The LawDog Files

by D. Lawdog

  Just what do you think happens to all of that mung when you squirt a jumbo-sized dose of 3-in-1 oil off into the handcuff mechanism?

  Maybe nothing at first. But, as things go along, as more and more dust and lint build up, and as more oil gets coinked in there, sooner or later the inside of your handcuff mechanism is going to look remarkably like the Demon Hairball of Azgeroth exploded in there.

  And sooner or later you’re going to be standing there with a bemused, yet apprehensive, look on your face, a broken handcuff key in one paw, and an increasingly concerned, and still handcuffed, prisoner in the other.

  Which means that someone—probably not you—is going to have to go find a set of bolt-cutters and chop your inmate loose. This will further be followed by someone else—probably with more rank than brains—in my department issuing a silly-arsed memo restricting our officers to the short, dinky, short, tiny, and altogether too-bloody-short official Smith-and-Wesson-issue key.

  Ladies and gentlemen, if the official Smith-and-Wesson key was truly the bee’s knees, there wouldn’t be a booming business in after-market improved handcuff keys.

  So. When you do lubricate your handcuffs, kindly use dry graphite powder or some other variety of dry, non-Demon-Hairball-forming, lubricant.

  Thanks ever so.

  FILE 38: A Life, Ruined

  I wrote this one about thirty seconds after I got home after my shift. This is the sort of thing that really irritates me: men who have to be babies. Can’t stand them. Oh, and he threw up the Tylenol as soon as the Listerine hit his stomach. Honestly, sometimes I wish he hadn’t, but then I think about what a hard suicide death by Tylenol is. Eww.

  * * *

  You stood there, a picture of righteous indignation, and protested that I was “ruining your life,”

  Allow me to retort.

  You went home to your nine-months-plus-pregnant wife at five o’clock this morning after pub-crawling all night.

  Thirty minutes after getting to bed, your offspring decided, as is Mama Nature’s prerogative, to begin the whole “Hello, World!” thing, necessitating your wife, being the pregnant one, and all that, waking you up with the time-honored news that it was time to go to the hospital.

  According to statements from residents of the four adjoining apartments, your response was to bellow—and do let me quote—“You [deleted][deleted], how could you [deleted] do this to me?!”

  Seeing as how your wife was going into labor, you pretty much had to know this was coming for a least a month or two.

  Anyhoo, again, according to witnesses, you followed up this wonderful display by flinging the car key out of the window of your second-floor apartment into the parking lot, where it went Goddess-only-knows-where.

  While your wife tried to find the key to your family’s only means of transportation to the hospital—I believe I have touched upon the whole going-into-labor bit—you went to the bathroom, where you consumed the contents of a bottle of Tylenol PM, a bottle of melatonin, a bottle of prenatal vitamins, and six Sudafed—and this is the truly heroic bit—washed them all down with half of a bottle of Listerine.

  Dude… Listerine?

  Apparently, being somewhat of an overachiever, you then proceeded to pound upon several doors in the apartment complex, demanding that the inhabitants thereof—and please, allow me to paraphrase—“Shoot you and put you out of your misery.”

  Unfortunately, no one stepped up to do society a favor, and you wound up—unventilated, damn it—back at your apartment, beating your head on the door and wailing at the top of your lungs to an uncaring Fate until your complex manager, for the sake of peace and quiet, informed you that your father-in-law had taken his Baby Girl to the hospital.

  By the by, your wife’s loving father tried to post your bail. Four times. Apropos of nothing, if I were you, I’d meditate on the fact that the weather in Outer Mongolia is absolutely splendid this time of year.

  I’m just saying, is all.

  Somehow you managed to find the car key that you had previously chucked into the parking lot and proceeded to drive your hungover, buzzing, yet fresh-breathed self to the hospital to demand the whereabouts of your wife.

  I’m sure that you were correct and that your in-laws did arrange for your wife’s admission to be kept confidential; however, the proper way to deal with this was not to sit down on the floor in front of the admissions desk and continually bellow your spouse’s name.

