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Woman got caught stealing from a grocery store. She said she needed food for her children. I got called and noticed that amidst
the food she had lifted, she also had a lot of candles in her cart, so of course I had to ask her if she was feeding candles to her
kids. She said no. I asked her if she had gone to the food bank for free food and she said no. So my sympathy evaporated for her
pretty quickly. She was also freaking out a bit because her kids were waiting for her in her car and we had been in the store
security office for too long. Which made me even less impressed with her. So I told her she was going to jail, and she’d need to
call her husband to pick up the kids. He was a chef at nearby restaurant. It was of course super inconvenient for him to leave his
job, but she called him. Now, I had no actual intention of booking her into the jail; I didn’t even handcuff her. But I suspected if
I let her go, she’d never mention a word of this incident to anybody, and when she got in the mail her summons to appear in
court she’d probably make up some reason to her husband why she had to go out take care of business. I felt it would be in her
best interest to have a little more accountability and oversight in her life, so that’s why we got the husband involved. After she
had to explain to him that was going to jail for being a thief, I told them that jeez I had changed my mind about that and actually
she was free to go – released on her personal recognizance to appear in court when ordered to do so later. Was that whole thing
a dick move on my part? Nah. I don’t feel bad about that at all; she needed help and the best person to help was her husband,
so absolutely we should not leave him out of it. And yes, I did that tactic with many, many other deserving folks.

Safeway manager called to report a theft of liquor; somebody was going after the high-end top-shelf bottles of the expensive
spirits. The manager got him on video, a fat kid about 23 years old, loading down baskets one at a time, he boldly carried them
right out to his car, skipping the whole paying for it part. Multiple trips. His license plate was recorded by a citizen. I went to
the kids’ house. He confessed. He had almost a dozen Safeway shopping baskets in his bedroom. And the liquor? He still had
most of it; he only drank a little and was not even reselling it or anything. Just out looking for thrills, apparently.

Patrol check for a wide open door at a residence: I go check it out and find the door won’t close because it’s laying on the floor
in the living room. Nobody is home; the kids are at school and the single mom was at work. Being a shipyard worker, for some
reason she didn’t want to take her wallet to work. So she just left it on the living room coffee table, stuffed full of cash and credit
cards. With, uh, the front door broken on the floor. I called her at work and she said one of the kids had destroyed the door so
she just had left it there like that.