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Run-ins with drunks have become common lately. Mostly when they crash and then call us to try and help them get away with their DUI scott-free. Like say, pulling their car out of the plate glass window of the storefront they're embedded in before they open up in the morning and the shopkeep notices. (That hasn't happened YET, but, there's nothing that says it CAN'T)
Too bad for them, when they try that, they only discover that we're the meddling kids to their rubber-masked phoney ghost.
Sometimes though, you get the other kind of drunk. The kind that's TOO compliant.
Like the guy the cops were following the other night who was drifting with the winds all over the road instead of keeping it between the lines. Their suspicions confirmed that the driver was drunk, they flipped on their lights to pull him over.
Immediately, he made a hard ninety-degree right.....
Into a tall 4'' high curb, over said curb, through a yard, and into fence, flattening the front of his car in the process.
Well, his HEART was in the right place...
Unfortunately, that turned what should have been a routine impound into a wreck/recovery situation for our late-night driver Doc, who got the call. When he gets on scene, he decides to see if maybe the car will run long enough to at least back it away from the fence it's tangled in, rather than hook on the winch line and drag it and possibly part of the neighborhood, back onto his truck.
To his surprise, it starts right up when he turned the key. And despite the front end being a little bit pancaked, it still drove fairly straight, and the steering still was functional too. Amazing considering the licking it took. (It was a near-fossilized Geo Metro, a car that back in the early 90s' bravely pushed the boundary of what could charitably be called a "car" into territory that had once been reserved for "wind up toy".
)
Now, Doc doesn't want to drop it off the high curb and into the street, might press his luck too much and kill it for the final time. Looking around he notes that about a block down the street, there's a curb cut-out for a driveway, and asks the officer on scene if he can drive it down there, drive it out into the street and load it.
Cop says sure, whatever it takes to get it out of here.
So Doc goes limping down the sidewalk, in a smashed car, with a lit-up police cruiser shadowing him the whole way....
Wonder if anyone on a 2am glass-of-water run happened to look out the window at THAT spectacle and wonder what was going on? They were probably a bit flummoxed as to why nothing appeared in the newspaper the next morning about any slow-speed chases.....
The only good thing to come of that is now that his car is totaled (on account of the damage, even if it does drive) the drunk will be without wheels for quite some time. Granted, not much damage, but, like I said, it was a Geo, issuing it a parking ticket would have probably totaled it too.
So endeth the tale of the drunk who tried to please... now we segue into the tale of the drunk who was outright defiant....
A downtown office calls us up first thing in the AM and tells us there's a car they don't recognize sitting in their lot, and they'd like it gone before their employees start to show up around 9ish and, like musical chairs, the last guy in has no place to park.
A quick jaunt down there reveals a blue SUV over in a corner that I don't recognize. At only 10 spaces, the lot is small enough that after a few times through, you've memorized all the employees cars and where they like to park, interlopers thus stick out like me trying to seamlessly blend in with the crowd in downtown Addis Ababa, while wearing a light-up bow tie.
Nonetheless, procedure is procedure and I do a lap around the car to see if there's a permit in it someone has missed.
There isn't, but there is a humongous sideswipe down the entire right side of the car, the grey kind you get when you dry-hump a Jersey barrier, those chest-high concrete walls that turn ordinary highways into glorified cattle chutes. They also bounded off it hard enough to pop the right rear tire like a party favor, it's flat to the rim, which is resting on the asphalt.
Ooh, and what's this? A nefarious note left for the possible purveying pleasure of our dynamic duo?
Well, kinda: it was under a wiper blade.
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, takes some real brass cojones , to have a late-night accident (possibly DUI related, not 100% sure but I'd bet at least a few samoas on it) limp into someone else's parking lot and essentially say "Yeah, I took yer spot, now do sumthin' bout' it you summbich!"
Well, we did something alright. Towed them away.
Sorry, can't wait around for your schedule to coincide with that of the person who actually OWNS the property you are sitting on.
And the kicker, it was a brand new SUV, so the spare HAD to still be stowed underneath, along with a tire iron and jack, had they just had a little more personal gumption, they'd probably have been able to get back on the road since the battle scars down the side, while nasty looking for sure, were only superficial flesh wounds. The car would've driven just fine on some bent sheet metal if they'd just changed the flat.
Unless of course they were as drunk as I suspect they were.... in which case abandoning it there was the smarter thing to do.
DUI.. you lose when you call us, you lose when you DON'T call us, you lose when you comply with the cops, you lose when you DON'T comply with cops...
