Page 247 - NIXBOOK

The shirtless dude I stopped one night to tell him not to skateboard in the dark on a busy road. That was his thing…to ride his
skateboard even in the dark. Fast forward a few years, one day I come in to work and I was told that dude had died during the
night. I said “Oh was he riding his skateboard in the middle of the road in the dark?” Yup. The truck that hit him almost tore
his head completely off; it was a pretty severe impact. Dude should have listened to me; he might still be alive today.

I pulled over a lot of people who weren’t wearing their seatbelts because they had a pretty good reason, like a shingles outbreak,
or a recent mastectomy, or a lung removal surgery. I’m an empathetic kind of guy so I always gave them a pass without asking
for any more details. Usually they didn’t pull up their shirt quickly – before I could stop them - to show me proof. Usually.

That chief also got mad when his #2 guy got his picture in the newspaper at some kind of community event. That was a huge
no-no; as everybody knows only the Chief is worthy enough to represent the department in the local press.

And I know it also really rankled him when I kept getting the annual community “Officer of the Year” award from the local
newspaper. I got nice certificates from the paper, but never a word about it was mentioned from the Chief and of course the
award certainly wasn’t put on a wall in the office, because when the Police Chief’s name is misspelled so badly that it looks like
“Officer Nick Hoke” then no way of course will it be displayed or even a passing mention of it made in my annual evaluations.