We have been working without a contract since Dec 31 04! The commissioners asked us to be patient and wait while they settled a couple of others, since they know we are underpaid and deserve more, but if they did our contracts first we would end up with less, ok, we voted and agreed to wait.. now all this time later (we were told we had to wait until the end of June 05) We are still without a contract, negotiations are going no where and now they are refusing to go to binding arbitration (probably because the last time they went to binding arbitration our dept got the bggest raise ever, and a fair one to boot) Our Union lawyer is seeing if they can refuse arbitration and if we can strike (that whole emergency serives, vital personel/public safety deal) We should have an answer by Thursday. What a bunch of bold faced liars the commissioners are What is really a kick in the pants, is the last time we had negotiations, we agreed to take less, and opted for a shorter contract so we wouldn't get stuck in negotiations again, we were in negotiations for "only" 11 months that time, if we only knew!!! Stupid county.. (if I don't get my shift changed in July, I have decided, job or no I am leaving, I can't keep working on such little sleep.. I will work at McDonalds if I have to in the interim, well, maybe not fast food, but you get the idea, anything is better then this! So hopefully I won't have to deal with it much longer, but I will see all the retro from the past 17 months!)

Holy COW, it has been a rough few days at work. We just got the latest version of Interact CAD installed, along with a new server, and a completely new GIS mapping system. We've been on paper CADs for about three days now. Arghhhhhhh! Last night we finally got CAD up and running, but couldn't use it. Instead, we had to enter all the paper CADs.....there were a boatload of em. We worked on it from around midnight last night and still had about 1/3 to go by 6:00 this morning. THEN..... For each of those CADs, we had to use a program called CAD Catch-Up to go in and edit them with the proper units, dates and times. Had maybe 1/4 of that process completed by the time we left this morning at 6:00. I'm really REALLY hoping the dayshift crew was able to finish the rest of those edits. It looks like rain, which as you all know equals wrecks all over....really stressful job without CAD! Hope everyone has a good weekend! I know I'm going to be thrilled to be off after tonight! ~Victoria 354/295/170

What are the new radios, do you know? We got new radios about 18 months ago and now they are upgrading to Zetron 640...sposed to be better. A phrase I use for that situation is "are you clear for traffic?" Also our agency uses a 10 code for that (no other 10 codes, just for that cir****tance).....if there is a warrant we would say "Title 10 F-Frank " and wait for the officer to say "go ahead" before proceeding.

HI Brianna, Just a quick idea regarding the "suspect in hearing distance" question....I use the phrase, "secure for info?" and/or "secure to copy?".....to alert the officer in the field if there is a warrant, etc. Some departments have an "alert tone" ( I think our state police have that---at least they used to when I went thru their training academy many years ago) that will let the officer know the name check that was run is coming back with warrants, etc. How's everything else going on with you? I'm on furlough for another week, then it is back to the insanity!!!! take care, Paula

Thanks Carol, So far the hunt is unsuccessful, but I am not hard core hunting, yet, but that will be changing. it used to be the 5th or 6th day of my rotation (we work 6 on, 2 off) before I felt totally dead, but lately here I am worn out my first ngiht back, and it goes downhill from there.. not a good sign. Thanks again for the support!!