Shortly after midnight, deputies rushed to West Jefferson Middle School to investigate accounts of motor vehicles and furtive flashlights on the school’s running track. In truth, the situation was more silly than sinister. Afflicted by middle-class ennui and hankering for adventure, three bold teens had decided that an after-hours spin around the track in a Toyota 4-Runner would give their Wednesday night meaning. “Plows drive on it,” one young man offered in their defense. Unfortunately, those plows had scraped the entire asphalt track clean with the exception of a single 30-foot stretch – at least 20 feet more than the kids needed to get hopelessly stuck. They immediately summoned a friend with a Dodge Dakota pickup and a tow rope, and the officers surprised them trying to free the 4-Runner. Taking matters in hand, deputies parked the sheepish young men in the back seats of their patrol cars and called Jeffco Schools security and a tow truck. The R-1 security man allowed that, as nothing seemed to be damaged aside from the teens’ street cred, he’d settle for simple trespass charges. For his part, the tow truck driver took one look at the narrow running track and said the young hooligans were on their own. Luckily, the Dakota was up to the job, and the rascals escaped with only chastened pride and third-degree trespassing citations. The officer noted that the four were uniformly cooperative and respectful throughout their ordeal.

Here’s a beauty: At about 5 p.m. a deputy was summoned to a South U.S. Highway 285 address to consider a reported livestock problem. On arrival, he discovered a goat scampering freely about the yard. Only it wasn’t his yard. The homeowner explained that she hadn’t previously been introduced to the creature and couldn’t begin to guess its proper address. At her wits end, she just wanted it gone. The officer dutifully called animal control, which suggested she give them another buzz about the same time the next day if the ornery pest was still hanging around. Perhaps feeling unappreciated, the goat leapt onto the cruiser’s driver’s side hood, thoroughly scratching it, then danced over to the passenger side and left his signature there. As the officer drove away in defeat, the animal repeatedly took up station in front of the cruiser, forcing him to stop. Each time he stopped, the bearded beast leapt back on the hood, or carved little frescoes into the passenger-side door. At last free and away, the deputy summoned a crime scene technician to assess the damage to his vehicle.

Spying a thick curtain of decorative distraction dangling from a vehicle’s rearview mirror, an alert deputy stopped the festive offender near Evergreen Parkway and Lewis Ridge Road. Alas, the young fellow didn’t habla de Englise, so a second deputy was summoned to interpret. The obstructed motorist identified himself as “Alfredo” and, though he claimed to have no identification on his person, “Alfredo” did produce matching insurance card and registration under that name. Because a records check found no entanglements for “Alfredo,” the deputy returned his documents and told him he was free to go. First, though, they asked if he would mind if they poked around his car, and he said “si.” The officers quickly turned up a wallet under the driver’s seat with a Mexican identification card showing Alfredo’s handsome mug smiling under an entirely different name. Arrested for false reporting, He-Who-Is-Not-Alfredo wound up at the county calaboose where it was learned he answers to yet a third name. The county kept all three personae’s Mexican ID card and bade them vamoose.

Tooling down Evergreen Parkway one afternoon, a
good citizen stopped to pick up what he took for a bag of trash thoughtlessly
discarded on the side of the road near Pine Crest Drive. As it turns out, he
was both right and wrong. Instead of unanswered credit card come-ons and empty
Lunchables containers, the plastic grocery bag contained the severed head of a
goat. Alarmed, the fellow summoned a sheriff’s deputy who, rather than trying
to ascertain the unfortunate creature’s identity or locate its next of kin,
found a final resting place for its grisly remains at the Mountain Substation.