A young man and a couple of his pals (all drunk, all stupid and all horrifyingly eligible to vote) became bored one night. They conducted a quick inventory of their present possessions in order to assist them in finding something to break up the monotony. [1] Noisy vehicle ... check. [2] Loud stereo with ample supply of death metal and gangsta’ rap ... check. [3] Beer ... check. Thus armed and presently driving around in the vicinity of a local Hutterite colony, they decided to spend the next 20 minutes terrorizing the sleeping families in the colony. They raced through the large property, spinning donuts, ruining gardens, frightening livestock and causing about $3,000 damage to a truck scale. This continued until most of that community’s men had jumped into their own trucks in order to coral the marauders. That didn’t worry our heroes though. They were confident in the ability of their vehicle to outrun a bunch of farm trucks and were about to do so when an essential but unconsidered element in their pre-mischief inventory became evident ... [4] Full tank of gas. Moments later police arrested and charged the driver with impaired driving and an assortment of related charges. He’ll need to get a ride to court so hopefully whoever takes him there is more attentive to the limitations of the gas tank.
One weekday afternoon, this week, a couple of would-be gangsters decided to skip lunch and apply themselves to some extra-curricular artistic endeavours. The aesthetic vision they shared was to spray paint “AW” (in bright blue) on as many buildings as they could manage over their lunch break from classes. That number of buildings turned out to be 18. Police followed the reported sightings of the mischievous Michael Angelo’s to a pair of similarly featured characters lurking in a nearby back alley. The member approached them and said, “let me see your hands”. This request was delivered in the standard “let me see your hands” manner which is intended to elicit the recipient to hold out their hands for examination. The suspects interpreted it as the other version of “show me your hands” which is usually barked and is augmented by the pointing of a gun. Just as well. The pair raised their hands over their heads and in doing so were unable to keep several cans of bright blue spray paint from tumbling out from beneath their jackets. “Caught red handed”, declared the member, then she noticed their upraised hands and corrected herself, “caught blue handed!”.
Both members of the well-advertised “AW” gang (Artful Wankers? Academic Wonders?) were arrested and charged with about 18 counts of criminal mischief. Both were also charged with obstruction when they tried to provide police with fake names to avoid additional charges related to probation breaches. Actually the names seemed reasonable, it was the dates of birth that had the aroma of deception. They gave two different dates of birth but insisted that they were: 1.) Brothers. And: 2.) Twins. When police pointed out that they were born in different months, they both rolled their eyes (“stoopid kops”) and explained, “we’re fraternal twins ... not identical”.
If one wants to avoid the attention of a passing police officer ... one must avoid saying things like, “Oh Sh(ucks!) It’s the cops” loud enough for the “cops” to hear. One should also avoid making obvious attempts to hide something that was in one’s hand, somewhere else in one’s clothing, before escaping back into the bar one just left. One such person was then followed back into the bar and then into the ladies’ rest room. The male member stood outside of the closed rest room stall and listened as the toilet tank cover was removed and then hastily replaced. The female suspect then stepped out and (seemingly unsurprised to see a male police officer in the ladies’ room) said, “it’s all yours”. Very soon after she was arrested for being in possession of a controlled substance (marijuana). The member was pretty sure that it was going to be some form of illicit drugs which she had attempted to hide inside the toilet tank. He surmised that she had put the drugs in the tank because she wanted to come back to get them after he left - otherwise she would have flushed the evidence away. What did surprise the member was that she had thrown several rolled cannabis cigarettes into the water and the baggy of loose buds was open and had sunk to the bottom. No good for smoking anymore but still an excellent exhibit for court purposes.
Early Monday morning a semi hauling assorted cargo for a courier company lost control on the QEII and flipped over on its side. The trailer remained mostly intact except for about a thousand pounds of product which crashed through the rear door and spilled out onto the roadway and into the ditch. The driver was uninjured. Investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing. The fire department attended and dealt with the vehicle. A HAZMAT team was called in to deal with the spilled materials and police attended to secure the scene and prevent anyone from helping themselves to the spilled contents. Did I mention that those contents were primarily pharmaceuticals; namely birth control pills, Viagra and nicotine gum?
When I heard about this I thought, “why the HAZMAT team?”. I know that people routinely ingest those three products. I considered “chemical reaction” as a reason but discounted it after considering that those three products are often used in conjugation (I mean conjunction) with one another. That left me with “residual environmental impact” as the rationale for the HAZMAT involvement. I presume that we will know whether they were successful or not depending on the rigidity of the cat tails and wild grasses in that particular section of ditch next spring.
If you have information about any unsolved crime or ongoing criminal enterprise, call the Ponoka RCMP at 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.