If you ask any law enforcement officer of any branch in any country, he'll have at least one funny story to tell. That's because when you work in law enforcement, you usually see people when they're not really like they'd like you to see them. Sometimes that can be scary, but sometimes, it's enough to make you grin a little. Sometimes what people do is so funny it's difficult for us to keep a straight face while we're writing the citation. Sometimes, it's so funny we let them go with just a warning and then laugh our ass off when we drive on down the road.
I began my career in law enforcement as the night cop in a very small town in Illinois. I can't tell you the name of the town because the population was only about a thousand residents and it's one of those little towns where everybody knows everybody else's business, or at least think they do.
I was also the only cop because nothing ever happened in that little town during the day. Nothing ever happened at night when I patrolled either, but it made the business owners feel better if somebody drove down the alleys every night and made sure there were no back doors open. That was most of my job, just driving around and watching for anything that seemed unusual. Once in a while I'd nail some kid for a loud muffler or squealing his tires, but mostly, I spent the hours between ten at night and six in the morning just driving around.
One night, I drove past the alley behind the bank and saw a car parked behind the hardware store at the other end of the block. I knew the guy who ran the hardware store drove a pickup, so it wasn't him working late, and he only had one employee, a woman I'll call Gladys, and she didn't have a car. Gladys wouldn't have been working that late anyway. She was over sixty and would be home in bed. That left the possibility that someone was robbing the hardware store.
You're probably thinking I should have called for backup before I investigated, but you don't understand about small town law enforcement. When you're the only cop in a small town, your backup is the county sheriff's department. The county isn't blessed with infinite funding, so if they sent a deputy out to assist me, the county would also send the town a bill for hours spent and use of the county vehicles. My instructions were to call for backup only when I was absolutely sure I needed it.
I had another reason for not using my radio right then to call county dispatch. Most of the deputies considered us small town cops to be amateurs, and if a deputy had to come out and he didn't find at least a robbery, I'd never live it down.
I hadn't turned on my light bar, and I decided not to. If there was something going on, the light bar would just tell whoever was doing it that I was there and they'd probably run. My patrol car was just an ordinary car with magnetic stickers and the light bar to show that it was a police cruiser. It didn't have the heavy-duty suspension or high speed tires an actual police car would have, and probably wouldn't fare too well in a high-speed chase.
I drove around the block to the hardware store and then turned into the alley. As soon my headlights lit up the front of the parked sedan, I saw two people in the front seats. It looked like the driver was female because of the long, blonde hair. I couldn't see the passenger very well, because the two were kissing and the blonde's head and back covered the passenger.
They stopped kissing just as I got out of my car and started walking toward them. I was about ten feet away when I recognized the blonde. She was Janice Mason, the art teacher at the local high school. I didn't get a good look at the other person because once they stopped kissing, that person had slid down in the seat.
Janice looked scared when I walked up to her side of the car. She rolled down her window when I asked, and then started trying to explain. I wasn't really listening to her because I'd just seen the other person in the car. That other person was Marilyn James, the mayor's wife. Marilyn was trying to button her blouse at the time, and she was having trouble because her big breasts refused to be stuffed back inside the blouse. When I flashed the beam of my flashlight from her breasts down, I saw why. There was a white, strapless bra on the floor, and judging by the size of the cups, it had to be Marilyn's.
I'd like to say I was professional and didn't grin, but I couldn't help it. I knew from seeing her around town that Marilyn was generously endowed, but I didn't know her nipples were as thick and long as the tip of my little finger. It was tough to move my flashlight beam back to Janice, but I did, and then asked her what was going on.
Janice just looked at me for a few seconds and then smiled.
"Phil, we're just sitting here talking, that's all."
I'm sure I was still grinning.
"I'm a little confused here. If you're just talking, why are you parked behind the hardware store and why is Mrs. James...well, why is she like she is?"
Marilyn had managed to get most of her buttons buttoned by then, and she leaned over toward the window. Her voice was a little shaky and she sounded a lot like she was begging.
"Phil, please, please just let Janice take me home. I can't have anybody know we were here. If this gets out, Harold will have to resign and Janice will lose her job."
Well, I figured it was none of my business what they wanted to do together, though I did wonder if Harold knew about it. I figured he did, because it was almost midnight, and if I'd been married to Marilyn, I'd have wanted those big breasts in bed with me.
Then I remembered that Harold seemed to spend a lot of his spare time fishing with Bruce Anderson, the high school music teacher. Bruce wasn't exactly a man's man, if you know what I mean, and neither was Harold. I'd always believed Marilyn was the real boss in the James family. I figured both Harold and Marilyn had just figured out how to stay married and still have what they really wanted.
I told Janice and Marilyn they needed to find a different place to talk, and then let them go. Marilyn baked me a cake every month after that until I got a job as a cop in Springfield, and Janice always grinned and waved when she saw me.
Springfield was a whole different place to be a cop. There were actual crimes committed in Springfield, so I had my hands full a lot of nights. It wasn't unusual for me to get involved in a robbery or a car accident a couple times a week. Drugs weren't the problem they are today, but we still caught a few guys selling grass or heroin. Then there was the night I was sure the woman standing on the street corner was a hooker.
I was sure she was a hooker because she had on a tight leather miniskirt that wasn't doing a very good job of covering her ass cheeks, and her top was a tank top so short I could see the curve of her bare breasts sticking out under the bottom. She had on fishnet stockings and was trying to walk on black spike heels that had to be over four inches tall.
The only problem with her being a hooker was she was in the wrong place. All the hookers were concentrated along three blocks of an older part of Springfield. There wasn't much there except for empty storefronts, a bar on one corner and a hotel I wondered why the city hadn't condemned. This woman was standing on a corner of a street that had a couple name clothing stores and a popular bar where a lot of the young singles hung out.
I drove up to that corner and thumbed the switch on the light bar to turn the rear of the bar to flashing yellow. She started to walk away when I got out of my car, but stopped when I asked her to stop and come back to my car. That was unusual too. Most hookers either do one of two things when you stop them. They'll either run or they'll grin.
The new ones run. The girls who've been around the block a couple of times know they'll get caught and arrested anyway, so they just stand there and wait. They also know as soon as they're booked and get bail set, their pimp will be down to bail them out. It saves time and energy if they just give up. I can't say I've ever had a hooker run on me and then stop when I told her to.
This woman did though, and when she walked back to my patrol car, she was smiling about something. She wasn't carrying a purse, but when I asked her if she had any identification, she beamed a big smile at me, pulled a driver's license out from under the lace top of her right stocking, and handed it to me. I opened the back door of my cruiser and asked her to get inside. She balked at that.
"I can't officer. I can't get inside your car."
I asked her why, and she grinned sheepishly.
"Because I'm not wearing any underwear and you'll see me."
Well, that pretty much convinced me she wasn't just an ordinary hooker. A lot of hookers don't wear panties either. That saves time and it's also part of their sales pitch. They'll flip their skirt up for a potential john so show him what he'd be getting if he forks over what they ask for. I'd never arrested one who was in the least bit modest.
I told her I couldn't just leave her standing there, so she had to get into my car, and if she didn't do that willingly, I'd have to put her in cuffs and then put her there. She just grinned.
