Thursday, May 28, 2009

Right Place at the Right Time

If you don't believe in pure dumb luck I would start now!

I'm driving around all night long looking for something interesting to get into. The town is pretty quite at night. Very little traffic and no many calls to speak of. I'm on the main street through town, hoping to find a car with drugs or drunk drivers, waiting at a traffic light to turn around and I hear a loud thumping noise coming from behind me. This big F-150 goes past me doing about 45 or 50 with two flat right tires. I get so excited!! This dude has to be wasted out of his mind to be driving that fast with two flat tires. I pull out behind it and wait for it to make its turn onto another road and pull it over. The shit is on now!

I walk up and its a freakin kid. A kid who looks about 14 and ends up being 16. I think to myself, self there isn't shit I can do with this kid except call his parents and get the vehicle towed. He doesn't have a license and therefore no insurance. Best I can do is write a ticket. Thats when things get a bit more interesting. I check his name and birth date and surprise surprise to me he's a runaway kid. No wonder he's driving a car with flat tires and doesn't seem concerned because he doesn't want to go home anyway. So now we call the parents. Dad says he doesn't know whos truck it is. Kid says it's his friend who lives next door. Then he says its the same neighbors dad's truck. The registration comes back to a business and its 1 in the morning and of course they aren't open. We find a pill bottle in the console and theres a name, address, and phone number on it. We can't reach anyone on the phone so another unit checks by at the house.

This house is no where near this kids house. Not exactly a neighbor. The other officer knocks on the door and asks the guy if he owns a white Ford F-150. The guy walks out the door and "What the F**K!!!" is the only thing the guy says.

The kid's arrested now and all the way to juvenile detention he's calm and not worried and almost bragging about the fact that he stole this truck. I probably won't stumble on anything like that again in my life. The truck wasn't even reported stolen yet. The kid wasn't from our city and probably wouldn't have been a recovered runaway for another week or so. I couldn't have phathomed this was the case when I first saw that truck. So if you don't believe in luck, I was lucky, the owner was lucky, and the kid was lucky he was a freakin 16 year old and not a 17 year old. I'll make sure to find him again and arrest him as an adult so he really goes to jail.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Alcohol may be the Root of all EVIL

It would be cliche of me to generalize all family violence as the result of an alcoholic husband. That would only feed to the mainstream notion that all alcoholics are abusers, that only men are abusers, and that only men are alcoholics. I've only been on patrol for 3 months and haven't handled a lot of cases. I can only attest to what I've seen or heard and nothing of what I'm saying is using any empirical data to back it up other than my own experience.

Three cases of assault/family violence. Every single one of them was the result of a drunken husband. Every one of them the actor was intoxicated to some degree during the assault. To some extent the female victim was injured or felt pain. The women don't share anything in common. Their degree of education and work experience are all different. The men are all drunks. Their level of education and work are closer with the exception of one of them the apitomy of a loser. I don't have family history on any of the men or women. One of the women had been in an abusive marriage before. One of the women is an immigrant on visa status. One of the women had a child at home with them at the time it occured. There aren't any common charateristics except the men are alcoholics.

So if you did a study based on these three cases the conclusion is simple. 100 % of the time alcohol is a factor in the abuse. The abuser will be a male alcoholic. The victim will be his wife and no one else. I don't like absolutes typically but this is a pretty sure statistic thus far. I know three cases aren't enough for comparison to apply to a populace as a whole. I'd obviously need to extend my group and include controls like alcholic men who aren't married but date as well as cases of alcohol involved assaults where the man isn't an admitted alcholic.

I think this would've made for a more interesting research topic than the one I did during school. Although this wouldn't be nearly as complicated or expensive a study as my proposed idea while I was in school. All I would need is access to police records (I have that) and contact information for the individuals and lots of cell phone minutes. Might make for a good Doctorate dissertation some day.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

More Posts to Come

I know I know I know...10 days without a new update. Cool things have been going on at work and I have plenty to write about but night shift sucks and I don't have the energy this week to think clearly. So let me leave you with this short break down.

Right place at the right time stolen vehicle recovery.

Alcohol may be the root of most evil.

Why aren't kids just kids anymore?

But I just got a ticket last week Officer, please don't write me another one.

These are all great stories that will be talked about in more detail later.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

At Least We're Not # 1

I just read a funny article on sports teams and the most miserable sports cities in America. Like it says everyone has something to complain about. Unless you cheer for the Patriots or the Yankees; in which case you don't have a soul so you don't count anyway. The writer says Seattle sits at the top as the most miserable. I agree with that only because they just lost their basketball ball team to a miserable place like Oklahoma City (If you don't watch basketball at all refer to the "Thunder"). I would admit that really sucks. But what real hope did that town really ever have anyway. Its Seattle for peet's sake; who cares about Seattle except people who live there. I couldn't imagine being an athlete and hoping a Seattle team picks me up. Which is why I think Buffalo ranks at 3. What the hell are you going to do in Buffalo? I bet that place ranks among the top 10 worst places to live in the country right along with places like Detroit and Flint and Fargo. Those two cities are of no surprise to me when it comes to poor rankings.

