Police were dealing with a man who was the subject of a disturbance complaint. In the course of their investigation, they asked the man to identify himself. He gave his name but then couldn’t spell it. He gave his date of birth just as unconvincingly ... never the same date twice.
He was arrested for obstruction and his fingerprints were sent off to Ottawa to see if they matched that of anyone police have previously charged. Apparently he was attempting to pass himself off as his cousin; apparently he had a bad habit of not showing up for court and was constantly being arrested on some outstanding warrant or another for just that sort of thing. Fortunately for him (the real him) he did not have any outstanding warrants. Unfortunately for him, he was brought before a Justice of the Peace on the obstruction charge and remanded in custody because of his abysmal record of failing to appear. (I’m not sure why, exactly, but this reminds me of the sage words of former Oiler tough guy, George Laraque: “sometimes you’re the windshield ... sometimes you’re the bug”).
Remember a few weeks back, there was the strange case of a woman being hit by a car and then the apathetic driver called her unpleasant names as he raced away. You may also remember that it turns out that she was actually attempting to relieve that driver of his cocaine...first by fraud and then by show of force (or more specifically: by show of ‘steak knife’). He sure doesn’t like people trying to take his drugs without paying for them and he sure is a bad driver.
I mention this only because he returned to Ponoka this week to sell some more cocaine. The only difference was that his intended customer had actually paid with real money this time and that a couple of plain-clothes police officers were mere feet away watching it happen. The members identified themselves and this time it was the members who tried to take his guys drugs away from him without paying for them. Once again, he wasn’t gone to simply give up his drugs without a fight. Not just because a couple of cops were pointing guns at him and telling him to ‘stop’ and especially not while he was busy trying to sell those same drugs to a paying customer. He threw his car into reverse and raced blindly backwards through a narrow parking lot towards three more marked police cars. His desperate attempt to avoid arrest ended almost simultaneously with his crashing into the corner of a building and his finding himself being dragged roughly through the freshly smashed glass of the driver’s side window by a couple of irritated police officers.
Both he and his paying customer were arrested and face charges ... though his are significantly more serious and resulted in his being immediately remanded in custody.
We’ve all seen ‘that guy,’ the one who just loves driving. His vehicle is polished to a mirror finish, chrome doo dads shinin’, muffler rumblin’, sub box pumpin’, the windows rolled down, one arm resting on the frame, the other on the wheel while his head bobs and sways slowly from side to side with a smug, self-assured look upon his face. The whole package screams, ‘look at me!’
Now, while this may be indicative of a slightly shallow personality ... it’s not against the law. Not unless this whole “look at me” show plays out in front of an off duty police officer taking a leisurely walk down the street and he knows a few things about the status of your driving privileges. Specifically, that police officer knows that after you were charged for creating crop circles with your pickup truck you immediately lost your licence. He also knows that you had to go to a higher court (at no small expense) in order to get strictly limited authorization to drive a company vehicle on legitimate company business and that this “look at me” show fit neither of those criteria. The result is a brand new set of charges, losing all the money you paid for bail the first time, doubling that amount to get out of bail this time and losing your driving privileges completely once again. Hmmm? Sometimes you really are the bug.
Last April a man was arrested for being in possession of a stolen pickup truck. He pled guilty fairly early on in the process and was sentenced to jail. He just got out the other day. We had seized some property from that vehicle (brand new tools and accessories - still in their packages) which the man had claimed were his but that he could not adequately account for. He was told to bring some sort of proof of ownership and we would release the property back to him. He stated that he would bring in this proof and a vehicle of sufficient size to carry it all. He told the member that he was going to stop by Hobbema Detachment on his way, to thank the members there for recovering some property, which was stolen from him while he was in jail. When he didn’t show up in Ponoka when expected, I called Hobbema to see if he had dropped by there. Imagine my surprise to hear that the Hobbema members arrested him for being in possession of a stolen truck again.
Bzzzzzzzzzz.....zzzzzz.... splattttt!
If you have information about any unsolved crime or ongoing criminal enterprise, call the Ponoka RCMP at 403-783-4472. You can also call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS or now leave tips anonymously on-line at www.tipsubmit.com . If this is the kind of environment that you would like to work in, we are hiring. Check us out at www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca or call 1-877-RCMP-GRC for information about the application process.