WTBL - Walking the Blue Line

WTBL Walking the Blue Line (00:11)
Big hello to all of our listeners. Thanks for tuning in. This week's episode is about firsts. You know, if you think back to your first day on the job or maybe your first day in school or maybe the first time you had a boyfriend or a girlfriend, those firsts can be a little bit scary, intimidating, and maybe hilarious, depending upon how things go. So I hope that you'll listen to this episode.

and see some of the humor in it that I do now looking back many years later. Next week we anticipate returning with a normal full length episode as this one's just a little bit short, but all the same, hope you enjoy and be safe out there.

Yvonne (00:55)
Hi, welcome to the Walking the Blue

thought we would talk today about first. Everyone has a first something and so how about Lyle you tell us about your very first traffic stop.

Lyle (01:05)
I've got a lot of years in law enforcement and I actually started in the ⁓ security police law enforcement of the US Air

joined the

National Guard over in Montana and we were on a deployment. So I was fresh out of high school, had gone through the academy for the ⁓ US Air Force and we deployed down to

Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. And we were down there doing a couple of weeks of annual duty. So they blended us into the police force that was already there on the base.

Yvonne (01:40)
So, ⁓ were you scared?

Lyle (01:42)
Well, I wasn't scared at first, but I am pretty young. I was pretty new at it. And how old are you? Like 18, 19 years old.

Yvonne (01:52)
And how old do you have to be to be a cop not in the

Lyle (01:56)
everywhere is 21 years old.

Yvonne (01:58)
We're 18 at this

Lyle (02:02)
right out of high school almost where I had just finished my training at San Antonio Lackland Air Force Base. And we got this chance to go down to Florida for a couple of weeks and help out with different duties on the base. one of the things that the security police do for

military is regulate those people that can come on and go off of the base. this is one of the first duties that they had given us. I went out, spent like my morning working one of the gates and flagging people through, checking IDs, issuing visitor passes, all of that kind of

Exciting, very exciting. You see, you see all generals coming through and

Yvonne (02:38)
exciting stuff.

Lyle (02:45)
all of the pilots and such and they're officers and for those of you that don't know anything about the military You know officers are kind of the management the admin and then you've got the enlisted people the grunts. I was a grunt. I a Believe Yes, yeah, well, especially when you come right out of basic Airman first class maybe and so I'm maybe two steps up the

Yvonne (03:00)
The man on the totem pole.

Lyle (03:10)
the totem pole on a very tall totem pole. I'm kind of hanging out down at the bottom, swimming at the shallow end of the gene pool. So I don't know anything. I haven't been doing this very long. Haven't really done it in real life, but they stick me out there all by myself. then midway through the day, they want to give us some relief. Let us come in for lunch.

do something different than stand at this gate all day. So they sent my relief out and he brings a patrol car and this is like one of the first times I get to drive a patrol car all by myself. Exciting. Exciting, was, yeah. Excited. Right, they typically don't turn you loose with that kind of stuff. You go out with a trainer and all of that

Yvonne (03:45)
I'd be

Lyle (03:52)
since we were only there for a couple of weeks we didn't get a lot of that.

initial training that regular police would get.

Yvonne (03:59)
So did you get to go like patrol the base?

Lyle (04:02)
Got to go to patrol the base a couple of times but on this particular day for my first traffic stop I was just headed from point A to point B. They told me, get the patrol car at the gate and drive it back to the station where then I would get a chance to go take my lunch But as typical with Florida, it's either sunny or it's raining and it was a very...

rainy day. It was a little bit in the afternoon so it was kind of getting dusk out actually by the time I was at this point in my shift and I see this van driving down the road you know all suspicious on an Air Force base right? No security at all. No security there at all. They just let everybody on there.

This van doesn't have any taillights whatsoever. It's a little actually hard to see in the rain and such. I kind of get the idea in my mind is like, well, you know, I should probably stop this person and tell them there's no way I'm going to write a ticket. That's like, paperwork and such. But yeah, exactly. And I have never done that before either. So at the very least, I'll make a traffic stop.

