Raving Lunatic

I'm driving on NewBern Avenue, minding my own business, intent on stopping to check a work schedule at Wake Mental health before heading back to District 21. I can't help but notice a white pickup truck run the stop sign on Pettigrew Street, crossing all three lanes in front of my police car. I had to brake suddenly to avoid a wreck.

As the truck passes I notice there is no license plate attached. I immediately follow. The truck is all over the road...obviously an impaired driver. The truck takes a right on State Street, crosses into the wrong lane, and parks, slamming both left tires into the curb. I engage my blue lights.

The driver is a middle-aged black man wearing jeans and a black sport jacket. He is immediately belligerent. "Fucking cop! I hate all you white-bread motherfuckers!"

He's drunk. I give him several sobriety tests, all of which he fails miserably. I arrest him and, straight out of the tough-guy play book, he waits until he's handcuffed to run his mouth.

"I hope you get your head blown off! I hope all white people die! I hope your children die! I'm gonna call the NAACP! You gone lose yo job, cracker!"

His hostile tirade continues for two solid hours, testing my patience. He refuses to cooperate with any part of the booking process, a sure way to have your bail denied.

The first court setting comes and he immediately pleads guilty. This is unheard of. Most DWI cases take anywhere from eight months to a year to adjudicate. And this guy pleads guilty?

He tells the judge he's an alcoholic. He tells her he knows the law and the state's case is weak, even though he's pleading guilty to it. Six misdemeanor charges, three of which carry potential four month sentences. Two prior DWI's. The judge gives him time served and probation. Eleven days in jail and a year of probation. The system at its finest.

"The Black"

I had to appear in court yesterday, a humorous lesson in futility. After four hours of sitting, watching case after case get dismissed or continued, I decide to take my lunch break in the gym. Maybe work off a little aggression. So I'm driving to the Police Academy, minding my own business, when suddenly a red Honda Accord swerves head-on into my lane. I slam on brakes and veer right, my front right tire striking the curb.

The driver of the Honda is a large Hispanic woman. The top half of her body is hanging out the window, her left arm waiving furiously at me. She's screaming, "The black! The black!" I ask her, "The black what?" Her answer: "The black. The black."

She waives for me to follow and spins around in the roadway, nearly striking a parked car. For some reason I follow, even though I think the appropriate action would be to ignore her. She leads me into an apartment complex and pulls alongside a young black male. He has dreads, a red hat (tilted left for dramatic-or idiotic-effect), jeans, and a white t-shirt. He casually smokes a cigarette as I approach.

The Hispanic woman leaps from her car and yells, "The black," pointing her index finger at the young man. He looks at me and says, "That bitch is crazy!" While pointing she frantically dials a number on her cell phone. Moments later she hands me the phone and I speak with her translator, the fourteen-year-old daughter of the Hispanic woman's employer.

"Hey, Officer, I don't know why she's so upset. She says there were two black guys that wanted to fight her boyfriend."

"Is this one of the guys?" I ask, assuming she knows we're parked in front of a potential suspect.

"Uh, no. She said he knows the guys. She wants you to take him to the police station and interrogate him to find out who the other two were."

"Don't think I'm going to do that," I say, handing the phone back to her.

The woman talks on the phone several more minutes and again approaches me, extending the phone. The fourteen-year-old asks, "She wants to leave now. Can she go?"

I tell her she can go. She squeals tires and spins around in the parking lot, the whole time pointing her index finger at the black guy.

"That bitch is crazy," he says. "I wasn't even with them guys. Her boyfriend wanted to fight one of them cause he threw a cigarette butt down in their yard."

I leave and get my workout, satisfied that everyone involved got the best possible service I could provide.

Kinoki

I saw an ad this morning for Kinoki Foot Pads. The ad claims the pads draw toxins out of your body through the bottoms of your feet. People were shown peeling off the soiled pads, the dirt and grime allegedly life-threatening toxins. My feet would produce the same amount of debris after a quick stroll through the back yard without shoes. Evidently, according to the decorated scientists that created Kinoki, matter falls from the sky and slowly works its way through the body into your midsection, before metastasizing in the intestines. Kinoki pulls the debris down through the soles of the feet. The manufacturer promises better health and improved energy levels after one treatment. They even provide a lifetime supply of pads. All you have to do is pay ten dollars to ship a two ounce box full of materials that couldn't have cost ten cents to make.

