How was your Monday?

Well I went back to work today and even though it's Tuesday it's my Monday (we work 4 ten hour shifts and have 3 days off). I was a little anxious to see the final outcome of Friday's pursuit so I headed into work. Nothing exciting happened on the way in except for people driving in the slow lane, but I got over it. So to answer the big question..... Yes, every bad guy got away, but we have identified the ring leader and we'll catch him soon. He's toast! We almost always catch them through investigation.
Moving on, today for me was pretty exciting but not nearly as exciting as last week. I got a call from my friend Brent, who said that he saw me twice today. Once on one end of the city and the other time I was downtown pointing my gun at some guy. So we'll skip the first time he saw me and go right to gun part. One of our traffic officers (the mean guys on motorcycles that write good people tickets all day long) tried to pull someone over, for speeding of all things, and the guy took off. Yep another pursuit. Well this guy only goes a short distance and darts into a park. He lights something small on fire with his lighter and jumps into the back of his van, you know one of those kidnapper type vans that have dark scary windows, as if we aren't going to see him hiding. Yeah right!
Anyway, we surround the van and try to call him out but he doesn't want to cooperate. So we can either sit there for 3 hours until the SWAT team comes in or handle it ourselves. We chose the latter. By now there are all kinds of bystanders and mothers with their kids at the park watching a live episode of cops unfold before them. Which brings me to my first point. If you were there it is only natural to want to watch, right? Of course. But if you have little junior with you and there are several cops chasing a van into the park and pointing their guns and yelling commands don't you think that may be a clue to run? Or at least move a safe distance away? You'd think!
We were able to run the owner of the van's name and discovered that he had a $100,000 warrant out for his arrest. Now this incident is getting fun. So we shoot out the windows with a "bean bag shotgun" to let the knucklehead know we mean business. I guess that got his attention because he came out peacefully and went to jail. Boring ending I know. Oh, and the thing he lit on fire was only a cigarette. He wanted one last smoke before going to the clink! And speaking of cigarettes......
Later in the shift my partner and I get a call of a female at Labor Ready, a temporary work for the day type business, who was "flashing" people in the parking lot for cigarettes. In her defense they are getting really expensive these days. Anyway, in a typical officer response we ask for a description of the female, which comes out as 5'04, 110 pounds with long brown hair. All of a sudden we now have 20 cops going to this call which just cracks me up because if the description is the opposite only one or two officers respond. But I've been doing this cop thing for over a decade and I know the truth is always far from the reality. I mean there is no way some supermodel would be hanging out at Labor Ready peddling for cigarettes. Nonetheless it's now a race between the other 20 cops even though my partner and I got dispatched first. So we get there first and there she is, she looks just like Cindy Crawford but with missing teeth, drunk, and on crack for the last two years. Yep, it wasn't pretty. It was one of those times where you just say, "Ma'am. Please leave now and don't come back, and if you do make sure the graveyard shift is on".
That's about it for today. There were several more cool things that happened, but I can't make these posts mega long. Plus I did enough paperwork for the day. =) So stay tuned for more action and if tomorrow is boring I still have a ton of cool past stories to tell. Bless you.