Equal Opportunity Crime

     Happened to be out at night when Patrol got a call of a burglary in progress at a local bar, the “Louisville Tavern.”  We all called it the “Louieville Tavern”.  One of my coworkers, Officer Preston, would get indignant at what he perceived as “Slaughtering the Queen’s English” and correct us all the time; “It’s the LOUISville Tavern”.  I guess he thought Merryweather would be spinning in his grave to be called “Captain Louie”.  I was close so I rolled on the alarm. 

 

     I pulled up to see Officer Rick on the west side next to a kicked-in door, and Officer Mel on the east side.  Rick radioed that a suspect was running to the east inside the tavern, so I went to where Mel was.  I got there about the same time as a chair crashed through an east window and a skinny guy started climbing through.  Mel put his gun right between the skinny guy’s eyes and yelled “FREEZE!” so loud that I’m sure seismologists in California registered it on the Richter scale.  The suspect screamed like a girl and ran back to the west, so I ran over to where Rick was standing by just in time to grab the suspects’ right arm. 

 

     Just then a weird thing happened: as Rick cranked this guys' right arm around, it didn’t just bend at the elbow, the whole arm arced around like a wet noodle.  Rick let go it so fast, I thought that the guy had broken out of his grasp, so I grabbed the wrist, and felt that there was no bone, just flaccid flesh making up his arm.  The sensation made me let go fast too, Rick just looked at me and said, “Weird, Huh?”  The suspect told us he had a degenerative bone disorder, which had dissolved the bones in his right arm. 

 

     Rick looked at me and asked, “What do we do?”  The suspect thought that we were talking to him, so he said, “Well, the cop on the other side (Officer Mel) freaked me out when he yelled at me and I, well, I dumped a load in my pants; could you take me to my apartment so I can clean up?”  We felt so bad for the guy that we did.  He thought we were so nice for letting him shower before he went to jail, he told us about all the other burglaries he had committed, all of them mini marts and taverns, just to get beer. 

 

     As for me, I just need to remember not to frighten Mel… my ears are still ringing. 

The Un-Dead

    Got called out to a shooting victim call, and as usual, the ambulance had transported the victim to the hospital.  I think that they would transport dirt on an archeological dig if they thought they could bill Medicare. 

 

    Anyway, I get to the hospital and the nurses (who see the badge) point me to the trauma care room.  I walk in, and there are a few people still around the body.  I saw that an x-ray was up on the wall, what looked like a broken-up .22 bullet was inside the skull.  The victim looked to be a 50-ish woman, who looked to be well-dressed and in good shape (other than the .22 caliber hole in her head).  I looked close at the hole in the head: right side temple, contact wound.  I then looked at the heel and fingers of her right hand: small, pin-pricks of blood were on the top of her knuckles. 

 

    I called the Patrol Sergeant at the scene and found that the scene and witness all pointed to suicide.  The evidence on the body pointed to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.  I then set about photographing the evidence on the body, which included me diving in with gloved hands to lift hair away from the wound, and also picking up the right hand to photograph the blood.  As I held the hand to take the picture, the body suddenly squeezed my hand.  After I did a little “Guh guh guh” move, and put near tossed my camera through the defibulater, I realized that the machines were still hooked up and the victim was still breathing.  The nurse looked over at me with an amused look and said, “We are leaving her hooked up to life support until the family gets here.”  Thanks for telling me. 

 

    I won’t ever complain again at a smelly, rotten one ... at least the only movement is the bugs. 

Where Have All The Bodies Gone?

     A very frustrating week; and by golly it had all the signs of being a fun one. 

 

     It started out with detective Schuk getting some info on an old missing persons case.  The info was that some nut strangled the missing woman (a prostitute and meth user), then buried her in his back yard.  The guy happened to be in the city jail on unrelated traffic charges, so he was convenient to interview.  He would not admit to killing the hooker, but he did tell us that he sometimes did “Bad things.” 

