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What is wrong with people?

             This phrase seems to pop up quite often.  I found myself just this thing and actually laughing when an officer directed me to log an issue that a citizen advised him of.

I had taken a 911 call for a possible intoxicated driver, a dark colored Camaro, driving 45 mph, with it's high beam headlights on and swerving all over the roadway.  I give this call to the county.  They later locate and stopped the suspect vehicle to find out the driver is not impaired, but having issues with the ball joints and its causing issues with steering and handling.   This situation is as dangerous as being intoxicated, its not safe to have a vehicle with such issues on the road knowing it has problems.

So its mid week, and it started off rather calm.  They had already been dealing with an ongoing yearly issue.  Each year a farmer complains about people parking along his field which borders the city ball diamonds.  And each year we threaten to tow, and ticket violators.  This year is no different the calls have started complaining about the parking issue, and how the signs say that it is strictly enforced.  One of our officers told the owner he could have the vehicles towed at the owners expense.  Oh, no he did not want to do that and cause problems, its just a matter of time before one goes out and turns around in his field and he wants to get it stopped now.   The officer while talking with him about it, said he didn't know what we could do, he would go and look at the situation and make the chief aware of it, to see what he wanted done regarding the situation.   This is where I was stunned.  As a law enforcement officer, why do you blow off this guy requesting you to issue citations and refer it back to having to check with the chief?   Well this would be the same officer who apparently has decided to work on his attitude and being more pro-active by issuing more verbal and written warnings than tickets.  I have noticed overall suddenly a few months ago we are issuing all these written warnings out of no where, I have no clue why.  They are useless, they never ask us to check to see if they have been issued a warning previously anyways.

So the officer goes to the area and finds and runs the vehicles of 4-5 people parked there and takes down the information so he can have it announced and get them to move their vehicles.  All of them are local and should know better, I guess follow the leader type mentality, I saw others parked there so I did.  It really mostly comes down to not wanting to walk from the actual parking lot.  So as these vehicles are being moved, the officer is told by one of them that there are only signs facing the opposite directing indicating no parking there, if you come from the opposite direction it is not posted you cannot park on that side of the road.  So now the city is going to have to install double sided signs probably so these people cannot say they did not know they could not park in someones field.

Later in the night I take a call on a harassment report, apparently the daughters ex-boyfriend tossed a bunch of roses out in the driveway and has been sending text messages and images harassing them.  Nothing to be done at this time by the officers.

I take a call from a mother advising her son has called her talking about a car passing him at a high rate of speed, and then making a u-turn in the roadway and going the opposite direction.  I am not even off the phone with her and then he calls.  He tells me the same but with more information and some details seem odd, he was out in the middle of no where parked with a friend along a country road talking, and this car blows by them, and then they leave and this car makes a U-turn and gets behind them and then flies around them and goes a ways and then turns around heading back the opposite direction, he describes it pretty well where it should be able to be located if it was observed, including that it has no license plates.   The county is advised, and they check but are unable to locate it.

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