  I’m guessing that you figured out all on your ownsome that flinging yourself onto your side when hospital security arrived and kicking your legs in a circle while shrieking at the top of your lungs was also not a wise response.

  I’d dearly like tell you that the sentence on the Security Incident Form that read, “forcing us to deploy PepperFoam and our flashlights to gain compliance” didn’t make me giggle like a schoolgirl, but I’d be lying.

  Snerk.

  So. There you were, sniveling that if we didn’t let you attend the birth of your child, we were going to Ruin Your Life.

  *scratch, scratch*

  Old cock, I think you’d already gotten that part sewn up quite nicely.

  You’ll be out of here in four hours… if you’re sober by then. Now, shut your mush and go to sleep.

  Jackass.

  FILE 39: Kein Engel

  I should know better than to have preconceived notions about anyone else, but sometimes they sneak up on you. The officer in question retired several years later, bought a Harley Davidson with his pension checks, and is still touring the country, to the best of my knowledge.

  * * *

  One of the officers who worked with our department on a regular basis was in his 60s’s, bald as a cue ball, grandkids out the wazoo, and about as North Texas redneck as you can get.

  He drove an ancient beat-to-hell pickup with bits of hay in the bed and a Remington Model 11 in the rear window.

  He carried a Smith and Wesson Combat Magnum because he didn’t trust them new-fangled auto-chuckers.

  His dog had a red bandanna instead of a collar.

  He had every episode of Hee-Haw on tape.

  The man was a good-ol’-boy. He was the beta version of the Standard Bubba Model.

  Sometime ago back, I walked into the office, and there were a bunch of S.O. personnel giving him the hairy eyeball as he typed an incident report into the computer. He had obviously put a CD into the drive to give him music to help make the report go a little faster.

  “Erst wenn die Wolken schlafengehn,” growled this gentleman, happily.

  I listened for a bit and then nudged another officer. “That sounds like… Rammstein,” I said to her.

  “Uh-huh,” sayeth she, kind of big-eyed.

  “Kann man uns am Himmel sehn,” he graveled, head bobbing enthusiastically.

  “Engel?” I guessed.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Wir haben Angst und sind allein,” he grated, hammering away on the keyboard in time to the beat.

  “He’s… singing.”

  “Umm… Uh-huh.”

  “Gott weiss ich will kein Engel sein!”

  Folks, that was just plain Not Right.

  FILE 40: Wasabi!

  While this isn’t a law enforcement story per se, I thought it was close enough to include. And Peking Moon is still my favorite Chinese place in town.

  * * *

  Some months ago I stopped off at Peking Moon for some egg flower soup and fried rice.

  As I flicked open my napkin, I heard the male half of the couple in the booth across from mine say, with a large amount of relief, “They’ve got some [deleted] guacamole!”

  This caused me to blink, and then I looked over at his plate and saw the pile of pale green paste sitting next to some of those fried egg noodles used for thickening soup.

  “Self,” thought I, “this here is a recipe for unpleasantness,” so I said, very gently, “Excuse me, but I believe that is actually wasabi rather than guacamole.”

  You know, I w
as brought up with the understanding that offering unasked-for advice to those who were neither family nor friends just Wasn’t Done.

  Every once in awhile, I have been reminded of the wisdom of this.

  The gentleman turned to me, and to the evident mortification of his lady, said, very softly and in a Not-From-Around-Here accent, “I don’t remember asking you a goddamned thing.”

  Goodness.

  “I especially don’t need some PC, multicultural, liberal [deleted]wipe telling me what to call something.”

  I propped my chin in my left hand, feigning an expression of mild interest to cover my right hand casually loosening the lid on the bottle of sriracha sauce, just in case.