 

     The reason he does bad things sometimes is because he has 4 women’s voices in his head telling him what to do.  The voices are Alice, Carol, Gwen and the real troublemaker, Sally.  Sally once told him to break out a window and crawl into it, it happened to be the front window of a local jailer’s home.  I asked him if Sally ever regrets doing bad things, he said, “Sally didn’t get her face beat in by breaking into the house, I did.” 

 

     He told me the reason he has this entire mental problem is because back in 1976 he smoked some marijuana.  I guess the U.S. Government was right when it produced the film “Refer Madness.”  I think he was good for the hooker’s death. 

 

     A look at his yard showed a “mound and depression” consistent with a human burial.  While Detective Schuk got the warrant to dig up the guy’s yard, I got another call of a “bad smell” and some clothing items found near one of the city’s greenway paths. 

 

     I went to check that out and found the area where the clothing items were found.  There was no mass of blow flys, and no huge population of magpies around, but there was a bad smell.  I followed the bad smell to where it seemed to be coming from, a pile of wood behind some thick cottonwood trees.  I could see there was some more clothing under and in-between some of the log piles, so I reached down to grab the clothing.  Now I had not brought any latex gloves with me; but I thought, if it was a dead body, I’ll just have the crime scene response people bring some.  So I grabbed the shirt with my bare hands… big mistake.  There was no dead body.  There was just some assorted clothing that bums were receiving from a local rescue mission nearby to use as toilet paper.  The log pile made a convenient commode.  The smell was not that of a dead body but rather… well… poop.

 

     I was not very upbeat as I returned to the station.  We got the warrant and several of us set off for the possible grave.  We dug for 5 hours and came up with nothing except some exceptionally large earthworms.  Detective Schuk did get attacked by a momma cat while we searched the house; everyone in the entire department heard the story of the ferocious animal that left two puncture marks on his left hand, I think he’s bucking for some medical leave time. 

 

     Me, I just can’t seem to find any bodies. 

Viva el Presidente!

          As you know, yesterday, Mexican president Vicente Fox came to our fair city.  Doc and I were the designated counter-snipers in the apple orchard where el Presidente spoke to a crowd of adoring (carefully screened and selected) fans.  Before we took off to the location, I got a latte' and bought Doc what he wanted- a green tea.  I was hoping that no one saw me get the tea; I mean, come on... lattes are liberal enough... throw in a green tea and people will think I voted for Dean.  Drinks in hand, we went to our site. 

          Doc and I arrived and set out to check in with the Secret Service agent in charge.  Afterwards, Doc walked back to a pile of bins and retrieved his green tea from behind a box where he had stashed it before meeting the agent.  I guess Doc thought he would be put on their "No-Fly Watch List" if discovered drinking green tea by the Secret Service during a Republican administration.  Green tea in hand, we then tackled the problem of how to get up onto the 38-foot warehouse roof which overlooked the orchards and a podium where Presidente Fox and a few dignitaries (including Washington Governor Chrissy G.) would speak. 

          The warehouse had a smaller building on one side, so we decided to get onto the small roof, then from there use another ladder to get onto the main roof.  We called the local (and remained unnamed) fire department, who came and set up the ladders for us.  We then packed all our stuff onto the roof; rifles, binoculars, lunch boxes... then climbed up for the long sentry duty.  While on the roof, we entertained ourselves by laser ranging the distances to ground squirrels that popped out onto rocks between 78.7 and 542.5 yards away.  We also wiled away some time by throwing hunks of tar down onto the reaction force car (the reaction force is a marked police Tahoe with four fellow SWAT guys; all geared up and ready to attack the forces of Al-Qaida, Communists, or green tea-drinking Dean supporters); they are supposed to stay out of sight and not bring any attention to themselves, which makes them the perfect tar-ball target. 

