UCAPD: Police Woman

Since this was my last ride-along with the campus police this semester, I tried to change things up. You know, get a different angle. After all, I don’t want to bore you. As luck would have it, I ended up riding with Officer Sarah Garrett, one of the three female officers at UCA.

When many of you heard on our Facebook page that I was riding with Officer Garrett, you proposed several questions. The most common question was, “What is it like being a female officer?” Garrett said it may be different for women police officers elsewhere, but not at UCA. Garrett said that she is treated the same as the men.

Garrett said that a lot of times women are trained just as much or more than the men so they can handle their own on the street. I saw the big gun in her police car. Man or woman, if you can aim and shoot that thing, you can handle your own.

Surprisingly, after all the fraternity drama this past week, Friday night was pretty uneventful – at least between 8 p.m. and midnight. We pulled over a girl on a moped. Garrett said she honestly thought the girl was drunk but, apparently, she just didn’t know how to drive the moped. Here is a video of that encounter.

The biggest stop of the night was the students that got caught with enough alcohol for a small party and a bag of weed.

Officer Chris Vasquez saw an SUV parked on a red curb so he went to tell the students inside the vehicle to move it. When he reached the car, he saw alcohol inside it. By the time we arrived, he was thoroughly searching the SUV and had already pulled out several bottles of liquor, cans of beer, a pipe and the weed.

After reading the students their rights, Vasquez told them that they could all go to jail for minor in possession of alcohol, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, or even possession of a controlled substance. Vasquez made the student with the weed dump it out and grind it into the concrete. Two other students had to pour out all the alcohol. We have attached that video at the end of the story. To hear the whole thing on audio, click here.

Since most of our readers seem to enjoy our look from inside the police car, we'll be back with more of them next semester.

• Share
• Tweet
• "&title=""">