Any cop who's been around has funny stories. I have tons. I started writing about them many years ago, and just kinda stopped, but I'm thinking I might have to resurrect the concept and punch out a collection of vignettes... In my opinion, they're often closer to the mark of real life than gory, horrendous tales of woe are - They're certainly more prevalent. Anyway, here's one of my favorites...
I was working graveyard shift on patrol; 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. It's generally loved by young officers, because it's a relatively target rich environment. Why, you ask? Let's face it, at 3 am in a small city, there ain't much of anybody on the streets other than cops and criminals. You do, however, have to deal with domestics and drunks, neither of which are a lot of fun. So, I tensed a bit when we got a suspicious circumstances call at about 12:30 a.m. - Dispatch said it had been a female caller, and that it sounded like a prowler call, or possibly a domestic, so we put pedal to the metal and booked right over there. Oh, yeah, it's easier and funner to drive fast at night, too, 'cause there are fewer people in the way, and you can go lights out when you get close, (On cop cars, you can drop all the lights, including brake lights, which makes it much easier to work Auto-Prowl, and to play Opticom tag, but those are other stories...). So we arrive, Stopping a couple houses away from the address, and walk in, checking out a small house in a quiet neighborhood. I'm the assigned unit, so after not seeing anything going on, I head cautiously for the front door, and right about when I get there, the light snaps on, the door opens, and a young woman in a robe tells, me, "It was a mistake Officer, everything's fine, I don't need any help..."
I noticed that she's flushed, very red in the cheeks, and looks nervous, eyes kinda darting around a bit as she talks to me... OK, so time for a quick common sense test: If you were the cop, would you just leave at this point? Of course not!
If this is a domestic, she could be hiding the offending Significant Other, or she might be at gunpoint on the other side of the door for all we know - An irate partner or a rapist just waiting for us to leave so they can cap her, or... Anyway, you get the idea - We're still goin' in...
So I ask her, politely, if she indeed made the call, and she says she did but that, again, she, "Made a mistake and everything's fine." I explain that, due to the nature of the call, we have to come in and make sure that everything is fine, and would she move please? She does, reluctantly, and I ask if anybody else is inside. "What?" she responds, "No.... There's nobody else here, just me..." My backup and I exchange glances and we don't believe her, so I gently say, "Are you sure there's nobody else, because we're going to look, and we don't need any surprises." Her eyebrows go up and she shakes her head and says, "No, really, it's OK, there's nobody else..." So we search and there doesn't seem to be anybody else, but... There's a pillow in the middle of the upstairs hall, and all the covers on the bed look like they've been violently thrown aside. My backup is downstairs with the caller, and I think to myself, Uh huh, what we got here is a li'l ol' do-mestic spat that erupted in bed - He stalked off in a huff, she threw a pillow at him , he scared her, she called 911, he split, now she's protecting him - Got it...
So I head back downstairs, brief my partner, then turn to our caller and say, "Ma'am, I saw the bedroom, I think I know what really happened, and, well, you're not doing yourself or him a favor protecting him, so, you want to tell us the real story, please?" She looks shocked, even more embarrassed, gathers the collar of her robe to her throat and looks down, saying quietly, "It's not like that, it's not what you think..." I'm thinking, what's not like I think? Was it a woman instead of a guy, somebody's husband, what? So I say, "I'm sure nobody meant to hurt anybody, and we just want to help, so just tell us, who are we looking for?"
She sighs, shakes her head, covers her face with her hands, and laughs... Laughs, and then she says, "Well, shit, I'm in it now, aren't I?" She looks up, smiling, still shaking her head and says, "It's not who you're looking for, it's what!" then she laughs some more.
And now... The rest of the story.
See, our caller is a graduate student, and while she has a very nice boyfriend, he wasn't there that night. She got in to bed after a long night studying and started to drift off to sleep. She was pleasantly surprised to find her big ol' boy kitty cat had snuggled under the covers and was at her feet, all nice and warm, (He likes to do that, she notes). She reaches down with her toes to give kitty a scritch and then thinks; man, his fur feels rough, what's with that?
She peeks under the covers and sees...
A full grown Possum. She screams, exploding out of the bed, the Possum screams and scrambles for the door, she wings a pillow at it as it careens off the wall headed for the stairs. She calls 911...
We searched the house without success. Kitty was under the bed in the guest room looking a bit spooked. The possum, we assume, went out the cat door he came in the first place.
Truth is often stranger than fiction: And funnier...
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