Grand Theft Auto

Sometimes when I have trouble sleeping in my house during the heat season (I have no central air), I take a walk in the cool of the night.  Last night I woke up in a drenched bed and I took my accumulated aluminum cans to the recycle barrel on Main Street around the corner.

As I was pouring the cans into the recycle bin I heard a car being cranked over repeatedly.  At 3:30 in the morning in a darkened business district with no one else around.

I took a few steps and stood on the sidewalk watching someone inside a darkened car in the used car lot turning the engine over, and then when it caught the car made a loud screeching sound, shuddered and the engine killed.   Again and again this process was repeated

I thought my standing 60 feet away in the dim glow of the street lights would induce the driver in the dark car to emerge to sheepishly explain himself, or else run away, especially since the business was completely dark and shuttered for the night.  Not so, he just kept repeating the suspicious process.

The former cop in me, 30 years dormant but already jarred awake by the dissonant car engine noise in the night, I thought briefly about striding up to the car in the lot and asking the driver what the hell he thought he was doing.  After all, maybe it was a repo, or an owner who had returned to get his car at that hour, perhaps by arrangement.

But in the olden days (cops always take action, it's their job to do so) I would have had two crucial advantages: a pistol on my hip and a radio nearby in my car, connected to a wide network of swift support.  This was a dangerous course for a mere civilian out alone in the dark encountering a possibly criminal situation with no nearby apparent support.

Ruing that I am so old as to not view my cell phone as an essential appendage of my body to be taken with me at absolutely all times (it was sitting on my dining room table), I turned and started walking briskly home, a two-minute walk.  As I rounded the corner to gain my residential street, I heard the noisy engine finally catch and with a loud vroom, it pulled out of the lot onto the street and I looked back to see it peeling off EB on Main Street at a high speed, completely without lights.

I ran the rest of the way back home and dialed the Falls Church police.  Thus began a charade, a caricature of civilian interaction with police that informs us why the public doesn't readily interact with the police.

A female answered on the fourth ring and the conversation, while not verbatim, went something like this as well as I remember it 24 hours later.

"Hello?"

"Is this the Falls Church police?"

"Yes, how can I help you?"

"I just saw a very suspicious occurrence at the Falls Church Auto used car lot on Broad [Main] Street one minute ago, a person started up a darkened car in the lot and went speeding off eastbound on Broad Street at a high rate of speed with no lights on."

"Sir, what are you saying?"

"I think a car might have been stolen from the used car lot at Falls Church Auto just a minute ago and it was headed EB on Broad Street without lights a minute ago."

"Where is Falls Church Auto?"

"It's on Broad Street across from the car wash."

"Which car wash is that?"

"It's right where the bicycle bridge on the W&OD Trail crosses over Broad Street."

"What part of town is that?"

"You're not familiar with Falls Church, are you?"

"What side of town is this lot in?"

"It's right next to the Car Title Loan storefront, and Smokey's garage service station.  It's directly across the street from the old Chevy Chase Bank branch, which turned into a Capital One branch, which is closed now."

"Do you know its address?"

"No."

"And the car left on Broad Street?"

"Yes, EB."

"What kind of car was it?"

"I don't know, it was dark.  It was a dark sedan.  It had a pennant flag on the roof and a promotional front plate."

"A what?"

"A cloth banner flying on the roof and a promotional front plate."

"What's a promotional front plate?"

"It wasn't an ordinary front tag, it contained an advertisement for the used car lot on the front plate."

"Did you see the license plate or get a license number?"

"No, it was too dark, but I could see that it was a novelty front tag."

"What is your name"

"Peter Lamberton."

"How do you spell that?"

"Like it sounds.  L-A-M-B-E-R-T-O-N."

"What's your phone number?"

[Feeling crucial minutes slipping away!]

"Isn't my number on your caller ID?"

"We just want to confirm it.  Does it end in 4**4?"

"Yes."

"Can you hold for a minute?"

"Yes."

After three minutes of being on hold, I hung up.  There was no further communication with the local police.

Today I stopped in at Falls Church Auto.  After all, I have bought two cars from that business, and sold two cars to it.

There I heard a sad tale of woe, that a classic car with only 15,000 miles on it, already pre-sold to a buyer in France and being prepared for him, had been stolen off the lot at 3;30 that morning.  The police received a call from a citizen at that time and had responded by 3:48 am and had found an open window at the business and left a note.  They came back at 9:30 am, learned of the theft and took the report.  They didn't have any information on who the informant was.

