I have an aggressive dog. He is a Jack Russell Terrier. In his life he has been run over by bigger dogs enough times that he now preemptively attacks them. He used to be friendly, now he’s friendly with other dogs about 45% of the time, the rest of the time things get ugly. That’s why, when I take him to the Arnold Arboretum, I like to bring him off the beaten path (road is more like it) and have him play where there aren’t any other dogs. Except my trusty beagle, that is, loyal friend and bane of my wife’s existence.
The mutts and I were off on one of our little hikes yesterday when I came across a bag of human remains. Yes, a plastic bag full of ashes, semi ripped open and clumped together by a recent rainfall. I felt bad for the remains, but at the same time I didn’t want to touch them. I gave the bag a brief kick in order to free some of the ashes through the hole. A lackluster puff, nothing more. I gingerly rolled the bag beneath my shoe, hoping to disengage the matter from itself. There was some spillage, but not a lot. I grappled with the temptation to grab the bag and rip it apart, send the ashes all abut Peter’s Hill, and if I knew the person contained within, I just might have, but since I didn’t know them I thought the better of it, concluding that touching the bag would be gross.
So I just left him or her there. It probably wasn’t a bag of human ashes anyways. Maybe it was from a barbeque or something. Who knows? Further up, I discovered a laptop computer shoved haphazardly beneath some leaves. It partially turned on when I pressed the power button, and what’s more, a further investigation of the area revealed a carrying case. No real identification on it, except the name “Jackie G.” in silver marker on the outside. I considered that it might belong to the Red Sox’ old shortstop Jackie Gutierrez, and that my finding and returning it to him would allow me to count Jackie among my closest friends. That would be cool. But instead, having no idea where in the world Jackie Gutierrez is these days, I brought it to a nearby police station.
I entered the police station with two kids. They must have been about 18 years old. They came in right behind me. Since I was first, the guy behind the counter asked me what I wanted. I lifted up the laptop and said I found this. The cop shook his head dismissively and said it would have to wait. Then he asked the kids what they were there for. They were looking for the girl’s brother who had been brought to the station the other night. The cop told them that he wasn’t there anymore, that he was at a juvenile detention facility somewhere. Where, the sister asked. Are you his guardian? No. I can’t tell you if you’re not his guardian. Well what did he do? Again, I can’t tell you that if you aren’t his guardian. Then the cop told them that the kid would be at court the next day and bail was $25,000. Then the boy, I don’t know if he was a brother or a boyfriend of the girl, goes, what’s a fifteen year old kid gotta do to have a bail that high?
Who knows? They were obviously both distraught, and as I sat there on the bench waiting and waiting for the cop to find the time to check out the computer, I didn’t feel so bad because of seeing it.
The cop was bent out of shape because a lot of people were being mistakenly sent to his station with lost and found items that weren’t even from his precinct. “I’m not mad at you,” he said, but he was mad. At a certain point, I was tempted to just leave the computer there and skedaddle, but I stayed because they were the cops, capable of arrests and so forth and so on.
I have to confess that the experience wasn’t all that unpleasant once I got talking to the guy. Even though he was angry, there was a certain character to his frustration. Sounds awful to say this, but I enjoyed watching him shove his binder against a wall. He was intermittently listening to music at the time. A fellow cop came up and chided him for it.
“This is the New Jack City soundtrack, isn’t it?”
Maybe he fantasized himself as being played by Ice-T. It occurred to me as I walked back to the car, that it would have been great if instead of the laptop I took the bag of “human remains” into the police station as lost and found. He would undoubtedly have gone absolutely ballistic, but I can’t imagine that he would do anything like shoot me. My sense is it would have been one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever witnessed in a police station.
are you serious when you say that you came across a bag of human ashes?
Saw this on Universal Hub. Good story.
when i was a young wild boy i occasionally would have to bail out a friend.i would saunter up to the police station (district 14 brighton) and would tell the desk cop i was there to bail out so and so.i would be told to sit down, not asked, told. i would sit on the bench and wait and the cop would never do anything in response to my being there.so im sitting there like an idiot for half an hour before i would get up the guts to step up to the desk again “shut up and sit the fuck down” is what i was told.ok?i have done nothing wrong and i am here to get my friend out.”shut your fucking mouth before i lock you up” was the response. i did this same song and dance several times between the ages of 17 and 21 and it was almost always the same treatment even though it was always a different cop.they always treat you like they are better than you.im all for the cops, its a tough job but maybe if some of them lost the attititude kids would have more respect.
I’ve come to believe that the cops in this city are much more interested in protecting their construction detail overtime pay and not at all concerned with protecting the city.
If they were interested in city safety perhaps a few less ours doing construction detail and perhaps some concern for whom they are are payed to “Serve and Protect”.
Have you ever met a cop that treated you like the ones they work for? They are here to protect us, the law abiding citizens, and yet they lack even the simple respect towards us who pay their salaries with our tax dollars.
you seemed to have spent a lot of time in police stations. maybe the cop was annoyed because you and your friends were always getting locked up, or maybe because the drunken college kid/junior bail bondsman was always staggering in to get his friends out of jail. i’m sure you told the cop that you were pre-law and you knew your rights.
[...] Can you imagined if I had reported this incident to my friend the New Jack City soundtrack listening cop? Come to think of it, I should have. That guy is an unwitting treasure trove of hilarity, and I just leave him sitting in those barracks all alone, another of the vast untapped cultural resources in this wonderful city. One has to wonder, if I had gone running to him, and feigned being shaken, would he have been able to hold back, or would he have called me a sissy. [...]