It was a really nice day the other day. A perfect day for writing tickets and causing people grief. It was a Monday but there was an unusual amount of traffic out on the road headed out to the beach for the day. I spent some time making sure that I had plenty of cite books and batteries for my lidar, then loaded everything up in the cruiser. I washed the car because you have to look good while people are giving you the evil eye in the rear view mirror. My buddy and I joke all the time about how we need to get some of those old school mirrored aviator sunglasses like the ones Tom Cruise wears in Top Gun and a set of dentures with silver and gold teeth. This way when the violator looks back at me thinking, “Oh god, oh god, oh god, is writing me a ticket?” I can look up and smile letting the sun twinkle off of my teeth. LOL! Now that would be funny. If you don’t get that, don’t worry I’m a dork that’s why it’s funny to me.
I remember the first ticket I ever got. Now I can admit that I deserved it. My friend and I were cruising down a hill in a 35 zone at about 52 miles per hour (Rodger will remember this). The cop was this older guy who obviously looked like he had been a cop for a while. He tugged on his belt as he stood up from his car seat. He then put on the good ol’ gold framed aviators and began the slow march up to my window. When he got to my window he put both hands on the edge of my window and leaned in. If remember right I’m pretty sure he called me “boy” and I’m pretty sure the phrase, “You know how fast you were goin boy?” flowed off his tongue. I don’t remember what I said, but I think it pissed him off because he looked back over his shoulder at about four construction cones on the side of the road and said, “Ooh…..construction zone, I’ll be right back with ya.” It wasn’t funny at the time, but it’s funny as hell now that I am thinking back to it.
Anyway, I had just got all of my gear in the car and switched on the air conditioner when I was flagged back into the city hall by one of the office ladies. There was a man standing at the front counter that apparently had been waiting for an hour to talk to me. He worked for one of the local businesses in town. This particular business is a lumber business but not like Parr Lumber or like the people who stalk the shelves at home depot. This business makes high end finished wood. I’m pretty sure a lot of this wood has found its way onto the walls of two or three celebrity homes.
The man told me that he needed to report a theft of tarps. Apparently, the night prior they had a flatbed truck driver show up and receive a load. Since the wood is really expensive they require that the load be tarped before transport to protect it against damage. The truck didn’t have enough tarps for the load so he was forced to call his trucking company. The trucking company wired him about $500.00 to buy new tarps, but this meant that the driver would have to detach his trailer and drive about an hour to Washington to pick them up. Instead the driver just stole some tarps from one of the Lumber company’s trucks and tarped his load. The man reporting the crime, told me that they probably wouldn’t even have known that the trucker had taken them if he had tarped up and left before they arrived for work. Instead he tarped the load and decided to sleep in the lumber company’s yard until morning. What a fucking retard!
I asked, where the truck and tarps are now. The man told me that the truck was still in the lot and that they were making him give back the tarps. They were also removing their load from the truck. I responded to the lumber yard. There, I found a very nice newer Freightliner truck with a flatbed trailer attached. The complainant showed me to the man who had allegedly committed the theft. By now he had already rolled the tarps back up and returned them to the lumber company. I said, “Hey man, what’s going on over here?” The trucker said, “I stole their tarps, am I going to jail.” The problem with this is, the trucker never left the lumber yard with the tarps. In fact he rolled them back up and returned them to their original position. With our DA’s office, the best I could do in this situation is charge the man with criminal mischief and even then I am sure the DA would just “round file” it.
While I was talking to the trucker I ran his license. It was from another state and came back suspended. So here he is standing in a small town miles and miles from home with about a $120,000.00 truck and no license. I rapped up my investigation and decided to forward my report to the DA’s office without actually charging the trucker with anything. The lumber company was happy that they had their tarps back and just wanted the trucker trespassed from their property.
I said to the trucker, “Look man, I’m getting you the hook up. I’m not going to take you to jail and I’m not going to tow your truck because I didn’t see you driving it. All I want in return, is for you to park the truck on a nearby side street and have someone with a valid commercial driver’s license come and pick it up.” I then pointed to the area I wanted him to park. He thanked me profusely. I warned him that if I saw him driving the truck I would impound it and send him walking. The trucker agreed to park the truck.
Up until this point nothing is out of the ordinary. I cleared the scene and headed back to the PD to complete my report. I was at the PD for about ten minutes when I received a call from the complainant. He told me that the trucker had just driven the truck away. I said, “Yeah, I know. I told him to park it on a side street.” The complainant said, “Well, he is on his way out of town right now. I just watched him cross over the highway.”
“THE FUCKING STUPID SON OF A BITCH!” I thought to myself. I thanked the complainant for the call and hung up. I checked the area searching for the truck. I remember feeling like a total tool. Here it is again, I’m a nice guy and someone totally exploits it. I circled the outer perimeter of the city and slowly tightened the noose until I located the truck on a back woods gravel road. He was trying to find a quick way to the highway. I got him stopped and “surprise surprise” it was the same dummy I talked to over at the lumber yard.
I said, “I thought I told you not to drive stupid?” The trucker said, “Well those guys at the lumber yard were harassing me and I had to get out of there.” I asked, “Then why didn’t you call me?” The trucker said, “Man? Can’t you just follow me to the next truck stop?” I laughed and said, “The nearest truck stop is an hour away. That’s not happen’n!” I pointed toward to rear of the trailer and said, “Walk!” I reached up and took the ignition key as I followed him back. I made the trucker stand at the rear of the truck until I completed all of my impound paperwork. I went on ahead and contacted the trucking company who were from Tennessee. I like they way people are down there. I explained to the trucking company what had happened. The man on the phone said, “Thank you so much for impounding our truck officer, that’s one of our newer ones and we’ll be glad to have it back. Who knows what would have happened if that son of a bitch brought it back.”
The tow truck showed up and towed the Freightliner away. I gave the man routine paper work and left his stupid ass standing on the side of the road in the middle of no where. I told him that I don’t like being made a fool of and if there is anything I can do to make life rough for him, I will do it.
This was the last straw for me. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Now I know why that cop who gave me my first ticket was kind of coarse with me. He probably started out trying to cut people breaks and let them go with warnings. Well, what I have learned over the last year, people need citations. For some reason that’s the only thing that they seem to understand. Before I got that first ticket, I had been stopped a bunch of times and just given a warning. I still sped. In fact I don’t think I actually slowed down until I got that ticket. So guess what? Everyone is going to pay from here on out! If you don’t like it, you can think of all the fuck wads out there like this guy and thank them.
