This job is about having fun. One night that fun was provided by a tree in a parking lot of a gas station. You might wonder how a tree can provide humor. With a little imagination and cop humor, you can have fun with anything.

We were in the parking lot of a Chevron gas station for a DUI crash. While the DUI investigation was being conducted, someone pointed to a tree in the parking lot and told me to look. I turned toward the tree and started laughing because it looked like it had legs that were spread open in a weird position.

I then told another officer to look at the tree. A surprised look flashed across his face as he immediately started laughing too.

While we were laughing, the suspect caught a glimpse of us while he was doing his field sobriety tests. He kept looking at us the entire time even though we were at least 40 feet from him. When he was finally arrested, the suspect told us he was upset because we were making fun of him.

I said, “We weren’t laughing at you.”

“That’s mess up man.”

“Seriously, we weren’t. We were laughing at something else.”

He was really upset now and nothing I said was going to change his mind. I didn’t want him to go to jail mad so I decided to show him the real reason why we were laughing. It wasn’t like it was going to make things worse. We walked him over to the tree and said, “Look.”

He looked at the tree and suddenly busted up laughing. That made all of us laugh even more. There was just something funny about that tree.

He then walked to the police car with a smile on his face and sat down in the backseat with no problems. While he was in the backseat one of the officers went up to the tree and took a picture of it with his phone.

The suspect was watching and asked, “Can you take a picture with my phone too? It’s in my pocket.”

Sure, why not. One of the guys got the phone out of his pocket and took the picture for him. The DUI guy said, “Thanks,” as they put his phone back in his pocket.

You can never be too serious on this job. Sometimes humor is right around the corner, or at the next tree….

That tree will forever be known as the “The Dirty Tree.”