What is disappointing to me is that Houston is ranked # 5. What the hell folks!! Whats our freakin problem that we can't have a consistently decent team for once. The mid 90's Rockets were awesome. They've turned into choke kings though. Playoff after playoff with nothing to show for it. The Astro's made it to the World Series one time in the history of the team and got their butts handed to them. The Oilers never won a Superbowl and have two championship wins in the 60's before the Superbowl existed. That's over 40 years without a champion football team. And we currently cheer for the Texans. We all know how that's going so I won't get into any details. We can't boast any college sports because seriously who cares about the Cougars. Our only claim to fame in recent years has been WNBA and MLS. Like the article says who cares about those sports. Its like the city has settled for mundane mediocre teams that don't really excite us or push the envelope and win. Maybe it's the humid weather; we're all just to lethargic to care about sports anymore.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Politics Smolitics I'm So Sick Of Government

24 hour media has changed the social order. Everything is on demand and news spreads faster than wildfires in California. I try to tell myself stop listening to them, stop watching them, just drop politics from my life and I'll be a happier person. But I just can't do it!! (As I type this I'm listening to 700AM radio...someone help me!!). I don't know how to scathe my interest; better yet to diminish my concern. That's right, I'm sincerely concerned for the country and for the future of our government. How did that ever happen to me? I never used to care. I never used to give a flying F*** what happened on a larger scale than my own day to day activities. And right now seems to be the worst time ever to care. Things are so hot and debated and torn apart.

That may be the problem. That's why I have such a hard time with politics. I don't lean one way or the other all the way. I'm a topic by topic decider. I will never claim to be a Republican or claim to be a Democrat. I will never say I'm a conservative or a liberal. They come with such horrible stigmas these days. Politics has become so blinded by labels and name calling and just ignorant to the actual common person its sickening. And the real problem is there are people who buy right into it. I have to check myself every once in a while to make sure I'm not becoming one of those ignorant one sided emotional party members that just say the other guy is wrong because he doesn't label himself like I do.

That brings up another issue; emotion. I'm beginning to hear more and more emotion on the talk radio shows and in the voices of the so called straight talking likes of FOX and CNN and MSNBC. The reporters are sounding like the bloggers and callers and e-mailers. What ever happened to unbiased reporting? I know conservative talk radio is going to be just that, and that's why I don't listen to it expecting anything other than smack talk. That's why it exists. But when I start seeing it on TV (obviously much more widely followed than radio) it concerns me. It divides everyone and makes us judge the other guy.

Our nation needs a huge punch in the face to wake up and realize we're crumbling. 911 was a huge punch in the face, this economic downturn is a huge punch in the face, what will it be next? Our political system needs to wake up and revamp itself. I don't believe its being done currently at the level it should be. Strictly undoing everything the other guy did in the past is not changing. Changing is new ideas and new ways of getting things done. Our politicians said change was coming to Washington and it appears like things are status quo. Same broken promises with the same players behind different masks. Its starting to make me sick to my stomach.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Let the Movies Begin!!

We saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine last night for the 12:01AM showing. I almost felt like a total dork. I told my wife the next time we see the first showing of a comic book movie we need to wear costumes to get the full effect. There was one guy dressed up like Wolverine; claws and dog tags included, pretty funny. And before the movie started one of the theatre managers came in and announced three IMAX showings of Star Trek next week on Thursday. The announcement wouldn't have been so odd except a lot of the patrons started cheering. The whole thing was the nerdiest experience I've had in a long time. I almost want to go to Star Trek next week to check for crazy pointed ear Trekkies.

The movie itself wasn't half bad. Guess it was a bit more than half good. It seemed to move really slow in the beginning then all of a sudden pick up and just end. The pace it was moving made it seem like it would last forever. And I would have been perfectly happy with 4 hours of X-Men as long as the story was told properly with some depth and character development. But really it lacked just that. Hero loses something valuable then hero desires revenge but develops a sense of morality that controls his rage. Its a typical story that's been told a thousand times. I had always thought Wolverine was more like Punisher in that morals and human decency weren't his thing, especially without Professor Xavier looking over him. I can see how maybe this movie is all just a ploy to get people to buy the comic to compare the accuracy. But I almost don't want to contribute to the ever growing Marvel dynasty just to spite them for making less than adequate movies. If Watchmen had let Hollywood destroy that comic the way they've destroyed X-Men it would've been one of the worst movies of the year.

So if you can't tell neither one of us really liked the movie. It was exactly what I expected it to be and nothing like I had hoped it could have been. They had a chance to make up for three other mediocre movies and failed miserably. I hope a good box office doesn't mean the writers and producers get to comfortable with rolling out the same crap next time. I may have to wait twenty years when someone takes another shot at it like Batman to get it right.