Officer, I swear it wasn't me! It was... the cat!
Thanks to the awesome folks on Reddit who contributed to this post.
1/22. I was with the officer when this happened.
Some kids were shooting bottle rockets, no big deal, but they were in an area where there had been some burglaries, so we checked it out.
There were three of them when we pulled up, maybe 14 years old. Here's the thing though, they were pretty well cornered. On one side was a pond where we could easily catch them, on another side was a huge fence with barbed wire, and finally there was one side with an unclimbable embankment that lead to some rail road tracks. Like I said, we had them cornered.
Two of them take off for the embankment and hide in the trees/grass, while one runs towards the fence.
Well the two that ran for the embankment were pretty well hidden, but Mr. Solo realized the fence had barbed wire, panicked, and decided to lay flat on his belly in ankle high grass hoping we couldn't see him.
We walked up and asked him to get to his feet. Nothing. We repeated the directions. Do you know what he did?
He rolled over, faked the biggest yawn he could muster and started stretching this way and that. Then he asked "Sorry, what? I was just sleeping."
The whole scene was too funny, so the officer and I start hysterically laughing, tell the kid he's not in trouble, and remind him not to run from the police.
This kid really thought he could pretend he just woke up from a nap, after we had just watched him sprint across the field and lay down. Good times.
2/22. Caught a woman stealing, she said it was her twin.
"What's your twin's name?" I asked.
"Jen."
I looked at her ID.
"That's your name," I said.
"Oh...yeah."
3/22. A couple said they were camping.
No camping gear. 1 piece of luggage with their clothes. Completely clean vehicle interior. Didn't know the name of their campsite. Mexican license plates... that did not belong to the vehicle they were driving. I opened their vehicle and what did I find?
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I opened their vehicle and what did I find? 300 lbs of weed in the panels of the vehicle.
4/22. I'm Air Force Security Forces (Air Force MP).
One day I got dispatched to a call about a guy stealing little bottles of wine from the class six store (the store that sells alcohol, guns, car parts, tools, sporting goods, that kind of stuff). Well I get there, handcuff the guy, get statements from the manager and cashier, and then search the guy before I put him in my car to go back to the squadron. Well while searching him, I found a total of 30 mini bottles on him. 30. I know our uniforms have a lot of pockets, but damn. Anyways, the entire time he's claiming that he didn't do anything wrong, he wasn't stealing them, blah blah blah. The he said it. "I swear to God sir, those were water when I put them in there, Jesus must've turned them into wine"
5/22. In interview with a woman for shop lifting (we have CCTV of her shoplifting then walking out, she was wearing the same clothes as she was in the CCTV)
"I didn't go in"
We have CCTV showing you going in and stealing.
"No you don't"
It's here 'goes to click play'
"No don't click play I don't wanna watch it, it's not me go away"
So what did you do?
"I went in to try on some makeup"
You just said you didn't go in?
"I didn't"
Rightttttttt...
6/22. Was watching cops one time, buddy told the cop he thought the bag of blow in his pocket was sugar and he found it on the ground and ya know, you're not just gonna leave a bag of free sugar on the ground.
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7/22. Of course there is the classic "these aren't my pants" when there is dope in the pockets.
I also revived a heroin overdose who woke up and commenced trying to convince me he was shooting insulin. In to his arm. After cooking it on a spoon I guess?
8/22. Paramedic here. A guy overdoses while speedballing, girlfriend calls 911. Engine company narcans him before I got there, reverses the heroin but now he's in full blown coke mania. During the course of a healthy and productive debate about his transport to the hospital, he swears up and down that he didn't do heroin (track marks, needles, history, empty slabs in the room.)
Once we got him in the truck, he tells me that he totally didn't do heroin, but he suddenly remembered what happened.
"I was playing a game with with girlfriend where we have sex, and I pretend to be unconscious and overdosed."
9/22. "That's not marijuana sir, I was just getting some chives from the neighbor so my girlfriend could make soup"
10/22. A guy I caught masturbating in a park. His excuse was "I needed to check it was still working"
11/22. Stop a car for a traffic violation. Male driver. Female passenger. Ask for both of their IDs because neither have a seatbelt on. Driver says he doesnt have a DL but gives me a name. I ask him who the female is sitting next to him and he says her name is Danielle and shes his wife. Ask her to spell her full name and she tries to tell me her first name is Sarah. Ask the guy for vehicle registration and he says it's not his car. Ask who the car belongs to and he just says "Gary".
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I ask for Garys last name and he doesnt know it. Ask where Gary is and he tells me Gary is in Long Beach. Long Beach, CA? Yeah. We're 2000 miles away from Long Beach. Guy tells me Gary is letting him test drive it because he might buy it.
They both had felony warrants and a few pounds of meth was in a fake keg of Heineken in the back seat.
