Next year, Cabo

circa 1955: A man bringing a roast turkey to the table for a traditional Christmas dinner. (Photo by Evans/Three Lions/Getty Images)

The holiday took a cheerless turn when two sons called the cops on their dad. Staying with Pop at the ancestral Conifer home over Thanksgiving, they’d also paid a visit to their father’s ex-wife, which peeved old dad so much that he barred them from removing their belongings from the house. Since dad was well into the festive libations by that time, his boys asked an officer to stand by while they removed their stuff anyway. Noticing an uninvited uniform, dad became further enraged because his sons “brought the police into this.” When told the fruit of his loins were coming to get their stuff, he said “If you wanna stand by, you do what you gotta do, officer.” When the lads arrived, Pop insisted “the police can leave,” and “we’re done unless you go away.” When the officers didn’t leave, he wondered if we’re all living in a “police state.” Asked if he would go inside and retrieve one son’s insulin needles, he dutifully brought them out, then started yelling at the boy and handed them over with a decidedly unfatherly shove. “It rattled my ribcage,” the son said later. Weary of the man’s atrocious holiday spirit, the officers clapped him in irons, at which he sourly observed, “Now you’re going to take me to jail because I pushed something into my son’s chest a little harder than what you liked.” Deputies stuffed the turkey in the county coop.

 

Preoccupied patron pinches petrol

When a familiar face in a white Toyota pickup stopped to fill up at a Hilltop Drive gas station, the clerk didn’t think twice about activating the pump prior to payment. When the man topped off his tank, climbed back in his vehicle and slowly drove away without settling his tab, the clerk called the cops. Given the man’s repeat-customer status and obvious nonchalance, the clerk was inclined to believe he’d merely forgotten to pay. He oldHippiedescribed the unlikely fuel pirate as a middle-aged “hippie” with long gray hair who probably lives in the area. The clerk provided a license plate number that, for whatever reason, didn’t register with the DMV, and a brief patrol of the immediate vicinity didn’t turn up the suspect vehicle. With luck, the forgetful fuel filcher will return to the scene of the crime in between 200 to 300 miles.

Throne of Contention

A routine investigation into a broken toilet handle at an Aspen Park retail complex quickly sank into an ominous cesspool of mystery and suspicion. According to the property manager, public access to the center’s foyer bathrooms is necessary to provide for the relief of distressed audiences at a nearby community theater. On examination, the deputy concluded that the otherwise undamaged lever merely fell off, and suggested she simply apply some glue to the problem. The manager rejected that explanation on the grounds that the stool’s manufacturer had provided strong assurances that its toilet handles “just don’t fall off.” The real culprit, she said, is an unidentified and ill-defined “murder suspect” who slips in at night and creeps about in the ceiling, leaving disorder and annoyance in his wake. Detecting a serious lack of focus in her narrative, the deputy proposed that tenants noticing irregularities call JCSO for assistance. But the tenants won’t call, objected the manager, because “they don’t think things could happen to them.” Unable to flush out a suspect, the officer washed his hands of the case.

toilet

Eye-witless accounts prove justice is blind

A concerned shopper called JCSO dispatch on July 13 to report a speeding blue pickup truck “intentionally trying to run people over” in the Bergen Park grocery store parking lot. According to the man’s statement, he was so alarmed by the pickup driver’s wanton disregard for the general health and welfare that he’d deliberately blocked the careening vehicle with his Lexus, at which the driver shot him a rude gesture and raced unsafely away to points unknown. Both the complainant and a store employee described the menacing motorist as “an elderly man” perhaps “80 years old.” When located, the driver turned out to be a somewhat more youthful person of the female persuasion, who quickly guessed that the officer was acting at the behest of “the lady in the Lexus.” She maintained she hadn’t been trying to run down anybody and, convinced that “the lady” had cut her off because “she” drove a Lexus and felt superior to the truck-driving classes, she’d responded appropriately by inserting her index finger – not middle finger – into her nose in protest, and departing quickly to avoid further confrontation. Perceiving credibility gaps on both ends and in the middle, the deputy closed the case.

chicken_in_line-up

Chretien de Troyes would have approved

When a woman who’d rented a truck from an Industrial Way business hadn’t returned the vehicle by the contracted date of June 30, the owner called to say that the truck was already re-rented and, if she didn’t have it back on site by 8 a.m. on July 1, there could be charges aplenty. Fortunately, the woman did return the truck by the stated time. Unfortunately, she brought along a chivalrous friend, who gallantly castigated the businessman, saying “that’s not how you treat a woman.” In response, the White Knight told deputies, the truck’s owner “got in my face,” though the altercation remained entirely verbal. Later, to deputies, Mr. Knight said that, as an MMA (Mixed Martial Artist), he could easily have cleaned the businessman’s clock, but chose not to. Before riding his steed into the sunset, Mr. Mixed closed his own account at the business, and the deputy closed the case. When contacted, the woman was matter-of-fact. “Bottom line, I misunderstood,” she said. “My time is valuable.”

karateKid