News Photo by Reagan Voetberg Alpena Police Officer Aaron Kwiatkowski takes pictures to document a crash that occurred Tuesday after a semi-truck backed into a car.

ALPENA — If you’ve ever asked a police officer what their typical day-in-the-life is like, they might hesitate to answer at first — each day is as unpredictable as the next.

Officer Aaron Kwiatkowski of the Alpena Police Department started his day at 6 a.m. for the day shift on Tuesday. The day shift lasts from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Kwiatkowski said his favorite shift is the afternoon shift, although he thinks he may be biased because he has worked it the most in his two years as an officer. The afternoon shift lasts from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. He said that he gets the most variety of activity on that shift compared to the day or night shift.

His work changes from day to day. Sometimes, he will be driving around town from call to call, and other times, he will have nothing but a single traffic stop. When he receives a call, he could be tasked to help with a welfare check, de-escalating an assault situation, an animal control issue like a pet on the road, a warning about an erratic driver, or other situations.

For example, on Tuesday, a call came in from central dispatch around 11:34 a.m. A semi-truck had backed into a car. Both vehicles were waiting for a train to pass through a railroad crossing when the crash occurred. Kwiatkowski took the information from both drivers. He took pictures of the damage on both vehicles. No one was injured and neither vehicle retained serious damage from the crash.

“That was not on my bingo card today,” Kwiatkowski commented after clearing the incident.

He said that the surprise of it all is what makes his job so enjoyable. He likes coming in to work every day, although, like any job, some tasks can become tedious.

Kwiatkowski starts any shift at the station, puts on his vest and gear, and gets in the police car, either to answer calls or patrol traffic.

At the station during regular hours, he will find Tracy Marquardt, administrative assistant, and Gretchen Kruse, office clerk, working the front desk.

They keep everything running at the station, Kwiatkowski said.

Other features at the station include two interview rooms, a training room, a gym for officers to work out in, a room for testing and labeling evidence, and a couple of rooms that hold evidence used in court cases. There is also a work station that officers primarily use to type up reports.

Once he is in the police car, Kwiatkowski turns on his computer and logs into the system he uses to check license plates. When he types in a license plate number, he can see information including the registrant’s age, name, gender, address, whether they have any tickets or warrants, and their license plate registration expiration date.

In the trunk of the police car, there is a rifle box, as well as a bag holding supplies like Preliminary Breath Tests, notebooks, paper masks, and other tools.

The back seat of the car is all plastic, which makes for easier cleanup if a person is bleeding, for instance. There are no handles on the inside of the doors in the back seat. A plastic divider separates the back seat from the front.

In the front seat, Kwiatkowski uses his computer, a radar to check the speed of vehicles near him, and a radio to communicate with other officers on patrol and central dispatch. He also has a loudspeaker device and a printer installed in the car for printing tickets.

Around 10 a.m. on his shift Tuesday, Kwiatkowski pulled over a pickup truck because the license plate was not visible due to dirt that had collected on a transparent covering over the plate.

Kwiatkowski gave the driver a warning and sent him on his way. He personally does not hand out tickets frequently, but other officers are more heavy-handed. In this case, the driver told Kwiatkowski that he had a screwdriver and would take off the cover as soon as possible, so he did not think that a ticket was necessary.

As he drives, Kwiatkowski stays alert and pays close attention to detail. He mostly drives down the main roads around the city, but he glances down side streets as he passes them to make sure that everything looks normal. He checks details like missing license plates and expired registration stickers while also making sure that drivers are abiding by traffic laws.

Around 10:42 a.m., Kwiatkowski noticed a vehicle with an expired registration sticker. He knew from the color, which would normally indicate an expiration date in 2024. He initiated a traffic stop. The driver told him that he had another vehicle to drive and would use that one instead until he could update the license plate registration. He also said that the check engine light was on and he was heading home to figure out the issue. Kwiatkowski gave the driver a warning.

Kwiatkowski stopped at the station for a moment afterward to take a short break and talk briefly with the sergeant on duty. The sergeant told him about a traffic stop he had done the other day where he found that the driver had not buckled in their 7-year-old child. That was a situation, the sergeant said, that was worth a ticket.

Just a couple minutes after leaving the station again, Kwiatkowski caught a driver running a red light. She did not present her driver’s license at first, so Kwiatkowski planned to issue a ticket that would require her to show her license to court without any further consequences. When he went to hand her the ticket, the driver had found her license, so he let her go and told her he would void the ticket back at the station.

In between that stop and a call, Kwiatkowski drove by the spot where a sergeant had pulled over a vehicle. The sergeant gave him a thumbs-up to signal that there was no danger.

Reagan Voetberg can be reached at 989-358-5683 or rvoetberg@TheAlpenaNews.com.