City Immune Response (Part Two)

"Last time, we got a bit off topic and reflected more on the troubles police used to face. Shall we try again?"
   "You agreed to let me stay the night, its the least I could do. Speaking of, I thought I heard something large outside - do you have any of those alien machines around here?"
   "Nothing Diego or I could take apart, no... Do aliens complicate matters of law enforcement?"
   "Well, I'm not sure how to arrest them, or if handcuffs would fit on their - they do have wrists - right?"
   "Four of them as I recall."
   "Weird. Well, the fact that there are aliens that can cause trouble for a community, its trouble for those that keep that community safe. I am quite fortunate that that the town I'm from has a separate military and police force, so those demon machines aren't my problem, but I know a lot of places don't have that luxury. When it comes to internal affairs, its a hard job.
   As I mentioned yesterday, national police forces were big enough that you had back up pretty much wherever you were. You could also specialize- you had forensic scientist who pretty much never left the lab despite what TV might have you believe, and specialized armed response teams, which didn't necessarily overlap with community officers who talked down domestic altercations. Now, its all a matter of wits. You need to collect clues, talk to people, and deal with threats all on your own. It is entirely up to me to decide if the threat of force is going to make the suspect back down, or escalate the situation. That was not part of my original forensics specialty."
   "So what would you say to prospective police officers in the age of reanimates? Any advice for the job?"
   "First of all, what is in your head is generally more important than what is in your hand. That above all else really. The other things, is what our internal memos used to call the Community Immunity Plan, or C.I.P. We always found it kind of stupid since it was a big outside consultant thing that amounted to the common sense - 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure'. It did go a bit farther, but it was basically look at the community as a living organism, gaian new age [bleep] What was that?"
  Diego flipped on his mike  "Don't swear on the air. Its against regulations and unbecoming of an officer"
  "You're more rule bound than I am."
  "We're not going to rebuild society if every follows different rules or lives by breaking them"
  "An interesting debate Mr. Diego, we did invite Sargent Mulchaty for his views, not ours. Sorry sir, if you will please continue?"
   "He does have a point Mr. Hobbes, but I do have mine. The big thing is measured response. be nice and treat people as blisters to be smoothed over, not organs to be amputated. No, that is a little too much. Try to be present, and find sources of irritation to the community first. Not everything calls for force, its a rash before its a tumor ectera. Start with the big force, and you'll come to rely on it.
   You know, the weirdest thing is - you could learn a lot from the reanimates in this field."
   "Really?! How so?"
   "There are some dangerous places that are always crawling with the things. Military bases most often, but sometimes they just love a particular gas station, school or house. However, anywhere else, its more of a time thing. I've got a friend who swears if you never stay in one place longer than three days, you'll see nothing other than type ones and alphas. Its probably not that exact, and more location based, but there is truth. The longer someone is in a city, the more of them that come out of the wood work, and the more vicious and varied they get. Maybe they hibernate until people show up and set up camp. I don't know."
   "Thank you again for appearing on the show, but it seems we're running short on time."
   "If I might ask - why do you sign off like that so often? You're not competing against other stations, and for all intensive purposes, you could talk as long as you want."
   "Its the same reason we bleeped you earlier. We're really not located to give people up to the moment warnings about alien or reanimate sightings, most of the time we don't have other human experts around to teach people. So instead we try to provide a calm atmosphere and a sense of normalcy by sticking to a set schedule. Maintenance and battery life play a role as well. Frankly, there are some local stations that have their own agenda, and we try to be the professional CBS or BBC above the propaganda and local shock jocks.
  Coming up: the seven o'clock classic hour and the local weather before the eight pm sign-off. Live from the Dead Air, this is Thomas Hobbes on 104.3."