I don’t know if you know this or not, but us cops pay attention to detail.
I assume it has something to do with us having to document every last minute detail in any given situation and then testify to it in court so the bad guy goes to prison.
Suffice it to say, we are, in fact and more often than not, pretty good at being aware of not only our surroundings, but the kinds of things that are transpiring in those aforementioned surroundings.
Case in point: I stopped a guy a couple months ago for a cell phone violation. Here in the sunny state of CA, it is illegal to yammer away on one’s cellular telephonic device whilst operating a motor vehicle. I saw this nice gentleman doing that very thing.
Consequently, I thought I’d have a nice little chat with him about his scofflaw-ery behavior. (Yes, I realize I made that word up.) I conducted my usual enforcement stop and told the driver why I stopped him.
Now, I should mention I saw the driver holding a cell phone that looked eerily like an iPhone. Upon contacting the driver (on the passenger side of the vehicle, of course), I noticed that very phone on the front passenger seat. The driver was now holding a bag of sunflower seeds.
Yes. Sunflower seeds.
I explained the violation to the driver and he said he was not, in fact, talking on his cell phone. Rather, he had been (and I swear to you I am not lying here) “reading the carbohydrate information on the sunflower seed package.”
Ah, the audacity of lying.
You know, it isn’t so much being lied to. Although I hate it with a passion that defies articulation, it happens so damn often that it’s purely par for the course by this point in my career. What really caught me off-guard wasn’t the lie…it was the sheer lunacy of the lie.
This dude was trying to convince me that I mistook his bag of David’s Sunflower Seeds for his iPhone.
Seriously.
I’m sure you know how easy is to get mixed up and all discombobulated when one mistakes a bright white, yellow and red bag of freaking sunflower seeds for a sleek piece of elegant technology.
Happens all the time.
I would have had more respect for the man if he’d have either fallen on his iSword or come up with something a little less patently stupid.
