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I'm resuming my volunteer work with the local police department Saturday night. We routinely check license plates at the local motels. A local license plate is a red flag. It usually signals a room rental used for drug parties or a transient meth lab. The department just outfitted us with 2 cars including light bars and radios. It's a mixed blessing. The cars have very useful resources, but also render you a labeled target. We're prohibited from carrying our CCW weapons while volunteering. The increased threat levels almost make me want to do patrols in my personal car to be less conspicuous.

I'm wondering how this volunteer relationship might change if we get hit in the next few months. Normally, we just act as extra eyes and ears. Additional training allows participation in taking reports of property crimes, non-injury accidents and directing traffic. Anything to free up the two sworn officers on duty at any given time. It's not unusual for me to have my wife running dispatch during her regular shift while I'm out in the COP patrol. We might pull the local ham operators in to help if things get bad. My wife and I both have ham licenses. She could double as emergency services net control on a ham frequency while dispatching police/fire/ambulance on the PD radio. We did that in San Diego at the Sheriff's Dept.