At the business, I learned that a key for the car was missing, and that it was a manual transmission and that the emergency brake had been locked down tightly, both of which would explain why the car had been catching, shuddering with a screech of metal on metal and quitting if the thief was not fully conversant with a stick shift or knew that the emergency brake was tightly engaged.  I wish I could have done more to have averted this theft because it is a small business and I like the people there.

A Day In The Life Of A Trooper

A friend recently sent me a Red Skelton sketch where he joked about two state patrolmen stopping a very careful driver for a good driver award, only to find out that he was driving so carefully because he was totally inebriated and didn't want to draw attention to himself.  That skit reminded me of one of the most memorable DUI arrests I made when I was a state trooper three decades ago, an arrest that I call my hi-tech bust. 

One night just east of Boulder on the Denver-Boulder Turnpike, Highway 36, I topped the long incline leading out of Boulder and saw the long sweep of congested traffic below me on the long decline flowing towards Broomfield.  Since there was no possibility of catching an opposing speeder because of the median wall separating the two sides, I flipped off my radar unit. Half a mile away on the long decline I saw brake lights go off. 

Intrigued, I flipped the radar unit back on and the brake lights went on again and stayed on.  I flipped the unit off, and the taillights returned to normal. 

I increased my speed and weaved through traffic until I caught up with the car whose driver I had observed driving strangely, dragging his brakes whenever my radar unit was on, and I flipped on the unit again.  The brake lights came on and stayed on, in conformity with my radar unit's operation. 

The driver was hemmed in by the vehicular volume and driving along with the slower flow of traffic.  Since his lengthily dragging his brakes indicated erratic driving, I pulled him over.

I asked for his driver's license and registration and asked if he had a radar detector in his vehicle.  He confirmed that he did.  

Detecting the odor of alcohol on his breath and noting his slurred speech and bloodshot eyes, I asked him to step out into the space between our cars and administered a roadside sobriety exam.  He failed them entirely and I arrested him.

 As I transported him back to the Boulder jail, he demanded to know why I'd stopped him.   I was so proud of my "hi-tech" probable cause stop that I told the 10-55 how it was that i noticed him.

I explained that I had noticed that whenever I energized my radar unit, obviously his radar detector sounded its alarm and he apparently automatically put his foot on his brakes as a reflex action and kept it there until his detector stopped sounding off, at which point he obviously took his foot off his brakes and stopped dragging them.  Never try to explain anything that's even slightly complicated to a drunk, because for the rest of the ride to jail he kept screaming that I'd arrested him for having a radar detector and didn't I know that they were legal in Colorado! 

I did know that radar detectors were perfectly legal in Colorado and I tried to patiently explain that he was under arrest for DUI, not possession of a radar detector.  My attempts at ameliorating his agitation were unsuccessful and I was sorry that I'd broken my usual rule of deflection and answered his question honestly.

Another Tragic Shooting

A lone gunman opened fire on white policemen in Dallas to express his odious racial hatred.  The Dallas police chief, when this highly trained and motivated killer refused to surrender and was in a superior position to keep killing people, made the good decision to send a robot in after the mad dog.  

Let me go on record to say that taking out the assassin in Dallas with a robot bomb was an astonishingly good command decision to end the standoff with a militarily trained sniper who shot over a dozen citizens (including executing 5 police officers) so he couldn't shoot or execute more citizens. Two hours of negotiations proved to be fruitless. 

Akin to a military situation, the commander, in order to suppress casualties, took the strongpoint out with artillery rather than expose those advancing upon the it to harm due to their inadequate protection and cover.  And I don't think the robot pinned the assassin to the ground then shot him. 

Rather the robot went into the killer's liar and blew itself up, which killed the barricaded cowardly murderer. Yay. 

(From a former police officer.)

A Christmas tree run...

…is fun; (Police Officer's Tree)

To do it twice, (the tree at Union Station)

is yet more nice; (at the Botanical Gardens, with Thomas the Engine chugging around a track at its base)

But thrice is best, (the National Tree)

of all the rest. (the Capitol Tree, and below, O Canada!)

The Little City, the little creature

My home town is called The Little City, a self-proclaimed title as it asserts its fierce independence within the welter of competing governmental entities within the Beltway.  It all has to do with its superior public school system, which props up property values even in hard times, and skyrockets property taxes even for persons without children like me to feed such extravagance.

