Stupid People

I have problems with idiots. Given my job, I shouldn't be surprised and I usually find in entertaining, but occasionally I just want to repeatedly bang my head against my hard wooden desk until I blissfully slip into oblivion. Keep in mind please, that I have just came off of 4 days solid in court and have caught a really nasty cold, so my tolerance for morons may be a tad low.

I serve a very rural community and I had the good fortune to be trapped into 6 hours of court in one of the smaller counties we serve. The courthouse is very old and picturesque. It brings to mind seens of old men in overalls whittling and spitting tobacco on benches outside the courthouse. Mainly because there ARE old men spitting tobacco juice and whittling outside the old courthouse. Unfortunately the air conditioning in the courthouse doesn't work that well either. This adds to the effect of the vintage building. After spending most of a day waiting for my single case to be called, I heard something interesting during a plea bargain. The young man standing before the judge was up on charges of burglary and theft. Among the items listed as being stolen from a private residence was underwear. When I heard this, I turned to the probation officer who worked the county regularly and ask in a whisper, "Is there a large blackmarket demand for used underwear up here." Without missing a beat, she whispered back, "Depends on whether they are bikinis or boxers."

About 18 months ago I had a parolee who had been out about a year start giving me trouble. He was behind on his supervision fees and had started missing meetings with me. I cut him a little slack because he was working as a block mason's assistant and construction can have unpredictable hours. On a rainy afternoon, I finally caught up to him and we met in the city hall building. We sat down on a bench and I started chewing him out about missed meetings. He responded by apologizing and saying, "We've been working a lot of overtime, I don't have a license and it is just hard to make my meetings. We are working so much and working out of town a lot I just don't have the time." So then without any interuption I asked him why he hadn't caught up on his unpaid fees. Without a pause he said, "The weather is bad and we haven't been working very much, so I haven't had any money."

I recently did a sentencing report on a young lady who was part of a three-way drug sale. They three people all parked their vehicles in a drugstore parking lot. One individual went in and filled a pain medication perscription, came out and divided up the pills and accepted money for them in the parking lot in clear view of the police officer writing a ticket on the other side of a road.

Another court case involved a man charged with felony reckless endangerment, speeding, reckless driving, possession of a controlled substance for resale, possession of a controlled substance for delivery, carrying a concealed weapon, theft over $10,000. Seems he was heading down the interstate around 90 mph with the lights flashing and blowing the car horn, weaving in and out of traffic. When the traffic stop was made, the subject was behaving suspiciously, so the troopers ran the tag. The car was stolen. When the suspect was arrested and searched, he was found to be in possession of a handgun and large sum of cash. The car was search and a large quantity of methamphetamine, packaged for resale was found. A similar case was in the paper recently. The man was brought to police attention because he drove off without paying for $25 worth of gas. Why would anyone with a car load of drugs risk attracking attention to themselves in such stupid ways. I have at least three people on my caseload for drug crimes, who were caught because they were speeding. One college kid was picked up with over 5 pounds of marijuana, 15 pills of x and some cocaine because it rolled out from under the seat of his car when he pulled over to get a speeding ticket.

A woman formerly on my caseload picked up new charges of possession when she was caught shooting up in a motel. The deskclerk called the police because her boyfriend was wandering around the parking lot naked, babbling incoherently. When the police took him back to the room to get clothes, they caught her with a syringe in her leg.

A college kid was on my caseload. He got into some drug problems in another state. Apparently he started his on business supplying the local fraternities with not-even-remotely-legal substances for their parties. He moved back to this state to live with his parents, enrolled in a local school and fired his business back up. He didn't use the stuff himself. What he did was slip to a nearby city Friday evening and bring back enough stuff to supply his people for a couple of weeks. Since the trips weren't regular, they didn't trigger any warnings. Then one weekend he and his supplier decided to hit the town a little before he came back. Only his source had an open warrant and was recognised by a local law officer. When the stop was made, my guys id was ran. Since he was an out-of-state case, the tbi was notified of his residence in this state and the fact that he was on probation. This meant he would be searched without benefit of a search warrant. They found a pound of marijuana, 10 tabs of x, .3 grams of cocaine, 4 oxyconten tablets, a set of digital scales, $5000 in cash, and some other paraphernalia.

