It doesn’t get said enough. Cops are cool people. I was reminded of this the other day when I was leaving the grocery store and saw the face of a police officer who was coming in. It was the same officer who’d been in my apartment doing a wellness check in 2022.
At the grocery store he saw me. There was a flash of recognition between us, and we just kept going. No need to relive that terrible day.
I still have no idea who made the call to the police four years ago and asked them to check on me. What is a wellness check? Artificial Intelligence provides a good description, but I hate the bloodless plasticity of AI so will put its words in the form of a poem.
A police wellness check
(or welfare check)
is an in-person visit by law enforcement
to verify the safety of an individual
who may be at risk.
This service is typically free
and is initiated when friends, family, or neighbors are unable to reach someone and have
a "qualified request"
based on credible information
about a safety concern.
Add booze and a couple of loose women and you’ve got a Bukowski epic.
Anyway, the wellness check. It was 2022, I was broke, depressed and had recently lost both my mother and older brother. I had finished a book, The Devil’s Triangle, that was going to be released in the fall, but there hadn’t been much of an advance from the publisher. I was radioactive from a political nightmare. The right, which leaves people on the battlefield, was useless. Because I didn’t submit to their extortion, the left had no use for me either.
Somebody, or maybe more than one person, knew I was in trouble—maybe even more than I did. I started getting calls from this service that provides prayers for people in need. You don’t know who paid for it, you just get a call out of the blue. “Hey Mark,” the nice woman’s voice on the other end of the line said, “someone who loves you wants to offer you some prayers. Can I pray for you today?” Sure. Then she did about a minute of some Holy Roller supplications and praising Jesus. I liked it.
That was the prelude to the main event, which was getting visited by a police officer. Naturally I felt a spike of adrenaline when I saw the uniform. I was sure it had something to do with 2018, when the left-wing American Stasi dropped their payload of opposition research on me in the hopes that it would kill the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, a high school friend of mine.
I thought the cop was here about that. Except he wasn’t. This time someone who likes me was upending my life. Someone had tipped him off that I was struggling and may even be suicidal. Sadly both were true. (Only a GoFundMe stood between me and oblivion.)
I invited the officer in, and the energy in the room shifted. I wasn’t all alone anymore. I was in the kind of situation you see on TV or in a movie. A police officer was standing here explanting that an anonymous person had called them and thought I needed help. Luckily as a person with a few decades of sobriety, there weren’t the usual elements of such a scene—I wasn’t drunk or high, there were no screaming kids, and I had my shirt on. The cop has a country way about him and also strong masculine energy. He was like Brett Favre with a badge.
My defenses came down, and I heard myself completely uncorking to this guy. I angrily recounted the political nightmare, then the trauma of the deaths of my mother and my brother. I hadn’t gotten paid by the publisher. On top of all that, the lovely woman I’d been dating bolted after the Kavanaugh nightmare and wasn’t coming back.
I’d been to a therapist a couple of times, a nice and attractive woman in her 40s, but I could never unleash the bombs about asshole politicians and weak-ass conservative grifters and pussy and fights and family the way I did with this guy. He stood there letting me roar. He was stone-faced for most of it, but softened and became very focused and suddenly looked empathetic when I got to the part about the woman leaving.
“Damn,” he said. “That’s a gut punch.”
Silence fell. I stood there decompressing, like a fighter after a round. He’d drawn me down to what’s important. The politics, the fiends, the unpaid writing, the drama—it was all bad, to be sure. Yet losing a woman you love—that’s what hurts.
We talked more and he asked some required questions—age, occupation, etc. Was I on any medication? “I’m a skateboarder,” I said. “I don’t take drugs.” He eyed my Carver in the corner of the room and nodded. Then he left. Everything seemed a little lighter. I took my board and went out for a ride.
Cops are cool people. They put up with a lot of nonsense, especially from leftist protesters who have personal issues they’re trying to work out through politics.