Traffic officer patrols first night of the year

Officer Jeff Skinner prepares in his car inside the garage of Cole County Sheriff's Department to transfer the individual in his custody in the backseat for DWI to the custody of the Cole County Jail.
Officer Jeff Skinner prepares in his car inside the garage of Cole County Sheriff's Department to transfer the individual in his custody in the backseat for DWI to the custody of the Cole County Jail.

After a late night of celebration, New Year's Eve and the early first hours of 2018 might feel like a half-remembered dream for some people. However, as the clock struck midnight, Jefferson City Police Department's Officer Jeff Skinner patrolled the streets to make sure festivities didn't combine with bad decisions to lead to long-lasting or permanent real life consequences.

Skinner knows firsthand the damage one impaired driver can do.

"I was hit head-on going 20 miles an hour by a drunk (driver) going 86 miles an hour. My car got thrown 50-some feet sideways. I came away with just a backache." He said he's particularly insistent on enforcing seatbelt laws, too, given his experiences in patrol cars where a seatbelt saved his life.

He's been with the department for five years, and has been in the traffic division for a little more than a year. He previously worked for almost 10 years in Miller County at the Lake Ozark Police Department.

His one sibling - an older brother - is four years older than him and has worked with Boone County Sheriff's Department for more than 20 years.

"At Boone County, they have a policy where they don't hire family, so I wanted to blaze my own trail. I'm more of a city cop anyway. It just seemed like it was right up my alley, with my personality, what I wanted to do. I enjoy helping people. I enjoy leadership," he explained of how he got into law enforcement, despite the inherent dangers and difficult schedules, after he decided upon receiving his undergraduate degree that law school wouldn't be the right thing for him.

"I'm looking for traffic violaters. Any traffic accident that comes about, we usually work it," he explained of his current responsibilities.

"We want to educate people, without necessarily having to issue a citation or take someone into custody. That can be as simple as being visible and being seen."

He couldn't remember the last New Year's Eve he hadn't been on the job.

Given the holiday, as with any, he was also particularly vigilant for signs of drunk drivers.

As the eve of 2018 transitioned into an equally frigid and dark first early morning on Missouri Boulevard, downtown and in the other areas of his patrol zone, Skinner's eyes scanned nearby vehicles on the road - not just looking at motion, but analyzing what it could mean.

Does hesitation at a stoplight mean someone is unfamiliar with the area and is looking for their correct turn? Does a slight veer to the left toward the center line show someone is texting? Or does that and other behavior indicate someone's driving is impaired by alcohol, drugs or some combination of factors including being under the influence of a substance or not having gotten enough sleep?

When it comes to evaluating a driver's ability to drive responsibly, he looks for a driver's vigilance and awareness of the road around them as demonstrated by the actions of their vehicle; does their pattern of behavior add up to a reason to stop them?

"If you're not sure, keep investigating, keep looking and if there's nothing there, there's nothing there. It took years to get to that (analytical awareness of his own)," he said.

"I don't have to issue a citation, unless if I see the need. Something we always keep in mind, not only is it kind of embarassing to get pulled over, but you know, getting a citation, that costs these people money, and if they drive for a living, it has a lot of repurcussions for issuing a citation.

"I'm all for it if somebody deserves it. I'm a pretty good judge of people, who's actually going to take a warning and this is just a slip up, or if this is persistent behavior, that we need to try to help them understand that speed only leads to crashes," he said in particular of writing citations for speeding.

He said officers' discretion is something that largely has to be developed on an individual basis; he trains other officers in traffic law enforcement, too.

"A lot of it, the officer just has to come up with their own style. The way I kind of teach it, it's kind of like a meal. Are you going to decide that the whole meal was terrible just because you didn't like the appetizer?" He admitted it's a little silly of an analogy, but "it helps recruits understand that you don't just issue a ticket or you don't not issue a ticket. It makes them think, 'well, what happened here?'

"School zones, I don't have any tolerance for," he said of speeding violations. He has a family of his own, whose safety he's very cognizant of while on the job.

A little after midnight, he took a moment to text his girlfriend a happy New Year message, though he knew she would have been asleep for hours.

She's due to deliver a baby in February, "but with our other two, she was about two weeks early, so, five or six weeks, and we'll have a baby girl. We already have a (14-year-old) boy and a (9-year-old) girl."

"I'm about ready to have a son that's going to be driving age, and the last thing I want is a drunk (driver) to run into him."

With one seatbelt citation issued and one warning given for speeding, Skinner's 10-hour shift that had started at 4 p.m. in 2017 and ended in 2018 had been pretty docile, he said - especially compared to the beginning of the new year in 2017 when he was at Capital Region Hospital where a murder victim was pronounced dead. However, he did end the first night of the new year with his first DWI arrest of 2018 at about 1 a.m.

"I want this to be a wake-up call for you," he told the individual while he processed them at JCPD headquarters, before transporting them to Cole County Jail.

"If a drunk driver gets removed from the roadway, that's one instance more that I don't have to wake somebody up at 4 o'clock in the morning," and inform them of a tragedy that involves their loved one. "It's not fun, especially when they open the door, and they know why we're there. That's the worst," he said earlier on patrol.

Once he was done for the night, he was scheduled to be right back at the job at 2 p.m. Monday, after a shower, warming up his own vehicle in the negative-digit temperatures, his commute home and his usual six or so hours of sleep.

In the next 15-20 years of his career he has before he thinks he'll retire, he wants to become a sergeant and detective - perhaps in homicide or family investigations of abuse.

"I've been at it 15 years, and I still get a lot of job satisfaction. I still get excited making what some guys would consider a routine arrest. I like staying busy. I like paperwork. Paperwork does not deter me from doing work," though he added, "Sitting at a desk is not for me."