Blessings from heaven come in many shapes and sizes

Recently crime has seemed to take off in Tremonton. There have been numerous businesses broken into. I have been the only officer working graveyards, because we are short a guy. And of course night time is the best time to break into a business. You know it does no good if you break in during the day, when there are people there to thwart your cause. Unless of course you want to go the robbery route. I don't recommend either. Well I have been taking all the burglaries that have happened personally. They break in while I am working, it's my job to stop them, they are making me look bad. Whenever this happens I can imagine the thoughts of the officers that work the shift after me. "Well what were you doing all night? Apparently not enough."

Of course it is nearly impossible to be in the exact right place, at the exact right time, to catch someone actually burglarizing a place. I have only had the chance to catch one burglar in the act, and I think I am the only one in the department ever to do this. This is all fine and dandy to tell myself this, but trying to play reverse psychology on myself, in my mind, just isn't that effective. I am of course worried what everyone thinks about me, so that makes it even worse for me when this happens and I am working.

So this week I have quadrupled my efforts to prevent another burglary from happening. I drop the pulling cars over thing (my favorite), for the constantly lurking in shadows and alleys waiting for the bad guys to strike. I have armed myself with all of the high tech equipment we have. Night Vision, got it, thermal imager, got it. Basically if you are out and about, you get to talk to me, not optional.

Well a few days ago (Friday the 13th), I was lurking and creeping, and shining bright lights in all the windows (checking to make sure they weren't broken). Well, as I am passing one of our local laundromats, I see a female inside walking around. I double check my watch and see that its 3AM. At 3AM there aren't even people at the local gym. So I am pretty sure I am not dealing with a die hard launderer. I park my car and walk into the laundromat, and the person is gone. I am thinking, "how in the world did she get out and away with me not seeing her?" There are only two doors inside the place, a rickety old bathroom, and a room with the massive water heater in it. I check the water heater room door, locked. I check the bathroom door locked. But when I shake the door a bit, I hear a female voice on the other side say, "What?"

Well that wasn't the response I was expecting. I announce that I am the Police and I need to talk to her. I hear scrambling behind the door, the sink immediately goes on and the toilet starts flushing. My first thought was, great I have interrupted a druggie in the middle of getting her fix. The door opens and a young girl comes out, puts her hands on her hips, gives me the look of death, and says, "What?" She looks like a druggie, zippered sweatshirt (undone), black halter top, bra straps coming out the top (classy), and sweatpants. Her appearance is unkempt and she has the odor of not showering for 3 days to a week.

I tell her that I saw her inside, I explain the recent crime spree, and tell her that I am talking to everyone. I ask her for her name. She has to think about this one (bad sign, this means incoming lie), Kaytlyn Smith, she says. Date of birth, she fires this one right out (sign of the truth. She should have stuck with the lying because the birthday she gave me put her at 15 years old. My line of questioning shifts to why she is out past curfew. She gives me a story about being out with a friend and stopping to use the bathroom. She can't remember the friends name, can't tell me where she lives, she points north west and says, "She lives that way." For those of you catching on, your right, lie again. It's 3 Am, so I explain to the urchin that I am going to give her a ticket for curfew, and she won a free ride back home. I have her come out of the laundromat and stand in front of my car. I search all her information on my computer and come up with nothing. By now, my spidy senses are screaming at me that there is a problem here. I ask the girl what her address is. She doesn't know, she just moved here a week ago and hasn't learned it yet. This one is a common answer, but sometimes true. I could swear I have dealt with this girl before. So I ask her, "are you sure you haven't met me before?" She tells me it's impossible because she only has lived her for a week. I tell myself that my spidy senses must be wrong. I have her get into the back seat of my patrol car, buckle up, and we are headed to Garland.

The girl directs me to a home that she claims is hers. But says that her mother isn't home if the lights are off outside. I tell the girl, "Well I can release you to a guardian, or I can take you to jail, but your not getting left here alone." She decides that we should try her grandparents house back in Tremonton. So we head back to Tremonton. She leads me to a house and says, "This is it, this is the one." As I pull to the curb, I type in the license plate of a truck in the driveway into my computer. Lo and behold, the results show that it belongs to the father of one of our notorious runaways. To protect the name of the guilty, I will now refer to her as, Little Miss Jerk.

By now the wheels in my head have caught back up to the present situation and start putting things together. I ask;

Me - "Are you sure you aren't Little Miss Jerk"?

LMJ - "No that's not me, that's my cousin"

Me - "Are you sure, you sure do look a lot like Little Miss Jerk?"

LMJ - "I get that a lot, we are cousin's"

Me - "You know if you are Little Miss Jerk, I am gonna take you to jail for lying to me"

LMJ - "Okay, I am not worried cause that's not me."

Me - "So your grandparents are gonna tell me your Kaytlyn?"

LMJ - "Yep"

I tell her to wait in the car. As I walk to the step's I am giddy. I am almost 100% sure that I have Little Miss Jerk in the back of my police car. She is gonna go to detention for lying to me, and there is a juvenile warrant out for her arrest (yes she is that bad). It's 4 AM, and no one that is asleep, is that fast at answering the door at 4 AM. It takes me about 3 minutes to get someone to answer the door. I recognize the person who answers the door as the father of Little Miss Jerk. I apologize for waking him up and ask him if Little Miss Jerk has a cousin named Kaytlyn. He tells me that he isn't aware of any.

