good evening and welcome to the run around i me and reynolds and this day in the life starts in the evening as we spend the night with officer melissa o'connor of the belmont police department come with us as we see what a night like for her and for the which is extremely it's required now for all officers to wear this all times i did it just the other day actually this week an officer in brockton was saved using a bulletproof vest he was shot in the chest and know he's saved and then probably one of the most important things we put on as a radio this is how we make contact with dispatch wherever in trouble we ever knew to get a hold of someone all radios one form of  to make sure she's ok so come on let's go forty nine is actually up here but just a little bit further i think that the fire trucks up there that's what's causing the stress so more here in the area we kind of call off from the dispatch know that we're here three so you can put me off in the area forty nine one hundred hurt or so as you can see up here the fire department's already here and they're investigating seen this type of call is pretty much a fire call from the start  burning something burning so once we can get through these cars will do is at one point of lights on and so right in front of the fire truck and see if they need us to direct traffic on the interesting part of this job is other things change and you never know what's going to happen to be our new way to go do something and then get a call and you just have to go with it things change all the time and should be ok with that now the traffic seems to be running pretty smoothly both sides can get through  going to keep my distance and see if the fire department needs any help on their end they're still investigating the burning  so i'll be clear long with the fire so right now we're going to head over to well one of our officers our father fortunate passed away and so we're going to go to the funeral home and not  one thing we make sure we always do there's not a lot of us men and women in blue so we try and support each other is as much as we possibly can going across the line a little bit into watertown i'm headed to the de vito funeral home and  involved in the death and i'll go right behind this cruise and that's our computer system basically use every single day we sign on to those two screens one so we know everyone is on the screen to get a good idea someone somewhere and maybe they need help well know exactly where they are what address they're at and to run plates which we do when we run our traffic assignments and either pull vehicles over or a car accident and need information whether their registration is active or their license is active and then i can go from there with that ok now we're going to go lights and sirens where the motor vehicle accident or unaware fit any injuries so we have our blue lights on now when we get to an intersection i use my sirens were going to the intersection of pleasant street lake street day so that was just a motor vehicle accident that was just a motor vehicle accident luckily it was minor there was no injuries with me the party and with minor damage to anymore a vehicle accident estimated around under a thousand dollars of damage what we do is we do a paper exchange  to take that call over and he's going to exchange paperwork and i we're going to be clear and the route i'm in tonight is three eight six which is involves the high school so when we go to the high school if there's ever a parking complaint or if the detail officers need assistance or they need a patrol officer i'll be dispatched to that when we get off at the high school and we attend the football game i'll be in my sector so what we do is i call off and we go over there  so we're lucky enough that the football game tonight is in my sector so we will catch that ok here at the football game i'm here with captain or who's in charge of the police detail the football game and he's going to explain where the five offices here and then we'll have one over with the visitors stands full of one officer up there on the corner of the stands where we usually have most of the belmont kids stand and they they have some fun there and then they'll beat me usually standing right around here that's how we put up the five officers and at the gates we assist the school department in making sure people aren't bringing in any alcohol and while we're in the stands and talking with the students and watching what they're doing i'll make sure they're not under the influence and usually they aren't the details who for the football game soon don't want usually very calm but we've had a couple minor problems at different times and we usually resolve them pretty easily without without a whole bunch of fanfare or typically not a rest  so we're doing pretty well at games like this must be good for them to get to know you in a different light that's right yes absolutely and we get to know the kids and they get to see us in a different light it will settle it it's about rebuilding relationships it works the kids like it  playing sports really keeps you out of trouble your practice every day games i may have a really good fan base and a net net and adrenalin and excitement really keeps you going in the right way for me it sometimes now when i see it we see a lot more increased calls with drug activity unfortunately and and kids seem to be a part of that i think a big issue within the high school is that they do not have a school resource officer anymore they don't have that person to go to to talk to that they can trust someone they can build a relationship with someone that they can talk to about family issues or drug issues or any type of issues that they might not want to speak to their friends about or they might be embarrassed to speak to the friends about it so i feel the lack of having a role model in the high school as known to me has a school resource officer or maybe the lack of kids not playing sports for whatever reason for being a part of other activities music arts and stuff like that most frequently in belmont believe it or not his stuff like heroin we see a lot of that we see a lot of prescription drugs  alcohol is kind of diminished marijuana occasionally but more the heavy heavy duty drugs like heroin is probably the most frequent don't you see i'm i'd say in the town i'm the from wherever they get them technology has increased a lot with cell phones and a very common call that we've been