Page 87 - NIXBOOK

There I was doing what you could call “working traffic”, waiting for cars to blow through a stop sign in a neighborhood. It’s a
quiet and calm shift and I’m averaging only like one violator every 15 or 20 minutes. Then I hear a noise. A loud noise. Like a
whooshing. Like somebody has just fired up a pressure washer at the house nearby. No, the sound is getting closer. Maybe it’s a
low flying lear jet? Louder and closer it gets and then I see it; it is of course the sound a large crumpled plastic garbage can makes
when it is lodged directly underneath a moving Honda Accord. I watch as the teen driver goes past me, dragging this loud-ass
plastic can that is totally jammed up underneath his car. I pull him over and he admitted that he had just intentionally swerved
toward the can that had been by the side of the road, empty after the garbageman had come along. The kid had wanted to just
send it flying, but instead it went under his car, got halfway there, and then got stuck. I was less than impressed. I made the kid
call his mother right away to self-report his idiocy. Then I talked to his mother. Her tone was very unsatisfactory for me, because
it was pretty much like “Oh my son is such a little rascal isn’t he?”

Drug store manager called 911 to report a shoplifter had been in her store. Based on her description, I narrowed the list of
suspects down to two known local homeless guys; both in their 20’s and both addicted to heroin. Manager points to a backpack
on the floor. “That’s his – he was in such a hurry to get out of here after I confronted him that he left it behind.” I look in the
pack and find the ID to one of the dudes I had suspected, narrowing down the suspect list to one. I caught him a short time
later. “Hey man, I got your backpack here!”

Dispatcher called me on the radio, advised a neighboring jurisdiction wanted to confirm if a warrant in the system was still
active on a suspect they were contacting. I looked in our file cabinet, found the original paperwork signed by our judge, and
th
confirmed it was valid. The suspect was arrested and taken to the jail for failing to appear for the 5 time, on that one warrant.
Every time he got arrested, he’d promise to show up to court, and then not appear again. Seeing somebody get arrested five
times for failing to appear on a charge is actually not that unusual; quite a few folks out there are slow learners. If you want to
really drag out your criminal court case utilizing this method, you can delay the inevitable by a several years, if you want.