It's a nice place to jog though, as the forty mile W&OD Trail, a paved over railroad bed, cuts right through the heart of the city, and its streets for the most part are spacious enough and not crushed with heavy traffic.  It also has a nice set of hills, such as the hill which I ran up this morning that goes up to the elementary school, a school I attended half a century ago.

The jog was unsatisfactory though.  First off I lost the five dollar bill I put in my pocket, a fact I discovered after I'd poured a cup of coffee at the 7-11 near my house to take back to my house at the conclusion of my little two mile outing.  The proprietor kindly let me take the coffee anyway, gratis.

A hundred yards and a few minutes before that I had run by a poor little dead cat lying forlornly in the gutter amidst the dirty damp leaves, run over by a car, fresh blood surrounding its head.  I decided to call Animal Control as soon as I got home to report it so they could come pick it up and perhaps alert the owners.  I thought it would be an unwelcome sight for its family to discover if they were out looking for it.

There was a city police cruiser at the restaurant right next to the 7-11 so I stopped in there first and waited respectfully for the officer inside to finish ordering his breakfast at the counter before I approached him.  I asked if the city had an Animal Control officer and he answered affirmatively. 

I explained the situation to him, gave an exact location (if you're going to report something, try to know exactly where it is, such as, "on the western curb line of West Street 200 feet north of the W&OD Trail").  I left to go get my coffee next door as he called it in.

When I went by again carrying my coffee he came out and asked me to call it in when I got home because the Animal Control officer wasn't on duty currently and dispatch would give me another number to call.  The poor guy had a breakfast waiting for him and I said, "Sure, I'll be home in a few minutes."

Below is as best as I can recreate the conversation I had a few minutes later, after calling the police department's non-emergency number just a few minutes ago.

"City of Falls Church, police department."

"Hi, I'd like to report a dead cat in the city limits that I ran by a few minutes ago when I was out jogging, so your Animal Control officer could go pick it up."

"A dead cat?"

"Yes, it was dead, it had been struck by a car obviously because there was fresh blood around its head, and I thought you could go pick it up and alert the owners.  It had a collar."

"Sir, we don't pick up dead animals.  Only live ones or injured ones so we could care for it."

"Well, I thought the Animal Control officer could go get it before the family found it and saw it lying in the gutter dead, covered in blood."

"Our Animal Warden is only part time."

"Well, Could I have his number?  I'll call it to report the cat's location."

"Sir, she is part time and not on duty at the current time." 

I took this as a No.  I was starting to regret this.  When will I ever learn not to bother with trying to report animal situations within city jurisdictions?

"Well, I'm not sure why the city registers animals then because it looked like it had a tag and you could notify the owners in case they're out looking for it."

(Slight exasperation.)  "Well, I can take down a description in case the owners call in.  What kind of a cat was it?"

"It was a tabby, a household cat." 

"What color was it?"

"Well, aren't all tabbies tan with black stripes?"  (I was wrong about this.)

"Tan with black stripes.  Okay, was it male or female?"

"I couldn't tell if it was male or female even if it was alive."  This was my attempt at humor.

"A neutered cat.  Okay, where was it?"

I gave the precise location, wondering if the dispatcher would even bother to write it down.

Poor little tabby, somebody's family member, lying dead in the gutter of The Little City.

The Office is Closed Till Monday...

I went running with John this morning, 4 miles on the W&OD Trail from Bluemont eastwards, in 41:21.  The new normal.

Half a mile out we ran under an elevated roadway, pretty much at stream level.  That would be the Four-Mile Creek.

As we ran under the bridge, my attention was drawn to a fellow setting up a picture with his cell phone in the darkness.  I'm a jerk who doesn't want to ruin other people's shots so I yelled, "Coming through!"

I should have been looking the entire scene over.  I almost ran over a raccoon there on the roadway, that he was setting up a picture of.

That's not normal.  Raccoons that don't shy from humans, that sit immobile while people are four feet away, are rabid in my humble estimation, and should be given wide berth.

I was glad I was able to skip over the immobile beast at the last moment and wasn't scratched or bit.  I have no desire to go through a regime of rabies shots. 

