We were doing them into the mid 90's then it seemed they just dried up. Always thought it was good unwinding and friendship.

Choir practice was no longer a thing by the time I started in 2006, but I heard about it from some of the older guys. Seems like it started to wane in the 90s.

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
After a senior guy was caught with another guys wife, the choir practice stopped.

Dude lost his job and the husband left to another dept

IA began hunting people on their time off if it was even heard people were having fun.

Dumbasses. That’s too bad. Now for Rat Squad (IA). Can’t find anything else to do except looking for people having fun and try to hang the m out to dry.

IA has to justify itself, if the cops aren’t doing enough to keep them busy-they began looking at in car cameras…or checking how many times the Taser had been sparked and began investigating wether you had maybe used it w/o self reporting…

Me & a few guys used to go dirt bike riding and we’re talking about it one day at roll call, next day I get a letter about violating state law for riding dirt bikes on the right of way of US 64. I wrote on mine, “prove it” and turned it into the SGT.( we had actually rode under the highway in some kind of rectangular tunnel for water to flow under the road.)

IA had been listing it to the talk in roll call via the phones (fancy ones with several lines). One of the rookies had been some kinda of telephone technician in the army and she told us how they did it. She never spoke in a room with a phone unless she disconnected it.

We have always had take home cruisers so Choir practice was not a thing exactly. I am guessing (heard stories) drinking while driving cruisers was not unheard of in the 70s and early 80s.
However, the way our staffing works we have 4 squads that work a shift set, two squads share two of their three days off.
My first six years the sister squads did something together at least one day out of the three off pretty much every week.
After six years I went to a different assignment and did not work daily with anyone else from my department, but another agency. They were all much older and I just had my first kid. I did a Men’s Bible Study with one of the fellas that was closer to my age before work once a week. Also had another guy I was close with and we did things with them once a month or so.
After six years in that spot I came back to working the street and we don’t do much together as group. No one really seems to.

We have a local restaurant that has a bar and if you go there at 8am the bar is full of nurses and doctors that got off at 7am.
Is the bar allowed to serve alcohol that early, nope. Though no one has ever made a fuss.

quote:

Originally posted by old dino:

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:

quote:

WTF is choir practice?

Code word for going off somewhere, getting drunk and blowing off steam. Read Joseph Wambaugh's The Choirboys. There was a movie made of it, but it sucked.

Figured that would get asked ...

Read Joseph Wambaugh's book "The Choirboys"

Choir practice nearly everyday after work in a parking lot or wherever. Especially when the beer was "donated" ( fireworks sometimes donated too ).

If the wife asks why late getting home, the classic answer was, ... "was at choir practice".

Being from a larger department, our choir practice was usually four to ten of us. Choir practice was outdoors or in a covered parking lot and include sometimes some shenanigans.

Also donated on an infrequent basis were steaks, etc. that had been shoplifted/recovered, after they had been photographed. Could not be resold, and we had no provision to store them until the case was adjudicated.

Those were some good times, but choir practice all but disappeared by the mid-90's.

Back in the early 70s, we went Bowling (NHPD) Then in 1985 we had Choir practice (LCSD) Kinda went away in the early 90s.

I'm not shitting you when I say that the first time I heard about choir practices I really thought my agency had a choir. I grew up in choirs and was kind of excited about it.

Haha! I can see it now...

Rookie Skull Leader rolls up, hymnal in hand, eager and excited to sing. Sees a bunch of guys with beers cracking jokes. There's a moment of confusion, and then his face drops when he realizes it's just a euphemism.

Never experienced choir practice, but I'm not a drinker anyway so it wouldn't have been my thing. A couple of my older buddies do "church" every Sunday morning where they sit around, smoke, and shoot stuff. I've been to that a few times and it's a good time.

When I worked midnights there was great comraderie. My department is only staffed for one man at a time, but the neighboring "city" has 3-5 depending upon the night, and we'd always get together for dinner between 2 and 3am and watch stupid stuff on Netflix or YouTube and just shoot the shit. If a big call came in we'd all roll together. It was a great time. Now that I'm on day shift everybody is too busy with details and BS calls, and even if it was slow enough to get together like that their admin would probably put an end to it just because they could. Fun is forbidden and not to be tolerated!