  “A [deleted] spade is a [deleted] spade, and I’m not going to call it a ‘ding ding ching how’ just because some gook handed it to me.” So saying, the gentleman promptly shoveled a large amount of the green paste onto a chip, popped it into his pie hole, and chewed with emphasis.

  I’d like to say that I was a big enough man that I didn’t smile happily at him when he blinked, coughed, and then shot fluorescent green goo out his left nostril.

  But I’d be lying.

  If the old boy had a case of the hips toward “multiculturalism,” one would have to wonder what the hell he was doing in a Chinese restaurant owned by a Vietnamese clan and employing Mexican cooks to serve Japanese sushi and American BBQ chicken for patrons of various European and African descents? Not to mention insulting a Maltese-American of Scottish and Mohawk ancestry?

  Hell, that’s practically the United Nations right there.

  Ah, well.

  Apparently, a nasal lavage of Japanese horseradish is not conducive to a Proper Dining Experience because the gentleman and his lady friend left about the time his vision cleared enough for him to drive.

  Heh.

  I was reminded of this nasty little episode because yesterday I was drifting through intake, and guess who was hanging off the bars in the detox tank slurring threats and curse words at the detention staff like an intoxicated gibbon?

  Yeppers.

  I probably didn’t help matters much when I stopped and asked him if he’d figured out the difference between guacamole and wasabi yet.

  *snerk*

  Karma. It’s a wonderful thing.

  FILE 41: A Damsel in Distress

  This was during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. We had a lot of stuff like this going on, but it seems that the climate in North Texas didn’t agree with a lot of the refugees, and they scarpered off to somewhere else pretty quickly.

  * * *

  Gentle Readers, allow me to introduce “Joe Critter.”

  Joe was a fairly recent transplant to our fair city, having been forced to relocate due to Mother Nature developing a serious case of the arse regarding his former stomping grounds.

  What earned Joe his moniker of “critter” was the fact that he was presently on misdemeanor probation due to his having an attitude toward romance which is generally frowned upon by society.

  Now, to the best of our knowledge, Joe had managed to keep his booger-hooks to himself for a fairly admirable amount of time—probably due in no small part to Joe’s erstwhile probation officer getting a wee bit put out and issuing a Violation of Probation warrant for Joe—but, it being a long summer, Joe had apparently decided he could contain himself no longer.

  So Joe hopped into his late-’70s crittermobile, cruised down to a local curbside diner, pulled into a parking slot, and ordered a meal, content in the knowledge that said meal would soon be delivered by a toothsome morsel.

  Now, as Joe’s meal was being fixed, allow your mind’s eye to fall upon the pickup truck several slots down from Joe. Witnesses became unexpectedly blank as to the description of the truck, the description of the occupants, and even the name painted on the side of the truck, but we’re fairly sure that it contained several men of Hispanic extraction.

  Anyhoo, back to Joe. Sure enough, Joe’s munchies were delivered by a Sweet Young High School Thing, and Joe was so happy about this fact, that when she appeared at his window and greeted him, he reached forth and gathered himself a nice, big, double handful of female… umm… architecture.

  Our Wee Damsel, having been gently tutored in Southern Feminine Deportment, Etiquette, and Grace by a loving Mama and Daddy, immediately stiff-armed 44 ounces of Sprite into Joe’s leering mush.

  Joe was somewhat taken aback by this reaction to his smoothness and responded with language that is not generally viewed as being romantic by most people. To say nothing of our Fair Maiden, who took a two-handed grip on her Serving Tray of Doom +3 and attempted to line-drive Joe’s snot-locker over the scoreboard.

  Now, you may be developing an inkling that Joe wasn’t quite as quick on the uptake as one might hope for. He hauled off and delivered a tirade of abusive, indecent, and, yes, profane language, said language which tended to incite our Lady Fair into taking a firmer grip upon her Tray Of Doom +3 and commenced pummeling him furiously about the head and shoulders.

  Sometime during the middle of this beat down, Joe’s buttocks, being somewhat brighter than the rest of Joe, apparently decided that discretion was, indeed, the better part of valor, walked themselves across the bench seat, opened the passenger side door, and hopped out into the parking lot.

