Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to King Soopers in Conifer where a justice-minded young delicatessen employee stood accused of making his sandwiches too light on the bread. According to the store’s security official, the 18-year-old man consistently undercharged customers for their deli sandwiches. When asked why he’d charged only $3.29 per pound instead of the advertised price of $5.99 per pound, he told officers that “I think $5.99 per pound is too much to be charging.” He said he’d made that point with his supervisor about a month ago and that she’d given him verbal approval to charge the discounted rate, or “maybe I misunderstood her.” He figured he gave the unofficial sale price to about 95 percent of his customers, and only charged the official rate sporadically to allay suspicion. Determining the magnitude of the delicious crime, a deputy concluded mathematically that, during five months behind the counter, the ham-fisted employee sliced deli profits by $167.43. He was issued a summons for theft and had to turn in his apron.

Used with the permission of Evergreen Newspapers

Suspecting a soused citizen of side-salad swipery, employees of a Conifer Road grocery called for badge-bearing backup. Officers found the sodden suspect reclined and semi-coherent on the curb out front. Though unable to recall how he got there, the man told officers he was hitching a ride to Pine, or possibly waiting for a friend, or maybe walking to his mom’s house, and further stated with absolute conviction that he’d had no alcohol at all, that day, or else three shots, tops. Either way, he’d paid in full for the three Oriental noodle soups and container of potato salad in his shopping bag, which he would gladly prove if he could only find the receipt, which was either still hanging out of the self-checkout machine, or wasn’t. Deputies soon located a receipt for three Oriental noodle soups in the fellow’s breast pocket, alongside a previously un-missed slab of apple-wood-smoked Swiss cheese. “Oh,” he said, “I must have forgotten to pay for that, too.” Having recovered its pilfered provisions, the store generously declined to press charges. Having adjudged the man’s BAC at something beyond “tipsy” officers bagged him for release to a responsible party.

Summoned to Jubilee Trail, deputies found a man with minor facial trauma in the house and his inebriated brother reclining in a pickup truck in the driveway. According to Abel, he and Cain had been returning home from a friend’s house when smoldering sibling rivalry burst into flames. Abel got out of the vehicle, walked home and started working on the aforementioned truck. Cain showed up a short time later and started punching Abel in the mug. There are two sides to every story, of course, but instead of offering a defense, Cain laid down in the driveway with his hands behind his back and told officers he was “ready to go to jail.” It was the calm before the storm. Once cuffed, Cain spake to Abel thusly: “It’s over when I get out, I don’t care if it takes years! I’m going to (mess) you up!” When officers suggested Cain tone down the rhetoric a notch and calmly state his name, he turned the hose on them. “(Nuts to) you, that’s my name. You’re my enemy. Your job is to catch me.” An unnecessary observation, since he was already caught. Deputies arrested Cain for third-degree assault and led him into exile in Golden.

“You missed all the action,” the breathless woman told deputies upon their arrival at a downtown saloon about midnight. “I just got beat up.” It gets better. Seems she was in the bathroom when an anxious blonde berated her for “not moving out of her way fast enough.” The booze-fueled argument spilled into the cantina proper, culminating in a sucker punch to the complainant’s noggin. While several witnesses confirmed that account, her flaxen-haired foe had made herself scarce and nobody was able (or willing) to disclose her identity. In any case, the proud victim seemed well satisfied by telling the story to such an attentive audience, and asked officers to drop the matter. They did.

Say you’re an estimable North Evergreen gent cruising around in your shiny black Audi. It’s a bright, sunny morning and you’re feeling peckish, so you pull into a Bergen Park drive-thru and ask for the No. 1 combo. Unfortunately, you’ve arrived on that nebulous cusp twixt breakfast and lunch and receive the No. 1 egg and muffin sandwich combo instead of the No. 1 hamburger combo you really wanted – a comical inconvenience, really, unless you’re an insufferable snot, in which case you might hurl the mistaken order back through the takeout window and demand both a full refund and the manager’s business card. Who knows? As crazy as it sounds, you might even decide the restaurant wasn’t responding fast enough to suit your esteemed self and storm inside to present your righteous demands directly into somebody’s face until they’ve all been met to your utter satisfaction. You might, but you probably wouldn’t, because then you might get a visit from a sheriff’s deputy who – even though the restaurant generously declines to press charges – might write you a ticket for disorderly conduct. Thank goodness you were raised better than that.