Archive for August, 2009
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
Me – “Good evening, I’m Deputy Barker, can I see your license and – ”
Him (drunken passenger in backseat) – “My brother works for the county…call him…he’ll fix this.”
Me – “Fix it? He’ll fix it?”
Him – “Yeah.”
Of course, the problem, aside from all four people in the car (driver included) being hammered, was that the guy’s brother didn’t work for the county…and he is only a part-time officer at the agency where he does work…and even if he had worked for the county AND been a full-time officer, he had nothing whatsoever to do with my traffic stops. Other than that, the drunk in the backseat was exactly right.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter. The drunken idiot himself was…what’s word…oh, yeah, wanted. In two different counties on two separate warrants.
Me (wanting, but not actually, saying) – “Here, put these bracelets on, ya’ tool.”
* * * * *
The man worked security. LuAnn and I knew he worked security because his blindingly florescent yellow shirt said so. Said ‘Security’ right on it, in giant black letters that stood out brilliantly against his BRIGHT AS THE FUCKING SUN FLORESCENT YELLOW SHIRT.
But we also knew because he had on camouflage military pants…so he could be stealthy…which he had tucked smartly into his boots. His pants were so stealthy, in fact, that LuAnn and I couldn’t even see him from ankles to waist…he just disappeared…because of his camouflage pants, you see.
Hmmmmm…florescent yellow shirt…camouflage pants. Seems like two different theories of dress, does it not?
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Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
It’s just a gun. And some boobs.
Okay, it’s an assault rifle. And the magazine’s in it so it might be loaded.
And the boobs? Yeah, they belong to a civilian.
Ah, I love it when my little ol’ hometown, Midland, Texas, makes the news. This time it’s because five Midland County Sheriff’s Deputies got stupid over tits and guns.
The five deputies were attending advanced training Austin and afterward, when they were off-duty, they went for dinner. They went in Midland County Sheriff’s Office cruisers because that’s what they’d driven to Austin (usual policy is take an agency squad if you’re going for agency training). Okay, so far, so good.
Here’s where it gets stupid. (And the best quote in this whole mess came from Sheriff Gary Painter himself, “But in this particular instance, people got stupid real quick … It went from not very smart to very stupid in about 30 seconds.”)
These guys, all in their 30s and one in his 40s (in other words, not 22-year old cops…these guys should have known better), go to dinner at a place called Twin Peaks, which is Hooters-esque. Lots of boobs and buns and shapely young girls. There might be a menu but really, when surrounded by that kind of grade A Top Notch American Silicon, who cares.
These guys knew they were going to get stupid, at least according to what they told the responding Round Rock officers, because they decided two of them would be the designated drivers.
Feel that? That’s pre-planned stupidity beginning to fill the air.
The deputies got to talking with Miss Perky and decided amongst themselves, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have this nubile young thing sit on the back of our county-issued squad cars and hold our county-issued semi-automatic assault rifle?”
“Oh, and hey, let’s take the picture with our county-issued digital camera.”
Wow, the stupidity filling the air is as thick as humidity in New Orleans.
I’ve been to agency training in an agency car. You have to eat. That in and of itself isn’t the problem, though a better choice for eatery might have been someplace whose motto wasn’t ‘Twice the fun.’ One fun for each peak, I guess. I do have a problem with them drinking because while they weren’t in uniform, they were in marked squad cars.
What kind of picture does that take for a civilian? They see an officer, off-duty or not, in a tax-payer funded car and drinking. A majority of people who see that will automatically assume the officer is going to drive drunk. It’d be nice if they’d assume the best, but they won’t because chances are that at some point in their life, they’ve gotten a ticket for something they didn’t think they did. They will assume the worst.
But the larger problem is the gun. Yeah, I know it’s Texas and things are different in Texas and that is, believe it or not, part of what draws me spiritually back to my homeland in spite of the fact that I’m waaaaaaayyyyyy tooooooo liberal to be allowed back inside her borders.
Guns are a part of life and that’s fine. But for an officer who was admittedly buzzed (3 – 5 beers each, the Midland County boys told the Round Rock boys) to willingly hand over his weapon is a nightmare. First of all, we’re trained to…uh…NOT give over our weapon. That weapon stays in our control at all times. If we’ve lost control of it, then there are larger problems on the horizon, Indy.
