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You are kidding me, they don’t talk about me like that? Surely… Yes they do. And I can let you listen to it!

By Benjamin Groff II GroffMedia© | benandsteve.com | ©2026

September 30, 2026

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Good morning, folks.

I don’t know whether it was an Oklahoma City thing or whether listeners elsewhere heard it, too. In the mid-1980s, I kept my patrol radio tuned to KATT, The Rock 1000. One of my favorite parts of the morning was a voice that came on with a greeting something like, “Hello, babysitters. This is Clarence, and this is the All My Children update.”

Clarence had a deep voice and a gift for recapping the previous day’s soap opera. He would run through the latest goings-on, slipping into impressions of the characters along the way. I could be miles into a patrol shift, carrying whatever the night had handed me, and that voice would give me a few minutes to laugh.

I needed those minutes. Some of the officers I worked with used enough starch in their underwear to stand at attention without getting out of the patrol car.

Around the station, I was known as the Lone Eagle. I worked the south district, and when I headed south, I soared. Some nights brought felony arrests. Other nights, I found a way to upset an elected city official who probably thought the hour made him unreachable.

Then there was Mildred.

Her husband was a city councilman, and the chief had agreed to put her on the reserve police force. How that arrangement came about, I couldn’t say. What I knew was that Mildred talked through an entire eight-hour shift without seeming to draw a breath. Riding with her was like attending a farm auction where the auctioneer never stopped and the hog never sold. Every so often, the hog would snort, and the bidding would begin again.

Somehow, no matter how the schedule was arranged, Mildred ended up in my unit. The other officers wouldn’t take her. I was the least senior officer on those nights, so I got the assignment.

One night, I lost my patience.

I asked Mildred if she had ever wondered why she always rode with me. She said she thought it was because I liked having her along. I told her that wasn’t it. I said it more harshly than I should have.

She looked genuinely surprised. She hadn’t noticed that other reserve officers got different assignments while she kept getting mine. I told her the others complained about riding with her. When she thought I was making it up, I played a mini-cassette recording of officers saying just that.

Mildred listened. Then she said, “Oh, Ben, you ought to hear what they say about you before you get to the station to pick me up.”

“I know,” I told her. “You don’t think this is the only tape I have, do you?”

I didn’t stop there. I said things about her husband and why I thought he wanted her out of the house. I had no proof of that. I was angry, and I wanted my words to land. I also told her what I expected to happen next: she would go home upset, her husband would complain to the chief, and sooner or later something would happen to me at work.

I drove back to police headquarters and gave her one sentence she could repeat.

“Get the hell out of my unit.”

That night may sound like a scene Clarence could have recapped the next morning: a councilman’s wife, a tape recorder, a patrol officer who finally said too much, and trouble waiting at the station. But there was nothing funny about what followed. Two matters did arise that left me feeling exposed and unable to defend myself as I might have at another time.

My father had died, and I was still crushed by it. I feared a public fight would hurt my family. A year later, I believe I would have fought with everything I had. At that moment, I pulled back.

When I think about those patrol mornings now, I still hear Clarence’s voice cutting through the radio. For a few minutes, his account of somebody else’s drama gave me room to breathe. I had no idea how much I would miss that little break when the drama became my own.

In the months that followed, a series of events unfolded. I’ve written about some of them. Others I’ve never told publicly. That changes in October, when I’ll share what happened and why it sent shock waves through our community and local law enforcement. Watch for the first installment of October Surprises.

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