I ask him if he would be willing to come to my car and tell me if I have Little Miss Jerk in my backseat. He was willing, and walked to the curb with me. It was dark, so I pull out the flashlight from my belt and shine it in my back seat. No girl. Where did she go? I shine the light on the floor thinking she might have curled up down there. No girl?? Holy cow!, I arrested Houdini? I walk to the other side of my car and shine my light in the back seat again (yes, I am idiot, thinking that perhaps the different angle of the light would reveal the girl). And then I have to say the thing that I never, in 1,000,000 years, thought I would say. And as the words came out of my lips they sounded as stupid as I felt. "Ummmm....... it looks like she got out of my car." The father gave me a look that said, "She was in the back of a police car, how in the world did she get out." The dad asks, "So she got away?" And I stupidly say, "Looks like it." There wasn't much more to say. I told him I was going to go find Little Miss Jerk.

As I walk back to my car I look at my back window and realize that it's not there. I know what you are all thinking, she kicked it out. NO!! The idiot cop that drives that car, ME, left his window down. I start berating myself inside my head, I believe the thoughts, idiot, dolt, and stupid were used on numerous occasions. I had had the window down so I could hear burglars. The temperature was so nice that I hadn't even noticed it was still down. And then my thoughts went to what my co-workers were going to say.

So if I wasn't embarrassed enough, now I have to announce it to the police world. Why? because anytime we have a prisoner in our car we have to tell dispatch. And as far as they know I still have a prisoner, and I have to account for that. So I got on the radio and said, "Box Elder, my prisoner just escaped from me." OH THE SHAME. Well one of my buddies from the Sheriff's Department comes to help me look for Little Miss Jerk. We scour town for an hour and a half. No Luck! Little Miss Jerk is a professional runaway, and she has crawled into one of her holes. GAH, what an idiot I am. Who in the world leaves their window down with a prisoner in the back seat.

Well the day isn't over yet. I still have to suffer through shift change. Well 7AM comes around and who is relieving me, My Sergeant. Well he gets a good laugh. And thank goodness he was too busy laughing to yell. So I fill out paperwork charging Little Miss Jerk for escape, and lying to me, and curfew violation. And I head home without a shred of pride. Of course my sweet wife asks how my day was. And I have to relive the tale of my stupidity one more time. Natalie of course loves my story and tells me I need to blog about it. I am still bleeding deep from where my pride used to be. I adamantly tell her that I have no problem telling about my adventures,but I am not going to share my incompetence with everyone, and I go to bed wishing that I was just waking up from a bad nightmare.

Well because I am on graveyards I wake up the same day I went to sleep. That means that it is still Friday the 13th. Well while I was asleep the day continued to be worse for my co-workers. There was an armed robbery in town. We had people flashing guns at people in town. The Hell's Angels Motorcycle Gang was making a run through Utah, so there were gang problems all over the County.

Well I head into work, and the day just has the feeling of nastiness. I go to work at 11PM, and it's super busy, and I am going from call to call to call. To add to the nastiness, I get some information that I have two rival motorcycle gang members in our town bar, strutting their stuff, and shooting each other menacing looks. I am working by myself again, and all it is going to take to make my night worse is for the wrong person to loose their temper.

I finally get a free minute from calls and decide that I am going to go get the plate numbers off the motorcycles at the bar, in case I have something bad happen. That way if someone runs before I can get there, I have suspect information.

Well I am heading towards the bar when I see a projectile coming towards my car. The best I can tell someone threw the object from the roof of a building. I am able to evade the projectile and watch it bounce harmlessly on the road. It's a plastic bottle. I let my dispatch know that someone has just thrown a bottle at my car from a roof, and I will be out investigating. I see a second story balcony on one of the businesses and determine this is where the bottle came from.

I know that there are some dingy apartments on the second floor of this building. I walk up the creaky stairs as quietly as possible. Well the walls in the building are paper thin, and I stop and listen. And I can hear a female talking in the apartment, and this is what I heard; "We didn't do it on purpose Mom, we were on the roof and accidentally kicked the bottle off, and then this cop came out of nowhere." I listen to the mother chastise the girl for a minute. So, when I have heard enough incriminating evidence on my bottle thrower, I knock on the door, and this is how the conversation went;

Me - "Hi, I need to talk to the person that threw a bottle at my police car"

Mother - "It was my daughter, she is right here."

Daughter - "I am sorry, we didn't throw the bottle we accidentally kicked it off the roof"

Me - "What were you doing on the roof?"

Daughter - "Hanging out with my friend"

Me - "How did you get on the roof"

Daughter - "Through the window" ( I make her show me the window)

Me - "You were up there with your friend?"

Daughter - "Yah"

Me - "I need to see your friend, what's her name"

Daughter - "I'm not sure, I think it's Kaytlyn"

Me - "Go get your friend."

Well the daughter goes to get her friend and guess who walks out. Yep, it's Little Miss Jerk. I address Little Miss Jerk by her true name. She then has the audacity to say, "I already told you that's not my name." Well I wasn't going to pass up on this opportunity, but I can't believe that she still dares lie to me. So I told her, "Shut your mouth, I am sick of your lies, turn around and put your hands behind your back." Little Miss Jerk is handcuffed and walked to my car. She is put in the back of my car, seat belted in, and I check that the windows are up. As I close the door I decide I am gonna gain a bit of pride back, and I say, "Good luck getting out this time."

I go to the police department to get a copy of the juvenile warrant. I have another officer come and watch her while she is in my car. He knows she likes to escape so he pulls up, and puts his spotlight on her while she is in the back of my car. I get the warrant and we head to detention. The road is closed from Tremonton to Logan for construction. So I have to drive to Brigham City and then up the canyon. It took an hour to get there, but it was time well spent. Little Miss Jerk is booked into the Juvenile Detention Center, and I head back to Tremonton. And I was on cloud nine for the rest of the night.

So while a 15 year old girl may have won a battle, I won the war!! So now that my story has a happy ending I decided it was blog worthy. And I owe it all to a little blessing from heaven, in the form of a bottle.