Let’s look at this through an absurdist lens for just a second. Let’s say this waitress has mental issues. Let’s say she’s bi-polar and hasn’t been taking her meds. What if, at that moment, she becomes a problem? Don’t tell me it couldn’t happen, I’ve dealt with people who’ve become a problem in less time than it takes to sneeze. Or let’s say her crazy ex-boyfriend, the one she just got a restraining order against, suddenly shows up at her workplace, bent on beating her ass (Trey, come on, that never happens…ex-boyfriends never show up at work to hurt people…never never never). Does she decide to spray his ass with bullets now that she’s armed? Or maybe she accidently gets her finger in the trigger guard and spews out two or three three-round bursts before she can get disentangled.
Or maybe none of that happens. Maybe what happens is someone sees a girl wearing almost no clothes toting around an assault rifle in a parking lot and gets scared. It could happen. They would have no idea what was going on. They’d think, “Hey, we’ve been told to watch for anything out of the ordinary ‘cause there are terrorists hell-bent on destroying us so maybe this is something…after all, those damned towel-heads are using female suicide bombers anymore…course those women have on a bit more clothing…but still.”
It could happen that way. In fact, it did happen that way. The caller was an off-duty officer who wasn’t sure why a woman was wandering around a parking lot with an assault rifle.
Cops need to be held to a higher standard. For me, that includes not getting drunk and handing my assault rifle to whatever hot badge bunny comes around shoving her tits in my face (and no, I’m not saying it was her fault…the fault lies entirely with the officers).
Cops should be held to a higher behavioral standard simply because of our job. We hold ourselves out as the wall against chaos and ask people to respect us when we tell them what to do. To have any sort of moral authority to do that, we need to act responsibly. That doesn’t mean officers can’t have fun and cut loose, but why do it while at training classes? Why do it with a marked squad car? Why do it with a county-issued firearm?
But here’s the largest reason of all, and one I constantly tell other officers: hold me to a higher standard because, after all, society has given me legal authority to kill people.
Not only have you given me the authority to kill people, you expect me to in certain situations.
So by all means, let’s get drunk in public, while driving our squad cars, and hand the tools of our trade to a young girl.
The officer who handed her the gun got fired. Three others who went outside got a three-day vacation. The one who was smart enough to stay inside and munch on his extra-hot wings got a letter of reprimand. I don’t always agree with Sheriff Gary Painter (and I’m really not certain anyone should be sheriff of anywhere for 24 years and counting), but in this case, I think he did absolutely the right thing.
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Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
I’m so excited. Black Gold is back (TruTv, Wednesdays at 10). Season two and this season, it’s a real challenge. Not like last season. Dude, anybody could put three wells down in 50 days. That was nothing. Hell, I could’a done that in my sleep.
But this season it’s on like Donkey Kong, bitch.
Four wells in 50 days!
Talk about ramping it up.
Okay, there are probably some of you who haven’t a clue and really that’s just sad. Black Gold is a reality series (yeah, yeah, I know, reality series’ aren’t real and there are few things more of a waste of time…I’m thinking now of something like talking to a box of rocks) about drilling for oil that for whatever twisted, perverse reason, I simply can not live without.
First of all, Black Gold is set in and around my hometown, Midland, Texas. That’s just cool ’cause the only thing anyone knows about Midland is that W says it’s his hometown (except it’s not really because he was born in New Haven, Connecticut and now lives in Dallas…but he lost his first political campaign there in 1977 to Kent Hance who never became President so who got the better end of that deal…and another aside, go back and read some of the news accounts of that race ’cause it had it’s own ‘birther’ problem for the future leader of the free world).
So anyway, last season the show looked at three rigs each trying to put down three wells in 50 days. Followed the day crews as they either got the job done or got their asses kicked. This season, they seem to be following only one rig but showing the better part of all three crews as they try to slam down four well in 50 days.
Cool as shit, baby. See, I grew up in this crap. My Mama worked in the oil field, counting all the money that came gushing up from those holes…or counting all the money that went disappearing down the dry holes. So I get kind of a charge from watching that stuff.