Quackery, buffoonery, junk science... whatever you want to call it. How does the old adage go?
"A fool and his money are soon parted." It seems a more plausible concept might be an anal suppository to suck toxins out of your body. It could be called "The Magic Cucumber." Just stick it up your ass every night before bed and you'll feel twenty years younger. Idiots would line up for miles outside Walgreens and Eckerd Drugs. These ideas rank right up there with magnet therapy, energy crystals, dowsing rods, rabbit feet, and organized religion.

Internet Ads

Internet ads are weird. There is no simpler way to put it. Even conventional, legitimate business sites have strange ads. I was reading an ad for toilets (Don't ask me why) and ran across the words, "Use a toilet seat riser for less pain/stress." Less pain and stress? If you are having that much trouble during bowel movements, you might want to consider changing your diet. Maybe eat something with actual nutritional content instead of liquor and pie. A bowel movement shouldn't be this problematic.

While I'm on Internet ads, have you happened to peruse the personal ads on CraigsList? Some of the most outrageous paragraphs ever written are on this site. And if the post is preempted with the words, "Nothing weird, but..." you know what follows will be ridiculous. "Nothing weird, but I'm a gay man who would love to watch a straight couple have sex." Nothing weird, but I'm looking for a good used sex Hamster. No imitation fur, please!" I love it when these ads become deviant specific, as if the person posting the ad would be offended if your strange behavior is confused with his/hers.

I get the "Nothing weird" alert on the job. When I'm interviewing suspects or dealing with victims, the statement almost always comes up. I remember a case in Walmart several years back. The victim, an older black woman, was shopping for shoes at a bargain table. While holding a shoe, she felt something touching her foot. She looked down, and, to her horror, a man was lying under the table, stroking her foot with his left hand. He told her it was part of his religion to caress women's feet. He asked if she would take off her shoe. I believe his exact words were, "Nothing weird, but will you take off your shoes so I can touch your skin?" I guess the "Nothing weird" disclaimer made everything okay, so she removed her shoes. He touched her feet for several moments.. Then, as anyone would expect, he began licking her toes. It was at this moment she said to me, "At this point things seemed a little strange." A little strange? I guess some guy, lying under a table and stroking a stranger's foot, is not strange. Only when he licked her it became weird. The entire incident was weird. The instant he touched her she should have ran away screaming.

Ironic Prom

Police work is sometimes fraught with irony. Not today's misconceived definition of the word like, "Rain on your wedding day," but true irony where an act produces an outcome in direct opposition to the intended result. I had the misfortune of responding to an assault call in a bridal shop in downtown Raleigh. A young black woman and her mother entered the shop with a dress. The mother asked an attendant to measure her daughter and alter the garment, as the prom was a mere week away. The girl's father, recently paroled from prison, gave the dress to his daughter as a peace offering, wanting, after so many years as an outsider, to start a relationship with his daughter.

But this wasn't to be the happy reunion he expected. He stole the dress from the bridal shop, assuming it would fit perfectly and his crime would never be uncovered. But as the great "Murphy" once said, "Whatever can go wrong will." The bridal shop clerk recognized the stolen dress and notified the owner, who confronted mother and daughter. He tried to take the dress from the daughter and she struck him twice in the face, splitting his lip. The shop clerk called the police and I arrived.

Ultimately, the young woman was arrested and charged with assault. The stolen dress was confiscated. Mom flipped out and threw a vase at us during the arrest, earning a spot next to her daughter in the back seat of my police car. Finally, I filed a warrant on the father. All he wanted was to get back into his daughter's life. Instead, he bought her a criminal record and ruined her prom. Way to go dad

Good Service

I remember a time when good service meant something in retail. A time when shop clerks actually smiled at patrons, asked if they could "help," even inconvenienced themselves to ensure good service. But now, with the advent of the massive bargain retail establishment, quality service is dying. Enter Walmart and Ross Dress for Less. Outfits that buy sweatshop t-shirts by the million so they can sell to you at "rock bottom" prices and put mom and pop stores out of business in droves. Bottom dollar, that's all we seem to care about anymore.

