PARKVILLE, Mo. ----- Brandon Kahler whipped his police car around onto the street and stepped on the gas. As the flashing red and blue lights cut through the fog his car quickly approached the speeding white Lexus.
The Lexus slowed down and pulled to the side of the road. Kahler pulled his boot off the gas and pulled in behind.
“At least they didn’t pretend to not see me and try to pull off into Price Chopper’s parking lot and hide,” Kahler said.
Small moments of excitement are something 28-year-old Parkville Police Officer Brandon Kahler looks forward to. The small town of Parkville, Mo., doesn’t have a lot of action for the young officer, and quiet days are typical.
Kahler picked up his radio and called out the plate numbers to the dispatcher.
“You always run people before you make contact with them because you don’t know if they’re wanted,” Kahler said.
He waited for the plate to clear before grabbing his clipboard and making his way to the speeder.
He returned with only a driver’s license and a slightly wet navy blue uniform because the rain had started to fall again. The license belonged to a middle-aged woman who was in a hurry because she and her passenger had a flight to catch.
“Usually I would take both their licenses and her insurance, but since they’re in a hurry and because I’m a nice guy, I’m not going to make them wait,” Kahler said. “If they miss their flight that could get expensive for them.”
He returned the woman’s license and let them go with a warning.
The excitement was over, and Kahler was back on the south patrol, which is everything south of the police station and east of Bell Road. The other on-duty officer, Ed Olson was assigned the north patrol, everything north of the police station and west of Bell Road.
“We only have two people tonight, usually we have three or four per shift,” Kahler said. “That shows you how big we are and how much crime we have.”
The south patrol is geared toward traffic violations, and the north patrol is focused on patrolling neighborhoods. Traffic violations are by far the most common incident in Parkville, but Kahler isn’t exactly fond of writing tickets.
“I’m just not a traffic guy,” Kahler said. “We don’t necessarily have a quota like most people think, it’s not mandatory that we write tickets but it’s revenue for the city, of course.”
That night Kahler pulled out his radar gun twice in attempts to catch speeders but didn’t pull over anyone else.
He pointed his gun toward cars on Missouri Highway 9 and watched their speed pop up as a small red number on his radar. Kahler half smiled and mentioned that every car slows down drastically when they pass his police car, even when they’re not speeding.
“Everybody speeds. I just hope these things don’t cause cancer because I would be in trouble,” Kahler said jokingly referring to his radar gun.
Kahler spent most of his time that night driving his car through the wet streets and neighborhoods of Parkville and just making sure nothing looked out of place.
His radio went off several times, but he didn’t get to see any action. All the calls that came through were for the Riverside Police Department in the next town over.
Kahler might have been in on that action over in Riverside that night if the Parkville Police Station hadn’t been on top of hiring officers back in July. Kahler had applied at the Riverside Police Station and was hoping to get on there.
“I just put out a bunch of applications,” he said. “Parkville was just the first to respond.”
Kahler is new at being a police officer but he already knows he won’t stay with the Parkville station for too long because he wants to see more action. He is thinking about going federal and would really like to be on a SWAT team.
“This is a good place to start,” Kahler said. “You can learn a lot. It’s just hard to grow and expand.”
Kahler patrolled gated neighborhoods and drove by several million-dollar homes.
“We do a lot of neighborhood checks,” he said. “There are a lot of famous or quasi-famous people that live in here.”
He drove down foggy roads lined with lighted luxurious homes, he began recalling exciting times when he had been called to these neighborhoods.
“You see these houses? They are picture perfect and you would think the people that live in them are picture perfect,” Kahler said. “However they aren’t. You get calls and find out they are just as crazy as the people who are less well off.”
He mentioned a time when he had a burglary in progress and he was only one house away. He caught up to a teen who had just stolen some alcohol from a man’s home. The teen was punched in the face by the man who was home at the time, and Kahler remembers the event vividly.
He remembers talking to the teen’s mom, who was upset because her son got punched. He said he explained to her that her son was lucky that was all that happened because the man had the right to shoot him.
Kahler continued to drive through quiet neighborhoods and rain continued to fall on his windshield. His radio kept silent.
Kahler doesn’t get a lot of calls working in a small town with a low crime rate, but when a call does come in it’s usually a medical call or an alarm that has been tripped.
"The majority of calls we get are medical calls,” Kahler said. “We usually don’t do a lot because the fire department and the ambulance are right behind us.”
That night turned out to be a typical Sunday night for Kahler and the Parkville Police Department. Kahler had been on the south patrol for five hours without a single call and only one traffic stop, which he let go with a warning.
Although Kahler has a lot of down time, he has found a way to amuse himself while also keeping busy.
“Sometimes I drive around and try to find Officer Olson,” he admits. “He doesn’t know I’m looking for him, but it’s fun. It’s like hide and seek.”
