Page 122 - NIXBOOK

There I am at the local mobile home trailer park, trying to track down one of our resident scroungers who had the frequent
habit of scrounging things for himself that he usually had no right to take, under the cover of darkness. Scrounger was not home,
he was probably out dumpster diving or looking for more used tires to liberate from behind auto repair businesses. His buddy
was there, though, and since the current case wasn’t serious enough to warrant an arrest, I asked his buddy to just pass along a
message, which he helpfully agreed to do. I pointed to my name tag on my uniform. “Tell your friend that OFFICER HOKE was
here, and OFFICER HOKE (pointing to my name tag again) says stop stealing tires from behind the auto repair business or else
I’m going to come back here and make his miserable life more miserable.” We both kind of laughed because it was no secret
that I had in fact arrested Scrounger more than several times during my career, for stealing junk that didn’t belong to him. The
guy promised to yell at the scrounger for me, and then he says “Hey Officer Hoke do you remember me?” Oh great, this again.
I said “Nope.” He said “You arrested me and I went to prison. I was doing stupid stuff. I got locked up for 68 months.” Holy shit.
I had to ask if I had heard him right: “Did you just say sixty-eight months?!?” He confirmed it. “Yeah, I deserved it. I stole a lot
of things.” I looked at him and then remembered him. I knew that he had gone off to prison after I had caught him and booked
him into the jail, but I had no idea it was for over five years. Part of me wanted to ask “Uh…so we good now?” but he
acknowledged he had been stupid in his younger years and he was reformed now. Still awkward as hell though, when somebody
says something like that to you, you know? No, you probably don’t know. Well, if you’re a cop you know the feeling. (It’s weird!)

An 88 year old lady called 911 to report falling for a scam. I went to her house. “I sent some money to California,” she sadly told
me. I asked how much. “Sixteen thousand five hundred dollars.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You sent $16,500 dollars’
worth of gift cards to a scammer in California?!?” I asked. She looked sadder and said “No it wasn’t gift cards it was cash…$100
dollar bills.” When her adult daughter found out, FedEx was called to cancel the delivery. The FedEx operator entered the
number, and said she was sorry, but they were too late. The driver had scanned the bar code and classified it as “Delivered”…just
4 minutes’ earlier. The package was addressed to random house in California; I had the local cops there respond and they
reported the homeowner was not related to the scam. Home surveillance recordings showed the FedEx driver never even made
it to the doorstep; the package was intercepted and signed for out of camera range. No way to trace who the scammer was. Case
closed. An hour later the victim called me again “He’s really mad, he didn’t get the money I sent him!” I assured her that oh, yes,
he most certainly did get the $16,500 dollars in cash, and now that he knew you were so gullible, he’s going to try and convince
you to sent another $16,500 dollars. “Don’t take any more calls from that guy! And get a new phone number!” I told her.