12/22. Not a cop but anyways. My friends and I got busted for something in a very Catholic country by a very Catholic cop. Before getting carted off we are being given a bit of rough housing and threats in our hotel room. We are all in the room together and I made the sign of the cross to testify that I wasn't lying. The cop takes a step back asks me if I'm Catholic and I say yes (I'm not). Things start getting a bit of easier for me apart from a light "you should be a better Catholic boy" speech. The cop turns to my friend and asks him the same question.
My friend hasn't picked up on much of what just went on and says "Protestant" (he kinda is). Things got a lot worse for him very fast! Suddenly he's the only one that's committed any crime and is suddenly "stupid" as well. It's basically the worst thing you could have said at that moment.
13/22. Some guy had stolen a duck and was plucking its feathers out on the riverbank, cop goes up to him and asks what he's doing, guy tells him he's teaching his pet duck to swim and he's just minding it's clothes...
14/22. Summer of 1990.
We had just pulled into a nice dark corner of a subdivision that was under construction. The radio was quiet, and we had a ton of reports to catch up on, so we blacked out and took advantage of the quiet to get caught up.
After about 20 min, we get a call on the local channel from another car out on the interstate with a traffic call (speeding). They're like, "Uh, you guys gotta come over here and see this." We tell them nah, we're busy trying to knock out these reports. They come back again, "NO, you REALLY have to come out here and see this, REALLY!"
So we go ahead and head on over. We roll up on the stop, and there is a black '89 Probe, and two teens in handcuffs standing at the back of the car.
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We get out of the cruiser, and we then proceed to notice the 5 cell phones on the trunk (Remember, this is 1990...these were big honking things.) and two HUGE wads/rolls of cash.
Needless to say, our interest is VERY piqued.
The officer who had the stop, motions to the passenger side of the car, and says, "Take a look..". So we do, and find a white powdery substance all over the floorboard of the passenger side.
We're thinking, JACKPOT!
The whole time, the kids are saying, "It's Flour, It's flour!" and we're just chuckling and saying, "Yeah, suuure it is.."
We get some evidence baggies, bag up the phones and the money, and some of the substance, so that we can take it back to the station to test it.
As we get back to the station, the officer who had the stop originally, takes the kids into interrogation, while me and my partner head over to the area we kept the test kits. Now, they aren't much different nowdays, than they were back then, just bigger, and didn't have the range of things you could test for.
My partner takes some of the substance, drops it in the test kit, cracks the glass tubes.......and no reaction. We look at each other, and say at the same time, "Bad test." So he grabs another...same thing. We do one more test just to be safe, and again, no reaction. At this time we head on over to interrogation, to let the officer on the stop know that it's not drugs, and as we walk into the room, the teens are telling their story.
Well, what they were doing was basically selling baking soda and flour to crackheads over on the other side of the river (really bad area). We're all standing there with our eyes about the size of dinner plates, from the stupidity of these two. How they didn't end up shot or murdered was a miracle.
So, for once, the cover story really was true, but as Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story...
15/22. I caught up to a car on a highway going well over the speed limit. The driver was also weaving through three lanes. After pulling him over, the vehicle came to a stop and began to shake back and forth.
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I approached the driver side cautiously and no one was sitting in the driver's seat. The driver, who was the only occupant of the vehicle, had moved across to the front passenger seat and argued that I didn't see him "driving" because he wasn't in the driver's seat. He went to jail that night for DWI.
16/22. My aunt works for the RCMP in Canada, she told me this story. Apparently many years ago some lady called 911 claiming some random person rang the doorbell, she opened the door. The person burst in and threw her relatively new born baby in their pool and ran away. She didn't know how to swim, so she couldn't dive in and get it.
But here's what actually happened...
What actually happened was, she made that all up and it was her who threw her own baby into the pool to drown and die! She did it because by the time the doctors had found out the baby would be a "special needs", it was too late for an abortion. She didn't want to be embarrassed by having a child like that....
The cops found this all out after tapping her phone for several years. She admitted it to some relative in her home country on a phone call 8 years after the incident.
17/22. My brother's roommate from college is a cop in Pittsburgh. They were just on patrol after a Wiz Khalifa concert and it was him and two other cops in their unmarked police car. He's in the passenger seat with another cop in the back just kind of monitoring the crowd to make sure no one gets out of hand. His partner driving the car gets out of it and it talking on the phone as someone jumps into the driver seat and tries to steal the cop car with two cops in it. He yells get out of the car, you're under arrest. She claimed she wasn't going to steal it but rather just drive the 2 or 3 blocks to her car because she didn't want to walk.
18/22. Ridealong here.
"Where ya headed?"
"To visit my son at college"
"Which college?"
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"Uhhhh...I don't know"
Cut to popping the trunk and 160 pounds of weed falling onto the side of the interstate. That was a fun day.
19/22. Pulled over a woman for going 59 in a 45. She claimed her speedometer light was out and it was about 9:30 so it was pretty dark. Told her okay just get me you insurance and registration. She then turned on her lights to find it and the speedometer came on.
She cried when we pointed it out.
20/22. Not a police officer, but my boyfriend was a Marine. In Afghanistan one time they were conducting a clearing operation in a village and found a Taliban fighter under a pile of rugs clutching a detonator. They then discovered several IEDs set up outside the building in the intersection that were rigged to go off with the detonator.
