Wagon The Dog

Well kids, it's that time again. My turn on the "wagon wheel" came up last night, and it was hardly an uneventful night. Last night's turn was bittersweet, since my old partner and I aren't talking anymore, but as Michael Jackson would say, "The show must go on. Now where are the Boy Scouts?"

11:15pm-11:35pm - Roll call, equipment check. The night starts off perfectly. I jump in the wagon, turn the key, and . . . bubkis. The damned wagon is as dead as Hunter S. Thompson. Swell. We unpack, walk across the lot, and jump into "01" wagon. That sucker fires right up, but has no air conditioning - not good news for a big fatty-fat-fat-fat like me.

11:40pm-12:00am - Domestic. We get a domestic disturbance right outta the gate, but luckily it was only Mr. Winchester. Mr. Winchester is the district drunk/crazy guy. He calls police for such important issues as asking the time and the neighbor in apartment "J." Unfortunately, his row only goes up to apartment "I."

12:00am-12:30am - Security check. I know I'm gonna get ripped for this, but I'll tell you anyway. We are driving past the 24-hour PathMark near the projects (home to Mr. Winchester), and we see seven African-American teenagers staring at us. We keep driving, and they scurry into the market. Since they were more interested in us than anything else, we decided to go back to the store and see what was up. I park right in front of the big windows for all to see, and the utes (Did you say utes? What is a ute?) walk to the rear of the store. About twenty minutes later, they realize we aren't leaving, so they all exit the store empty-handed. Were we profiling? Yeah. Did it work? Probably.

2:00am-3:00am - Theft in progress. Radio puts out a call for a theft in progress near the Pennypack woods. The description was four Arabic males casing cars on the block. When the first patrol car arrives, the males flee into the woods, leaving their car at the scene with the keys inside! After checking the woods to no avail, the sergeant decides it's time to screw with the little bastards. He tells my partner to drive their vehicle into HQ, leaving them stranded in the woods. We laughed the whole way back. About an hour later, the morons return to the scene, not realizing that some officers stayed in the area to look for them, and were quickly arrested.

3:00am-4:00am - Lunch and stuff. We only get a thirty minute lunch break (actually, we get 33 minutes, but don't ask me why) so we try and eat fast. As we finish, the waitress says that she heard six gunshots by (you guessed it) the projects. We get to the scene quickly (and my partner is saying, "Please, please, please, let there be a body") and see a woman standing on the corner. My partner asks her if she heard anything, and she confirms that there were four shots fired. The next obvious question was "Where did they come from?" Her obvious response: "I don't know." He doesn't ask for it, but I give my partner some of Wyatt's social commentary: "Ya know, these people live here. Wouldn't you think that they would want us to find the guy shooting up their neighborhood? Next time, it might be them on the receiving end, and when it is, it'll be the police's fault, because we never did anything about it in the first place!"

4:00am-7:00am - Smooth sailing. For some reason, the radio died for the last three hours of the tour. Not that we minded.