Temple Photojournalism
PEOPLE OF THE STREETS/
RIDE ALONG / OFFICER DOUGHERTY
Text and Photos by Ashley Kane
Riding Along
“I’ve never done one of these before,” Officer John Dougherty says as he pulls out his phone to make a phone call. He called to verify if he was supposed to state on the radio that he had a ride-along with him. In all of his 18 years of being an officer, he never had a ride-along before. “My other district was afraid I would say
something,” he warned the officer in charge of getting me in to a ride-along; the officer I was originally supposed to ride with ran into a three-car pile up… or an accident of a vehicle and a pole (I heard two different stories).
Anyway, Officer Dougherty walks in, grabs some papers, asks “You ready?” and we jumped into the SUV. He pulls up a pending burglary, radios that he can take it, and we were off to Roosevelt Blvd. Officer Dougherty has been working with the 7th District for only two months now. Previously, he worked in the 17th District for three years, and then the 5th District in the fire squad before moving to the 7th. The area is a good one, he said, “That’s why I came here. I live ten minutes away. When I was working the other district, it was a frickin’ 40 minutes to get there.”
When asked about why he does what he does, Officer Dougherty explains that his father was a cop for 33 years; his sister is a sergeant with internal affairs; and jobs are hard to get. “There’s no jobs out there anymore. You probably know that,” he laughs. He says he’s lucky to have such a job.
Arriving at ABC Supply Co., Inc, Officer Dougherty pulls his 48 book and his “bullshit hat.” The burglary he quickly radios in to change to a theft. The outside lot of this company is surrounded by barbed wire; someone with access had to have done it – Officer Dougherty was sure. He took the report and jumped in the SUV to take it back to Headquarters. I asked what would happen with the report, and he said the chances of finding the $6,900 worth of stolen property or the thief was extremely unlikely. “A lot of crime is this way. You wont catch them unless they do it again.”
The company didn’t have cameras. I asked about the neighbohring car dealership, if investigation to see if they have cameras that possibly caught anything over the Easter weekend would be done.
“That’s actually a very good idea,” Officer Dougherty said as he turned to retreat back to the dealership. My hopes of being a hero died when a few workers said there was only a camera on the front of the building. “Oh well, we gave it a shot.”
Calls like this are common for the 5th and 7th Districts. There is not a lot of violence; maybe one homicide a year, according to the officer. He works two weeks from 6:45am-2:45pm, then two weeks from 2:45pm-10:45pm. Most of his day consists of waiting for pending calls. In his free time on the job, Officer Dougherty takes it upon himself to do car- or ped- stops, even though there is no quota an officer has to fulfill in Philadelphia.
Officer Dougherty is single. “This job makes it hard on a marriage. There is always a lot of marital problems, I hear from some of the other guys.” In his old district his shift would end at 3:00am most nights. “I’m single. I like it that way.”
While I was waiting for an officer to arrive to the Headquarters before the ride-along, I had put on my bullet-proof vest and had been informed there was absolutely no photography allowed (which is different from the paper I signed, and was told previously to arriving). Officer Dougherty was cool though and ‘had no idea I took any pictures.’ I later looped back to get the pictures seen on this spread, when my ride-along was technically over.
