It’s no secret that most cops eventually develop a somewhat twisted perspective on their role in society. This is usually manifested as a rather dark sense of humor. We can laugh ourselves silly over events that make the blood of ordinary citizens run cold.
While I have learned the hard way that we must re-live and laugh at these stories behind closed doors, such stories can be important lessons for rookies and serve to bond a shift or department together in positive ways. I think it is important for legendary officers and legendary incidents to be immortalized in storytelling.
I will spin a few tales here for your enjoyment. They’re all true (or mostly so).
The Mystery of the Sick, Twisted Cult
Before I begin, do you know the difference between a child’s fairy tale and a police story? A fairy tale always begins with: “Once upon a time...” whereas a police story generally begins with: “Now, this is truth — no BS!”
That’s about the only difference.
Okay, one of my all-time favorite stories involved a state trooper who was called to a “motorist assist” on a rural interstate one dark and stormy night. Upon arrival, he found a truck pulling a rusty, dilapidated horse trailer and could hear a horse screaming in extreme distress. It seems the horse’s front legs had broken through the rusty trailer floor, becoming somewhat shorter due to contact with the pavement for an unknown distance.
The cowboy had no gun, so he needed the cop to put the poor creature out of its misery. Once the dark deed was accomplished, the cowboy asked what could be done with carcass.
As luck would have it, a rendering plant (where dead livestock are rendered into various useful byproducts) was only a few miles away. Upon arrival, the next predicament was how to unload more than 1,000 pounds of uncooperative horseflesh.
It was 0300 hours and the plant’s tractor was securely locked away. The cop found a few feet of nylon webbing in his truck, so they tied one of the deceased horse’s hind legs to a tree out front of the plant and pulled the trailer out from under the carcass. The cowboy headed on down the road as the cop was writing out a note to put in the front door of the rendering plant, explaining the dead horse.
However, before the officer could finish and post his note of explanation, he was dispatched to a serious traffic crash on the far edge of his patrol area. He planned to come back before the end of his shift to post the note. As you might be able to guess, the traffic crash turned out to be a multi-car, multi-fatal crash that occupied the rest of the trooper’s shift. He wrapped up the crash investigation and drove home — completely forgetting to return to the rendering plant.
Just as the night-shift cop was about to fall asleep at home the next morning his phone rang — it was his dispatch center and he instantly remembered the note he failed to post. As the trooper hurriedly tried to explain the dead horse incident to the morning dispatcher, she related the call she had just taken from the rendering plant.
The plant manager had called, breathless, asking for several cops to immediately come investigate the weird “cult” activity they had discovered with the light of day. The trooper ended up in the bosses’ office later that morning explaining why the plant manager had been confronted with a dead horse, missing the lower half of its front legs, tied to the tree in front of his office with a bullet hole smack dab between its eyes! What kind of a sick, twisted cult could have done such a thing?
The Sleepy Driver
This one came into my academy office in the form of an email from the MDC (mobile data computer) of a cop’s patrol car. He was one of the best field instructors in my training program, and the subject line stated: “You ain’t gonna believe this one!”
While on routine patrol, the officer saw a sedan weaving slowly from lane to lane on a mostly-deserted interstate highway early one morning. Assuming he had a left-over drunk from the previous night, the officer overtook the car and saw it was from another state, several hundred miles away. The car had darkly-tinted windows — a violation in our state.
Once he had the car stopped, the officer approached cautiously, unable to see into the car’s interior because of the tinted windows. As the driver’s window came down, the officer saw an attractive female driver who was VERY nervous and fidgety. Seeing the lady’s hands in clear view, the officer moved closer and quickly realized she was naked from the waist down, trying to cover her immodesty with a sweater.
Being a highly trained observer, the officer also noticed a faint, buzzing sound coming from inside the vehicle.
As the story was explained, the girl turned out to be perfectly sober, but had been driving all night and was very tired. Her weaving, was caused by ...uhh, ..uhh, her trying not to fall asleep, she explained.
When asked about the buzzing sound, the girl replied, “What buzzing sound?”
Being a highly-skilled investigator, our hero was not about to settle for the girl’s half-baked story about falling asleep, so he instructed the driver to open the console compartment, which caused the buzzing sound to get much louder. The source of the buzzing sound, as you have certainly guessed by now, was described as a still-functioning, long, silver, cylindrical, battery-powered device.
My buddy wrapped up his story thusly: “I told her the next time she got sleepy while driving, her best bet for staying alert was a strong cup of coffee, instead of the more ...uhh, ...distracting technique she had used this morning.”
And “yes,” he concluded, “I wrote her up for the tinted windows.”
I sterilized the sender’s name from the email and immediately sent to all the trainers at the academy. For the rest of the day, I could tell when a colleague read the email by the eruption of laughter down the hall.
Okay, I have room for one more — a short one.
The Drunk on the Harley
An officer spotted a “biker-type” rider on a Harley chopper ahead of him on the two-lane rural highway and immediately saw something he could hardly believe. The cop quickly pulled over the biker and approached to make contact. Complete with a long, braided ponytail, beard and dressed in full denim, the biker looked like a frequent flyer. As the officer told the rider to dismount, it was obvious the dude was highly intoxicated and unsteady on his feet.
Even before beginning any field sobriety tests, the officer had to address an even more pressing issue. Secured to the rear seat of the chopper, stuck down with multiple wraps of duct tape, was an infant seat — complete with a buckled-in infant!
The biker protested that he was just trying to comply with the child-seat law. The kid was properly buckled in, after all.
This one really is the truth — no BS! It was immortalized on dash-camera video.
Now, for the punch line: ALL of these stories come from the same trooper! My buddy Kelley is one of those legendary cops who consistently comes across the weird stuff!
Tell us your “legendary” story. Keep it short, clean, and anonymous!