          Once the caravan arrived, Presidente Fox was supposed to walk over to a guy on a ladder pruning a tree, demonstrating the sort of jobs "guest workers" do in the U.S. of A.  The only problem is that they stuck this poor slob out there about three hours before Senior Fox arrived, and did not tell him when Fox was coming.  Every time a car would crest the hill, the worker would start pruning.  By the time Fox (followed by secret security, media and sycophants) arrived, el Presidente ended up looking at a tree which now only had the trunk and 1/2 a branch.  This was followed by a speech and the usual hand shaking and picture taking.

          After all the important people had left, we started taking down our equipment.  We had most of our stuff, including Doc's $7000.00 sniper rifle on the lower roof when the fire guys arrived to get their ladders.  Two of them climbed up to the lower roof, and walked over to the second ladder.  One of the fire dudes walked right into Doc's rifle and tripped over it, kicking it about three feet over the roof.  I'm sure the only reason the guy did not fly off the roof is 'cause there were still several media outlets there, and Doc is camera shy. 

          Most everything turned out OK;  the commies did not attack, Doc's rifle is fine and el presidente did not see Doc drinking green tea.  That last one is the one that had me worried; a foreign leader seeing highly trained American security forces, sipping green tea, will likely see us as an easy target for invasion; perhaps they already do.

http://www.yakimaherald.com/page/dis/286173373891053

Training Day

          Today was our monthly training day for detectives and the Gang squad.  Specifically, we had firearms and defensive tactics training.  I’m sure that most of you will understand “firearms,” however “defensive tactics” may be a bit obscure.  Defensive tactics is, quite frankly, fighting.  It does seem much kinder and gentler to say, “I’m going to defensive tactics training,” rather than, “I’m going to learn how to beat the crap out of criminals.”  When you are at court defending yourself for having had to break, say, someone’s ribs because they took a swing at you, you just look at the jury with big, doe eyes and say apologetically, “I had to use defensive tactics,” i.e. the other guy used offensive tactics.  Granted, DT is fighting in such a way as to lessen the chance of injury to a suspect or yourself. 

          Anyway, I first went to the firearms portion.  Our range is actually on a nearby military base; it is pretty desolate there and today it was hot (97 F was the high).  I did say it was desolate, but there was still some interesting wildlife that wandered in.  Krycky!  Would you look at the size of this ripper!

Then Firearms Instructor, Officer Mike, showed us the specific drill we were going to shoot today.  We call Mike "The Troll", because he is only about 4 feet tall, eats rocks, and lives under a bridge.  Right now I think he is aiming at my kneecaps.

Here we have Officer Miller (aka Paris Hilton) taking a few pointers from the Range Master, Rod "Josie Wales" Y. 

The Gang Squad posed for a photo.  Gang Squad... isn't that a syntactical redundancy?  Sort of like, "Group Club" or "Attorney Misconduct." 

Here is detective Bru; wearing some hat he bought down in Mexico on a drunken binge.  He has been hammered with a bunch of embezzlement cases this month; he is getting so tired of the embezzlers, I think he is passing around an initiative to subject them to the death penalty.

By the way, all that Diet Pepsi I drink on the range made my teeth float, got to run to the military-style latrine quansit hut. 

Well... maybe I could hold it till I got back to the next course of instruction. I think that was a dead mouse in all that, er, well... liquid. 

So- after firearms, we all went off to a boxing club in town.  There we met up (after a trip to the restroom) with DT instructor Sgt Chad.  Here is Chad being comforted by Detective Mendoza.  I think Chad just learned that there we be no goulash for dinner; that's right, Chad is one of those Nordic guys who like to compete in various competitions like, how many Volkswagons can you lift and toss through 3rd story windows, or who is fastest at removing the opponents organs while smashing in their face in a cage match.  During lunch Chad asked if he could show me this "Reallly cool medicine ball workout".  15 minutes later my triceps were both crying for mommy.  Lesson learned: Don't think you can out-workout a guy who takes voice lessons to actually sound like Governer Arnold.

Who says cops are not sensitive? 

Finally, here are Officers Paris and Lee wrestling on the ground in a blatant violation of the department's sexual harassment policy. 