Then there is the bug zapper effect. A bug zapper works by presenting a pretty light that attracts the bugs, then electrocutes them when they get to close. For idiots on probation, Wal-mart is there. I don't have any idea how many of my people manage to get into trouble in the local Walmarts. There was the lady on probation for forgery who was arrested for shoplifting a $3.00 belly-button ring. Then there was the drug case caught trying to return a computer she never bought in the first place, then the out-of-state drug case caught shoplifting makeup or the diversion case for drugs who was picked up for pi and shoplifting bananas.

Then in court we have the sweet-young-thing who's ex-boyfriend calls her and tells her he is going to bash in her car windows. The next morning on side window and a rear window on her car are broken in. The car actually belongs to her mother who reports it. When this reaches court, the mother provides only hearsay evidence, so Miss TrailerPark 2006, in her 2 sizes too small belly shirt and spray on jeans gets on the stand and after much prying by the da, finally admits that she had a relationship with the accused, he did call her and treaten to do the damage and he did call and apologize for it. She would not say whether she believed he did it though. Despite repeated questions, she would not state an opinion as to whether he committed the vandalism. It finally came out the he sent her a dozen roses 2 days after the event though. I'm sure that made up for the $250 repair bill her mother paid.

Then of course the out-of-state girl I mentioned earlier. The makeup girl. This was an out-of-state diversion case. A diversion is a special type of probation where the probationer can expunge there record if they successfully complete probation. No felony conviction, no lost rights, clean record like nothing happening. You can only qualify for it once. She comes down here with a 2 year sentence. She's 21 and a cute little thing, long, dark hair, big brown eyes. Skinny little thing with skin tight jeans and perfect makeup. She was working 3rd shift in a truck stop as a cashier. First thing she does is get caught shoplifting makeup from a Wal-mart. That isn't enough to justify extradition, so I am told to keep monitoring her. Then I have to come into work on a Saturday morning and track her down to make her return a car she "borrowed" from a 50 year-old truck driver she met at work. She claims he loaned it to her, he says she found out where he hid the spare key and took it. I figure he loaned her the car expectign to be "repaid". When he didn't get any he found out about me and called threatening to have her picked up for theft. Then she is arrested for domestic assault. She attacked an ex-boyfriend in the parking lot of Cotton-eyed Joes. I questioned her about why she was at the nightclub, but could never prove she went into it. She was put on misdemeanor probation for that one. Last but not least, she got the crap beaten out of her by a thug when she wouldn't put out after he gave her a ride home. I had lectured her about flirting with the wrong people, but it didn't do any good. She played on her looks a lot, but she looked pretty rough after that one. It didn't do me a lot of good, when she found out I had to get my warrant from another state on her, she did the bare minimum to meet her requirements. She finally found a sugar daddy to pay her bills. I noticed the other day, she was working her way through general session court on new charges, so I will probably see her back soon.

Lastly, I had another cute girl who attracted trouble on probation. This one was on for trying to slip contriband into the local jail for her husband. She peeled seals off the tops of some chocolate milk bottles, emptied them and filled them back up with Kahlua Mud Slide, reglued the seals and put the tops back on. She just wasn't quite careful enough, and a corrections officer noticed the glue job. Anyway, she and hubbie parted ways, only they made a tape at some point. She goes over to his parents house to pay them back for some school books they bought her and find ex-hubbie showing their sex tape to his buddies. She goes berserk and wipes out a vcr, video camera, computer, printer and does some colateral damage to her co-star. She managed to destroy the only tape, so I never got to review the evidence, sigh. She got out of that, but later developed a taste for the ganja and a local bar. These are no-no's on probation. She just got placed on house arrest and moved to a half-way house.

We picked up a new trick with our female offenders. The local judges like pictures on the warrants we submit. If the offenders pick up new charges, instead of our id photos, we have started using the booking photos. This way we can show our local beauty queens what kind of impression they make after a night on the town.