A Day in the Life of A City

This spring, it has been my honor to attend several different events sponsored by the CHP (California Highway Patrol). These events were all a presentation of a certain anti-drinking and driving program, Every 15 Minutes. To quickly explain the program in a nutshell, I'll give you this memorized quote that everyone knows who has been to more than one of these events: "Every 15 minutes someone is killed or seriously injured in an alcohol related incident."

Is that enough information?

If its not, throughout the career of this blog, you will be to know it much better. Anyways, today happened to be the first part of the two day event for one school. The crash was uneventful (a double fatal car crash is staged in the football field...again, more later), as was the arrival at the hospital. To quickly note, all of this is filmed and then edited and presented the following day. After that point, I usually would go to the mortuary along with the not really dead dead person, along with Sarge and a cameraman. But today, I had a little spice added to my life. I got to go to booking, to watch the "drunk" driver get instated in the local jail.

The guy that was acting as the drunk was a real weiner. He even looked like a hotdog. His first complaint was that the handcuffs were uncomfortable. Could someone please tell me when they were supposed to be comfortable? We wondered if he needed fluffy padding between his wrists and the cuffs, but fortuantely, good sense prevailed. The Chippy officer told him to hold on a minute until we were done filming, then he could take them off. That was before we drove over to booking.

The trip to booking was quite interesting. I have never actually been in that section of the jail, and while I had no intention of ever going there except for under my absolute free will, that intention was strongly re-inforced.

While we were waiting for the Chippy to set everything up (you don't just bring a teenager into a jail without first setting out some precautions), we discovered that our "driver" had a peculiar way of popping his head out of the squad car to say something. It almost looked like someone had set a jack-in-the-box on its side and then turned a hidden crank about once every minute and a half. One of the things he popped his head out for was to ask one of the deputies if he was so-and-so. The deputy answered,

"Yeah. When did I arrest you?"

The answer, it turned out, was never. The deputy was the boy's old Scout master. Its so nice to see reunions that begin that way...I guess.

Anyways, after going to booking, we returned to the school. Now, one thing that I was not planning on was spending a fifteen minute car ride sandwiched between the equivalent of two football jocks in the back of a patrol car. I got squeeshed. But, it was okay. I had more room than if I had ridden in the back of Sarge's car. But, at the end of the day, I rode back to the school in the CHP car. I kinda asked for it, though. One of the ladies that works in the E15 program is a nurse, and rode shotgun to the hospital with Chippy driving. She claims she will never ride in a car driven by him again. I wanted to see if it was really true.

It wasn't.

Anyways, while we were driving home, on the freeway, this little bug zips by us going at an excessive speed. Chippy, asked us if he should pull her over. The boys let out a resounding yes. To note, Chippy had evidently pulled over someone else on the way to the hospital for rolling through a stopsign. Anyways, this girl got a ticket for speeding. The rest of the ride was uneventful until we almost reached our destination. Note that I said "almost." there had been an accident involving five vehicles. Chippy was the closest CHP officer, so, of course, was the first responder. It was a mess, although an interesting crash. I feel bad for the guy whose car got the worst of it, though.

His trunk was full of computer equipment.

Did I ever tell you about Chippy's smile? Now...that is another story....