Posts made in February, 2012

One day while I was working in a black and white police car on patrol, a dispatcher sent me a message over the car computer asking me if I could help someone with a non-police problem. A very old, and very confused, woman had called 911 because she couldn’t turn the hot water off in her tub and her son was an hour away. It was a quiet afternoon, so I said sure. I went to the apartment where the distraught woman met me at the door. “I’ve tried and tried,” she said, holding up a hammer, “and I can’t turn it off.” She showed me to the bathroom with old porcelain fixtures and the water running into the tub. She’d broken most of the handle hitting it with the hammer. But it was easy to shut off because she’d been trying to go the wrong way. The woman...

I read an article in the paper today about a family that won a settlement after suing the California Highway patrol. These types of suits always catch my eye so I was surprised that I had missed the precipitating event.  Five years ago after an argument with her father, an 18 year old took her father’s Porsche and sped off. She got on the freeway, crashed at a high rate of speed and was almost decapitated. If that’s not bad enough, pictures of the crash and the body made it onto the Internet. The suit charged the CHP with being negligent with the photos and the family won a couple of million dollars. This is a horrible story that gets worse. Now, the pictures are on the internet forever, if you Google the girls name they pop up, I know, I tried which is why I...