It's a cool Saturday night as Sgt. Leslie Saunders pulls his police cruiser out onto Water Street around midnight to resume his patrol.
The car crosses the Miramichi Bridge and it isn't long before Saunders makes his first stop with a passenger.
He flicks on the lights and swings the car around at an intersection and parks the wrong way, lights flashing on a group of teenagers gathered on the corner.
Saunders leaves his passenger in the car as he steps out and encourages the group to move along.
He stopped because some of the boys had beer in their hands.
"They threw it away when we came around," he says.
The car turns around and heads down the King George Highway, a road that will become a familiar sight throughout the night.
As the cruiser rolls slowly past the crowd waiting to get into the Opera House, Saunders points out the house next door.
The old owners used to sit on the roof and watch the fights at the bar next door, but there's a new owner.
"I don't imagine they get much sleep at night," he says.
Saunders drives by the bars in Newcastle, looking for any signs of trouble.
It's all part of the routine for a Saturday night patrol.
A quick trip to Tim Horton's comes up empty when he realizes it's closed for the night.
He's on his way back toward the bars when a call comes over the radio.
Someone reported seeing a man hitting a woman and they said he was holding her down on the ground.
The lights and siren come on as he picks up the radio.
"10-4."
Cars pull over as the cruiser speeds by and the sound of sirens from other cars comes over the radio as they all race to the scene.
"How's your nerves?" Saunders asks this reporter.
When he arrives on scene there are already officers in control of the situation.
The guy was talking to another girl and his girlfriend didn't like it.
Saunders pulls away and leaves the other officers to finish up and the guy to sleep in his truck for the night.
The cruiser is barely away from the scene when another call comes over the radio.
It's a cardiac arrest.
Saunders flicks on the driver's side spotlight to find the right house number and confirms it over the radio.
When he finds it, he parks on the side of the road, lights still flashing.
An ambulance arrives soon after the cruiser and Saunders goes inside to help.
It's dark in the car with barely enough light to see a shotgun hangs over the front seats just above the glass divider between the front and back.
In the dark the gun almost looks like a toy.
A voice comes over the radio.
"Ambulance is on scene."
When Saunders gets back in the cruiser, he explains one unit has a defibrillator for calls like that.
"We answer medical calls too," he says.
After another run past the bars, Saunders calls the K-9 unit and they meet up to hand over his passenger.
The SUV smells like wet dog from the black German shepherd pacing around the back.
"You do get used to it," says Const. Andy McFarlane.
Earlier in the night McFarlane answered a call with Chico to help the RCMP with a break-in at a camp.
"Basically I'm patrol and do all the dog calls too," he says.
There wasn't much he could do at the break and enter because people had already walked around the scene.
"When I got there the scene had been contaminated," he said
Another call comes over the radio and when the lights and siren come on Chico starts to whine.
McFarlane says the dog gets worked up when he hears the siren.
"I think he kind of assumes he's going to work when the lights go on."
The SUV soon catches up to a car, but it blocks the road, ignoring the siren and flashing lights.
McFarlane hits a button and sends out a warning blast from the siren.
The driver ignores it.
He hits it again and again until the driver finally pulls over.
McFarlane says it's frustrating when people ignore the siren and lights.
"You're on your way to a call so you don't have time to pull them over and give them a lecture."
He hears on the radio other cars have already responded so McFarlane slows down.
Another call comes a few minutes later and as he drives past the Morrissy Bridge McFarlane says he misses it because he has to go around to get across the river.
"It adds a couple minutes response time."
Three cars respond to the call before him so McFarlane turns around to head back across the river.
As he reaches the stop lights near the Miramichi Bridge he points out where he stopped a drunk driver earlier in the night when he was on his way back from the RCMP call.
"He blew through the red light here."
McFarlane swings around back to the Opera House and every time he passes someone Chico roars to life as he paces back and forth and barks at the strangers.
"You get used to that too," McFarlane says.
About 250 people crowd into the street in front of the Opera House as McFarlane waits in the car with Chico and tells the dog to calm down.
"This isn't going to be good."
But the crowd doesn't give the officer and his canine partner much trouble and at about 3 a.m. McFarlane pulls away.
He heads back to Chatham to drop off his passenger at the station.
It was a quiet night, he said, but some are busier than others.
"That's the thing about working, you never know."
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