We need to stop meeting by accident

Posted on April 16, 2017 by Badge415

It was a late Friday afternoon when I was sent to a hit and run crash. When I arrived, I saw both drivers sitting in their cars. Two other officers were already on scene.

After I interviewed both drivers, the suspect was detained for the DUI investigation. While we waited the suspect said, “I called my boss and told him I was going to get booked.”

“You called your boss already?” I asked.

“Yeah. I told him I wasn’t going to be there on Monday.”

That was pretty funny because he made that call before I got there. I guess that pitcher of beer and the shot of whiskey he drank told him which way this was going to go.

I made small talk with him and learned he was arrested for DUI about five years ago. I asked, “Did you crash or were you stopped?”

“I crashed.”

I asked him where and when. It just happened to be on a Friday night , which was my normal work day so I asked, “Was I there?”

I asked this because every so often I run into past crash cusomters. Well, actually they run into someone else and then I show up.

He starting giving me details about the collision and asked me, “Do you remember?”

“No. I take a lot of crashes, so it has to be different for it to stick out.”

He squinted as he looked at my name bar and said, “You were there.” He kept looking at my name and said, “I have a report at home with your name on it.”

“We need to stop meeting by accident,” I replied. At least he laughed because saying that never gets old.

A little while later I found his name in our records. He was in two different crashes in my city. One was the DUI crash he was talking about, but it was handled by someone else. The second crash was last summer. He was a passenger in that one and guess who wrote it?

Yes, Badge415’s name was at the bottom of that report. What a small world.

With a population of 350,000 people, I still find it amazing how I run into past crash customers.

I should start handling out Badge415 frequent customer loyalty punch cards with the words, “After 3 crashes you buy me Starbucks.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

The Sound of Music anyone?

Posted on April 10, 2017 by Badge415

The other night, I was sent to a hit and run crash where both the suspect and victim were standing by. When I arrived, I spoke to the suspect while the other officer contacted the victim.

The suspect, who we’ll called David, told me about the crash and taking off. After the collision, the victim told him to pull into a parking lot. David told the woman he would, but drove away instead.

He turned eastbound at the intersection and then into a different parking lot as the victim chased him. He drove out of that parking lot and back onto the street.

The victim pulled alongside and said, ‘Pull over motherfucker!’

This gem of a word was enough to get him to stop.

David said, “She was mad.”

I looked at this 18 year old kid and said, “You crashed into her and took off. Of course, she was mad. It’s not like she was going to be smiling with her hands in the air like the opening scene of The Sound of Music.”

He gave me a blank look. “You never saw The Sound of Music?”

“No.”

Gasp.

We walked over to the other officer, who was in his late 20s and I told him what I said. The cop told me he hadn’t seen the movie either. What in the world……

To be funny, I pulled my phone out and went to You Tube. I typed in “Sound of Music opening scene” and did the search. It came up and all three of us watched the first 15 seconds of the movie as Julie Andrews did her thing.

Thank goodness for You Tube. At least they both get my joke now.

And if you don’t know who Julie Andrews is, then double GASP.

Paper or plastic?

Posted on April 10, 2017 by Badge415

Tonight, I dispatched to a call involving a suspicious vehicle that was stopped in the right turn lane of a major road with no hazard lights on. When I pulled up, I saw a truck stopped in the lane just east of the intersection.

I walked up and saw a man in his 80s sitting in the driver seat with a two litter bottle of 7-Up in his lap. The man was lost and a bit confused. He was in no shape to drive and eventually agreed to let us give him a ride home.

The other cop on the call was going to take him home and I was going to park his truck in the adjacent parking lot, but there was one problem. He peed himself and his driver seat was soaked.

I saw that and wondered how I was going to get that truck into a parking spot without getting my pants wet. I shone my flashlight into the truck’s interior and saw a towel! That was a possibility, but the urine was going to soak through the towel within seconds.

Too bad there wasn’t a trainee working tonight. It would’ve been character building for them to figure this out.

Letting the guy drive into the parking lot wasn’t an option. Let’s just say it was a long story. Calling a tow truck wasn’t going to work either. I was just going to have to drive it.

I walked over to the other cop and asked, “Do you have any paper bags in the trunk?”

I asked this because paper bags are used for evidence rather than plastic bags like you see on TV or in the movies. He popped the trunk and there they were. Those large paper bags were my ticket to dry pants.

I pulled three out of his trunk and carried them to the pee-soaked driver seat. I placed them on the seat and carefully got in, making sure not to get my pants wet.

Once I was sitting on my paper bag throne I drove the truck out of the street and into a parking lot. I locked it up and happily walked away with dry pants.

Mission accomplished.

By the way, he wasn’t drunk. I checked the 7-Up bottle to make sure it really was soda.

Better than cow shit

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Badge415

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The other day I was driving my daughter to practice when we passed a strawberry field. She pointed it out and said something about getting some. I glanced over and it reminded me of a crash I took years ago. I looked at my daughter and said, “I had a car crash at a strawberry field once.”

She relied, “You did?”

Some crashes are easily forgotten, while others stand out. Some stand out because of what I saw or heard, while this particular one stood out because of what I smelled.

One night, I was dispatched to a roll-over crash in the eastern part of the city. I pulled up to the scene and expected to see the car either in the street or on the sidewalk. I scanned the area, but there was nothing. Then I looked at the northeast corner and saw a car deep into the strawberry field.

There aren”t a lot of fields for agriculture where I work so, having a crash at one was really unusual.

I parked and started walking toward the car. I stepped into the field and tried to walk between the rows to avoid stepping on the strawberries. There were crushed strawberries everywhere with an incredible smell was in the air.

I ended up having strawberries in the groves of my boots and some on my pants. You name it and there were bits of strawberry everywhere on the crashed car.

After I left my patrol car smelled like a bottle of strawberry soap exploded inside.

For some strange reason I felt like having a strawberry margarita after that. At least the guy didn’t crash into a dairy farm full of cow shit. I’ll take a strawberry field any day.