Between May 11 and the 18, Ponoka RCMP members experienced the typical rise in complaints that is brought on by the arrival of warmer weather. This increase in workload was further aggravated by the May long weekend and a full moon (one bringing out drunken campers the other bringing out werewolves ... and vise versa). A representative cross-section of each made up a good percentage of the 29 guests we billeted in our cells this week.
This week police stopped a vehicle which had a stolen licence plate on it and arrested the driver for a variety of offences. The arresting officer called the registered owner of the stolen licence plate to advise her of the situation. He thought that she would be pleased to be getting her property back and to know that the thief was also going to be charged with driving while suspended and would be losing her vehicle for 30 days as well. He was surprised that she was pleased about neither of those things. He learned that she had recovered her plate herself and didn’t bother to tell the police about it. She had allowed her daughter to take the vehicle on this occasion. The plate was on her vehicle and it was her daughter (the daughter with the suspended licence status) that police had arrested. ‘Well Ma’am’, the member consoled her, ‘you won’t have to worry about your daughter pestering you for the keys to your car for the next 30 days, anyway’.
Police stopped a speeding vehicle. The member detected a strong odour of raw marijuana inside the vehicle and noted some roaches in the ashtray. He advised the driver that he was under arrest for simple possession. He noticed that the driver was becoming pale and was shaking nervously now. He had the driver step outside of the vehicle and was patting him down when he discovered two baggies of marijuana and a large quantity of cash, that the driver could not adequately account for. He found a third (larger) bag of marijuana in the vehicle as well and advised the driver that he was now being charged with the more significant offence of trafficking. At that point the driver did something unexpected. He fainted. An ambulance was called but the driver came to again after a moment. The member then began to read the Charter Rights to the accused. In reply to the questions about ‘do you understand?’, ‘do you want to call a lawyer?’, etc, his reply was consistently to faint. Back at cells he had to be given notice of the charges and of his rights in a more gentle manner and tone, not dissimilar to a daddy reading a bedtime story to a toddler, so that the accused could get through it without passing out again. He later explained that fainting is an involuntary reaction to fear or extreme stress. He explained that this was why he could not be a policeman. The member pointed out that his current vocation as a drug trafficker wasn’t working out too well either and wondered if he’d considered something less stressful, like ‘librarian’ perhaps.
You can add ‘chicken catcher’ to the list of the world’s loneliest professions; right up there with lighthouse keeper, astronaut and Maytag repairmen. This week a local chicken wrangler tried to make a romantic connection with a neighbor but only succeeded in getting himself arrested. The grossly intoxicated man took lustful notice of two neighbor women smoking outside of their apartment suite. He tried to communicate to them the feelings of amour he was experiencing but he was so drunk and so high that he couldn’t spit the words out through his rubbery, anesthetized lips. His roommate tried to help him verbalize the message but was in the same state. He did, however, (gleefully) convince his pal to employ visual aids to get the subject matter across.
That the visual aids, he opted to employ, consisted of him dropping his pants and performing a scene from his favorite porno flick was the reason for the 911 call to police and his arrest soon thereafter. Police located the little lech (and his still exposed, corpus delicti) hiding inside his closet. Police also considered charging both roommates with possession of marijuana but except for the thick, lingering, ethereal fog of ganja smoke pervading the suite, none could be found (which would be a lot like wanting to charge someone with stealing a can of beans but having only a fart to show the judge for evidence). So dense was this cloud of cannabis, that the last member to leave the suite was suffering the effects of a contact high. His prolonged exposure was later treated with fresh air, a 40 ounce sour apple Slurpee, two corn dogs and a big bag of dill pickle chips.
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