They show a decent amount of Midland…mostly only the bars but then again, we’re talking about roughnecks and tool pushers. These ain’t the kinna people what go to the theatre all that much and if they did, they’d spell it ‘theater.’ And you get lots of lessons on what a nightmare it has to be to work a rig…which I never had to do and as whackadoodle as those rig hands are, my hat’s off to ‘em.
But mostly you get the beauty that is west Texas. The sand and mesquite and blowing dirt and gajillions of miles between any sort of civilization and I love it. Illinois friends of mine who’ve watched call me and say, “That’s where you grew up? In the middle of fucking nowhere? There ain’t nothing out there but dead armadillos and boys wearing waaaaayy too tight Wrangler jeans!”
And the guys working those rigs just make me laugh. Every other word is fuck this and fuck that fuck every damn thing in sight and I grew up with these cats. The guys who are now the tool pushers and drillers all around west Texas are the guys I went to school with, and the young’uns – drill hands and deck hands and worms – are all the SONS of the guys I went to school with. Not literally went to school with; metaphorically went to school with.
(yeah, none of those rig hands have clue one the difference between literal and metaphoric…that makes it even more delicious).
So I sit back and watch them get in fights over who’s the strongest son’a'bitch on the rig and who’s got the best truck and bestest gimme cap and I laugh my ass off. Then, when I’m done laughing at them, I laugh some more. Then I point them out to my wife and laugh at them some more.
See, the problem is, like all reality shows, the cast members are edited to be caricatures. Those aren’t real people, at least not completely real. Yeah, I grew up with them and yeah, the show characters are in the ballpark of my real life but not totally.
Still, it’s fun to laugh at them.
Make no mistake, though, there isn’t any way in Hell I could ever do what they do. There isn’t any way in Hell I could begin to even understand what it is they do. These idiots toss 800 pound tongs on and off the 100′ sections of pipe they’re throwing around like it’s nothing. Makes me sore just watching. So I do admire them. I admire the sheer balls of the work they do and I am in awe of the fact that they play a small role in keeping this country moving (which I say not to denigrate them on this particular point, but just in recognition that America uses way too fucking much foreign oil).
So, boys, I’m laughing at ya, but if and when I come back to town on that triumphant book tour, this socialist-commie liberal bastard will buy you at least one round…maybe two.
But…then…I’ll probably just laugh some more.
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Friday, August 14th, 2009
Is my ego so huge…so ginormous…that the number 14 excites me more than the number 12?
Well…duh…. When it comes to the number of readers registered at the blog.
And yeah, obviously my ego is that huge. I mean, I’m a cop and a writer. Is there any cry for attention more obvious than someone screaming, “Read my stuff!” or chasing you down with flashing red and blue lights?
I think not.
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Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
A couple of writerly comments today.
“I jerk off enough with my cock, I don’t need to do it with my writing too.”
In an email from a writer friend as we discussed the thorny issue of art vs. commerce vs. publishing. In another email, from a different writer-type the next morning, I got a rundown of excuses for someone not getting something done that they’d promised to get done a while back. Sort of the same subject. At the end of the missive was this:
“Ah, the reasons I love publishing. You’re lucky, you get to go shoot things occasionally.”
Jerking off and shooting. Which one would get me into more trouble?
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Saturday, August 8th, 2009
Or rather, the stupidity…the stupidity….
You have to hear it ala Brando from Apocalypse Now. “The stupidity…the stupidity….”
I’m all for debate about health care reform. And I believe there are people on all sides of the debate who probably have good, viable ideas. But Jesus God bar the doors and leave the fucking idiots who are too stupid to realize how their government actually works in the streets.
From the Washington Post, July 27, 2009, “At a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to ‘keep your government hands off my Medicare.’”
I’m not even going to bother with the irony, it’s too easy and obvious.
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Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
“So did you witness the accident?”
“Yeah.”
“How fast do you think he was going?”
“Oh I think he was doing the speed limit…when he was sideways.”
Said not to me, but to another deputy during their investigation of a traffic crash. I’ve never heard it put quite like that before.
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