Suzanne Ashe

STAFF WRITER

What better way to spend a Saturday night than on a ride-along with a Utah Highway Patrol trooper.

Transcript-Bulletin contributing photographer Meagan Burr and I settled into a brand new UHP Dodge Charger at about 7 p.m. Saturday evening. We were assigned to Trooper Nathan Croft, an eight-year law enforcement veteran.

The night kicked off with an orientation at the UHP office in Murray. Here Col. Lance Davenport addressed dozens of troopers, several plain-clothed officers and two helicopter pilots.

As part of the "Over the Limit, Under Arrest" campaign, seven additional Tooele County troopers stopped 87 cars. They made three DUI arrests, two warrant arrests and two drug arrests.

It was exciting to be apart of the blitz, even though I could only think of everything I had ever done wrong while driving. My list includes being distracted by my cell phone, my iPod and my dog riding shotgun. I also thought about the times I'd driven long stretches of road late at night when I knew I was just too tired to be driving safely.

I'd been warned by Lt. Mike Rapich that if Croft got involved in a high-speed pursuit, we would be left behind. (It was a liability thing, I was told).

After the briefing, we fueled up on pizza and pink-frosted doughnuts. Then we headed back to Tooele County for a five-hour game of cat and mouse. For the most part, Croft spends his shifts in the center divide along I-80. He heads toward Delle, pulls into the divide and waits. The car is equipped with a hefty amount of equipment including an in-dash radar sensor. Red numbers flash when a car is traveling faster than 55.

A little after 9 p.m., Croft spies something wrong and peels out after an eastbound car. He pulls the car over, chats with the driver and returns with a license and slip of paper I'm guessing is the registration. He pulls up the screen of his dash-mounted laptop computer and begins to type.

The whole thing happened so fast I had no idea what violation the trooper had spotted. Croft explained that the car had no rear license plate illumination. He checked the out-of-state driver's license on the FATPOT system. The software, created by Salt Lake-based FATPOT Technologies, is used by 130 agencies in the state. It allows officers to run background checks, and print tickets and accident reports from their cars.

Seeing no arrests, he issued the driver a warning and sent him on his way.

This process of waiting in the dark facing oncoming traffic and then pouncing on a car and issuing a warning happened two or three times before I asked why the trooper wasn't writing any tickets.

"I look at the whole thing as voluntary compliance of the law," Croft said.

Croft has a skill for being able to spot things that are out of the ordinary that us civilians just don't see. It's a very subtle process.

He pulled over a pickup truck that had a tailpipe dragging underneath it causing a lot of sparks. That I spotted.

Croft said he mostly pulls over middle-aged men. That's because most men drive even if there is a woman in the car. Also, more men drive late at night and drowsy.

But Croft can't look for male drivers to pull over. That would be "profiling," which is illegal.

The middle-aged-men theory still held true Saturday night with a couple of exceptions -- mostly younger men.

I found there were a lot of aspects about a state trooper's job that I had not considered, such as long hours alone in a a cruiser.

While some other departments -- and all cops on TV -- ride with partners, the UHP cowboy it.

Croft is in constant touch with dispatchers, though it's not the usual chatter between co-workers, as anyone listening to a police scanner for five minutes would know. The standard response is to any communication recite the time, such as "23:09." Each time he gets out of the car, he calls in. Within five minutes the dispatcher calls to check in with him and keeps checking until she gets a response. Croft also has XM Satellite radio that he pays for just to keep him company.

Highway patrol troopers are state police officers. They patrol the state's highways, sure, but they can make arrests within city limits. That's something I hadn't considered before.

Croft didn't make an arrest until the end of his shift. That's when we really got to see him in action. I didn't really understand how long it takes to process a suspect coming into the jail. And that time is taken away from the time Croft could be out on patrol keeping everyone safe. So, instead of criticizing "only one arrest," and the hour that took, I thought about the other seven hours on patrol.

sashe@tooeletranscript.com