Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Really rioting over this.

OK, even though I am a police officer, I understand where there might be a situation where some group of people might want to address a complaint by going to the streets of california (I didn't capitalize it on purpose because it is an improper noun) and rioting. Some things that come to mind that might instigate such a righteous riot:

stolen welfare check
stolen or missing food stamps
high on PCP
high on Methamphetamine
religious persecution
firearm persecution
out of pork rinds at the local stop and rob
my hos missing money
or heaven forbid The Mozz passes away.

But really folks, your hometown team wins and you take to the streets, tearing down trees and signs so you can build fires in the roadways? You start to throw stuff at the cops to the point of injuring them and causing severe damage to equipment payed for by your own tax money. Or tax money that you didn't pay. Wow. This is further evidence that an earthquake of biblical proportions should strike californias (again not capitalized) major fault lines, hopefully separating you from the rest of the country.

P.S. Please take new york and whatever state al gore is in at the time of said earthquake with you.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Spring is here

Ya I know it has been a while since the last post and if I thought that it mattered to many people what I write here I might apologize, but I don't think it does so I won't. I will however explain why it has been a while since my last posting.

well the job has been quite busy lately and I will just give you a quick rundown on some data from the last month here in my fair little town.
burglaries, sex crimes, runaways, deaths, and the usual assortment of other criminal activity.

now on top of that all of the burglaries were in part of a larger rash that encompassed two other counties and three other departments.

So what I am getting at is that have been busy. Enough of that. On to something more fun.


Spring is acting kind of like it wants to appear here. Spring gets me excited. I much prefer the warm weather to the bone chilling, energy sapping, frozen tundra that this place turns into in the winter. With the spring comes time to plant the gardens and watch the green grow. If i hadn't become a cop I probably would have gone into business as a owner of a green house. I love to grow stuff. There is just something about putting a seed in the ground, tending it, harvesting the plants and eating it. It is kind of rewarding the same way hunting is.

I can here it now "Wait a second Private Tower. Did you just compare gardening to hunting?" Yes I did.
"But hunting is so violent and primal it is nothing like growing a vegetable. Gardening is peace full and hunting is violent a cruel."

Get life. hunting is by far less cruel than gardening. With hunting you have to "hunt" your prey. it takes talent and actual skill. Not to say gardening doesn't, just a different kind. And if you think about the morals behind it, gardening is by far more sick and twisted. Maybe that is why I enjoy it so. Let me explain.

When you hunt you are tracking and stalking prey. If you are lucky like, me or good enough at it like others, you catch some prey and dispatch it, quickly, with a firearm or other humanely acceptable weapon. It is relatively fair if you think about it in the normal food chain sense. Not gardening.

Gardening reminds me of serial killer or other sick behavior. Think about it. You plant something and tend it. You nourish it to maturity, all along the way caring for it. Making sure it is fed and watered. You pull the weeds and exterminate harmful pests. Then when the plant, which is alive I might add, is ready, you chop it down or rip the part of its flesh off that you want and then boil it or bake it, or even more barbaric you eat it raw.

And farmers of textile plants like cotton or flax are worse. They harvest the fibers and then wear them. Sound like any famous killers ?

I love gardening. I can't wait to plant.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Seriously what is that? and,... you are gonna eat that?

So I am currently on the street covering for an officer while he takes some time off. That's right I am rocking the night shifts. I love them.... its when the crazies come out... and not just the crazy people we end up dealing with......I mean some of the fellow cops in my area. I forgot what Night shifts can do to your psychological fitness.

Take for instance the County Deputy who shall remain nameless for now. No. I will name him. We will name him Deputy Jailskettie. Yes. I know his name is a Siamese twin combination of Jail and spaghetti with the white trash pronunciation of spaghetti with a "K"... not a "G" and dropping the "H".

Deputy Jailsketti and I had just returned from a riveting call that involved trucks and smaller cars and unlawful entries and peace being disturbed, you know the usual. while sitting in the patrol room, Deputy Jailsketti informed me that he was going to get something from the jail kitchen to eat and asked if I wanted to come. Sure, I thought how bad could jail food be. I figured I would pick out a little personal pizza or maybe one of those sweet artificial bean and cheese burritos I see the inmates munching away on all the time.

well as luck would have it, I happened to be allergic to all of those things, and could not partake. Deputy Jailsketti had his eye on a bread loaf pan full of what I thought was fish bait,or autopsy souvenirs. He told me that it was spaghetti. What ever. It wasn't packaged and that means it was made by the inmate workers........ no thanks.

So he heated it up. Ate it,.......... and before I knew it he turned into a a brain eating zombie munching away on one of the dispatchers shoulder sections... wait I think that may have been a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation.

Well I won't eat the jail food and that meant I was going to have to get something from the only place open at 2:00 a.m. Maverick. I chose a large burrito monstrosity called "the bomb".

We will see how that choice turns out tomorrow.

Best part of night shifts?..........fun calls.

Worst part?................................nutritional options.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

All I wanted was a G - damn lime rickey.

So me and the family were out on a nice leisurely drive and decided to drop by the local fast food joint and get the kids some ice cream. Well because I am a fat American, I though that my kids should not be the only ones partaking in the wonder that is Artic circle. I ordered my self a lime rickey.

Right when I took the first swig I was inundated with a flood of fond memories from one of my most favorite daytime DUI arrests.

There I was, minding my own business in my patrol vehicle, taking it easy. I had to report to the office in a few minutes to pick up a Reserve Officer for a ride along, so really I was not trying to attract anything to myself. But, as lady luck and her twisted sense of karma would have it, I none the less was almost T-boned while traveling through an intersection. I of course turned and stopped the vehicle in the parking lot of one of our potato processing plants. I contacted the driver and could immediately tell that she was intoxicated. I followed all of the usual procedure and had her exit the vehicle, do the SFST'S, blaa, blaa, blaa. I informed her that she was under arrest and she decide that she was not going to have that happen to her. Luckily I was able to contain and arrest her without any incident.

