Sprocket
Aug. 11: There is a peculiar tendency among certain individuals when confronted by an officer of the law to act as if said officer had just fallen off a turnip truck.
Such individuals, intoxicated by a false sense of novelty, provide nonsense answers and create various obstructions before finally conceding the obvious.
Not so the young man at the center of this vignette. He was spied driving his sporty vehicle well in excess of the posted speed limit and pulled over accordingly.
A question of speed soon became a question of how much the young man had been drinking.
He was refreshingly well informed about both the speed at which he had been traveling, as well as the number of frothy beverages he had recently enjoyed. Realizing his intoxicated state, he was somewhat dismayed at a request to do field sobriety tests: "You got me," he chided.
A breath test, he suggested, should have been the officer’s first step.
On the ride to the police station, the young man continued in his forthcoming way, remarking that he had been racing earlier in the evening with the driver of an Italian sports car in a nearby town.
As the evening drew to its inevitable end, the young man said, "I shoulda been drunker for that."
He was taken to a friend’s home and charges were forwarded to the prosecutor.
Cookie Monster Munch
Aug. 5: An officer on patrol noticed that two individuals sitting in a parked vehicle had a peculiar reaction to his benign presence, making him suspicious that someone was cooking up mischief.
The scent of a strange herb on the breeze confirmed this, so the officer approached the vehicle on foot.
As he did, various items in the car were tossed about, perhaps in the hope that the officer was too occupied by other thoughts to notice. The two were asked to show their hands.
This suggestion was resisted by one of the gentlemen, who attempted to conceal a pocket knife he had on his lap. (The other man was more cooperative keeping his hands visible during the interaction.)
The recalcitrant one was pulled from the vehicle and handcuffed.
A plastic pen fell from his lap, which the man conceded had not been used for writing recipes.
Other finds included a glass smoking device, a jar of dried botanical specimens, and a box of tin foil that was unlikely destined for a culinary future.
The man also had a considerable wad of cash in his pocket.
To top it all, throughout his interaction with the officer, the man’s phone received flurry of text messages.
Although it was clear he was neither mathematician nor magician, the messages used a peculiar argot involving fractions, emblematic numerals and the word "bag."
Bunsen and Beaker
Aug. 6: A report of theft drew an officer to a Woodinville grocery store in the early morning hours. A shift manager who had observed the incident reported that two men had been loading a pallet of cardboard into their truck, despite not having permission to do so.
A store employee ran outside to confront the wrongdoers while another called 9-1-1 with the truck’s license plate number. (The truck involved here bore a striking resemblance to another that had been linked to pallet theft.)
One employee bravely leaped into the truck and attempted to remove the keys from the ignition.
A struggle ensued, naturally, but somehow the suspects got away, heroics notwithstanding. Havoc was left in the wake of the disturbance and investigation continues.
