SATURDAY, NOV. 15, 9:15 p.m. — The cop pulled up, and before I knew it, I was inside the police cruiser. But I wasn’t in the back seat, waiting to be dragged to a holding cell. I was up front, beginning a Pipe Dream ride-along with Binghamton’s New York State University Police.

I was to follow Officer Mark Whalen on a night patrol in 405-SUNY, a late-model Chevy Impala with a police upgrade kit. Whalen pulled away from the University police headquarters, in the rear basement of the Couper Administration Building, and discussed his work with BU’s police force. He talked about his past work as a dispatcher before coming to BU’s police department and his philosophy on dealing with BU students.

“I’m gonna treat people the way I want to be treated,” he said.

Whalen’s first call that evening was to College-in-the-Woods’ Seneca Hall: a female student there had reportedly taken a large number of ibuprofen tablets. The girl’s friends, who had called the police, seemed worried about the number of pills she had apparently taken. When we arrived, the Harpur’s Ferry campus ambulance service was already on the scene. We all went upstairs, and I waited outside the room, unsure of what to do next.

But a few minutes later, Harpur’s Ferry volunteers escorted a girl out of the room.

“Could you get my laundry from downstairs?” the girl asked another floor resident. She seemed relatively composed when compared with the people who had called police. For their part, they seemed quite nervous.

“Is that the girl who took the pills?” I asked Whalen.

“That’s her,” he said.

—

After she was in the ambulance on the way to Binghamton General Hospital, Whalen spent some time chatting with the Harpur’s Ferry volunteers who had just responded to the scene. Whalen knew these guys well, and they all seemed quite comfortable together. He even lent his coat to one Ferry staff member who had apparently just jumped out of the shower (hair still wet) to answer the Seneca call.

As we pulled out of CIW, one of Harpur’s Ferry’s student volunteers, Richard Blackley, was driving the Harpur’s Ferry SUV and swerved abruptly into our lane. It looked for a second like he was about to hit Whalen’s car before he veered back into his own lane. But Whalen just laughed.

“He always does goofy stuff like that,” Whalen said.

A minute later, Whalen was on the phone with Blackley, who had called to tell him that one of the Impala’s headlights was out. Unsure whether Blackley was just playing another joke on him, Whalen stopped in front of the station to check the light. Sure enough, it was out, so he switched to 407-SUNY, an almost identical car.

USING THEIR DISCRETION

As Whalen continued his patrol around campus, he came back to talking about his law-enforcement philosophy. He claims to understand students and said he does his best to be patient and courteous. He said that his last position, as a dispatcher at the Potsdam, N.Y., police department, taught him to communicate as well as he does, with both students and others with whom he works.

“One of the key components is patience,” he said. “Whatever the problem is, it might seem mundane to us, but not to [students].”

Whalen said that he is not “robo-cop.” When dealing with any situation, he said he always “takes the circumstances into account.”

“You have to take it case-by-case,” he said.

—

Whalen steered the cruiser up Bunn Hill Road when a white Toyota Camry blew past. Whalen checked the speed on the radar detector: 61 in a 30.

“That’s a big no-no,” he said, putting the car into a quick K-turn. He set the lights and sirens ablaze and zoomed after the speeder.

After the Camry quickly pulled over and the driver’s license and registration turned up clean, Whalen wrote up a speeding ticket. What about circumstances? What about leniency?

Whalen wasn’t about to give that driver a break, he said: he had a carload of kids and speeding that fast was too dangerous.

By now, it was 11 p.m. and the end of Whalen’s shift. We headed back to headquarters.

“Now comes the hard part,” he said. “Paperwork.”

THE THIRD SHIFT

For many BU students, 11 p.m. on a Saturday is early. So my ride-along continued with Officer Orlando Torres, whose shift started at 11 p.m. and continued till 7 a.m. the next morning. Officer Torres started at University police just a few months ago.

But Torres had an urgent question for me before we could leave the station.

“Are you a Democrat or Republican?” he asked. I shifted uncomfortably. He laughed, and we headed back out onto campus.

Torres drove 407-SUNY into the campus traffic circle, but came to a sudden stop as another car entered the circle without yielding to the Impala. There was an awkward momentary pause just after both cars had hastily stopped to avoid a collision, and then Torres let the Ford Taurus car and its female driver pass.

“You could go,” Torres said, mostly to himself, “but I’m going to write you a ticket.” As she moved ahead, on went the red and blue lights, and the Taurus came to a stop.

Evidently, Torres changed his mind: after speaking to the driver and checking her record (she was clean), he let her go without a ticket.

Sometimes people just don’t see oncoming traffic in the circle, he said.

Torres, one of the newest members of University Police, spent several years in the Marine Corps Reserves before starting to work as a police officer. He completed his second tour in Iraq before coming to BU.

“I’m still in the learning phase,” he said.

—

It had promised to be a slow night: much of campus had already left for the Thanksgiving break. But then, at around 1 a.m., in an incident originally reported in the Nov. 21 edition of Police Watch, a noise complaint came in from Hillside Community’s Filmore Hall.

When police arrived at the noisy room, residents there readily invited the officers in. The party had died down, but beer cans were still strewn throughout the room.

When officers asked the age of one female visitor holding a beer, she hesitated a moment, and then quickly said, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Soon after, another visitor locked himself in the bathroom with the female. When officers tried to get him to open the door, he said that he was urinating.

After several minutes another officer on the scene, frustrated, told the two that they had better get out of the bathroom. They did, with the male holding a can of Keystone. Torres asked him his age.

“I’m 21,” he said, likely thinking he was off the hook. Torres asked him his birth date. The date he gave indicated that he was 22. Out came the officers’ ticket books.

The officer gave appearance tickets to both the male and the female.

The male protested that he hadn’t been drinking, and he said that the officers had made it up to get him in trouble, even though both saw him with the Keystone.

None of the six residents fared worse than a judicial referral: the apartment’s residents had been respectful, Torres said. Respect goes a long way, he added.

But that came up at odds with something Whalen had told me earlier in the night.

“You’re not supposed to give tickets based on attitude,” he said. Whalen said he always weighs the circumstances and facts at hand.

“If I encounter someone who is arrogant or belligerent, I try not to weigh that in,” he said. “We all come from different places.”