Suds 101. The introductory science of beer: Basically, beer, as a beverage, is quite tasty but as an alcohol delivery system it is dreadfully inefficient. Its volume is typically made up of 5 parts alcohol to 95 parts water. So the harder you work at delivering the alcohol molecules to your cerebral cortex, the burden you place upon your bladder is exponentially disproportionate. In fact ... and as part of my research ... I’m having one right now. Oh excuse me. I’ll be back in a moment, I just need to ... OK. I’m back now. Hmmm. Now I’ve forgotten where I was going with this. Oh well ... on with this week’s blotter:
Police responded to a panicked complaint from a woman at a gas bar late one evening. The caller reported that a drunken man had staggered out of the back of a vehicle which had just parked at the pumps. At first she was concerned that he was smoking while standing so close to the pumps.
Her concern was soon replaced by horror when it appeared that the man was not only smoking but had missed the filler hole of his vehicle and he was pumping the gasoline out onto the ground around his feet. Police arrived within seconds. Police quickly determined that the fluid in question was not gasoline at all but was that part of the beer that doesn’t reside numbingly inside one’s brain for several hours and was instead the part which is purged regularly throughout the night to make room for more beer. Police took up the same position as the man’s bladder had and agreed that he had too much beer in him. They lodged him in cells for the night. Also (and not unlike the man’s bladder), the sober traveling companions were also relieved and far more comfortable by virtue of an absence.
A member was passing the 7-Eleven when he took notice of a pickup truck reversing rapidly in the lot then throwing the truck into drive and rocketing out onto the street without regard for any pedestrians, other traffic and certainly without regard for any curious police types driving by. The member raced after the vehicle and stopped it about a half block away. The member approached the vehicle. He was a little perplexed when he got to the driver’s window; he could not recall another traffic stop in his broad experience where the driver (and the passenger as well) were laughing hysterically. The member was nonetheless keenly interested in whatever it was that they found so funny and he told them so (only in slightly more explicit terms).
The driver regained his composure quickly and said, “You gotta hear this. You’re gonna laugh. These three kids just asked me to buy them cigarettes. They showed me the money, I grabbed it then threw the truck into reverse and that’s where you came in”. The member laughed too and his laugh was infectious because the driver and passenger began to laugh again as well. The member said, “That’s hilarious. I guess that’s why they have those warnings on the package, that smoking is hazardous to your health”. “Now”, the member said (no longer laughing), “you’re under arrest for robbery”.
Once again the members mood proved infectious and his solemn demeanor was now mirrored by the previously jovial demeanor perpetrated by the driver and passenger (or “the accused and the accomplice” as we like to call them in the police business). The member handcuffed the driver and brought him back to his car. He apprized him of his rights and told him that robbery convictions typically resulted in double digit sentences but softened it up a little by telling him that a first offence like this may get him as little as two years and a day in a federal penitentiary. Strangely enough ... nobody called police to report being the victims of a robbery, though they must have certainly seen the police car race after the truck as it pulled away from them and nobody dropped by the scene of the traffic stop for that reason either.
Without a complaining witness the robbery charge was unofficially stayed and a couple of traffic tickets were substituted instead ... but upon the solemn oath of the accused to find a more appropriate way to do his part to deter youth from smoking.
A man who was recently featured, on page four here, after breaking into a restaurant one night (and poisoning himself after mistaking raw shrimp and raw pork as sushi) has once again let his late night snacking habits get him into conflict with the law again. This time he didn’t break into the restaurant and he didn’t eat anything that was uncooked. This time his drunken carcass was discovered banging and bumping around inside a restaurant’s dumpster while he dined on the leftovers that resided therein. In doing so he was breaching three of the conditions of his pre-trial release and he is on his way back to jail (where, I reminded him, “meals are cooked and served on plates”, though he seemed not to appreciate me pointing out the “bright side”).
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.