Not surprisingly, it’s been about a month so the ball-stomping has begun again. And while I joke about the fact that people bug me for updates, I have to confess that I really do appreciate it. I’m glad people enjoy the blog. So aside from the painful analogies and looking beyond the fact that encouraging ball-stomping should probably warrant psychiatric attention, please continue!

And even less surprisingly, the lack of updates is due (once again) to addiction to some thoroughly inspired and high-quality digitally enhanced escapism (video games). This time it was ‘Neverwinter Nights 2' prior to heading home to Chicago for the holidays. I was a little disappointed that it was not possible to seduce either the half-demon chick or the innocent farm girl. In a lot of those games a ‘romance’ develops. Oh well. They weren’t my type anyway... And AFTER the holiday, it was due almost exclusively to Ubisoft’s masterpiece ‘Assassin’s Creed’. It’s a hard game to master if you’re not used to video games, but I would recommend it whole-heartedly to anyone in need of stress relief after a bad day. Watching a cloaked assassin dismember medieval Templars and Saracens in truly horrific and brutal ways is more cathartic than you might think. And the game is so beautifully rendered that every snapped femur and spray of jugular blood is lovingly captured. Altair (the main character) is such a bad-ass that his victims beg for the honor of fellating him before they are slaughtered.

Anyway...the road has been pretty uneventful lately although I got a couple of stories worth noting this past week. The first was a simple warrant service. The only thing that really made this one any different was the girl’s reaction. Those who read regularly know that I take what is probably an unhealthy amount of sadistic pleasure in making girls cry. I never treat them any differently than anyone else, but I LOVE it when the tears come. The only thing better is making a big, bad DUDE cry. Those are rare, though. But yeah...as a civilian, I got utterly sickened by the sheer number of stories I heard from girls who bragged about getting warnings either by flirting or crying. And now...I have absolutely no mercy on either of those tactics. So I was at first pretty stoked about the sobbing when this girl was arrested. It quickly got annoying though.

I stopped the car for going 86 mph in a 65 mph zone. I got the driver’s license and ran it. There was a decent but borderline warrant on the system. In my job, with the jails the way they are in our area, we have to use some discretion on what warrants we take. Misdemeanor warrants are usually booked into jail and then kicked out the back door because we simply don’t have room for them. This warrant was for theft, but it was a mid-level misdemeanor, which meant the monetary value of the theft wasn’t high. Still...it was a theft warrant. As far as misdemeanor warrants go, here is my priority breakdown: Domestic violence, assaults or lower weapons charges (anything with any hint of violence) automatically goes to jail. No arguments or pleading. Theft and property crimes usually go depending on how slammed we are. Misdemeanor drugs pretty much ALWAYS means weed. I can take it or leave it. More often than not, I’ll take it. Traffic warrants I tend to let go with a warning pretty frequently.–Unless, of course, the bail amount is high which means the issuing judge really does want to talk to the jack-ass. The final straw in this instance was the fact that I hadn’t taken anyone to jail in about a month and it was truly pissing me off. Given that it was a theft warrant, I took it.

I had her get out of the car and she immediately started spilling her guts in a quavering voice. "I’ve got to be honest with you officer..." she said. That’s usually a prelude to something priceless. "I got stopped earlier tonight and the officer told me I had a warrant. But it wasn’t me and I promised him I would take care of it first thing tomorrow!" Now, regardless of whether the bullshit detector was screaming like crazy, the wonderful thing about arrest warrants is that it has NOTHING to do with the charge or the disposition of the case. It’s an order from a magistrate to arrest the person so the judge can talk to them about charge. As an officer serving a warrant, I have the very liberating luxury of not having to give a flying rat’s ass whether or not someone actually committed the crime they’re accused of. I have a judge’s order to arrest. That’s all I need. I then explained that, "Yes, you do have a warrant and I’m going to serve it," I then had her turn around and I grabbed her fingers as I always do in preparation for the handcuffs. "Wait! Wait!" she shouted, trying to pull her hands apart. At that point, if she had been anything other than a petite woman, she would have gotten dropped like my freshman trig class. But I just clamped down on her fingers and kept control. "I’ve got kids! I can’t go to jail! I didn’t do it! Someone used my name! The other officer said he believed me!" After about ten seconds of this bleating I got her in cuffs.

In the car she continued to bitch and whine constantly. "It wasn’t me! Oh god, I can’t believe you’re taking me to jail! Someone used my name! I swear! I PROMISE I’ll take care of it first thing tomorrow! Why are you being so cruel?! The other officer knew me and said he believed me! Why won’t you give me a chance to prove it?" I then tried to explain that she WOULD get her chance to prove it...in court. I then patiently explained that not only was whether or not she did it irrelevant, but that I really couldn’t imagine caring any less. She kept saying that this other officer who stopped her knew her and knew that she was innocent and let her go. I asked her how she knew the officer. She said she didn’t, but that the other officer knew that she was innocent. I asked her how he knew that. I asked if the other officer knew her case or family history or any details about the alleged incident. She said no. But she said she had her other ticket in her pocket. Humoring her, I went and looked at the ticket.

I had assumed the ‘other officer’ was from a neighboring agency. The odds were good. Turns out it was a guy I know VERY well in our department. I had him call me just to cover my bases and make sure there was nothing I needed to know about. He laughed his ASS off when I told him what was going on. He told me that she had been driving like a moron when he stopped her, too. She was going over 90 when he stopped her and weaving in traffic. I asked him about the warrant. He said that the only reason he told her that he believed her was because he was late for break and didn’t want to waste an hour at the jail.

