22. Are you SURE this weed isn’t yours??

A friend of mine used to be a cop. He moonlighted as security for a motel. Once he was in the lobby of the motel in full cop uniform when he sees a bag of weed fall out of a guy’s pocket while he’s checking in. He picks up the bag and holds it out to the guy and asks, “is this yours?” The guy looks at the bag, looks at my friend, looks at the bag… “No man, that’s not mine.” “Are you sure?” “Yeah man, I don’t know where that came from.” My friend pockets the weed and takes it home and smokes it.

23. EASY-E!

A friend of mine arrested Easy – E twice for selling dope in Paramount. The gangs beat the shit out of him and Compton, so he frequently went to Paramount in his youth to sling.

24. Sometimes all they’re looking for is a helping hand.

Not me, but my dad. My dad told me this story about how he responded to a neighbor’s call about a possible robbery in progress. My dad gets out of his car and sees there’s a ladder leaning against a wall to a 2nd floor window. He sees this guy halfway out the window, trying to negotiate this object he was holding out of this window. My dad stands at the foot of the ladder. The guy gets it out and actually yells down to my dad to come help him get the TV he was trying to steal. My dad says, “Sure, no problem” and gets the TV from him. Apparently, the guy didn’t register the fact my dad is a cop and didn’t even realize he was in handcuffs. Turns out the dude tested positive for a super high blood alcohol content and he was on PCP to boot.

25. He went on to become a homicide detective for this work.

It wasn’t me, but my uncle.

The year was 1958. My uncle was a detective in the Bakersfield, CA PD. A woman claimed a man beat and raped her. She didn’t know his name, but she recognized him from somewhere. Couldn’t remember where. She described him and my uncle started getting an idea who the guy was.

There was a local musician, a piano player, that my uncle knew was a scumbag. He made calls to bring the guy in for questioning and put him in a line-up. Turns out he was scheduled to perform live on TV at that very moment, playing piano for a country and western band.

My uncle rolled in a TV set and turned it on. He asked the woman to look at the band and see if she recognized the bad guy. The cameras stayed fixed on the singer and guitar player. The woman didn’t recognize anyone. So my uncle did a Smart Cop move: he called the TV station and demanded to speak to the director. He told the director who he was and insisted that the camera move to the piano player. Why? Because “he’s my brother and I’m a police detective and I want to see my brother on TV!”

As if by magic, the camera swung to the piano player, who smiled real big for the TV. The woman gasped. “THAT’S HIM!”

My uncle raced down to the TV studio with some uniforms. The piano player was taking a break when they hauled him away. BUSTED.

My uncle went on to become a homicide detective in Bakersfield. He was a big, burly guy. A well-spoken calm, cool, collected kind of cop. Everybody loved him. Except the criminals. He died about 8 years ago. I miss him.