I had an excursion at the Ross Dress for Less store last week. It just happened to be the only place open where I might buy gloves at 10:00PM on a Thursday night, and I suddenly realized the job would have me outdoors for several hours in the freezing cold. I was working, which always makes me feel like a gigantic spectacle, as my uniform is Carolina blue and adorned with a badge, name-tag, and collar insignia. People are immediately focused on my gun and Taser, especially small children, who constantly have to fight the urge to touch or be jerked suddenly by mom, followed by a terse warning.

I found gloves that matched my uniform and moved to the cash register. The line was at least twenty customers long and I had the fear I'd be called by dispatch before purchasing the gloves, leaving me standing in the cold for four hours with no gloves, my hands a frost-bite experiment. Only one register was open, and, of course, there was some sort of problem involving a mislabeled item that an elderly woman was arguing about the price. The rest of us were impatiently waiting for service. I couldn't' help but notice a morbidly obese black woman wearing a name tag labeled Manager. She shuffled up to the register and began a conversation with another woman waiting in line. "Hey Auntie, how'd you like them mashed taters Marie made after church last Sunday?" They chattered away, oblivious to those of us waiting in the line from Hell. Another employee straightened a t-shirt rack not ten feet from the registers. Her name-tag read Cashier, but she ignored the lines and folded t-shirts, very slowly I might add.

This went on for about ten minutes. The old lady continued ranting about the price. I guess $3.99 was too much for a sweater. She insisted it was marked for $3.49, the argument building to a crescendo, but the cashier never called anyone for a price check, opting to bicker with the old woman until finally agreeing to lower the price to $3.79. Finally, the manager seemed to realize the line was almost touching the rear wall of the store. She called for the second clerk to assist on the register. She even opened up the register herself, but she never helped. She stood between the registers, laughing and carrying on, while the two cashiers rang up patrons. Two additional registers were less than ten feet from her, but she never moved to help in any way. She didn't even bag the clothing. She just stood there, laughing, ignoring the line

Surviving a Zombie Attack

I watched the original "Night of the Living Dead" for the zillionth time during the Halloween Film Festival. It spawned no less than a hundred spin-off movies like "Resident Evil," "Dawn of the Dead," and "28 Days Later," some of which are not technically zombie movies, but techno-zombie movies. Any movie in which zombies pursue and eat the living is okay in my book, though, at this point, movies have created a pattern in which rules are established. So I've attached a list of things to avoid if you are pursued by zombies from a cliche' movie:

#1. Don't get bitten. Zombies love to bite you, thus turning you into one of them. It doesn't make good sense if you're a zombie, though. Zombies like to eat living people. If they turn you into one of them, they can't eat you! So why do they do it? This question has led hundreds of bad movie scientists to rule #2.

#2. Don't allow bad movie scientists to study the zombies. There is no cure for the walking undead, so quit trying to save your staggering, blood sucking relatives. You wouldn't want them back anyway! If we've learned anything about scientists, we know they are all crazy men looking for the newest biological weapon they can sell to the highest bidder. Don't be fooled by their good intentions, you know they are lying. C'mon, they're scientists!

#3. Never hide in a house. Zombies have a heightened sense of smell. After several hours in a house, the front lawn will look like the day after Christmas at a shopping mall. You'll be stuck inside, most likely with minimal food. You have to eat. The zombies can merely wait outside for all eternity. Only they won't. Eventually, they'll find a way into your home and trap you inside the basement, until ultimately knocking down the door and feasting on your brain.

#4. Zombies are slow, except when you get real close to them. Then, for some reason-I'm guessing some sort of blood-lust trigger in the olfactory glands (that isn't lost in decomposition)- they spring at you with new-found agility. They smell your entrails. And like every zombie movie you've ever seen, they can't wait to pull out your intestines and twirl them around their fingers like spaghetti.

#5. Beware of old people. Old people are close to death. If you allow them into your group, it is only a matter of time before one dies in his sleep and becomes a reanimated flesh eating legion of the dead. Ostracize the old. Besides, old people are annoying anyway. All they do is complain about aches and pains, and they run slow! You don't need slow runners when you're being pursued by zombies.


I think the best scenario for handling the zombie crisis is to find a houseboat, stock it with canned food, and shove off for a deserted island never inhabited by people. Zombies are poor swimmers and would just get eaten by the sharks anyway. Now, zombie sharks might be a problem I haven't considered, but they haven't made that movie yet. Or have they?