STORY BEHIND
THE POEM THE CHAMP
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Charlene Meyer is a perky, enthusiastic
new recruit, who was doing the practical portion of her training with my
squad. Recruit training consists roughly of 14 weeks academy time, 17 weeks
working on the street with a field trainer and then back to the academy
for a final 14 weeks before graduation.
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Charlene has just 5 months total experience,
and has proven herself quite well during this phase of her training. On
this night, our beat team was involved in one incident in The Balmoral
Hotel beer parlour, a notorious skid road establishment, when a second
incident involving a knife fight broke out. They called for immediate cover
and units were arriving from everywhere.
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When this incident was under control,
a third fight broke out. Charlene and her partner Paul Ballard were working
plainclothes and were in the crowd. Charlene called out to one of the suspects
in the fight. She turned around and without a word of warning, turned and
punched Charlene right in the face. More from the surprise, than from the
power of the punch, Charlene fell backwards and struck her head on the
floor. Momentarily dazed, she still managed to jump right up and leap back
into the fray.
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Paul her training officer had started
to move towards the suspect, when Charlene rocketed back into the battle
and after a brief struggle, was arrested, handcuffed and charged with assault.
Somewhere during the battle, Charlene cut her hand on the filthy floor
of the hotel. For that fact only, she was taken up to hospital by her partner
to get a tetanus shot. Charlene was relatively uninjured and certainly
undaunted. We’ll be sorry to see her go when she transfers next week, to
finish her training in another area of the city.
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