My Start, Part II

My sister pointed out that I spent some time working for the BART PD. True.

When I was at San Leandro PD, the Bay Area Transit District established a police department and I signed up for that too. Well we had literally nothing to do because there weren't even any trains running yet. There were stations being built but they were guarded by security guards.

We had to wear royal blue blazers and drive around in police cars that were powder blue dodges with no isigniae on them. Our "jurisdiction" included all of Alameda, Hayward, Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco Counties, and naturally our radios were frequently out of range.

I worked the AM (midnight to 0800) shift with a guy who had come over from the California Highway Patrol.

Did I mention there was nothing for us to do and huge territories in which to do it?

One memory was that some of the guys used to try to check out police cars that had almost no gas in them. They would take them to certain gast stations that offered 5 times Blue chip Stamps or Green Stamps. (Anybody remember those? Ask your moms or grandmas.) Then they would drive around all night and fill up again and get more stamps. I think they paid a lot more for gas at those stations but nobody seemed to care. I think they put the stamps in special stamp books and traded them in for appliances or other goodies.

Another example of government taking good care of the tax payer.

I think I stayed with that about six months before I became too, too disgusted with the whole program. That was just before I moved back to Salt Lake to make my last stab at getting educated.