Translator Wanted.

Sometimes I run into a stumbling block. It happened last night.

I was down below a dam checking fishermen when I come across two men who were fishing with a small stick with line wrapped around it. As soon as they saw me, one of the men tried to hide his stick under a rock. Too late- I saw it.

So I approach them and ask to see some fishing licenses. Blank stares. I ask again. More blank stares...and then "No Ingles! No Ingles". The men were clearly of Asian descent and I have run into this problem before. Luckily I was prepared, I pull out my handy dandy cards I had a Chinese professor from the local university translate for me. One of the cards says, "Do you have a fishing license?" So, I point to the sentence in chinese characters and one of the men excitedly says, "Oooh! Yes! License!" And he nods furiously. I point to his bag and try to play charades to ask if his license is in his bag. After several rounds of charades I give up, and pick up his bag and mime my way through getting consent to search its contents. Nothing. Not even an i.d.

When I show the second man the same sentence he furiously waves his hand around in the air like he is saying "Bye Bye", leaving me a bit confused as to whether he means, 'No, I don't have a license" or
'Man this place reeks of dead fish'.

So I turn back to the first guy and ask (in a loud voice, because it is hard not to do, even though I know he isn't deaf), "License?" I make a motion with my hands indicated that I need to see it with my eyes. I point to my eyes then point to the sentence asking about a fishing license. The man again shakes his head madly and starts saying, "Highway! Highway!" while he is pointing up in the sky. Huh?

"Your license is at the highway?"

"Highway! Yes! Highway!"

I point in the direction of the nearest highway and say questioningly, "Highway? Highway 6?"

Suddenly he starts making a shape in the air of a box and pokes his fingers into the box, "Highway!"

I point towards his bike and begin the pedal mime. I'm standing on the edge of the river running in place with my hands on imaginary handlebars, pumping away and saying very loudly, "Go to highway? Ride your bike to highway? License at highway?"

The Chinese man begins laughing at me.

I turn back to the other man and he merely begins his wild goodbye wave.

So, I take my fishing license from my pocket and pretend like I am handing it to an imaginary game warden. Then I switch places and become the imaginary game warden. I take the license from the imaginary me and look at the license admiringly, then give the imaginary me a giant thumbs up, in a desperate attempt to show that they need to show the game warden the fishing license.

The man laughs more. Apparently I'm putting on quite a show. More fisherman are beginning to watch my little one woman act.

Finally I pull out my pad of paper so I can attempt to get the man's name. I give him the paper and a pen, then pull out my flashcards. I find the one that says, "Please write your name."

The man smiles grandly, happy that he can finally do something that I'm asking him to do. He grabs the paper and scratches out what appears to be about 15 Chinese characters. I'm fairly certain that the Clerk of Court won't accept a citation written in chinese characters, so I begin belting out the abc's song. The men look at eachother and begin clapping along.

I give up.

I wave my hands back and forth, meaning "NO", then I pretend to reel in a fish, meaning "FISHING". NO MORE FISHING UNTIL YOU SHOW ME A LICENSE!

"Highway! Tomorrow!" He points to the river, "Tomorrow!"

"No," I say, shaking my head, "No more fishing!"

The men laugh and begin clapping some more. "Sank you, Sank you!" they say happily.

Just as I turn to walk in shame back to my truck, the men pick up their sticks and throw the line back into the water.

Mission accomplished. Or not.

And the Winner Is...

Every once in a while...ok, let's be honest, quite often, I encounter someone that makes me feel like a pretty darn good parent (at least in comparison).

Tonight I got a phone call from the "Range Officer" at the pistol/rifle hooting range on one of the wildlife areas. He reported that someone brought a baby to the shooting range. The baby was in a stroller, with no ear protection, inside the fenced in shooting range. A blanket covered the baby (it was 90 degrees today), and the child had been bawling for the last half hour.

By the time I arrived at the shooting range, the couple had gotten the baby into their car to go home. I approached the (very young) parents, and instructed them to never, EVER, bring the baby back to the shooting range again. The father just stared at me like he wanted to punch me, and the mother had a perpetual smirk on her face like she was going to start laughing.

"You have probably already given the baby some hearing damage by exposing him to these gunshots out here...not to mention all the lead," I said.

More blank stares and smirks...then the dad said, "Well we put the blanket over top of his stroller to muffle the sound. I stuck my head under there and it was just like wearing earmuffs."

I lectured him about the fragility of a baby's eardrums, and told them that if I ever saw the baby at the shooting range again that I would pursue Child Endangerment charges.

"Well, we are taking him to the sprint car nationals  next weekend, so he will be exposed to even more noise," the father said (purely to piss me off) as he climbed into the car to leave.

They drove away and I looked at the Range Officer in disbelief. How could a parent be this stupid?

After I left, I called a deputy to find out whether Child Endangerment would really fit the bill. He said that he didn't think it would, but it was definitely a candidate for the Dumbass Parent of the Year Award. It was one of those moments when I really wished I could give someone a ticket for being stupid.

I hung up and called DHS.

