It was really, really cold! Well it was more the wind than the cold. The wind pierced my jacket first and then my skin! So naturally I tried to stay inside either a building or my car most of the day. I did read a brief that was disturbing. The other day we were called to a dead baby. The poor thing was only a few months old. I read that the mother was in federal prison where she gave birth to the child and the father is a police officer at another agency. The baby was with grandparents and as far as I know the police officer/father never showed up on the scene! Makes you wonder what kind of people these are.


Had a nice dinner then walked out into the stinging wind. Damn, I about ran to the car and hopped in! This was going to be one of those evenings where I wasn't getting out of the car unless I had to. We got called to assist on a warrant service. The guy wasn't home but left a utility worker alone in the house who said he was at dinner. I don't know too many people who leave utility workers in their homes while they go out. I suspect the worker was a friend who called him and warned him not to come home. Before we left the warrant officer told me a funny story. He had been looking for a guy on a child support non-payment warrant and at one point caught up to him but the guy ran from him and got away. About a year later the officer was dining with his wife and guess who his waiter was! Yep, the same fugitive he'd been hunting and that night the hunt ended.


As I leave that location I'm making my way back to the station. It's almost the end of the shift and I'm looking forward to sleeping in. As I'm going down the street I see a truck dart into a lane almost striking another vehicle. I follow the truck for a minute to see how he's driving and he can't keep the vehicle straight. Granted it is very windy outside however I'm keeping my car steady and I'm using one hand on the wheel. I pull him over and walk up to him and he's fumbling for paperwork. His movements are slow and clumsy then when he speaks his speech is slurred. I can't smell any alcohol because of the wind but I suspect it. I get him out of the truck to do the sobriety tests. I always hated doing these in the bitter cold because any amateur law school reject can claim the weather was to blame for the poor performance. I arrest him and bring him to the intox station where he blows over twice the legal limit! Once I got him out of the wind then I could smell the brewery on his breath!

Another annoying day! An angry woman called because she got stopped and had every excuse under the sun. She was mad because she didn't get her way. I didn't make her any happier when I pointed out the subtle changes to her story and implied she was exaggerating. She hung up on me!

At the end of the shift people want to call and tattle on each other. I didn't have the patience to deal with it then. I'll get to it tomorrow. The question is did the burglary occur after the alarm or did his personal situation affect his performance.

It was kind of an annoying day! An officer stops a car with three people who all play the race card. That is standard operating procedure nowadays! The driver, who just got out of jail snapped. He told the officer he was going to give him a reason to throw him in jail! The driver tries to get out of the car but is restrained by his brother and the officer. Backup arrives and the situation is diffused.

Then a young illegal alien gets arrested again for shoplifting. He begs and cries not to be taken to jail. At the jail he slips a cuff and manages to find a design flaw that allows him to simply open the door and run! He was recaptured by a K9 soon afterward. I looked at the car later and managed to open the door from the back seat! That needs to be fixed. We can't have people open the back doors and walk away!

Baby Baby

I was already heading that direction. I heard an officer call out on a disturbance between two females in an intersection in one of our many neighborhoods. I was about a block off when the radio erupts with the emergency wail. My ears perk up because you never know what is about to drop and where. I could tell the dispatcher was confused on how to label this. She says "uh hostage situation." I have never heard those words go out across a police radio. I'm thinking something like in the movie Die Hard where terrorists take over a sky rise. I continue listening; "reportee states she was assaulted by another female who then took her baby and shut herself in an apartment!" Great! A baby is being kidnapped and I was just passing the street where the complex was. I make a U-turn and go down the street and find the complex. I get out of the car as the rain was gently coming down. Normally I wouldn't mind the gentle rain but in this situation it sucked. I was looking for a certain apartment number and found the building it was in. I couldn't find any other officers and I knew there were about four of them already running around. I turn around to see a very young girl looking at me. I asked her what apartment she was in and she asked if I was looking for the baby! The door to the apartment behind her was wide open! I still had no idea where the other officers were! I asked her where the baby was and she said she was inside. I drew my pistol and cautiously walked inside the apartment and found a tiny baby sitting on the floor just chilling out. She looked up me wondering who I was. About this time everyone else showed up. I don't know why, but for me the baby wasn't considered safe until I picked her up and put her in her baby seat. So I picked her up and fastened her in her car seat. She was a pretty baby. We found her mother and wound up arresting her. Turns out the original disturbance I was going to was the two women involved in this. What happened was the mother got upset that she was being asked to pull her weight (help out with rent and bills) and the mother suffering from the typical street thug mentality took it as an insult that someone dare suggest she isn't entitled to stay somewhere without helping out. The mother attacked the woman (her friend who took her in) and then fled leaving her baby there. I then left the scene grateful we didn't really have a baby hostage and we'd have to negotiate with some psycho. All is well that ends well!

Charge Her With Assisting Suicide?

