Police officer patrols dorms, campus

Officer Skaggs gets ready to go on his rounds for the night. He steps into the police car, a Dodge Charger, and is greeted by the brisk voices of other officers through the scanner.

It’s dusk on a Friday in Bloomington.

In a hallway of Ashton Center, the scent of Febreze and marijuana hangs in the air, a mixture of sweetness and musk. It is eerily quiet and poorly-lit, illuminated by a few fluorescent lights.

Ryan Skaggs, an Indiana University Police Department officer, is a tall, dark silhouette.

He sniffs at the first heavy wooden door and gives four steady knocks. Three Resident Assistants stand anxiously at a distance by a corkboard on the wall. Someone has used a sharp object to engrave “4:20” in the bottom corner. 

The door opens halfway, and three men welcome the officer into the room. They insist there are no drugs present and refuse a search.

“Where is the marijuana?” Skaggs asks calmly. He’s served with IUPD for more than two years, and it’s obvious he has done this before.

“I said there’s no marijuana,” a dark-haired freshman man says. His voice is shaky and raspy.

“It reeks of marijuana in this room, dude,” Skaggs says. 

On the dorm room wall hangs a large poster: “Keep calm and hit a bong.”
The dark-haired man stutters, eyes darting.

“I-I don’t see the smell.”

The freshman and his two guests emerge from the room and lower themselves against the hallway wall. Each of them sports a solid-colored T-shirt — green, red and brown.

A second officer who just arrived at the scene stands over them, motionless. He says nothing.

The tension in the dark hallway hangs as thickly in the air as the smell.

An RA opens a window at the end of the hall and leans against it.

The three men sit quietly, staring at their knees and shoes, fidgeting as Skaggs returns to the station for a search warrant.

One man cups his head in his hands. The other rubs his palms together nervously and looks toward the ceiling. The man in red stretches his legs out and stares blankly at his black adidas.

This is an average night for Skaggs, an IU alum. Starting as a cadet in 2008, he has been a full-time officer with the IUPD since June 2011.

Tonight, he’s patrolling campus with a police scanner as his partner.

Skaggs returns to the dorm room and rustles through the students’ possessions as if he’s misplaced his keys.

The sounds of coins clinking in a jar and drawers opening and shutting with a thud fill the quiet hallway.

A backpack is noisily unzipped, and a shopping bag rustles. Someone at the other end of the hall peers out of a room but retreats inside.

Skaggs emerges with a clear plastic garbage bag containing a Ziploc filled with marijuana, a small black vaporizer, an orange pill bottle, a circular metal grinder and two fake IDs.

He looks at the freshman’s friends.

“You two are free to go.”

The man in green and the man in red both sigh, and the air feels lighter. Relief washes over their tense faces.

The officer fastens metal handcuffs around the remaining man’s wrists with a loud click.

“I am going to jail, correct?”

“Absolutely,” Skaggs says, releasing the freshman’s wrists. 

The freshman walks down the dormitory stairs slowly in defeat, finally sliding into the back of the car. He got a drinking ticket for underage consumption last week.

“If I close my eyes, it feels like a cab ride,” he mutters to himself.

A young man in a navy V-neck and jeans sits wide-eyed on a curb in the Qdoba parking lot. He stares drunkenly, trance-like, at the ground in front of him.

The sky is black now, but some light pours into the parking lot from nearby buildings and street lamps. Suddenly, the glow of a flashlight illuminates the man’s face.

He looks up at Skaggs, staring blankly. He reeks of stale beer and has woodchips in his hair.

The officer asks him to stand, but he wobbles. He stumbles toward Skaggs and is told to sit back down.

Searching for his license, the man pulls out a brown leather wallet but opens it upside down, letting a sea of bills and credit cards spill onto the black pavement.

After gathering the mess and finding his license, the officer wraps handcuffs around the man’s wrists.

“Really?” the man says, gritting his teeth and furrowing his brows.

Skaggs tries to help the man up, but he staggers toward the police car clumsily like a marionette dancing — forward two steps, then back.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry.”

He leans against the officer for support and stumbles into the car with a thump against the plastic seat.

After blowing a .266, it’s off to the hospital and to jail, where his girlfriend was also sent earlier that night. He passes out in the backseat.

Thirty minutes later, the police car zips through Bloomington, past groups of students filling the sidewalks and bars. Chatter, cackling laughter and shrieks fade as the car passes by.

Bass music pulsates from house parties. Another officer’s voice comes over the radio, and Shaggs is on to his next task.