In the Line of Duty

The dog in the photo is K9 Officer Kane, with the Ocean County Sheriff's Office in New Jersey.  As of this writing, K9 Kane is recovering in a veterinary hospital from a stab wound inflicted by a man who was subsequently shot and killed by police.

It all happened this week in a small oceanfront community of multi-million-dollar homes and fewer than 300 year-round residents.

The man, wanted by authorities on charges of kidnapping, aggravated assault, theft and weapons offenses, was found to be holed up in a house in the beachfront town.  Confronted by the police, the man was holding a knife and ignored orders to drop it.  That’s when K9 Kane was released.

Unfortunately, rather than dropping the knife at that point the man used it to stab the dog, and that’s when the officers fired.  Happily, the dog is expected to recover, and justifiably, the man was killed by the gunfire.

That may sound harsh – “justifiably, the man was killed” – but if you are wanted by the cops, brandish a knife, refuse to obey orders to drop the knife, and stab a dog, we do not have sympathy for you.

True, there could be underlying emotional or mental issues that contributed to the man’s behavior.  Public information in this case does not yet address such questions.  But we still cannot think charitably when a K9 is stabbed.

K9 officers are just that, officers.  We make badges for them.  But where a human officer has a full understanding of the risks of the job, the K9 only knows his mission is to subdue the suspect, without an intellectual appreciation of the risks.  This is why we and most people are appalled when a K9 is injured (or worse) on the job.

We hope that K9 Kane recovers fully, and that the small beach town can return to its quiet normalcy.

Show Me The Money! Um, No...

We are of the opinion that this story should be added to the Stupid Criminals file.

Earlier this month, a would-be bank robber entered a northern New Jersey bank and handed one of the tellers a note specifying the denominations of cash he was demanding.  The problem with his plan was that it was 6:45 PM, the bank was preparing to close, and all the money had already been locked in the vault.

The guy didn’t believe the tellers, so he leapt over the counter and saw for himself that all the cash drawers were empty.  So he fled -- his hands just as empty as the cash drawers.

What did he think, that banks simply lock the doors at night?

While he got away before police arrived, security video and the assistance of police in neighboring towns enabled his capture four days later.

The county jail is open all night.

It Can Be A Small World

With more than nine million people living in New Jersey, what are the odds of this happening?

Recently, New Jersey State Trooper Michael Patterson pulled over a car for a minor infraction.  The interaction between the trooper and the driver was cordial, and the driver, a gentleman named Matthew Bailly, identified himself as a retired police officer from the town of Piscataway.

Trooper Patterson remarked that he was a Piscataway native, and the two men continued to compare notes.  Bially recalled that when he was a rookie on the job, he responded to a call on the same street on which the Trooper was raised.  On that call, which took place 27 years earlier, he helped deliver a baby.

At this point Trooper Patterson reintroduced himself, saying, "My name is Michael Patterson, sir. Thank you for delivering me."

Yes, Trooper Patterson had stopped the man who delivered him.

As a follow-up, Trooper Patterson and his mother later visited Bailly and his wife to further commemorate the unique circumstances that brought them together on two occasions, 27 years apart.

Snake Charmer

We all know that police officers are trained for dealing with hazardous situations.  But the training does not include a specific course on python-wrangling.

Yet wrangling a python was exactly what New Jersey State Trooper Steven Vallejo found himself doing this past Friday, when the New Jersey State Police received a call in the morning that there was a rather large snake on the Garden State Parkway, a bustling multi-lane toll road.

To judge by the photo posted by the agency, Trooper Vallejo found this to be simply all in a days’ work.  Calmly he used his baton to handle the snake.  More power to him.  We think we might have preferred facing an armed assailant.

Reportedly, a highway maintenance worker found the snake in a broken aquarium alongside the road, not far from one of the highway’s toll booths in densely-populated Essex County.  Although clearly abandoned, it was the snake’s lucky day: The weather was unusually warm for January in New Jersey, and the python was relocated to an exotic pet store a few miles away, where perhaps it will find a new owner more caring than the one who dumped it on a highway.

The Badge Company of New Jersey is proud to be a supplier to the New Jersey State Police.

Some People Just Want to Go to the Super Bowl

In Iowa recently, a brief car chase ended with a distinct twist.

On Interstate 80 near Des Moines, an Iowa State Patrol trooper attempted to pull over the driver of a Chevrolet Malibu for a simple traffic violation – an expired registration.  But the driver refused to pull over, and the chase was on.  More troopers joined the pursuit, which ended when one of the troopers executed a PIT maneuver.

The driver was then apprehended without further incident, and a search of the car produced nothing of any consequence.

But the arresting troopers were taken aback by the reason the driver gave for running:  He told them that he wanted to be chased because “it was on his bucket list.”

“In my 28 years, I’ve never heard that excuse,” Sgt. Scott Bright told a reporter.

While the driver can now cross that one off his list, to the extent that any of the following were on his list, he can cross them off, too:  DWI, eluding, interference with official acts, operation without registration, unlawful use of license, speeding, and a parole violation.

Back to the Beach... One Last Time

It is a bit melodramatic to call it a “dying wish,” but a 78-year-old woman here in New Jersey who is in hospice care with a terminal diagnosis of acute leukemia recently told her family that she would like to “go to the shore” one last time.

So she did.  With the help of a police officer in the oceanfront town of Ship Bottom.

For those readers not from this area, “going to the shore” is a regional phrase for what the rest of the country calls going to the beach.  But one does not go down to the shore.  The correct terminology is “down the shore.”

The family of Patricia Kelly, who spent countless summers vacationing at the shore, knew that she would not be able to walk onto the beach herself, so they asked the Ship Bottom Police Department for some help.  Which is how it came to be that Patrolman Ronald Holloway drove one of the agency’s SUVs across the sand recently, taking Kelly to the water’s edge.  There she was able to enjoy some time with her granddaughters, have a group hug with family and friends, and, looking out at the ocean, say goodbye to a place she loves.

Kelly was deeply appreciative, telling a reporter “they could have taken me right then, and I would have been the happiest person,” she said. “That's my place.”  Alluding to her desire to have her ashes spread on the beach, she added “I'll be there forever.”

The family conducted a prayer circle, and Officer Holloway participated.  The officer, clearly moved by the entire experience,  told a television reporter that “being able to take her out for this ride on the beach was a life-moving experience.  It was a checkmark in my career for sure.”

The family had nothing but praise for Officer Holloway, posting a message on the Ship Bottom Police Department’s Face book page that read “A BIG SHOUT OUT to Officer Ronald Holloway... he is a man who not only protects and serves but genuinely cares... his extraordinary kindness and character speaks volumes of the man he is.”

Liar, Liar... (you know the rest)

To be filed under “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” is this news headline from this week:

Lawyer’s Pants Catch Fire During Trial

The report, sufficiently weird as to be dismissed as false, was confirmed to NBC News by the Public Relations Director for the Eleventh Circuit Court in Florida.

To be fair, the story contained no information that would call into question the attorney’s truthfulness.  Instead, it was reported that he had one or more e-cigarette batteries in his pants pocket which sparked a small fire while he was arguing, of all things, an arson case.

With a quick dash to the men’s room the situation was brought under control and the lawyer is said to have returned to the courtroom with only a singed pocket to claim as damages.  It was further reported that the episode caused the attorney to quit using e-cigarettes.