Watering hole

Another story about that protest. I parked my police motorcycle in the right turn lane to protect the idiots who decided to sit in the middle of the entrance to this business with their hands and arms encased in pvc and steel tubes.

Needless to say, LAPD blue, ballistic vest, motor boots, and helmet don't go well with very warm weather. I'm one of those types that keeps my helmet on while in the roadway just in case some idiot motorists decides to make me a hood ornament. This is just my way of doing business whether on a traffic stop, vehicle collision scene or protest.

I feel the small inconvenience is nothing compared to being some brain mush body on a ventilator lying on a hospital bed for years when there is no hope for any quality of life.

So yes it did get warm, very warm, in fact it was just plain hot. I'm up and around the corner from the main body of protesters and where all the attention was from the road sitters.

While I stood there I noticed several protesters walk up, set up a folding table with coffee and juice. They also had a cooler full of ice and bottled water. One of our beat officers was just down the road from me. He looked as uncomfortable as I was standing on the hot asphalt roadway.

I used my NEXTEL and asked him if he wanted a cold bottle of water. He looked toward me and asked me where I had the water at. I told him it was in the cooler on the sidewalk where the protesters had set it up. He laughed and said "no".

"To hell with that" I told him. There were about four protesters present getting coffee and water. Much to the surprise of these protesters I walked up, opened the cooler and grabbed four bottles of water. They looked very surprised and said nothing (not that it would have changed things anyways).

I made the short walk down the roadway and handed the other officer two of the bottles. He began laughing saying he couldn't believe that I would take their water. Of course I played it off and told him I thought they were being very kind and considerate to bring a cooler full of cold bottled water for us.

Yeah he mentioned "No wonder you 'motor guys' are always in the shit."

Remember where you can find sympathy?

One of our big corporations has a yearly shareholders meeting which draws the attention of various groups of protesters. For the most part the protesters are very peaceful and want to make their opinions heard.

They set up their signs, stand along the sidewalk and have their voices heard about what they stand for and believe in. And of course we always hope for the best but expect the worst with contingency plans just in case things get out of hand and go sideways.

I'm sure that some of the views of these protesters are shared by many, including those of us keeping the peace there. I had one elderly protester ask me my opinion about the ecological disaster this corporation is causing in these foreign countries. Of course I have my own opinions. I politely told her that I didn't have any opinions while on duty.

As with any protest you always have those who want to cause trouble and escalate things. One group of protesters ran out into the main entrance of this corporation, sat down and had joined hands within steel tubes blocking any further cars from entering. So as a motor officer I'm tasked with closing down the right turn lane into this corporation entrance.

It's a screwy world when responsible (and I use the term very loosely) adults sit in the middle of a roadway. This litigious society of ours makes it possible for people to sue other people, corporations, and government entities due to their own head up ass stupidity.

For example use the idiots blocking the roadway entrance. If one of those loser's were run down by a car who pays? The driver? The corporation? Their security division head?, the city?, the city's police department?. Probably all of them. All because some grunge looking, unemployed, hemp wearing jackass decides they're going to make a stand and sit their ass where cars travel.

Maybe I'm wrong but I figure if you get yourself even slightly injured up to dead and everything in between because of your own stupidity, then the only person responsible is you and nobody else. Case closed. The only consolation should be their nomination for the yearly Darwin Award

I guess we could politely ask them to get up out of the roadway, yeah right. So as it goes, these idiots refuse a lawful order for their own safety and you use reasonable force to move these people, you're perpetuating the "Blue Meanies" stigma and those so called "victims" of oppression have lifetime injuries and emotional trauma..... bull shit.

As far as the police using any type of reasonable force to remove the human speed bump. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. Those tambourine shaking fools and the attorneys which some of these protesting groups are represented by are going to have anybody and everybody involved in a lengthy civil lawsuit.

Hell who knows, there could still be a law suit because they were sitting on dark roadway asphalt which became pretty warm by some of the complaints the "sitters" were making.

I'm not even going get started about how the media sensationalizes events like this to boost their viewer ratings. We all know that modern journalism isn't about telling the truth. It's about selling newspapers, television news ratings, etc. etc.

Gotta love California and our laughing stock 9th Judicial Circuit Court.

So for anyone out there who does this stupid crap like sitting in the roadway, you can find sympathy for your cause in the dictionary between "shit" and "syphilis"

One of those calls

You know we respond to some pretty stupid calls sometimes. In fact, so stupid it makes think that "this can't be real".

When I was working patrol I was dispatched to a call of a 415V or in plain English, a verbal disturbance of the peace. The call happened to be at an open air market on one of our boulevards. I get to the location and contact the manager of this market and asked him what was going on.

He told me two of his employees were arguing. When I asked him what they were arguing about he told me that one of them accused the other of taking a quarter from him. I was thinking to myself, "You've got to be kidding!" I asked him where the employees were at.

The manager walked me over to them as neither of them spoke a lick of English. Their English was very broken and hard to understand. A fellow officer arrived on scene and thankfully he spoke fluent Spanish. The officer translated my questions to them.

My first question was "You guys are fucking kidding me right?" I don't know if the officer used the appropriate Spanish translation for "Fucking". I understood one of the probably few words of English they spoke and that was "No." My next question was "So you call the police for a quarter!" Again "No."

So obviously my next question was "Well who the hell did then?" They both simultaneously pointed toward their manager. I asked both of the employees how they wanted their problem resolved. One who denied taking the quarter just wanted to go about his work. The other of course wanted his 25 cent piece back.

Not wanting to waste anymore time, I reached into my pocket, retrieved a quarter and tossed it to the employee. I asked "Is everything square now?" The employee was happy to have a quarter back and replied "Jes".

I walked away, back toward my patrol car when the manager asked me if everything was okay. Now the manager was probably in his mid twenties. I walked over to him, told him everything was settled. I reached into my shirt pocket and handed him my business card.

He asked me "What's this for?" I told him on the reverse side was a number for conflict resolution and next time either call them first or maybe do something like use his brain and just fork over a freakin quarter.

That's what happens when you put "youngsters" in charge, DUH!