m sort of a [trouble] magnet,” he grins. “I don’t mean I go out looking for it; it sort of finds me.”

A decorated war veteran, a police officer who has been involved in a deadly force situation and one who 24 hours earlier had engaged in a foot chase with an armed suspect. This was going to be good.

Harrison, who grew up between Roswell and Alpharetta, likes police work and wants to stay with the Alpharetta department. “I love it. It’s a great job,” he says. He has a SWAT Team tryout scheduled soon.

The officers work 12-hour shifts with a three-day weekend every other week. There are about 11 officers per shift, including a captain, two shift lieutenants and two field training officers who are corporals. Also on duty are four dispatchers.

After roll-call, which includes important updates and new issues to be aware of (like where suspects are hiding cuff keys these days), the officers head out.

On Patrol
All right, it’s on.
1847 hrs: We pull over a green Chrysler LHS with dealer tags for unknown insurance status. Ooh.

1900 hrs: We attempt to intercept a reported drunken driver at her home address. However, she beats us there. The car is in the driveway and no one witnessed her behind the wheel. She slides in safe at home.

1905 hrs. Finally, we have something that looks promising. The vehicle in front of us is being operated erratically, the driver unable to maintain her lane. Harrison lights her up. He returns to the cruiser shaking his head.

“She was putting on makeup,” says Harrison. “Had a big makeup bag in her lap and everything.”

We are soon reduced to running Texas tags. “I always run Texas plates,” explains Harrison. “They don’t have stickers, so there’s no way to tell when they’re expired without calling them in. People with Texas plates will just ride around forever.”

Well, it’s boring but it couldn’t get any worse, right? Wrong.
1946 hrs. A noise complaint turns out to be a kid’s Sweet Sixteen party, at home with parents present. “I hate crashing kids’ birthday parties,” says Harrison. “Don’t take any pictures of this.”

He asks the DJ to turn down the bass on the sound system, a request that is quickly complied with. The family indicates they have a problem with a particular neighbor.

“The noise ordinance doesn’t go into effect until 10 p.m.,” says Harrison. “There is a permissible decibel level, but I don’t have my noise meter with me,” he adds sarcastically.

And so it goes. A sudden U-turn behind a restaurant turns out to be a hostess who forgot something inside. Suspicious activity behind Alpharetta Presbyterian Church is revealed to be an Easter celebration lighted with tiki torches.

Harrison looks glum. “You should have been here last night,” he says.

Different Cruiser, Same Story
I am transferred to the car of Officer Keithroy Nurse, a physically imposing man whose physique is offset by a gentle manner and lilting Caribbean accent. He hails from the U.S. Virgin Islands, having lived a number of years in Brooklyn before settling in Alpharetta. In New York he had served 10 years as a bailiff in night court.

“Definitely a different beast up there,” says Nurse, describing law enforcement in the Big Apple.

In Georgia he had first been a corrections officer at a state prison before becoming a jailer in Alpharetta. He then moved to the evidence office and then to fingerprinting and pulling permits. Finally, he went to the police academy, becoming a fully mandated officer three years ago. While on the job he managed to earn a bachelor’s degree in public leadership administration.

Unnecessarily, I tell him how quiet the shift has been. “Man, you should have been here last night,” says Nurse. “It was jumping.”

Despite the change in escorts my luck remains the same. We get a call to a domestic dispute. Two grown half-sisters have been thrown out of their parents’ home, but the child of one of the women is still inside.

Nurse and another officer talk to the family. It was one daughter’s birthday and the two had wanted to go out to celebrate, leaving their parents with the children. The father (father of one, stepfather of the other) objected and opted to throw the girls out instead. Bundles of belongings lay about the doorway.

The women want the child and the rest of their belongings. They say they have called a friend who will pick them up and that they have someone with whom they can stay. The problem is the friend is on I-285 on a Saturday night and it’s cold out. The women remove their property from the house and each has a toddler with her now. They ask if they can sit in the back of the cruiser.

They are women. They’ve got toddlers. It’s cold. Of course they can wait in the cruiser. They do so for two hours.

The mother comes out of the house and asks them not to leave. She says that her husband has relented and says they may return. Nurse, too, asks the women to go back inside, but they decline, saying they refuse to be treated like that. It also comes out that there is tension between the father and the father of one of the toddlers. The latter was expected to participate in the birthday celebration.

It’s a small world. While waiting, Nurse learns that he lived in the same Texas city where the girls grew up. The world gets even smaller when the friend arrives. He, like Nurse, is from St. Croix. It turns out that Nurse used to date his sister.

Interesting, but not what I had in mind when the evening began.

Good Night, Nurse
Upon finally leaving the domestic dispute, Nurse secures North Park after surveying it for illicit lovers and the like. He also tours hotel parking lots. There has been a rash of “45’s” (entering autos) and Alpharetta PD jumps on that sort of thing, explains Nurse.

We maintain a presence. He looks at his computer and notes the location of other officers. “Even the captain is patrolling parking lots. And we have undercover units. Our best weapons are saturation, saturation and saturation.” Criminals may see them first, notes Nurse, but often that’s enough to prevent a crime.

We stop by the city’s only open bar at that hour, Wild Wings. There is an officer at the door as well as an off-duty officer inside. Nurse introduces me. “You should have been here last night,” says Officer Burger.

Finally, I give up. Harrison and Nurse both actually apologize that nothing has happened during the course of the evening.

And the city of Alpharetta thanks them for that very same thing.