Between June 15 and 22, Ponoka RCMP members tried to catch up on their paperwork before the Stampede arrives and it becomes impossible to do anything but attend to call after call. One of the things that made it a little easier to do this was the types of calls that came in this week which didn’t require much in the way of investigation. For instance, one “regular contributor to this blotter” called 911 to complain that he had given someone $40 for the purchase of some illicit drugs and the guy ripped him off. Very little effort was expended by police in that case.
A Ponoka member was assisting Bashaw Detachment with a complaint regarding a boat which had just capsized on Ferintosh Lake. The complainant reported that the occupant of the boat was nowhere to be seen and feared the worst. Emergency response crews from Camrose, Ferintosh and Bashaw attended the scene and a rescue boat was in the water searching for a victim. This assembly of emergency responders drew the attention of the local residents. One of them came down to where the crews were staged and stated, “someone drowned eh?”. Before they could reply he stated that he had his own misadventure on the lake a couple hours earlier. A moment later it became clear that the divers and the search boats were all looking in the wrong place. The victim they were looking for was standing on the beach chatting with the fireman.
Far and away the biggest nitwit to darken the doorways of our cellblock this week was the same dummy that darkened everyone else’s doorways this week (not just doorways but also bedrooms, kitchens, deep freezes and anything else which relies on electricity). This is the drunken fool who piloted his pickup truck into a power pole by the 53rd avenue bridge. He was so plastered that he didn’t realize he had hit a pole but thought that he had hit a friend’s car which was in the vicinity. What really distinguished this young man as the uber-bozo he truly is, was his attitude during the breath test. The arresting officer asked the laddie if he considered himself as being “OK to drive?”. The reply was “Have I driven drunker before? Hell Yeah! Will I drive drunker again? You bet!”. When he was provided with his blood/alcohol readings after the tests (over three times the legal limit), he stood up, raised his hands in victory and shouted his own praises, “Yee-haa! If yer gonna git her done, git er’ done big!”. Now, if you think that was just stupid drunk talk, you should know that after several sobering hours of slumber he told the releasing officer that he was very proud to have his own impaired charges to brag about and that he could now be in “the club” with all of his other (cool) friends who are also awaiting trial for impaired driving. Kinda reminds me of those 17 schoolgirls in Massachusetts who entered into a pregnancy pact to conceive together during the school year (it’s what the cool girls do). Who knows? If he and his fellow club members all end up in prison at the same time they may have more in common with those Massachusetts school girls than they realize.
Police responded to a complaint of a suspected escapee spotted near the Federal Correctional Center in Hobbema. The suspect was last seen running south on Hwy 2A, “as fast as his two legs could carry him”. It turns out that the fleeing suspect was not a serving prisoner of the minimum security institution at all but was a resident from an even lesser security institution in the same area ... an Emu farm. A member attended the area but didn’t locate the creature ... at least that was what he said ... but he also described the Emus that he was familiar with as looking much like their cousins, the Llama ... only with longer hair. I didn’t ask him if he had happened to notice any seven foot tall birds in the area while he was searching for the long haired, midget-camel.
Oddly enough there was a second similar complaint of an Ostrich pestering traffic on the QEII a few days later. Like Emus and their cousins (Llamas and Alpaca), Ostriches and Emu also share a passing resemblance as well; perhaps it was even the same bird. Again, the attending member did not locate the bird. Her report stated, “the bird was gone upon my arrival. It must have flown away”. I mention this because I’m only half convinced that her tongue was planted firmly in her cheek when she said that.
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.