The guy had evidently gotten scared and failed to set off the bombs. When they asked him what he was doing there he stated that he was just an innocent civilian that had fallen asleep under a pile of rugs and woke up with a detonator in his hand. Turned out to be a really strange guy. He ended up trying to bite my boyfriend after he took away his stash of hash during questioning.
21/22. When I found a bunch of young adults pool hopping they told me it was because they needed to test each swimming pool to make sure their neighborhood water source wasn't contaminated.
22/22. Growing up, my best friend's dad was a police officer. The favorite excuse he shared for a motorist who blew through a red light:
"But officer, the light was green when I closed my eyes".
He also told a story of his favorite retort to the common "you're just trying to fill your quota" which was to reply "yep, two more and I get a toaster". He would always smirk afterwards and finish with "yeah, that earned me a civilian complaint".
BONUS!
1. My uncle is a cop in town, and he would always tell the story of the time he pulled over this Fabio looking guy riding his Ducati without a helmet. When prompted as to why he wasn't wearing a helmet he responded, "I just took a shower officer I'm just drying my hair."
2. Called to the library for a loud drunken guy, was going to give him a ride somewhere to sober up:
"Is there anything in your pockets I need to know about?"
"I dunno, these ain't my pants..."
"...not ...your ...Pants?"
"Nope, pulled them out the lost and found and put them on cause I needed some pants."
"What happened to your pants?"
"I dunno! I woke up, my boys were gone, and I don't have any pants!"
pat him down "Well, whoever left these pants is going to be pissed they left their spice in the pocket!"
"Naw man, that's weed! I don't smoke that fake crap!"
Curious to hear what stumps strangers online, Redditor homo1ogize asked:
"What makes absolutely no sense to you at all?"
The things people do can be forever mysteries.
Entitlement
"Grown adults not taking responsibility for their actions/property and expecting others to clean up after them."
A Curious Culinary Process
"How people came up with baking."
"I get eating meats and veggies and fruits. That's just food that's pretty much ready to go."
"But somehow someone figured you can grind this plant into a powder, add a certain amount of water and some chicken eggs and some oil and some other crushed plant stuff and then heat it for X Minutes and now you have cake or bread or cookies or whatever."
Leaving The Bowl Full
"People that don't flush public restroom toilets."
"What's the deal with that? Do they not flush in their own homes? Is it laziness? Contempt with society? Seeing retail and other workers suffer? Just not knowing better?"
Life Insurance Loophole
"Seems like half of the true-crime shows I watch involve life insurance. What I don't understand is how the perpetrators convince themselves that being the beneficiary on a brand-new life insurance policy and then having the insured turn up dead within days or weeks is not going to put you under a detective's microscope."
"Even more suspicious are the ones who immediately make the claim for payout within a day of the death. At least sit on it for a month or two and act like you're grieving."
These trends continue to dumbfound Redditors' minds.
The Housing Market
"House price rises. How seriously can people have so much money for crappy houses? Where are all these great paying jobs that service the mortgage?"
"My partner and I have decent middle class jobs ( teacher, nurse) yet cannot afford to buy in the city where we live…. And not even close to the city where we live."
"How can a pandemic wreck an economy… throw thousands out of work needing to rely on government handouts …. Yet house prices increase?"
– mwm1980
The Facebook Ploy
"Those Facebook photos that promise you a lot of money if you post them. Is it true that people believe it?"
"How, in what environment, under what conditions, could that possibly work? Is this some sort of inside joke that I'm not aware of? 'Write Amen.'"
Brain Talk
"My first language was Spanish, which I learned at home. I learnt English at school and with friends outside of school. In addition, German is spoken."
"Surprisingly, when I speak in my brain, it's always in English. When I pronounce them out loud, though, they come out in the correct language."
Knowing scientific explanations doesn't necessarily mean we will completely comprehend them.
Moon Face
"How the moon is in perfect rotation with the earth to the point where we only see one side of the moon at all times no matter what."
Lack Of A Void
"What is the root of consciousness and why is there something instead of nothing."
Baby Transition
"How babies just go from swimming/breathing in a pouch of goo to being born and able to breathe normal air. It makes no sense to me. How does something go from not breathing air to breathing air in like a second?"
The Vastness Above Us
"Space."
"Look at the moon. Some days you can see Saturn or Jupiter out there. Look at the stars."
"You think about us… people on this rock in space all running around. We're floating in space on a rock. Spinning around. All together. One."
"And space is just soooo big. It's overwhelming. Really really big. I can't even comprehend how big."
"It doesn't even make sense how big it is."
This is something I've always chalked up to fate, but the concept of meeting people floors me.
How did I wind up with the friends in my circle? How did I get paired with my parents in this life? And how did I meet the person with whom I wound up exchanging vows?
It's terrifying to comprehend the prospect of never having met some of the most important people in my life, yet I would never know because I haven't been faced with the alternative.
It continues to blow my mind.
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