The real winning move would have been not to play the game.
Too bad for them, when they try that, they only discover that we're the meddling kids to their rubber-masked phoney ghost.
Sometimes though, you get the other kind of drunk. The kind that's TOO compliant.
Like the guy the cops were following the other night who was drifting with the winds all over the road instead of keeping it between the lines. Their suspicions confirmed that the driver was drunk, they flipped on their lights to pull him over.
Immediately, he made a hard ninety-degree right.....
Into a tall 4'' high curb, over said curb, through a yard, and into fence, flattening the front of his car in the process.
Well, his HEART was in the right place...
Unfortunately, that turned what should have been a routine impound into a wreck/recovery situation for our late-night driver Doc, who got the call. When he gets on scene, he decides to see if maybe the car will run long enough to at least back it away from the fence it's tangled in, rather than hook on the winch line and drag it and possibly part of the neighborhood, back onto his truck.
To his surprise, it starts right up when he turned the key. And despite the front end being a little bit pancaked, it still drove fairly straight, and the steering still was functional too. Amazing considering the licking it took. (It was a near-fossilized Geo Metro, a car that back in the early 90s' bravely pushed the boundary of what could charitably be called a "car" into territory that had once been reserved for "wind up toy".
)Now, Doc doesn't want to drop it off the high curb and into the street, might press his luck too much and kill it for the final time. Looking around he notes that about a block down the street, there's a curb cut-out for a driveway, and asks the officer on scene if he can drive it down there, drive it out into the street and load it.
Cop says sure, whatever it takes to get it out of here.
So Doc goes limping down the sidewalk, in a smashed car, with a lit-up police cruiser shadowing him the whole way....
Wonder if anyone on a 2am glass-of-water run happened to look out the window at THAT spectacle and wonder what was going on? They were probably a bit flummoxed as to why nothing appeared in the newspaper the next morning about any slow-speed chases.....
The only good thing to come of that is now that his car is totaled (on account of the damage, even if it does drive) the drunk will be without wheels for quite some time. Granted, not much damage, but, like I said, it was a Geo, issuing it a parking ticket would have probably totaled it too.
So endeth the tale of the drunk who tried to please... now we segue into the tale of the drunk who was outright defiant....
A downtown office calls us up first thing in the AM and tells us there's a car they don't recognize sitting in their lot, and they'd like it gone before their employees start to show up around 9ish and, like musical chairs, the last guy in has no place to park.
A quick jaunt down there reveals a blue SUV over in a corner that I don't recognize. At only 10 spaces, the lot is small enough that after a few times through, you've memorized all the employees cars and where they like to park, interlopers thus stick out like me trying to seamlessly blend in with the crowd in downtown Addis Ababa, while wearing a light-up bow tie.
Nonetheless, procedure is procedure and I do a lap around the car to see if there's a permit in it someone has missed.
There isn't, but there is a humongous sideswipe down the entire right side of the car, the grey kind you get when you dry-hump a Jersey barrier, those chest-high concrete walls that turn ordinary highways into glorified cattle chutes. They also bounded off it hard enough to pop the right rear tire like a party favor, it's flat to the rim, which is resting on the asphalt.
Ooh, and what's this? A nefarious note left for the possible purveying pleasure of our dynamic duo?
Well, kinda: it was under a wiper blade.
DO NOT TOW
Had accident
Will be back to claim at 2pm.
Had accident
Will be back to claim at 2pm.
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, takes some real brass cojones , to have a late-night accident (possibly DUI related, not 100% sure but I'd bet at least a few samoas on it) limp into someone else's parking lot and essentially say "Yeah, I took yer spot, now do sumthin' bout' it you summbich!"
Well, we did something alright. Towed them away.
Sorry, can't wait around for your schedule to coincide with that of the person who actually OWNS the property you are sitting on.
And the kicker, it was a brand new SUV, so the spare HAD to still be stowed underneath, along with a tire iron and jack, had they just had a little more personal gumption, they'd probably have been able to get back on the road since the battle scars down the side, while nasty looking for sure, were only superficial flesh wounds. The car would've driven just fine on some bent sheet metal if they'd just changed the flat.
Unless of course they were as drunk as I suspect they were.... in which case abandoning it there was the smarter thing to do.
DUI.. you lose when you call us, you lose when you DON'T call us, you lose when you comply with the cops, you lose when you DON'T comply with cops...
The real winning move would have been not to play the game.
.
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