Thursday, January 9, 2014

Keep Trying--Maybe You'll Get it Right

My early years in law enforcement were a mix of three jobs.  I started part-time in Chatham in 1975, added the Park Police in 1977 and was appointed full-time in Chatham in 1980, still working for the Park Police for a while after that. Along the way, I worked for the Columbia County Sheriff's Office a little bit also, mostly to fill in for special details or cover vacations...that sort of thing.
One night another deputy and I were working a two man car during a weekend of special events in one of the smaller towns. I might add that the event was one that often involved copious amounts of alcohol. In the wee hours of the morning we came through one of the hamlets in the town and found a pickup truck in the middle of the road at the end of a long driveway. In the truck we found a young man trying unsuccessfully to get it started. To begin with, the guy was hammered. He could hardly stand up. We got his license and when he couldn't produce his registration we asked if it was his truck. "No," he said, "It's Mike's truck," pointing to the house at the end of the driveway. About that time, Mike came out the door in his pajamas to see what all the commotion was about. He looked down at us and figured it out pretty quickly. "Hey, you stole my truck!" Then he came down the driveway a bit further and realized who the guy was. "You did this last year, didn't you."
Yes indeed the same guy. Three interesting observations here: 1) the first attempt was during the same weekend-long event the year before, 2) they thief didn't get any further the first time either and 3) the truck owner had continued to leave his keys in his truck.  Apparently, neither of them had learned a lesson from the first time.

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