It may be the oldest profession known to mankind. And no, I’m not talking about farming.
A couple hours into the midnight shift I backed up one of our two-man units who had made a car stop in an area known for drugs and prostitution, which go together like peas and carrots. (Drugs and prostitution, that is, not the two man unit. Although…).
When I got there, they already had the Lady of the Night out of the car and were talking to her on the sidewalk. I set my attention on the driver.
Never Heard Of It
He was a sixty-something year old man, gray hair, poor health, and poor taste in women. I started the, “Where are you going? Where are you coming from?” line of questioning which naturally led to questions about drug use or if there were any drugs in the car. He prefaced his answer by telling me that he recently had surgery.
In my mind, I’m thinking he’s laying the ground work for possessing pain pills. I was honestly expecting him to be like, “So that’s the reason I have all these Oxys in this sandwich bag, officer …” But he didn’t. He named some other type of medication that I had never heard of.
Denial Is Not A River In Egypt
While I was speaking with him I could tell he was uncomfortable — nervous — because he was fidgeting in his seat and averting his eyes quite a bit. This guy couldn’t sit still. Thinking it was a sure sign of guilt, I pointed out all the fidgeting to him to reinforce the fact that I was a trained observer. I then followed up by asking him if there were any drugs in the car. Of course he denied it.
It was time to break out the big guns and hit him with some psychological superiority: “Then why are you moving around so much? What are you hiding?”
“Nothing!” he protested.
His stomach hurt, it turned out.
T.M.I.
He went on to tell me that the surgery he recently had was on his intestines and the medication he took was to manage his bowel issues. Gross.
Because I’m such a fast learner, I followed up with, “So, what, do you have to go to the bathroom or something?”
He answered me in a strained voice, as if he were lifting something heavy, “I already did.”
All I could think about was Steve Martin in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels sitting at the dinner table with a cork on the end of his fork, wearing an eye patch, and taking care of business right there at the dinner table as an expression of relief washed over his face.
All Set With That
Needless to say, we sent them both on their merry way. It wasn’t worth the trouble, not even close. If there were drugs in that car, we weren’t finding them. We were all set with that.
Sometimes we win, sometimes they win. And if she had made a deal with that guy, she was going to earn her money that night.
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