Like I said, officer discretion. The warrant she had is one that could definitely be served, but in our very busy neck of the woods and dealing with our very busy jail...no one would think less of an officer for simply warning someone on a warrant like that. With the jail’s current guidelines, too, the girl would’ve been back out on the street before I finished my report for the arrest. That’s how crowded the jail is.

Besides...as any frequent reader knows...break time is sacrosanct. Woe to he who interrupts it! Chances are...if the cop who just gave you the ticket was a dickhead...it was probably because you practiced some form of blatant retardation in his presence on the way to break. At that point...if the action was moronic enough...we are sorta forced to intervene lest the citizens surrounding us complain that we didn’t catch you. Everyone hates us when we give you tickets...but oh dear lord! We sure do hear about it when we fail to catch the dicktard who just turned left in front of you, forcing you to drop the slushee in your lap and instantly icing up your balls. Then we’re lazy donut vacuums. But when we cite YOU for forcing an old lady to dive out of your way like a Spaniard in Pamplona, then we’re just over-zealous dicks. Goddam people suck...

But I digress...the point is that the officer had in no way expressed any true confidence in her innocence. He let her go because he was on his way to break. And after that leniency, she continued to drive like an ass-hat with the full knowledge that she had a warrant for her arrest. Hell yes, she went to jail! But THAT’S when the tears started. Wailing worthy of the Bible, my friends. She made wheezing noises in between her sobbing pleas that sounded like the noises I imagine a donkey would make while being slowly disemboweled. Noises like a goose with a throat infection. "I...NNNNNGHHH...can’t...NNNNNNGH....go....NNNNNNGHHH...to...NNNNNNGHHH...jail!" Snot-filled sniffles and gasps for air. It was almost terrifying in a way. It didn’t stop me from towing the car and taking her to jail, though. It wasn’t really a joyous occasion to hear her cry this time. It was obviously genuine, and it really DID get pretty fucking annoying after about ten seconds. She was booked without incident.

And of course my karma held that night. I had the sobbing girl in handcuffs not TWO fucking minutes when dispatch called out a chase from a neighboring county that was coming into our area. It NEVER fails! I was bored and pissed about not having been to jail in a while, so I hooked the first warrant I found. And naturally a TRUE dyed-in-the-wool criminal chooses right then to make his appearance. It was a fun chase. It went all over. Shoe got to tackle the guy when he found him hiding behind a shed. And the best part? The perp was the guy my buddy arrested a few months ago. Remember the mongoloid who claimed to his dying breath that we had arrested the wrong guy and that he ALWAYS squats shivering behind abandoned houses? Same dude. Same...fucking...dude. His first order of business upon getting out of jail was to steal another car.

And lastly we had a fairly miraculous crash. (And NO, Jamie...I still stick to my firm and adamant belief that this story is NOT proof of God’s existence. It’s just really, really improbable. ) The driver denies it, but I would bet you my badge he just fell asleep at the wheel. He claimed he hit black ice. There was no black ice anywhere in the county. Regardless of the cause, the vehicle drifted off the road into the median. There was no change in the tire tracks that would indicate any panic or evasive maneuvers. After about 75 feet, the tracks hit a slightly inclined storm grate. Then there was nothing. I walked further down the scene. Nothing. A little further. Nothing. A little more. Nothing. Then after 30 feet, BLAM! Impact marks and debris. The guy had flown thirty feet before the first impact. Then he rolled at least three times, probably more. He had some cuts and scrapes and some minor injuries. If you’re like me or read frequently, this exact thought should be rolling through your brain exactly as it was mine that night: "Thank god he was wearing his seatbelt." And YES, Jamie, I DO see the hypocrisy and irony in thanking god.

The funny thing was...the guy looked really familiar. So did the license plate on his Ford Explorer (fucking SUV’s...always rolling...ALWAYS!). I got his information and ran it. Then I remembered. I’d stopped him in mid-December for speeding. He claimed his speedometer was inaccurate. My buddy Danny stopped him two weeks before that. Another colleague stopped him two weeks before that. Then another not long before that. Then another...to a grand total of eight stops in the past two months. All for speed. And given the Dukes of Hazzard-esque launch he’d suffered from the storm grate, I was guessing that excessive speed was part of the problem here, too. He was transported to the hospital before I could talk to him about his speed.

At the hospital, one of the ER workers came up to me and asked, "Can you believe he was unrestrained?" Translation for the lay-person: "Can you believe he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt?" I blinked at them. "What? Did you say ‘unrestrained’?" "Yeah. Can you believe he wasn’t belted in?" "He TOLD you that?" "Yeah, why?" "He should be dead." "I know! Can you believe it?!" To me, that’s one in a goddam thousand if not more. You don’t roll a vehicle four times at high speed and stay inside the vehicle without a seatbelt. It just...does...not...happen. Unbelievable. Then the guy tried to tell me he was only going 65. I then patiently explained that one’s Ford Explorer does not launch on a parabolic trajectory and land 30 feet ahead and then roll four more times with an initial speed of 65 mph. He argued that his speedometer showed 65. I then asked if he remembered me pulling him over. He blinked and then smiled, "Hey yeah!" "And did you ever get your speedometer fixed? You told ME it was showing lower speeds." He blinked and the smile faded. "Oh, no I didn’t. I guess I could’ve been going faster." Shit, yeah! Ya think?! I then issued him the citation for failure to operate in a lane and no seatbelt. I then told him that I should have been looking at a dead man right then and that there’s no real reason why he was alive. I told him to slow down and rest before driving if he’s fatigued.

And that’s that. I’m going to bed...

Avoid a potentially embarrassing situation this week by explaining to your daughter that sometimes mommies and daddies also enjoy playing dress-up.  (www.theonion.com)