It doesn’t take long for a police officer to realize that many—if not most people they talk to are lying to them. Call me cynical, but after you’ve worked in a black and white patrol car for a few months, people lying to you are a given.

I remember a time when I was working with an Academy classmate of mine and we got a radio call for a child abuse investigation.

When we arrived at the scene, the victim who was a male about 13 years old told us his dad had beat him with an extension cord. The kid had the welts on his back to prove it. After making arrangements for the boy to get medical treatment and be cared for (I don’t think there was a mother in the picture) we took his father to jail.

This was the early 90’s and police cars did not have dividers between the front seat of the patrol car and the backseat. When a suspect was transported to jail, the passenger officer would sit in the back seat with the arrestee to assure the arrestee did not attack the driving officer or try to escape.

When I rode in the backseat with arrestees, I tried to distract them from the fact they were going to jail. I’d talk to them about their life or their family. In this instance the arrestee told me this arrest was not the first time he’d been in trouble with the police. He went on to tell me that he had prior arrests for illegal drugs. He also said that he’d been living the straight and narrow for the past few years and that today he’d really screwed up. He said he didn’t mean to inflict the injuries on his son, but the boy had gotten mouthy and belligerent. “He’s a teenager and thinks he knows it all.”

There is not a doubt in my mind that part of what this father said was true. I’m sure the kid knew just what buttons to push with his father. But I also know there are no excuses for leaving injuries to the boy’s back—so severe, they needed to be treated by a doctor.

I did not have one iota of sympathy for the man sitting beside me in our patrol car. But telling that man my true feelings would serve no good purpose and could make his booking process harder on all of us.

So instead of upbraiding him, I told him that just because he’d had a setback, didn’t mean that he had to continue in a downward spiral. I told him if it was true he’d been clean since the last time he’d been in prison it wasn’t too late to turn his life around. I told him that he should use the experience to better himself and vow to himself and his son that he would be a better parent and a better example.

Remembering that he’d said he had prior drug arrests, I asked him if there was any chance he had drugs concealed somewhere on his person. The reason I asked was because it was a lot easier for us to deal with the drugs priorto the booking process than if they were discovered duringbooking. Our arrestee assured us that he had no drugs on him.

Once we got to the jail, my male partner took our arrestee into the jail to be booked. Back then, felony arrestees were always strip-searched, and because my partner and arrestee were both males, he got the duty. While he was busy booking our arrestee, I began writing our arrest report.

Later my partner came out of the jail and tossed an evidence envelope on the desk next to me. I asked what was in the envelope.

He said, “Our arrestee was holding cocaine.”

“What?” I asked in disbelief. “We asked him several times if he had dope on him. We told him it was no big deal. Where was it?”

“In his wallet.”

 “He knew we’d find it. Why didn’t he own up to it?”

My partner shook his head. “He said he didn’t want to disappoint you. You had such faith in him that he could do better and be a better father. You believed he would turn his life around and he didn’t want you to see that he had lied to you about the dope.”

I have to say, I was floored. My “faith-filled words” were merely making conversation on our way to the jail so our arrestee didn’t start thinking about going back to prison and decide to headbutt me or try to jump out of the car. I can only hope, for the sake of his son, that our arrestee did his time and tried to live up to the image I’d painted for him…however my cynical side thinks it’s highly unlikely.