I came on the department in 2011. I van recall going to a couple of pretty mild "choir practices" in 2013 when I was on 2000x0400. They were so mild that they were just in the presinct lot, which isn't really visible to outsiders. A couple guys had a beer or two while a couple guys were eating some pizza. Out of the 20ish guys working that night on the shift probably 15 stayed an hour after to bullshit with eachother. Good memories (and they are just that because stuff like that doesn't happen anymore). Unfortunately, now you can barely talk to your own partner because everyone has their nose buried in their phone all shift.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Choir practice was no longer a thing by the time I started in 2006, but I heard about it from some of the older guys. Seems like it started to wane in the 90s.

Same for me, started in 2007. I suspect they were still happening to some extent, quietly, amongst the old heads, but the days of it being in the parking lot near the office are long dead. Some smaller groups who work the same shift get together and hang out, but that's for the younger crowds. Frankly, most of the people at work are not ones I want to hang out with.

My watch has occasionally case law reviews in the mornings after work. Other times we go over Lexipol policy updates.

For my department, we all aged out of choir practice. When it was popular, all of us were single. And young. Then wives and kids came into the mix and choir practice was replaced by soccer practice!

It was common until an underage female cadet attended. The inevitable happened. A career was ruined and charges pursued. After that choir practice became less frequent.

New breed of officers handle things differently, and probably better.

We had a fire pit on the back of our property with a fire pit and a bunch of chairs.

Ever agency around used it. Saved a bunch of careers and marriages.

We worked 12 hour shifts. Every other Sunday was cigar Sunday. We'd get together at shift change and solve the worlds' problems or talk about woodworking, sports, or whatever. Anyone in LE was welcome and we had a good mix of people. After I retired it sort of fell apart. Too many newbies who thought cigars were icky...and totally missed the point.

Is that the Sperm Whale movie?

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
Is that the Sperm Whale movie?

Yes, there is a character named "Spermwhale" Whalen in the book and movie (played by Charles Durning in the latter). Don't bother with the movie, which Joseph Wambaugh publicly disassociated himself from. Read the book.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
After a senior guy was caught with another guys wife, the choir practice stopped.

Dude lost his job and the husband left to another dept

IA began hunting people on their time off if it was even heard people were having fun.

Dumbasses. That’s too bad. Now for Rat Squad (IA). Can’t find anything else to do except looking for people having fun and try to hang the m out to dry.

IA has to justify itself, if the cops aren’t doing enough to keep them busy-they began looking at in car cameras…or checking how many times the Taser had been sparked and began investigating wether you had maybe used it w/o self reporting…

Me & a few guys used to go dirt bike riding and we’re talking about it one day at roll call, next day I get a letter about violating state law for riding dirt bikes on the right of way of US 64. I wrote on mine, “prove it” and turned it into the SGT.( we had actually rode under the highway in some kind of rectangular tunnel for water to flow under the road.)

IA had been listing it to the talk in roll call via the phones (fancy ones with several lines). One of the rookies had been some kinda of telephone technician in the army and she told us how they did it. She never spoke in a room with a phone unless she disconnected it.

Wow. Now that is what I call a Rat Squad. Bunch of Blue Falcons!!

Petered out in the mid-90s in my world.

More a thing in the spring/summer for us. One of the overlap 1400-2200 guys would usually get the grill and campfire going. By the time us 1500-2300 guys got there, whatever was "on the menu" was ready to go on. A few hours eating, drinking, decompressing. Generally pretty well-behaved.

Wasn't unusual for the guys working graveyard to drop by, grab a burger and (non-alcoholic) drink, engage in some information-exchange, then get back on the road. Supervisors knew about it, county park guys (whose picnic area we generally frequented) knew, and nobody cared because a) it was an isolated location and nobody was disturbed, b) we left the place clean, and c) while sometimes loud, it was harmless.

Same as others have noted: Choir practice got shorter when guys started families, then more infrequent. By the time I left it was still an occasionalthing, but within a year or two the new guys had little-to-no interest in team socializing.