Sorry no entries for the past week, but things got kinda busy. I realized near the end of this week that I've been working--either details, work, or court--for over two weeks without a day off. Monday--which was supposed to be a day off since I had to go to work that night (6pm-6am)--I got a call from the detail sergeant. Pleeease, can you take the welfare office detail this morning...? I know you have to work tonight but [insert rant about deputies who back out of details at the last second.] So, yeah, I worked that from 8-2, then went to work that night.

Worked again Tuesday night, then after getting off of work Wednesday morning at 6am, I went running at the Academy, got home and managed to grab about 2 hours of nap, then put my class B uniform on and flagged traffic for four hours. It was hot, sweaty, miserable, and dusty, but it was only four hours, and at least this time no one ran over my lunch. (The road crew guys still tease me about that.)

Thursday morning I had court, and was there until well after noon due to the fact that the woman went and paid her ticket after she saw that I'd shown up for court--and no one bothered to tell me, so I sat there waiting for her case to come up on the dockett. Aggravating.

Friday morning I had to go to court again, this time for a 72 hour probable cause hearing for a juvenile whom I'd arrested on Tuesday. Luckily, that only took a couple of hours, but then of course I had to go to work Friday night too. (As well as Saturday and Sunday night.)

So that's why there've been no entries for the past week.

However, this weekend was fun.

Saturday night another deputy and I had a known crack area staked out, waiting for cars to go in and come out. Waiting paid off, because after a few minutes of patience we saw a little silver sports car come out and then turn west at the intersection near where we were hiding. We pulled the car over less than a block away (no tag on the car! Perfect PC!), and ordered the occupants out one at a time. While I was patting down the driver, I asked him where he was coming from.

"I don't know."

"You don't know where you're coming from? You're just driving around with your eyes closed?"

I patted the other two down, and both of them claimed that they'd been sleeping. Yeah, and I have STUPID tattooed on my forehead. So, the other deputy and I fall into this perfect good cop/bad cop routine, where he stalks around them with the shotgun, cussing them out while I search the car--then after I finished searching, I just went up real quiet and nice to the driver. "C'mon, man, be straight with me... What were you doing back there? Be honest with me.."

He looked at me, gave this little sigh...

"We were there to buy dope."

I gave a little smile and nod. "And where's the dope now?"

He sighed again. "They wouldn't sell any to us."

We finally got the whole story out of them--two of them were from New York, down here on other business, and the third was from New Orleans--some guy the first two had met in a bar who'd told them where they could go to buy dope. We never did find any dope, so maybe he was telling the truth about them not being able to buy any. We finally cut them loose and sent them on their way.... they were so grateful to get away free, they were shaking our hands and thanking us. Funny.. you make someone's life hell for 20 minutes, and they still want to shake your hand.

Ah, but the really cool fun was Sunday night. I made my first drug bust, and though it's hard to see in the picture, in my right hand I'm holding a crack pipe, and in my left I'm holding a baggie with three rocks of crack cocaine. This was a fun little bust, complete with a bit of a foot pursuit. Yeah, I know it's not kilos and kilos of powder, but us being back in that area and arresting this guy ruined business for the dealers there for a good long while. We figured that it'll shut down over there for a few weeks, at least.

And, it's really pretty damn fun to make the drug dealers' lives miserable.

Ye flipping gods, but I love my job.