Editor’s note: This is the third in a four-part series of articles about staff writer Matt Milner’s ride-along with members of the Ottumwa Police Department. 

OTTUMWA — Saturday night. No one really knows what to expect. It could be quiet. More likely it will be busy.

Officer Jodi Thomas is sitting in front of a computer in the Ottumwa police station. It’s 6 p.m., and she’s filing an arrest report. For every arrest, every complaint, there’s paperwork to do.

Officer Rueben Ross is doing the same thing. But there’s a hitch: He thinks the guy he interviewed on another report was lying to him. He wouldn’t meet Ross at his house, insisting instead on a Casey’s, and then claimed he didn’t know where another person Ross needs to talk to lives.

Thomas leans back in her chair, thinking. There are a lot of angles police can play in a case like this, but the question is which one is most likely to gain positive results.

“How old is he?” she asks.

“Twenty,” Ross responds. “Everybody’s like 18, 19, 20.”

They bounce ideas back and forth. Ross thinks putting out a warrant for interference with official acts might work, but he doesn’t want to file a charge only to have it dropped when it gets to court.

“I don’t know how this new county attorney is, but putting out warrants is part of our job,” Thomas says. She walks Ross through what happened and when. Who was there? Who might be involved? In the end she suggests going back and talking to the victim again.

Thomas finishes up her report and heads out. It’s a quiet evening. She talks about the difference between what police know they can do and what the public thinks is possible.

Some people think fingerprints are an ironclad piece of evidence. They’re good, but they don’t help if a suspect has a clean record. Fingerprint databases only return hits on previous arrests.

Then there’s the technological side of things.

“People assume that we have the ability to do everything like with ‘CSI’ and ‘Law & Order,’ and we don’t,” she says. Iowa has only one major crime lab, and it gets calls from everywhere.

Assumptions about the police impact even the most basic situations, like when people slow down when a police car gets into traffic behind them. They think they’re being careful, but it makes it hard for the officer to maneuver when everyone is going the same speed.

“If I’ve followed you for three blocks and I haven’t pulled you over, don’t slow down,” Thomas says. “I’m not going to pull you over. I’m going somewhere.”