I wish the jerk setting up his shot hadn't been setting up passersbys for a month of painful shots because of his lack of understanding about situational awareness.  As John and I emerged on the other side of the bridge, we called out to approaching runners, "There's a rabid raccoon on the trial under the bridge, be careful!"

Most runners were wearing headphones and didn't hear our warnings.  It was a waste of breath on our part.

Coming back half an hour later, the same raccoon was there, sitting immobile in the middle of the trail under the bridge as a parade of humans passed by.  This is an animal,, though docile appearing, I wanted to keep far away from as possible.

We got back to our starting point, Bluemont, and I went off to find the Park Ranger at that location but I couldn't find anyone there.  So I called the Falls Church police non-emergency number on my cell phone, because that was the only emergency number I'd entered in it.  (Bluemont is in Arlington.)

 The woman who answered transferred me to the Arlington PD once I'd explained the situation.  You know, like, if anyone gets bit by this thing there'd be a response by the Arlington emergency response of one or two dozen responders.

The Arlington PD weren't too interested in my report of a dangerous animal on the BUSY W&OD Trail.  They transferred me to Animal Welfare which had a voicemail advising me they were closed directed me to leave a message which they'd access on Monday.

Losing interest in this Good Samaritan project, I called one last number, a number on the bulletin board there which directed me to call it to report anything on the trail.  Somebody, in Reston, answered and tried to pawn me off on calling yet another number.

I said, "Please pass on the information about the dangerous animal squatting on the middle of the trail at milepost 3."  "Will do," was the response.

Parking in Arlington

I'm having trouble with regulators these days.  Yesterday I enjoyed a lunch with a friend at a restaurant in Arlington. 

Arlington is notorious for its parking enforcement.  They make you want to never go there.

After lunch, I returned to my car and was standing there with my driver's door open, one foot inside the car, waiting for my friend to come get in.  He was lagging behind twenty feet or so on the sidewalk, coming and plainly in sight.

An Arlington Meter Maid swung by in the traffic lane on her Segway.  Vroom vroom look at me I'm an "Officer" and I'm bad.

While I stood there, standing with my car door open, one foot inside, waiting for my passenger who was in sight mere feet away and coming, she wrote out a ticket (they punch in or scan in your license plate, hit a code and out pops the ticket in seconds) and tendered it to me while I stood there, standing with my car, door open, foot inside waiting for my clearly visible passenger.

"This is my car," I said.  "And that is your ticket," she said smugly.

"I'm not parking, I'm standing," I said.  "There are no signs prohibiting standing."

"You're seven minutes over," she said sneeringly.  "$35 for seven minutes, five dollars a minute, three hundred dollars an hour to park in Arlington?" I asked while I still stood there with my driver's door open and my foot inside the car waiting for my passenger who was plainly visible a few feet away to get in the car.

"Take it up with the traffic board," she said.  "Do you know how hard it is to stand on this machine all day?"

I had no sympathy for her for her complaining, probably she should come down off her mount a little to address her prodigious frame.  She swirled around in the traffic lane on her Segway like the Lone Ranger rearing up Silver and roared off at twelve mph, swerving around the corner in search of quota fulfillment.

Welcome to Arlington, Virginia, friend.  My weekend running buddy who lives in Arlington assures me that Traffic Court in Arlington is merely Kangaroo Court where they'll just assess the printed penalty and then assess you 15% more in court costs for having the temerity to come in.

The New Normal

Today at noon on the Mall was our new normal, 5.8 miles in 51:35, an 8:54 pace. Our running has revved up since we added R (for Rabbit) to our little group.

We leave our work near Union Station, run down to the Mall by the Capitol, go down to the Lincoln Memorial and return by running up Capitol Hill (a significant incline a third of a mile long) in the fifth mile. L, who has never before ran sub-9s, is showing a fierce competitive streak and chases down every runner who passes us.

Today as we ran by the Capitol, a Capital Police squad car came up from underground parking and approached the sidewalk we were running on to cross it to drive onto the street. L pulled up for it while R and I continued by on the sidewalk, oblivious.

The cop actually yelled out his open driver's window at R and I that we had run through a red light (on the sidewalk). There's no profit in arguing with a policeman but give me a break, jerk.

Parking enforcement in the District

The District has expanded its metered parking exponentially and enforces the restrictions aggressively in its desperation to garner revenues. Parking at any meter citywide costs $2 an hour from 6 am to 10 pm Monday through Saturday.