Hey Remo... she's got that left elbow a bit low for the LVNR, eh?  Lee seems to like it, though.

See you all later; thanks for looking.

Dave

Wigs and Arabs

     Yesterday my kid told me that he needed a wig for a production he is doing in his TV/Video class.  He told me, “Dad, what happened to the wig you had?”  Good question... I don’t remember.  However I do remember when I got it. 

 

     In 1992 I was placed on the department’s SCAT unit.  SCAT stands for Street Crime Abatement Team; however here is the Webster’s definition:

SCAT: Function: noun.  Etymology: perhaps from Greek skat-, skOr.  Excrement: an animal fecal dropping.

Anyway, there I was with the high-speed, low drag members of the department, looking to prove myself.  My first attempts at undercover were chronicled in “Just No Good With Hookers” found here:

 

http://journals.aol.com/krisndave83/DeadInvestigations/entries/784.  

 

     After that difficulty, I tried the narcotic buy thing.  First I went to the Salvation Army and found a long, black wig that I trimmed to a “Joe Dirt” mullet.  Then I threw on a leather jacket and some smelly jeans.  On my very first try, I walked to the front of a tavern, known for drug sales.  I was approached by an older man, who asked me something I couldn't understand.  He kept repeating his words and I kept saying, “What?”  He started to get mad at me, upset that I did not understand him.  He rolled his eyes, slowed his speech, as if he was speaking to a third-grader, and I finally understood him to be saying, “Do- you- want- coke?” 

 

     I had trouble understanding him because it turned out that the guy was a Turkish national.  Come to think of it, this could lead to some vacation time!  Check it out- my first undercover drug buy is being set up by a Muslim from Istanbul!  Maybe Homeland Security will want to fly me to Washington DC to debrief me on the incident; they could set me up at the Howard Johnsons next to the White House; I really would like to tour the place.  Anyway, once we overcame the language barrier, he told me to wait.  After a moment, a tough-looking guy with tattoos on his neck came out and asked me if I was the one who wanted coke.  I told him I was, and that I wanted $20 worth.  He asked me, “Are you a cop?”  I told him no, I was not a cop.  He then relaxed, got a sneer on his face, and told me that it was lucky I was not a cop, because he would take his knife and cut me deep, ‘cause that is what he does to cops, blah, blah, blah.  All the time he was talking, he was pouring out about a gram of white powder into a folded piece of paper. 

 

     He handed me the cocaine.  I gave him a twenty dollar bill, smiled and said, “Police, you’re under arrest!”  I grabbed one of his arms as his sneer melted into a panicked expression, and he yelled out a little “aaaaahhh!”  I ended up pulling his jacket off as he tried to run away, but just as he turned to run, my back-up, Officer Garza, arrived.  We both took him to the sidewalk and cuffed him.  A bit of a crowd had formed around us (cheap entertainment for the winos), and as I scanned the crowd, there was the Turkish guy, just standing there watching!  I had thought for sure he would have run off when the fight was on, but he didn’t.  I grabbed him and told him he was under arrest as well.  Later at the trial for conspiracy to sell narcotics, he almost got off, because his defense attorney argued that he did not speak English well enough to be a drug front-man.  He may not have spoken English well, but he was persistent, and found guilty. 

We Have A Winner!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the "Carpet Cop Corny Caption Contest".  I want you all to know that my family laughed a great deal (at my expense) while reading your comments. 

Now, the moment you have all been waiting for...

The envelope please-

(drum roll)

And the winner is:

Screamin Remo with:   "cha cha cha Chia Cop"

If this is the first time you have looked at the site, this is not what we are talking about:

Although, I hear (through various police intelligence sources) that the criminal element may be using this "Chia" technology in order to hide themselves within a suburban environment:

Well, it's something that we all need to be aware of and watch out for. 

By the way, Remo needs a prize for his winning entry.  What should that prize be?  Well, the answer is obvious!  Anyone who would think of "Chia" would absolutely die for one of these: