Monday, July 14, 2008

Tennis, Anyone?

I got some interesting news while I was at the Old Homestead this weekend, about the local Sheriff and his goon squa... erm. Deputies.

Anyone who reads regularly knows that I am not anti law enforcement, far from it. I am, however, against the kind of ineptitude that has been displayed by the current Sheriff's department, mixed with a sadly mistaken over-all god complex.

I said that it would be a disaster when the King of the Idiots was elected, and I was right.

Let me put it this way, when I was a young Farmgirl, we had a city officer that had the entirely irreverent nickname of Cool Whip, because of his last name. Whether he refused to believe that he was not the coolest adult living, as far as we underagers were concerned, or he honestly thought it was a compliment, I don't know, but he took the nickname and ran with it.

To the extent of telling a group of fourteen year old girls, with a straight face, "They call me Cool Whip because I come in lots of flavors." Clueless to the point of being freaking creepy. Or just freaking creepy, take your pick, no one could ever agree on that point.

The King of the Idiots makes me miss the good ol' days with Cool Whip.

Well, there's been a steady increase in the "stupid kids" kind of theft and general mayhem in the county since the KOTI took over the helm. Pulling copper wiring out of grain trucks, abandoned houses, things like that. With the price of scrap metal these days everyone pretty much figured some youngsters with a future in numbers (on their pictures, on their shirts, on their sentences..) had figured out how to make some partying cash without actually getting a job.

When nothing happened to stop that kind of stuff, the county critters started getting restless. The last Sheriff had gotten them pretty much scared back into their holes, for the most part. No one wanted to tangle with him, and I can't blame them. I've known the man all my life and when he had his Sheriff face on he scared me. And he calls me "Button!"

Well, in more recent days, the critters have gotten entirely too bold. One little old lady left her house one morning, went to town, to the grocery store, and returned to her home thirty minutes later, to find it ransacked and missing several valuable and sentimental items.

One of the grain cooperatives had the door of it's offices ripped off, and the office denuded of anything that might be of value. They had to do business, so they replaced all the essentials and fixed the door the next day. That night, the door was again ripped off, and the replacement equipment stolen. I'm not talking about the door was kicked in, or the hinges were removed, or anything as mundane as that. Someone took a truck, attached it to the door, and then started driving. From what I hear the doorframe was pretty much missing.

So far, the Sheriff's department has solved precisely one of the multitude of these kinds of incidents, resulting in the return of approximately twenty five thousand dollars of tools, welders, and such.

Now, ask me how they solved that one.

I'm so glad you asked. The guilty parties stashed the goods at a buddy's house. Said buddy got into a fight with his woman. Said woman proceeded to rat the whole lot of them out, knowing where the items came from, where they were, and who did all the totin'.

The KOTI's method to catch the culprits for all the other thefts is to have his goon squa... er... Deputies... patrol the county roads, stopping every pickup they see, and looking in the back. If you have tools, or a welder, they ask you to prove your ownership of said items.

Not the brightest investigative plan I've ever heard, really. Frankly I think a blind, deaf monkey could run the department in a more efficient and friendly to the public manner, but then, I might be a little prejudiced against the KOTI because of my own personal history with him and his family. And the fact that he slung more mud than a monster truck rally in a monsoon during his campaign.

But I digress. In addition to this oh-so-brilliant investigative technique ("open your tool box" the officer tells Farmmom. "Kiss my butt, get a warrant," she replies) one of the goon squa... er... oh screw it. One of the goon squad has a "drug dog."

A black Lab. Not the best scent hound in the first place, and knowing the caliber of the "handler and trainer," I doubt the dog could find a pound of marijuana if you mixed it in his Alpo. Anyone who has ever been around a Lab knows that they're big, clumsy, happy-go-lucky lumps. I love the breed for a pet, but you couldn't pay me to try and train a Lab for police work. They just don't have the right kind of mindset for it, in my opinion.

Anyway, Numbah One Goon has this dog that he keeps in the truck with him and calls a drug dog, and every time he makes a stop, he takes the dog around the vehicle. Since Numbah One Goon is another of the "I have a badge, I am God!" types, he manages to annoy the crap out of people on a regular basis.

Me being a smartass, (who, me?) when Farmmom told me of the tactics that they're using all over the county, my first thought, and of course the first thing out of my mouth since my mental filter was on vacation that day was:

"Well hell just start carrying a tennis ball in the pickup."

I got confused looks, which is unusual, since I was sitting in a room full of the people who raised me and taught me to think the way I do. Usually at least Farmmom can hear the distant whistle of my freight train of thought, but this time she was blank.

"The next time Numbah One Goon stops you, as soon as he unloads the dog and starts up to the truck, just pitch the tennis ball out the window and watch the show."

After we cleaned up the puddles on the floor, the bag of a dozen tennis balls was duly dug out of the closet where it lives out of the sight of my pup. If she can see that we have more balls for fetch, she'll pop them right and left. If she can't, she takes care of her toys, but she still destroys them with enough regularity that we buy them by the dozen.

I think I might have created a monster, because when I left, Farmmom was trying to figure out who she was going to give tennis balls to, and who she was going to encourage to buy their own.

8 comments:

Snigglefrits said...

Forgive the overly cheesy comment, but damn girl, y'all have got first rate balls. :D

Anonymous said...

YOU RULE, GAL! I DO like yer way o' thinkin'! Keep us updated; I'm already laughing at the possibilities!

Farm.Dad said...

Hun you failed to draw the scope of our fine County on a couple of points in this post .
Point one is the fact that KOTI was so illiterate as a deputy that the prosecutors office forbid him to write his own reports , and in fact demanded he narrate all reports to another deputy who would type the incident up insuring that the report contained the information needed to satisfy the elements of the offense being charged.
Point two deals with the critters who were caught. Critter 1 was so intelligent that he took the swag to the buddy who was living with his ex girlfriend who he smacked around as a parting gift when he dumped her , and critter 2 thought this was a sterling idea as to where to stash the goods pending moving it across a state line to sell .
So you see no matter how incompetent you may be as an officer there is in fact a more incompetent critter out there, and they tend to run in coveys lol.
Ill say this about the S.O., They do answer the phones providing dispatch for our town police ( who do a journeyman's job on limited resources and personnel ). Also hiring the caliber and quality officers we have on the SO does a little to help keep the welfare rolls down in our little county .

Christina RN LMT said...

That is CLASSIC!!

You are truly brilliant.

Ambulance Driver said...

"I love the breed for a pet, but you couldn't pay me to try and train a Lab for police work. They just don't have the right kind of mindset for it, in my opinion."

On the contrary, they're the perfect drug sniffing dog - a superior nose, excellent trainability, and built-in motivation what with the retrieving instinct.

Of course, that's only if you want 'em to find stuff. There is pretty much nothing you can't teach a lab to do effectively, with the exception of human tracking (and that's only because they don't bay like a hound), and bite people. If you want 'em to bite and do all the stuff regular police dogs do, they're an entirely unsuitable choice.

Then again, the best attack dogs are not the aggressive types. Those are too hard to call off. You want a dog that can be conditioned to regard bite work as a particularly fun game - one that they can drop instantly with one command. Mean dogs tend to keep playing until they have utterly destroyed their Tyrone the Cracker Dealer Squeaky Toy (TM).

I gotta admit, though...the tennis ball idea is just freaking elegant. A well-trained drug dog would never fetch anything not thrown by his handler, but something about your description of KOTI tells me that neither the handlers nor the dogs are particularly well-trained.

Ambulance Driver said...

Heh...I said "cracker" instead of "crack."

Freudian slip.

Dunno if that means I'm a redneck honky, or that I'm just particularly hungry.

FarmGirl said...

AD-

When you were training hunting dogs, you were dealing with a different caliber of Lab than we generally get our hands on around here, I guess. Just like anything else there are well-bred examples, and then there's the bottom of the barrel...

We usually see the scattered, goofy, love everyone Labs, and this one doesn't seem to be the exception to the rule.

As for the training level, well, lets put it this way. I saw him unload the dog once. It hit the end of the leash and pulled... towards the fire hydrant.

Bill said...

I like Farmmom's style. - and the fact that she knew her constitutional rights.
Bill