The following story is told by a Miamisburg police officer.
MIAMISBURG — Normally, the subject would have walked home from the bar. This night, he drove, and a call was placed to police by a citizen who watched.
“He had made it home,” the officer said, “but he was passed out at the wheel and covered in puke.
“We got him out of the vehicle and did a field sobriety test. He was a little grouchy about that.
“He said he was having a bad day. I asked him why he was having a bad day. He said he usually walks home (from the bar), but tonight he decided to drive, and, ‘I shouldn’t have. But I was just having a bad day. My wife left me for the (female) neighbor across the street.’
“I’m trying to sympathize with him a little bit. He’s complaining about the neighbor across the street being a lesbian and complains his wife left him for another female.
“’And I know that lesbian called you on me,’” he said.
The officer thought for a second.
“I believe she did,” he said.
It’s not unusual to go out on a drunken person call. The officer said more than 80 percent of the calls his department receives are somewhat alcohol-related, which would seem to be the rate for most police departments.
Some have more unusual parts than others.
Two officers were trying to arrest an intoxicated subject, who also had a warrant out.
They had him on the hood of a cruiser, working to get him handcuffed.
“His friend comes up and says, ‘Hey, can I give him something,?’” the officer said.
“We say, ‘Just wait a minute. He’s being arrested.’
“But the guy’s persistent. He keeps saying he wants to give him something. So we say, ‘What do you want to give him?’
“He takes a card out of his wallet. He hands us a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card from a Monopoly game. He must have been waiting his whole life to give that card to his friend. That doesn’t work.”
The card didn’t make it to the guy being arrested, but the officer didn’t throw it away, either.
“I’ve actually got that card on my refrigerator at home,” the officer said.
One common problem is the designated driver.
“The designated driver is supposed to be sober,” the officer said. “Not the one most sober. Totally sober.
“A lot of people don’t understand that.”
Here are a few sobering accounts:
After an OVI-fueled crash, the driver started to run, but was easily overtaken by police, who wrestled him to the ground. While doing that, the subject’s leg came off.
“One of his legs was a prosthetic,” the officer said.
While that was an initial shock, it wasn’t as big as a certain bar fight broken up. In that one, a subject had a prosthetic nose. It came off, too.
Then there was the night the subject was bicycling to work after having too much to drink. His front tire hit the curb, he fell over and, “went to sleep right there.
“You can’t make this stuff up,” the officer said. Even the real scary stuff can be unusual.
Called to break up a domestic incident at a house, officers told everyone in the house to come out, single-file, with their hands up.
The woman came out with her hands only partially raised.
“I can’t,” she said when told to put them higher.
Officers found a foot-long knife stuck in her back.
“She lived, amazingly enough,” the officer said. “She and her husband were arguing over something and she thought he punched her in the back.
“I’m surprised at what people have told me, and surprised at what people did.”
There was the guy who robbed a jewelry store years ago and was caught almost immediately with one of the two rings stolen. The most expensive ring could not be found.
It was decided to take him to the hospital for an x-ray. He may have swallowed the ring.
There it was, but not in his stomach. The thief had shoved the ring up his behind.
“The jewelry store cleaned up the ring and sold it,” the officer said. “I’m sure they didn’t tell anybody where it had been.”
There are also dangerous moments, and not just the kind you’d think for people who wear weapons to work every day.
“We’re up on the interstate, which was closed in Moraine because of a wreck,” the officer said. “We had a couple of cruisers sideways with our overheads on and cones out and people were getting off at the exit just before.
“We’re standing at our cruisers and my partner looks out of the corner of his eye and says, ‘Look out.’
“A car (with a drunken driver) goes right between us – brushing our pants – and t-bones one of our cruisers. He was going so fast – about 70 miles an hour – he just drove our car down the road instead of turning it around.
“If the other officer hadn’t said, ‘Watch out,’ we’d be dead.”
Speaking of wrecks, there was the woman who hit a steer she didn’t see in the road, damaging the side of her car.
“I don’t understand,” the officer said. “You’ve got damage on both sides of your car.”
“I knew I hit something,” she said, “but I didn’t know what it was. I went back to see, and hit the thing again.”
Let’s wrap this up with the story about the two night burglars. One was caught immediately, but the other couldn’t be found. A K-9 was committed to tracking the second guy, and found him.
“All of the sudden, the dog went crazy in these flowers,” the officer said. “The next thing you know, he’s got ahold of the guy and the guy’s screaming, yelling for help.
“Ultimately, the guy’s handcuffed and we put him in the back of the cruiser. Then he starts to complain to me, ‘Hey, your dog bit my finger off.’
“I say, ‘Our dog didn’t bite your finger off.’
“He says, ‘No. It bit my finger off.’
“I told him to lean forward and I shined my light on him, and the dog had. It had bit his (little) finger off. I dispatched for a medic. The burglar had been wearing gloves. When he was in the cruiser, he had only one glove on. The hand he didn’t have the little finger, his glove was gone. So we went back and found the glove in the flower bed. And we felt around and the finger was still in the glove. We took it to the hospital, but the doctor couldn’t use it.
“That’s literally taking a bite out of crime.”
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