Pot? What pot?

I've spent the last several evenings arresting drunk people driving boats. Of course, I always stumble on them as I'm on my way back to my vehicle to head home for the night. Two nights ago I had an especially interesting one. He was not only drunk...but also high.

Here is a list of things this gem said to me throughout the evening.

1. "Pot? What pot?"
"The pot that I quite plainly smell right now. Where is it?"
"I don't have any pot. Do you guys have any pot?"

2. "Pleeeeaaaase? I'm already in enough trouble out here. Can you please pretend you didn't see the pot?"
"What do you mean you are already in enough trouble out here?"
"Two weeks ago some lady said that I raped her. It was a misunderstanding."

3. "How much did you smoke?"
"I didn't smoke anything."
"I'm not stupid. How much did you smoke?"
"I didn't smoke anything."
"Open your mouth so I can see your tongue....thank you...that's what I thought. How much did you smoke?"
"Maybe one hit."

4. "Is there anyone you can call to come and load up your boat? We are going downtown, so someone needs to take possession of your boat. Who can you call?"
"I could call my wife, but she is still mad at me about the rape."

5. "You are under arrest for Boating While Intoxicated. If you are going to be decent with me, I'll cuff you in the front for the ride."
"Wow, I feel like a seal. These are great flippers!" (as he claps his cuffed hands together).

6. "Can you pleeeeaaase turn on the lights and sirens? This is the worst night of my life, at least you can make it a little more fun for me."

7. "My nipples are hard. Can you turn down the air?"
"Sure."
"Unless you want my nipples to be hard."
"No thanks"

8. "And I'm not going to say anything about women drivers. That would be a bad idea right now. So I'm not going to say one thing about bad women drivers. By the way, why couldn't Helen Keller drive?"
Silence
"Because she was a woman! Ha Ha Ha!"
Silence
"Didn't you think that was funny? Even a little bit?"
Silence
"I guess not. Sorry."

9. "Come to think of it I don't think I smoked any of that weed."

10. "This is a Drug Recognition Expert. He is here to run you through some tests to see how much the drugs are affecting your body."
"What drugs?"
He fails each test miserably until finally he says,
"Ok, I don't want to do any more tests. You have already looked at my eyes enough"
DRE: "Sir, we only have about 2 more minutes to go in these tests. We would appreciate it if you would just finish it up."
"Well....alright. I guess you probably know by now that I haven't smoked anything anyway. Go ahead and finish."

11. "I was fired last week because my boss said I have a bad attitude and that all I care about is boating."
"You sure it wasn't for getting arrested and charged with rape?"
"Could've been that too."

12. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, can and will be used against you in a court of law..."
"That is what got me into trouble with the rape. I told the truth."

Uh huh-That was about four hours of my life I will never get back. Is it hunting season yet? Pleeeaaase?

Cops Against CSI

People shouldn't be allowed to watch CSI.

Let me re-phrase that...people shouldn't be allowed to watch CSI and then call me. I wish the department would outfit me with all the gadgets that the folks on CSI have in their back pockets, but to be perfectly honest, even my flashlight barely works...and I had to beg for that. The chance of my supervisor handing me some kind of handheld, fingerprint reader, dna matcher, bad guy-finder do-dad is pretty far out of the question.

So, here are some calls I've taken where I think the expectations might have been a bit high. And these are really just the few I could think of in the last ten minutes:

Q: "My jet ski was stolen, but I found it parked at a sandbar on the river. Can you come and take a look at it?"
A: "And then what? I can come and look at your jet ski that was once stolen but later found. And I can look at it some more. But no matter how long I look at it, I will never be able to take fingerprints from it. And even if I could take fingerprints from it, I have nothing to which to compare them. No matter how long I stare at the jet ski, no visions will come to me. I'm not a psychic."

Q: "Someone was trespassing on my property last night. I never saw the vehicle, but you should be able to come up with something from the tire tracks they left."
A: "Um. No. I won't be able to determine jack from the tire tracks they left. Unless they happened to drop the vehicle registration on top of the tire tracks, there are only about 100,000 vehicles in the state with the same exact tires making the same exact tracks as those left in your driveway."

Q:"I found an arrow in the road. I'll keep it for you in case it ever matches up to another case you are working on."
A: "Thank you so much for the help. I'm sure someday I will be able to match up the arrow to a poaching case. Was the arrow hand-made in some unique fashion, or is it a lot like the rest of the billion arrows sold to bowhunters nationwide? I'll scan it with my super-duper arrow identifier 3000, and maybe look at the blades under a spectra-micronoscope to determine the dna of the hairs the arrow might have once touched from the deer that was missed."

Q: "There are a pile of geese thrown in the dumpster behind our apartment complex"
A: "Did they happen to tell you who shot them? Oh, and did they have a license? Because otherwise, we have no violation."

Q: "I found a small piece of camo clothing on the barbed wire fence where someone has been trespassing. I saved it in case you can use it as evidence."
A: "Good thinking."

No, I'm not bitter. Just don't get me started on Law and Order.