ITHACA, N.Y.- As the sun is setting, the small college town of Ithaca, N.Y. starts to come alive after a long week of studying and working, the enticement of two days of freedom still lying ahead. Well, for most people.
Amanda Mazzaraco, 37, is not an ordinary citizen of Ithaca. She is a police officer for the Ithaca City Police Department.
“Sometimes you feel like you have gone over the same road a million times,” says Mazzaraco as she climbs up into her white Chevy Blazer. The Blazer is equipped for the slipperiest roads, with four-wheel drive and the sneakiest criminals, with a computer system positioned right next to the driver seat. While everyone else is returning home from work or getting ready to hit the bars, Mazzaraco is only halfway through her shift and she has a “hit and skip” to report to.
“Yeah, put your cell phone down,” she says to a multi-tasking driver. “Your just can’t catch them all,” says Mazzaraco as she passes the car and continues up the street to Collegetown, where the “hit and skip” is located.
Mazzaraco was once one of the college students getting ready to enjoy their weekend of freedom. She graduated from Ithaca College in 1992 as a television and radio major with job positions at advertising firms in New York City. Then she found out she was pregnant.
“It was either 80 hour weeks or seeing my family,” says Mazzaraco. Instead of accepting the job offers she decided to train to become an Ithaca City police officer. During her ten years on the job she has seen it all.
“I couldn’t make up half this shit,” says Mazzaraco. Even though Ithaca is a small town, it is home to two colleges, Cornell University and Ithaca College.
“Cornell brings a lot of weird things,” says Mazzaraco. Along with the culture and education Cornell brings to Ithaca it also brings many drunken college students who get into horrible situations says Mazzaraco.
Tonight Mazzarco is the traffic officer, but she can also respond to other calls too. Mazzarco says she can never tell what is going happen. Some nights it is busy for no reason, and other nights it is just quiet.
Mazaraco pulls up to a young women standing next to an older car with a bumper that is barely hanging on to the rest of the vehicle. The “hit and skip” was a parked car accident that occurred a few days ago, but the owner of the car did not notice until that evening. Mazzaraco asked the young woman a few questions and then returned to the Blazer. She started entering information into the computer. The computer is a tiny flat screen with a miniature keyboard and a printer hidden underneath the armrest. Any information on a report is typed into the computer for documentation. It makes the filing part of the job much easier because it saves time typing everything up later on. The computers are not in all of the police vehicles says Mazzarco.
“That’s why I like my car,” says Mazzaraco who is the only officer allowed to drive the computer equipped SUV.
After a few more calls to accidents, a broken-down car and a mistaken dial to 911 at a convenience store, it is back to the station to do some more research and paperwork.
Mazzaraco gets information on suspects all sorts of ways. First, she will look through previous police files. Then, she calls the local colleges if the person is a college student. She also enters them into whitepages.com and contacts their family members. She has even used Facebook to look up a suspect’s background. She likes to get as much information about a suspect before she actually contacts them for their side of the story.
“It’s a game,” says Mazzaraco.
After making some phone calls and printing out information it is back into the Blazer to finish the reports on the computer. While typing in the data she gets a phone call from home.
It is her three-year-old son wondering if she can come home now. Not until 11 p.m., she tells him. He is a disappointed and says goodbye many more times. Mazzarco is a mother of three boys, ages 15, 14, and 3. Spending time with her family is just as hard to fit into her schedule as trying to fit in time do all the paperwork for her calls. Mazzaraco wants to switch to daytime shifts but does not know if it will be possible. Changing her schedule would be much better for Mazzaraco but the current daytime officers may not want to give up their current shifts.
When she makes a stop at McDonalds to get her usual grilled chicken snack wrap she chats with the drive-thru girl while she waits. She is a familiar face among Ithaca locals. Mazzaraco tries to get to know everyone because she never knows when she may need him or her to help her out. She also thinks it important for people in a community to have good feelings towards their police officers. After her quick food break, it is off to an accident involving a deer near Collegetown.
The deer is a seven-pointer. That is big enough to cause some substantial damage to the hood of the driver’s car. Other officers respond to the call quicker than Mazzaraco and are shooting “Bambi’s mom” to put it out of its suffering. Some drivers pull over to call dibs on the enormous deer while it lays sprawled out on the cement sidewalk. Mazzaraco is just glad she didn’t respond quick enough to have to shoot it or hold it while it was getting shot.
Her shift is wrapping up and there is still a lot of paperwork to fill out, even though it was a quiet night. After sorting through the loose papers that litter the front of her car, she calls it a night.
“I’m ready to go home,” she says with a yawn. Finally after a night of watching out for everyone else during the beginning of his or her weekend, she too gets to return home from work.
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