Personally, it just means that I actively stay out of the District on Saturdays. I reckon that attitude represnts a loss to the city in the form of potential lost sales tax revenue.

The city is very efficient at dispensing parking tickets, having its uniformed meter-maids zip up and down the sidewalks trolling for expired meters on Segways. With a couple of taps on his or her hand-held computer, the officer prints out a $60 ticket, slaps it on the windshield and is speedily off looking for other miscreants.

Going to lunch the other day, I observed one of these hard working parking enforcement officials during a few seconds of downtime from revenue enhancement. He was cruising hands-free on his two-wheeled vehicle in the middle of the street alongside a slow moving Metropolitan Police patrol car with its driver's window rolled down, engaged in a discussion with the pretty officer inside while he smoked a cigarette with one hand and held a cell phone to his ear with the other hand, conducting yet another conversation.

I'm Afraid

When I was a policeman I learned not to show fear, or to let fear influence my actions, because in that realm fear can get you killed. So although at times I am afraid, I try not to ever show it or act upon it.

I was traveling last weekend and I went through airport security. I had barely made it through the metal detector after taking off my shoes (my toes were poking through my worn socks), my belt (my pants started creeping down my hips), my hat (my bald pate was luminous) and my jacket (revealing my untucked shirt) when a TSA guy boomed, "Sir, is this your bag?"

We were in Kansas City and the blue-shirted bag-examiner was triumphantly holding aloft a 13 oz. bottle of Arthur Bryant's Original Flavor Barbecue Sauce. Having just spent the weekend in KC, I knew from several days of taste tests that Arthur Bryant's is the preferred Kansas-style bbq sauce, even above Gates or LC's.

This cooking elixir wasn't in my carry-on bag though, it was in the bag of the guy behind me. I think he was trying to sneak this bottle of liquid amber gold past TSA to take it home and liven up his dinner fare.

He owned up to ownership, declined to go back through the onerous security line again after removing the offending item from the security area and offered it to the guard, who put it in a bus pan by the back window. This receptacle of prohibited items was chock full.

I sidled over to that window from the other side once I cleared the security and looked at the contraband through the glass. Inside the brimming pan were a dozen or more sealed bottles and cans of Arthur Bryant's sauce, Gatorade, purified water, Red Bull and Coke, along with shrink-wrapped tubes of shampoo conditioner and sundry makeup.

I was sorely tempted to take a picture through the window of this basket of shame to record what is going on in the fight against terrorism in the heartland of the homeland. But I was afraid that snapping a photo of the bucket of discarded items would be a "suspicious activity" that might get me questioned and perhaps put on a no-fly list.

I was greatly conflicted but I decided against the photograph. The Decider would be proud for having been successful in making me afraid.

Stephen Johns.

Rest in peace, brother.

When I was a state trooper trainee in Colorado in 1980, the instructors had me pegged for a closet liberal. In the class on Response, the teacher asked me what I would do if I was walking up on a 7-11 and a man burst forth out the door with an automatic rifle.

I said, I'd shoot him immediately with my pistol, if I could. Before he leveled his rapid-fire weapon at me and blew me away.

Then I equivocated when the instructor gave me a shocked (Shocked!) stare and said, I'd yell, Drop it! and give him a nano-second to comply. Then I'd shoot him dead.

Ah come on, the teacher said, you wouldn't order him to drop his weapon, draw down on him and wait for him to comply?

No, I said, I'd shoot him. I'd kill him.

This would be a mismatch, rifle versus pistol. If he killed me first, an armed, uniformed authority figure, there'd be no protection for anyone around. I'd kill him quickly if I could.

We had a saying in the state patrol, Better to be judged by 12 (the jury) than carried by 6 (the pall bearers).

The teacher acted disappointed in me, because of my reputation for upholding individual rights. But it was the right answer from the wrong person. He said, Yeah, you waste this guy.

Today where I live, at a place where I sometimes run (down the footpath alongside the Halocaust Museum), a lunatic, a racist Holocaust denier, walked into the museum with a rifle and opened fire. From what I have heard, the security officers inside immediately shot him down.

He killed a guard before he was shot down, a young man named Stephen Johns. God bless you officer Johns. And thank you, fellow officers for immediately acting to subdue this 88 year old American nut job.

Anne Frank would have been 80 if the Nazis hadn't killed her when she was a teenager.