getting is getting dispatched to someone high school for larcenies which kids are stealing each other's cell phones and i pods and that type of stuff and luckily for us with i phones they have that find my i phone which we're being able to track down stolen phones and track them down and find out who has taken always change so we try and go a little faster than normal with the blue lights on to get there as soon as we can like i said because you never know what you're going to show up on a motor vehicle accident with those two people i believe two vehicles involved in the every intersection no matter what but we have to be careful ourselves song very important to use our motor vehicle safety when traveling to any ca so what he just said is that it's very added on a typical accident it's it's important for people to know that we do not decide who's at fault that's the job of the insurance company to a we do is we get the story from one of the drivers in the story the other drivers and we just document that  the police report and that's what the insurance companies will go off so we again do not decide who's at fault that's all with the both insurance companies would contact each other and they come out and they do an appraisal evaluation of the accident and they decide who's at fault and all the surcharge events happen through the insurance has nothing to do with how many accidents have injuries it's kind of hard to tell very minor actions can have injuries and some major accidents have no injuries  say maybe fifty percent and maybe one out of every four might have a little bit more of a major injury but again that's really hard to tell it really depends on the intersection how hard sewing got hit how fast it was going  safer i mean some of them a built in they seem like they crumble really quickly that they don't have like the metal body that they used to have so sometimes you can get a very minor accident if you just hit a vehicle in the front or the back the right way the airbag will go off but it could be a very minor accident and the airbag itself can cause of injuries to the head lacerations or bruises or you know whatever what may happen so if someone decline medical treatment what they can do is a sign which we have or the fire department has called a medical refusal for in that says that they fire department came down either they are suggesting they go to hospital or they say they're ok but someone has to sign that refusal saying that they do not want to the hospital get checked out so in a case where we would show up in an accident and so in said you know my back kind of hurts but i'm not going to go to the doctor until i see how i feel in the morning when we hear that it will call for an ambulance for that doesn't happen in belmont every crime you can think of occurs in belmont it might not be as frequent as boston we still get the same we get very serious calls again like i said they may not happen every single day but we do get them we get breaking and entering you get people breaking into houses and the cars i just it happens when it happens might not be every day but we definitely get the same crime drugs are a problem as they are in a lot of surrounding communities and happens here too and we just want to make sure that people do know that you know it's not an invisible community that nothing happens or it's not under a bubble unfortunately crime o everywhere and you know we are very pretty active so i want to make sure that people understand that or do i like working in belmont and when i change anything about my job  i enjoy working in how much when i first came on the job six years ago i would run into conflicts with that knowing a lot of people who i grew up with i went to school with i graduated from high school about maybe ten years ago or so and i ran into that as a problem but now six years later three eight six i haven't really run into that problem much is easier for me to go to domestic as a female i would say it definitely has its advantages sometimes victims of either sexual  views if they're female victim they do kind of feel more comfortable speaking to a female and sometimes you do get that i've had probably i'd say a handful of sexual assault cases in the past where are all female victims and they were very forthcoming at first but after kind of talking to them getting to know them and building a little bit of a relationship they were more forthcoming and gave me more information and were ok with talking with the crime that had occurred and that's why i do it i want to become a police officer well basically so it's a timeline of basically what led me up to that it wasn't always a dream from when i was a kid it kind of hit me more later in life so i'll start off by telling you i grew up in vermont i graduated from bella high school in two thousand and one i went off to st anselm college in new hampshire and got a business degree and i graduated in two thousand and five i then worked in the business failed for a little bit i kind of did most of my communicating with a computer and i didn't like that and i knew at that point something was missing in my life i missed the communicating with people and helping people and making a difference in people's lives and at that point i realized that this might be a good fit for me being a police officer i took the civil service exam i ended up doing pretty well on it i pretty much right after the scores came out i got a call from the police department at that point in time i was working at the wellington school here about my elementary school and i quickly jumped on the opportunity here i went through the academy and for anyone to succeed in this for the profession you need to love what you do and want to do it you will want to do it we do this six month academy was very long it was very strenuous it was hard physically mentally but i made it through and i'm here and six years later happy to be here and i'm happy with my choice and i know that this is what i was meant to be is a police officer we're talking about now the type of weapon we carry we carry around here it's the glock twenty three it's a forty caliber gun when we when i first got issued this gun we were in the police academy and we had a week long training every day so forty hours of training for one solid week and we do qualifications and you have to qualify by state law we qualify twice a year here in massachusetts at our department we also have carried in the cruisers are fifteen it's