Officer Alex shares another tall tale from the streets…at least we hope
“Dear Sir or Ma’am,” he was writing in impossibly small block lettering. “I am so very sorry I hit your car, but I could not stay to make a report.”
He paused, gauging the amount of space he had left on the back of the business card as if he hadn’t already written those words at least 40 times by now. Officer Alex Teach was a very meticulous man.
“Smitty, you working the mall tonight?” he asked, looking up from his work for the first time in five minutes. He set the pen down on the coffee table to wiggle his wrist before getting back to it.
“Yeah. You?” the very patient roommate asked in return. He’d just hoisted his body armor over his head and was reaching for the Velcro straps all without realizing he was already rolling his eyes at whatever this crazy ass-hat was going to say. He kept the lights and cable on but was it worth it?
“The golf cart. I need to do some rounds on the parking lot and I don’t want to use my car. It’s cool right?” Teach asked calmly, knowing damn well he had been banned from their use just last year after an unfortunate accident involving a handicap ramp during a bank deposit run with a grossly unprepared J.C. Penney assistant manager.
In fact, he’d been asked not to return to the mall at all for some time, even as a customer.
“No. NO. Don’t even go there. I need this job. I’m taking the kid to the beach in June and this is paying for it.”
Teach continued writing before responding. “…Please call the office or cell phone listed on the other side of this card so we can make a wreck report and exchange insurance info. Sorry again and thank you in advance.”
“Wait. You doing the business card thing again?” Smitty asked in a calm tone but with inner remorse. “You know we gotta pass him on the parking lot every morning at shift change. He’s going to find out one day, man.”
With his free hand Teach brushed his fingers at him, his right hand still scribbling furiously. “Relax! It’s funny. It brings him joy. I know this guy, we’re practically best friends.” There was a brief silence indicative of bullcrap.
“Yeah well, I’m not getting canned from the mall like you did. Do what you want but I’m not handing you any keys.”
Teach looked up and showed Smitty whose business card pile he’d absconded with, and upon seeing the name it was now Smitty’s turn to pause before saying, “The keys stay in the ignition though. Do whatever. No one will be watching.”
Police work is, by nature, both the worst and best job in the world. When it’s good it’s great, when it’s bad it’s hell, but by and large the guys have a lot of fun. But it would seem that once you ascend the rank of, say, Sergeant, and become more administratively prone rather than street prone, your sense of humor tends to match your career trajectory: Jagged and more likely than not, flat.
So when administratively dealing with cops that are still “street oriented,” admin types tend to forget that this one problem for them is the ONLY problem for the guy or girl in front of them, and these guys have an alarming amount of time on their hands to let decisions fester and plot revenge, while you’re just wondering how to deal with the next guy or girl slated for coming in to get yelled at or praised (same thing).
I say all this to explain how fifty different Police Chief’s business cards admitting fault to a parking lot crash wind up under the windshield wipers of fifty scratched, dented and wrecked parked cars on the parking lot of one of the largest shopping malls in the state of Tennessee.
Two cops, two roommates, hassled by the same guy. “It’s going to help him. You’ll see,” Teach said as he finished the last one, subconsciously straightening up the stack of cards as he prepped them for transport. “Humor is fundamental.”
Smitty shook his head, but he was grinning as he cinched on his gunbelt and headed towards the door.
“You’re an idiot,” he said over his shoulder. But his smile was as real as the phone calls that asshole was going to endure the next several days.
They have their games, we have ours.
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.