  We know this because Joe repeatedly maintained that he was—and I quote—“A man, ’n’ I don’ run from no [expletive deleted] [deleted]!”

  Since Joe seemed to be rather firmly attached to said buttocks, here we had Joe out in the parking lot with Our Heroine button-hooking the front of his punkmobile, battle tray at the ready.

  Well, that was altogether enough for Young Joe. Steps had to be taken to preserve his reputation. And he came to his feet with a linoleum knife in one paw.

  Any further action on Joe’s part was interrupted by a soft voice saying, “Perdóname, señorita.”

  Well, this kind of cleared the old tunnel vision, and Joe discovered that he and our Damsel were surrounded by a group of gentlemen, presumably out of the construction truck mentioned earlier, one of whom was ’tsk’ing his tongue at Joe whilst gently wagging an index finger.

  Joe, belatedly tapping into a heretofore unused reserve of smart, froze in place.

  The finger-wagger was heard to murmur, “¿Con su permiso?” before a very large gentleman, with a huge mustache over a bigger grin, firmly relieved Joe of his pig-sticker. Then, witnesses affirm that the gentlemen grinned at our Sweet Young Thing, made “get-on-with-it” gestures, and went back to noshing on fries and Cokes while still surrounding the combatants.

  Ahem.

  Since this is Texas, let us say that our Damsel then “held the suspect for questioning by police.”

  Yes, that did nicely. The suspect was, indeed, still present when police arrived. Followed by the ambulance.

  Responding officers noted that there may have been some quite understandable enthusiasm expressed in said “holding for police.”

  Heh.

  FILE 42: Your Wife

  More often than not Domestic Violence arrestees try to justify their actions to anyone who’ll listen. Usually, that’s the intake personnel, who not only don’t care, but don’t want to be dragged into court because the arrestee inadvertently confessed during the justification. I have never said this to Domestic Violence arrestees. That’s what my blog is for.

  * * *

  Dear Mr. Critter,

  I have listened patiently to your tale of woe and your explanations as to “what really happened,” and I have heard your attempts to justify your actions three times in a row.

  I still don’t believe you.

  No, you have had your say. Now it is my turn.

  You and your wife divorced 19 months ago. A year and a half—almost two years past—your wife stopped being your wife.

  You have explained the 500-plus phone calls over the last month as concern for your children. I can understand paternal concern.

  You have e
xplained sitting in your parked car across the street from your ex-wife’s house as loneliness for the children of whom you have lost custody. I understand loneliness.

  You have explained following your ex-wife from a restaurant to her home before blocking her car in the driveway and calling the police as merely a father’s concern for his children being un-seat-belted in a moving vehicle. I understand concern for your children.

  However, I have listened to your explanations, and I have listened to your two free phone calls during the booking process, and I am, by nature and by training, an observant man.

  Do you realize that while you have mentioned your ex-wife multiple times, in not one single instance have you used her name?

  Not only this, but you continually refer to the woman who divorced you nineteen months ago as “My Wife.”

  Not “My Ex-Wife.” Not “That [deleted]” or even the ever-popular “That [deleted]ing [deleted].”

  No. You repeatedly say such things as, “I followed My Wife from the eatery because…”; “They were in My Wife’s house…”; “My Wife doesn’t take care…”; “My Wife doesn’t realize…”

  The thing is, she stopped being your wife nineteen months ago. You’ve had more than enough time for that little fact to sink in.

  That unconscious possessiveness tells me all that I need to know.

  The warrant you were arrested on is for felony stalking. There is a petition for an Order for Emergency Protection heading for the magistrate’s desk, and it will be served before your release from custody sometime tomorrow.

  I suggest you use the time between now and then to contemplate and to indulge in some deep-breathing exercises; you could meditate on the thousands of other fish in the sea… that sort of thing.