This is where it turns a little memorable. I have heard most every excuse and rationalization for committing a crime. DUI's come with their own unique set of them. "I only drank one or two.". "I was driving the rest home because I was the MOST sober.". One of the best was the guy who was just plain honest and told me he was an alcoholic and that he couldn't drive unless he was drunk. But what came out of this ladies mouth was priceless. This is a little snippet from the conversation I had with her.

Me- "Where were you heading to this morning?"
Susp.-"To get a G-- damn lime Ricky. You C--- Sucker."
Me- "Well I underst...."
Susp.- "A lime rickey! thats all I wanted! A G-- damn lime rickey! AHHHHRGG!!"

( of course she was in hand cuffs already by this time, and like alot of suspects she got real "tuff" once she was in the car )

Susp.- " You arrested me because I wanted a lime rickey?! I can;t beleive this s---!"
Me- "No miss, I arrested you because I believe you are intoxicated and I witnessed you driving your car."
Susp.- "G-- damn LIME RICKEY'S! They always F--- me over!"
Me- (laughing almost uncontrollably) "What did you say?"
Susp.- "You heard me, lime rickey's are responsible for this.. last time you arrested me for DUI I was going home from getting a lime rickey."

Then it hit me. I did not recognize her at first but I had arrested her for DUI before about a year or so before this. It was at about the same time in the morning, and she had almost T- boned me in an intersection that time as well. best part,... On the search incident to arrest I do remember finding a fresh lime ricky in the cup holder..

What are the odds?

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

"it wasn't me. It was the one armed man."

Over the past summer months, the fair city which I live and work in had been plagued by a rash of burglaries. Now this rash was not the kind that just shows up once in a while when your skin gets a little dry, and you are able to clear it up with some cortisone cream and a hot compress. No, this was the kind of rash you get after a night of bad decisions made while getting highly intoxicated and going home with someone that you picked up in a skeezy bar in Vegas. That's right, what happens in Vegas does not stay there, it hitches a ride back home with you and flares up during a leg workout in the gym, requiring medical intervention, penicillin and various voodoo spells to get rid of.
This was the kind of rash the burglaries resembled. They were done quickly, efficiently, and rather smartly. Really we had no evidence on most of them other than a few foot prints and some tool marks. Only allot of missing cash and property.
Then the call came early one morning, that the Junior High had been broken into and I was being requested to assisted with the investigation. This scene was a little different compared to the others. It was rather sloppily done and luckily for, us the burglar was caught on the video surveillance.
We got him. We all knew who it was because, well, he only has one full arm. The other is shorter caused by what appears to be a birth defect. We had all seen him around the neighborhood a number of times and the sergeant had gotten a statement from him a week earlier during another incident.
Long story short. Got a search warrant for his residence for him and the stolen property. All of those things were located during the search. He was arrested without incident. during the interrogation he admitted to all of the other burglaries that had been committed during the rash.
He eventually would plead guilty and has since been sentenced. I feel bad for him in a way. He was very cooperative, he knew he was caught. I really do believe he is a good kid who just made some really bad decisions. Hopefully he will serve his sentence and make better choices in the future.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Fortunately I can not include pictures

In the course of our duties as law enforcement officers we have the chance to run across many different types of scenes and situations. Some of them are just plain funny and other make you dead on the inside. Sometimes you have an experience that builds your faith in humanity and other times you wonder if god is watching, or if he even cares. sometimes you are amazed at the amazing stupidity that other display and then there are the times where bad things just happen. No rhyme or reason. No pattern that they fit into. They just happen. They are just accidents.
For me, these are some of the hardest to deal with. I can fathom how somebody may get angry enough to batter a person or worse, or even hurt themselves. We all have those tendencies in ourselves and at times we can loose control or otherwise fall to those tendencies.
Accidents happen to everyone. They are dictated by fate, karma, or the man upstairs, whatever you happen to believe controls the universe. This bothers me. I don't like it when things just happen. I feel like I have to believe in a cause or reason in order to accept it. Accidents rarely have a true reason why they happen. They just do.
Recently we had a medical call that involved an industrial cheese grater and the victims arm. The grater has a high speed barrel the turns and of course you feed the cheese into it and it shreds or grates the cheese. I am sure that you can appreciate what could happen to an arm when it is sucked into that type of machinery. Like I said fortunately for you I can not post pictures of it.
Why did this happen? Ok. Ok. I know, because she stuck her hand where it should not have been while the machine was on? Get out. That's not what I mean. Why does this have to happen to this person? That's what I mean. Sometimes I just don't get it.

Friday, November 7, 2008

In response to the comments about my beard

Listen folks I understand that at times Giuseppe, can be overwhelming but believe me he has made me a better man. I am stronger, more capable, and some would say more handsome for his being on my face. Though he is parasitic and his anti social behaviors can be off putting, he like most beards was grown to hide horrible "scars" or other disabilities. He conceals a very off putting skin condition that I have been suffering from for most of my life. This condition is very rare and only inflames itself into fruition about 2-3 times in ones life time. The last time it had rashed out was in the third grade and children can be horribly mean at that age. I was named everything from "Pigman" to "Foldface".

You see Giuseppe has made me whole again and if I was to shave him now I would appear as the picture indicates. Of course the picture is a dramatization, but it is toned down in the same, because current technology can't provide an accurate portrayal of the condition.

So back off of Giuseppe he is giving me the confidence to show may face in public. Oh, and my wife actually likes him, she just plays like she doesn't.