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I still have a bit of siren PTSD from that incident. I later came across a website where a company was selling toy model police
cars; they could be personalized to match any department’s color and graphics scheme, and they had super cool fully functional
little red and blue LED lightbars and corner strobes and even grill lights and rear deck lights, and a siren feature if one wanted
that but I realized absolutely not no way would I ever want a model police car that had a siren sound in it. It would give me
flashbacks, and not in a good way. I’m scarred.

Prosecutors sent me a subpoena to appear for a court case involving a felony theft; my testimony was needed in trial. I was less
than thrilled about testifying, because I had finished, filed, and forgotten the police investigation…three and half years earlier.

I caught a kid (19 or 20 years old) who had a suspended license, so I called for a tow truck and his car got impounded. He
contested the impound with the department of licensing, and in a special appeal hearing he told the hearing examiner that the
officer involved (me) did not have probable cause to stop him, and therefore the whole thing was invalid. The hearing examiner
said “okay then” and had the tow bill and daily storage fees from the tow truck company sent to the police department so we
could pay the $800 dollars instead of the driver. When the tow company sent the bill to the PD, my supervisor freaked out and
got a copy of the audio recording that had been made during the hearing. Because the kid’s statement about no probable cause
was a complete lie made under oath, the prosecutor readily agreed to file a perjury charge against him, which the kid eventually
pled guilty to and got on his permanent record. It didn’t slow him down too much though; the last time I checked on him that
guy (kid no longer) he had accumulated over 400 documented police contacts by age 30. And those were just the incidents
important enough for officers to bother putting into the database. His contact/arrest ratio was pretty impressive; averaging a
th
jail booking every 3 ½ months for a sustained 13 years, to yield a very impressive total of 43 jail booking photos. His 44 booking
photo was (finally) at a state prison.

The new guy on patrol is in the squad room, typing a report. He finishes, and leaves the building without logging off. Meaning
his account, on one of the shared computers, is open. We can’t have that, so I taken it upon myself to teach him a lesson. I’ll be
nice and not send out a silly email to just everybody this time, pretending to be him. But his account ID/profile picture definitely
got changed from The Punisher to Taylor Swift. Then his screen background photo got changed from a police sniper to a cartoon
drawing of Dora the Explorer. Over the years, the number of officers I did that to: about 8. Number of times it happened to me:
about 3.