I wonder if you could press charges on her;

They say there is no fool like an old fool. A sex offender marries a woman 22 years younger than him. A sex offender and a young woman who probably has has several emotional issues (if not a whole subscription). Needless to say had I known about this marriage I'd have taken bets on how long it would last. Anyhow, details are sketchy but they got into an argument. She was leaving him. She retrieved a gun and fired a shot. Apparently he was begging her not to leave and tried the old "you leave and I'll shoot myself" ploy. She handed him the gun and told him to go ahead. Calling what she thought was a bluff perhaps? Well, he takes the gun and shoots himself in the head! Damn! I wonder if she can be charged with assisting in suicide?

Drunk Interferes With Police

I heard the family disturbance call go out. I went en route and arrived after the two primary officers. When I get out I see one of the officers talking to an older man on the front porch. Even from 20 yards away I can see the large gash on his neck. Look like he lost a fight with Dracula. I hear the officer tell a younger man sitting on a bench a few feet away to keep quiet and not interfere with his investigation. I walk up and hear the younger man say "don't talk to them dad!" He now has my undivided attention. I walk up to him as he again shouts for his dad not to talk to the officer. I walk up to the younger man and smell the booze on him. He's drunk! I politely tell him to keep his mouth shut and if he has something to say he will get his chance. Now, I've given my warning and almost immediately he says again "dad quit talking and get a lawyer!" Now first any bleeding heart reading this needs to understand nobody is under arrest. At this point we are trying to find out what happened so nobody should need a lawyer. Second, I just warned him to keep quiet and now he's going to disregard me. Now he's put me in a position where either I back up what I say or look like a eunich. I think 'oh hell no' and I grab his arm and pull him up and handcuff him. He starts to protest but I cut him off and escort him to a patrol car. I then find out that he wasn't at the house during the fight. So that means he showed up afterward but he doesn't live in that neighborhood. He first claims he walked there. Then he says a friend dropped him off. During our pat down we remove some car keys to a car parked down the street. So this moron drove drunk to get here. Problem is nobody saw him drive here. The officers never saw him walk up. So getting him for drunk driving is out of the question. I'm thinking this would be interfering with public duties but with the lack of competence demonstrated by the district attorney's office I have little faith they will take the charge. We call and amazingly enough they take the charge! So we search him incident to arrest and he starts protesting his arrest. He asks why can't we write him a ticket. Damn fool doesn't understand you don't get a ticket for interfering with us. He then looks at me and says I'm mad at him. I tell him that I'm not mad. I told him to keep his mouth shut and not interfere with our investigation but he chose to disregard my warning so I had to back up what I said. This fool then says that I'm mad at him because of his record! I don't know who the hell he is much less what his record is. I suspect (and was right) that he's been arrested for drunk driving. In fact he was currently out on bond for that offense! Damn too bad nobody saw him driving! Oh well he still went to jail and the DA's office didn't take charges on anyone for the original family disturbance.

My Night Was Da Bomb!

When you're a teenager you are tempted to do all sorts of foolish things. This stage of life is when the phrase "it seemed like a good idea at the time" is learned. A group of teenagers are having a get together at a friend's house. They are coming off of Christmas break and some of them are seniors in high school. Those guys are thinking ahead to college. They decide to set off some dry ice bombs in the back yard. Now, to anyone who doesn't know, dry ice bombs are exactly what they sound like. They are improvised explosive devices that can cause some damage. However these kids are setting them off in the backyard just for the noise. What is even more dumb is the parents are watching this unaware (so they later claimed) that it was illegal. They obtain dry ice and a 24 pack of water bottles.


We originally get the call about firearms being discharged. We go out to a wooded area of a neighborhood and hear several explosions. We drive down the road asking neighbors until we find the house it is coming from. We knock on the door and the father answers. He admits his son and their friends are setting off the dry ice bombs. To be honest we were hoping it was fireworks and we would have left it alone. However since they said the magic word 'bomb' we have to do our jobs. We start asking for identifications for the initial report. The father and his son are in disbelief. They cannot believe we'd have the nerve to question them regarding their 'harmless fun.' The son starts questioning our authority to ask for their names. We politely tell him he can give us his name right there, or we'll put him in the patrol car in handcuffs and he can give it to us there, his choice. As we're gathering information I call the bomb squad and tell them what we have. They arrive within the hour. During the time we made small talk with the son and the mother. The father was off in another room sulking. At this point we had their cooperation and they gave us permission to enter the residence to check out the set up. I was halfway expecting the father to come into the room at any moment and revoke his invitation and demand we leave. Had that happened we would've left however we would have brought everyone in that house outside and kept them there while someone went and got a search warrant. That would make everyone miserable having to wait outside. Fortunately it never happened. When the bomb squad arrived he asked what the attitude of the family was like. I told him the family was cool at this point and we had no problems. This probably made the determination of the bomb squad to gather the evidence, put a scare into the kids and parents and leave it at that rather than arrest everyone for felony setting off explosive devices. As the parents of the other kids were being called I decided I'd done enough and got the hell out of there.