Yvonne (05:01)
You don't know how to do that.

Lyle (05:08)
I muster up all of my courage to get on the radio first of all and say, I'm conducting a traffic stop, which I don't think my flight chief, the supervisor, expected me to be doing. Put out my location, license plate number, reason for the stop. You actually have to give a reason why you're pulling someone over. So I say, you know, no tail lights. I initiate my traffic stop and then.

Van pulls over into a parking lot and I go to get out and about this time I realize my knees are a little bit shaky. know, it was like I've never done this before and what if this person does something and all of the things that I haven't really thought through in my mind and these windows are a little bit dark tinted you know I can't really see what's going on up there but I get it all together.

walk up and the lady who's driving rolls down the window and I have a soccer mom with four kids in there and I probably nervously can I have your driver's license registration military ID yeah exactly everybody's scared because the cops are pulling over and then she's gonna have to explain this ticket to her husband when she gets home right

Yvonne (06:13)
I feel when I'm pulled over

Lyle (06:30)
And in the military, it isn't like civilian where you just go pay a fine or actually you contest it in court. your first sergeant gets involved in these kinds of things. So nobody wants a ticket, because your commander's going to hear about it. she's probably thinking, my husband is going to kill me or something to that effect.

Yvonne (06:50)
Obviously

she wasn't in a uniform or anything.

Lyle (06:53)
So no, she was Yeah,

military. she's married to someone who's stationed there and she's a dependent so I Explained to her that the reason I'm pulling her over is because of her taillights being out and with the rain and everything she was a little difficult to see and She's super cooperative and it was like, thank you. Thank you so much, you know that kind of thing and I'm like

I'll be right back. So second part that I've never done before is check somebody's name on the air. Well, this isn't like a real big violation. I can see she's got a driver's license. I could see she's got her dependent ID card. So I'm not even going to bother with this because I'm already nervous and nervous and figuring that my flight chief is going to rip me a new one.

Yvonne (07:42)
are

you doing out there? You need a car for 10 minutes?

Lyle (07:45)
Ten minutes and you're going crazy. Thank goodness it wasn't the general's daughter or something like

Yvonne (07:51)
wouldn't want in you then

Lyle (07:53)
Yeah, so

I write all of her information down and then go back up and give her her driver's license and registration and such back and say, you just need to concentrate on getting this fixed and I hope that you have a good day. thank you. Thank you very much. And she was on her way and I went back to my car and about

Yvonne (08:13)
I'm doing that again real

Lyle (08:14)
but then I got to go back and bragged to my buddy. I pulled somebody over. I'm big cheese now.

Yvonne (08:17)
Hey, I pulled somebody.

Was

this your best friend Rob or was this somebody else?

Lyle (08:24)
Rob

was

Rob and I have

Friends in grade school, high school, college, joined the military together and he was on this deployment too. I had to go back and brag to Rob. That you were the first one. Got to make my first traffic stop. All the excitement that went with it.

Yvonne (08:34)
Rub it in just a little bit.

You and Rob have a slight competition going.

Lyle (08:43)
Yes, we do. We like to keep things lively occasionally. And you know, it's always good to be the first. Well, actually not always, because then you're going to be the first to screw up when you do something wrong.

Yvonne (08:58)
That has to be your first, yeah. Or you don't learn anything. Say, you learn the most when you mess up.

Lyle (09:00)
Exactly Right.

Yep. You know good judgment comes from bad decisions bad decisions come from bad judgment so Yeah, usually but hey that was my first traffic stop You know would be three years or so later before I would ever get the chance to do that again ⁓ when I became an employee at the Spokane County Sheriff's Office, but

Yvonne (09:11)
and he learned what not to do pretty quick.

Lyle (09:27)
had that one under my belt and it was kind of fun to look back on. Very nerve wracking at the time.

Yvonne (09:34)
So we'd like to conclude this one

Lyle (09:37)
let us know if there's anything in particular that you have questions about, comments that you'd like to make, answers to any of questions. Thanks for joining us today on Walking the Blue Line.

Yvonne (09:47)
We'll talk to you later.