I've probably told this story before, but it's probably been a while, so I'll rehash it. I feel reasonably certain one of the cops taking the report when I wrecked doing a paper route stole a $20 bill from the manila envelope I had in the front floorboard. Some dear lady had taken me to get a drink of water and get my bloodied face cleaned up. While I was gone, the cops got there, and one stapled the envelope all around (which was weird). The money was just crammed into the envelope where I had been collecting from the convenience stores. I'm sure they thought I wouldn't miss a $20. Even though the bills weren't neatly stacked, I had invoices to tell me exactly how much money I was to collect.I never reported it, though. The wreck was a traumatic incident, it was my fault, but I wasn't ticketed (even though I had been fairly snarky during the process). I guess at the time I just wanted to get it all behind me, but if I think about it, I still consider it an injustice. When Chief Charging Battery got there, one of the cops asked him about why I acted the way I had and he told them some cops had stopped by our apartment a few months prior and given me a hard time. And that's another story...There wasn't anything I had done wrong, but the cops woke me up one Saturday morning. Chief Charging Battery was not yet home from his paper route. When I saw the cops, I thought they were coming to tell me Chief Charging Battery had been killed in a car wreck. So my nerves were falling apart by the time I grabbed a robe and ran to the door. Then I got confused because they started asking for Chief Charging Battery. On account of the fact that I acted visibly nervous, they did not believe me when I said he wasn't there. I can remember one of them saying, He's going to jail, ma'am. Why they stick ma'am on a lie like that, I just don't know. Later that day, all the miscommunications got cleared up... well, most of them. Chief Charging Battery did not go to jail; he got in touch with the officers and they apologized to him (BUT NOT TO ME) about the miscommunication, and I learned a hard lesson about the cryptic way my husband talks that might have alerted me that something was amiss had I only known to press him when he says something that sounds just a little off. I wrote a letter to the police chief of Raleigh and complained about how the situation was handled. I got a follow up call asking if I wanted to file a formal complaint. I declined; I said I just wanted to make someone aware of the situation.Once when I came out of the K-Mart on Western Blvd. in Raleigh many years ago, I had a note on the windshield of my car saying something to the effect of, If I had been on duty, you would have a pocketful of summonses. Grow up. So either a cop with his drawers in a wad or a twerp impersonating a police officer. I considered following up on that, but I decided to let sleeping dogs lie.Speaking of dogs, once when a deputy of the local sheriff's dept. came out to our house to answer a complaint I had called in about my neighbor, our black lab mix mongrel went to greet him, tail wagging. The deputy had his hand on his gun, and I thought he was going to shoot my dog. Whew. Fortunately, someone who owned that adopted stray before we got him had taught him to sit at command, and I told Blacky to sit. Good grief.More recently, I called to report that my car had been shot by someone with a paintball gun as I drove home. I told the officer my house number and that I would leave my porch light on. Despite that, she went to the house across the street and then the house next door before coming to mine. I wanted to give her a little instruction on the odd numbers being on one side and the even on the other, but I refrained. She mentioned that I didn't have my number on my house. I guess she either had poor training or else had sized me up as not a threat, because she turned clean around to look at my mailbox when I said my number was on my mailbox. smhSo, corrupt, unprofessional, paranoid, or inept, I'm just not too impressed.Oh, and I was once profiled--a cop was stopping young white girls at the edge of town where the speed limit went from 35to 55. That was back when I tried to obey all the traffic laws, but my VW beetle speedometer was broken (and I was going faster than I realized, probably because the guys at my summer job had tried to harass me that day--they had been stopped from wetting me down with a hose, but at the end of the day, one of the guys poured a cup of water on my head as I was leaving).
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