HUMOR (Sort of): Ride Along
Drew goes on a ride along with a Spotsylvania County deputy. As you expect, there's humor to be had. But there's a more serious side, too.
By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST
Once upon a time, I took Major Liz Scott of the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office to see the movie Cabin Boy which starred one of the greatest comedic talents in the history of cinema, Chris Elliott. This movie was a formative moment in our relationship of nearly 30 years.
To be clear, this was not a date because Liz was married to my great friend Dale, the Laudenbach Beer Whisperer, and Dale sat between us through the movie. Dale’s presence was important not only because he held the popcorn, but also because it meant that Liz was unable to murder me in the lightly attended theatre. Apparently, she had formed an opinion 15 minutes into the film that Chris Elliott was not one of the greatest comedic talents in cinema history. Liz vowed that one day she would get her revenge for making her sit through the entirety of Cabin Boy. That day arrived on September 19th, 2025.
Liz suggested that I go for a ride along with Major Del Myrick on that fateful day. She thought that, as a humorist and sometime journalist, I might find this glimpse behind the curtain of the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office illuminating and instructive. She also mentioned that I should wear clothing that would not inhibit my ability to run and that body camera footage adds 10 pounds. I chuckled. She did not.
Major Myrick picked me up before our “shift,” and I opened our time together in his County-issued vehicle by asking if we were headed to beach because I knew some former officers had taken their vehicles down there on vacation, and I knew a place with great tuna bites. Myrick, I quickly learned, is a man who takes his job very seriously, lives to serve and protect the people of Spotsylvania, and used my failed attempt at levity as a reminder to charge his body camera.
Over the course of the next eight hours, I realized we could have driven down and back to the coast, but his time, of course, was much better served patrolling the streets of Spotsylvania. I honestly don’t know that I have ever spent eight hours that went by so quickly.
Myrick has been an officer for a long time. He started out in Arlington and, fortunately, found his way to Spotsylvania where he is now the third-ranked officer behind only Sheriff Harris and the woman who still has nightmares about Chris Elliott aboard his trusty vessel, The Filthy Whore, from the 1994 cinema classic. I learned a lot from Myrick in our short time together:
Vehicles with temporary tags might as well drive around with a big sign that reads: “Drive closer and you will see that these tags expired months ago and give you the perfect excuse to pull me over to look for drugs or other illegal activity.” (Myrick showed an uncanny ability to find and follow vehicles that, to the untrained eye, seemed to pose no risk to the world. Most police vehicles serve as an office on the road and license plate numbers can be input quickly when stopped at red lights with results sent back to the officer in less time than it takes for the red light to change. And dispatchers are always ready should a deeper dive on a name be necessary.)
The sage advice of Woodsy Owl—Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute—is still wise counsel. Police work has become more difficult with recent legislation that has restricted officers’ ability to pull a vehicle over. Tinting of windows or tail lamps that don’t work are no longer legal reasons to stop a driver. Myrick is from California and grew up in a culture and with an ethos that believes littering is a sin against nature (of which I agree). You can continue to drive with a brake light out, but toss that cigarette butt out the window and, in a few seconds, the officer who knows you had a heroin overdose in 2023 and a domestic battery charge nine months ago will be coming over to introduce themselves shortly.
Humorists have no street cred. Nor should they. I see an abandoned shed on a vacant lot and am reminded of when my parents bought us a bow and arrow and allowed us to take target practice against the metal shed in the backyard. A decision they soon regretted. Patrolling officers see an abandoned shed, and they see opportunity for crime, not nostalgia-tinged boyhood memories.
In one brief shining moment of my ride along, the silver-tongued Myrick had convinced a woman with outstanding warrants to meet him at the magistrate’s office to turn herself in instead of the officers having to come find and arrest her. She promised to meet him at 8 o’clock. A fellow officer, at the magistrate on separate business, broke out in a wry grin when Myrick told him she was bringing herself in: “She won’t show,” he said. Four minutes later, the woman showed up and walked into the office to meet Major Myrick as she had promised. While Myrick and I waited, the magistrate asked me what I did and I told her I wrote a humor column for the FXBG Advance. Her voice caught and trembled, just for a moment, and she asked my name. When I answered she smiled broadly and said she read my work and enjoyed it. She was probably going to ask for an autograph and a selfie, but she was too professional for such fawning over local celebrity. At least that’s what I continued to tell Myrick every 15 minutes for the rest of our night together.
Police work is hard, and not just the whole getting shot at and wondering if they will live through their shift to see another day. In the time I spent with Myrick, he was pulling vehicles over with cause, searching for suspects with outstanding warrants, and typing the occasional News Release to be posted on the Sheriff Office’s Facebook page all while two radios and two cell phones were requiring his attention. He took multitasking to a whole new level. I got to meet a number of officers throughout the course of the night, and I was struck by their level of competence as well as their dry wit and humor which appear to be necessities for preservation of both self and sanity. As with any profession, there are certainly bad police officers and ones who are not especially good at their jobs. On this night, they were not evident.
I’m certain there are readers of this column who do not appreciate this paean to the police, and their skepticism, at times, is well-founded and warranted. But on this one night, I gained an appreciation for what the men and women in blue do on a daily basis. They put their lives on the line with a sense of duty to the public and to their fellow officers which is to be admired. Plus, Major Myrick said if I wrote nice things about him and the office, he would not make me run and film me with his body camera which was a great disappointment to Major Scott.
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Thanks, enjoyable.