a rifle we have to qualify with that as well two times a year and we do it about every six months in the spring we qualify as a gun club outdoors in the fall winter time we qualify inside in a range downstairs at the police station or we're talking with the watertown incident and basically kind of a walk through from that that night and the night i worked was the night when we lifeforce mint found the suspect on the boat which i believe if i can recall was it friday evening the whole incident took place on a thursday overnight on my uniform to live a little different different that day there was basically a lockdown within the town and surrounding towns there was not much sound outside all you could hear was helicopters going around and we got to roll call we immediately had assignments and we would have to answer calls but towards the end of the night when they had suspicions that the suspect was in the book about ten to fifteen of a bell after a series were on the ballot street school street side and we were standing out there protection with our rifles our air fifteen's because we were positive where the suspect was at that point we knew he was in we believed he was in wired town and we didn't know exactly where so we needed to be ready for anything to come in any time and we got word a notification that they found someone on the boat in watertown and at that point we put our rifles away and continue patrol as and as we would any other night absolutely i mean my no it really started the night when the mit officer got shot i remember watching the news i even was in kind of informed prior to everyone in the public i got a text message from a cambridge officer of mine who was a close friend of mine who told me that the mentee officer got shot was killed and so at that point i'm watching the news and it was it was a sight that you'll never forget i mean i saw one archers i knew watertown officers state police officers people running across the screen that i work with and you never think that something to this magnitude could happen and basically the town you work in or surrounding towns i mean we're pretty much involved as much as anyone so getting back to you know working friday night and we caught the suspect on the boat all i can tell you is the feeling that we had that day was like a feeling you will never forget it was it was bone chilling it was really just something that you know of twenty years thirty years from now i hope to be  tell people what exactly i felt and how we got through it and how we made it through as a department and it was it's pretty remarkable yeah i mean it we started getting like it was it was almost like breathtaking we came to work and there was cards written by kids from all across the country and we hung them all up all over the rock our own in the o ses office and it was just so neat to see stuff like that every single day you know actually you know people are appreciating the work we do and you know the stresses of the job and and the fact that it's it's a job that is very dangerous and there's times where you know you can't forget that we're taught from day one academy you mean it you may not come home one day at the end of the shift and that's what you try and that's what we know and we go into a job and do the same thing every day knowing you know that could be the outcome and we still do it every day and we got from all across the country people are sending us food they were sending us flowers they were sending us cards and it was really it was really a heartfelt feeling and something you know you just feel appreciated and you feel like w actually understood the magnitude of this issue in and i think we did a pretty good job and you know overall we we caught a suspect and you know hopefully you know people realize you know what we do it and the fact that we put our life on the line every single day and some days might not be as exciting as that but it's the days that you come into work and you don't know what's going to happen in the sun like that happens you know seven figure you got to be ready and that's that's the biggest thing about our job is it's it's twenty twentieth's and you never know what's going to happen how do we separate my personal life and my professional life as a police officer that's a very important thing that you need to know how to do for sure we learned that the academy you learn that the first thing they teach you is you need to have friends outside of work you're with these people i love them i love everyone i work with but you're with them through some tough times and through sound pretty bad situations and a big important thing is to be able to leave your job here leave it at work go home enjoy home enjoy whether you have kids pets family whatever it is you need to be able to not bring the stresses of the job home with you or it will kill you literally i mean you can look at the statistics as a police officer and they die young because a lot of the times they can't take they can't separate life and more social life from their professional life from work and i think i do a pretty good job of that there's been times where you know i'll be on a call that you know definitely i take with me but there's a time where i draw the line and say ok it's done i can't do anything about it i get it who are from it and you do but like i said from the beginning of this question this something they teach you from the very get go and you need to be able to differentiate between work and home because it only a little holy hot you will give you stress high blood pressure all that stuff if you take the stresses of the job home and have have friends outside of work go out with friends that don't know you're a police officer they don't need to know what you do on you know when you work i oftentimes get there every time i got my friends like oh she's a cop i'm not a big fan of that because then a lot of people just ask a thousand questions about what it's like to be a cop what you do what happens here and that's bring my job into my social life and i really i'm not a big fan of that of course i'll answer the questions but i like to definitely separate the two and i think it's important for everyone to do that and i think most cops will tell you that that's the only way to really get through day day to and that was melissa o'connor as she takes off again keeping belmont safe can't thank you enough for hanging out with us tonight on the run around and we'll see you next time