Every once in a while, I get on my soapbox and preach to you people but not very often. More often then not, I am just a regular guy, hanging out with you all @ 4peeps and enjoying every minute of it.
Well today is one of those days I hoist myself up on the soapbox and share a little bit of what I like to call "Police Work".
The following post is not meant as a "self-glorifying" post, nor is it meant to "show off". My intention (an however you take the information I present here is entirely up to the individual) is to show you that no matter how slick you think you are, no matter how cool you think doing something illegal is, no matter how much your friends might pressure you into doing something.. sooner or later, "we" are going to find you, and get you.
Now, I am not necessarily saying you are the one doing this, but everyone knows someone who deals in ...shall we say... illegal substances. Today we are concentrating on one of the "lesser" drugs, marijuana or "pot", "Mary Jane" (thanks ~Sid~
), grass, etc.... I have heard all sides of the argument. For and against. Everything from it's not habit forming to I can use it and still drive a car fine, Hey, if it's used for medicinal purposes, it's should be ok to use it, Out of all the drugs that are out there, pot isn't so bad. Well those of you in the "for" argument, I need only say one thing: Sorry, but it's illegal! and that should be the end of the argument (as far as I am concerned)!
Ok, enough preaching. If you haven't figured out that Drugs = Dumb = Illegal = Jail then I am not going to reach you in the few lines I have typed out and you will figure it out yourself, the hard way. So with that out of the way; last week I am doing the feel good Police type thing, stopping and chatting with the people in the town (Yes, I am one of those Community Oriented Cops). It makes me feel good and, I hope, makes the Townspeople feel good too. One of the kids who has been arrested by me a few times before approaches me on the street. He gives me some info about a Marijuana field growing out in the woods on the outskirts of the town. Now why would he do this you are asking? Well, because each time I arrested him, I treated him with respect. Treat me with respect, and you will get it in turn. He knows he had messed up when he got arrested, I knew he messed up when I arrested him. People make mistakes and his mistake wasn't so horrendous that I didn't need to treat him like a person. (eg: bring before me a rapist, child molester, murderer, etc... and that person will have some problems during the arrest procedure. I doubt any of you would feel otherwise?) So, this kid has come up with some pretty decent information before and I thought it warranted some looking into. Now, without going through the whole Police procedure, it took me about another couple of days to verify that what this kid was telling me was in fact, true.
So a quick call to the wonderful Police Avation Unit to inform them of a possible, and the ball gets rolling in motion. Fortunately for me (and for the town), my grandfather happens to own a private airfield (which also doubles as a Junkyard(don't ask me)) so the Avation unit makes arrangement to pick me up the following day at 1600hrs at the airfield.
They were a few minutes late.. but I will let them slide this time.
So up we go. Me in the "jump seat", the pilot and a para-medic in the back. I tell the pilot that I want to check out a few other places that have been "hit" before for "pot" growing before we get to the location of the tip. Now for those of you who have had a State Police Helicopter buzz your home, it's great watching your expressions from inside the Helicopter.
Anyway, I am getting off track here. Back to the story. So we head out over to the area where the "pot" is supposed to be located. Good thing I hadn't eaten yet, because the pilot must have been former Military. I think, looking back on it, he was purposely trying to make me toss my cookies. But, being former Military myself, it wasn't happening
. I got off track again, didn't I?? 
So we start circiling the area looking for the pot.
Now those of you who think you can hide from the long arm of the law... think again! Pot is easily recgonizable from the air! How recgonizable you ask? Take a look:
The Police Digital camera is a piece of garbage, hence the big red circle around the "pot" growing. No, there isn't a big red circle around pot plants thanks to some super duper "pot tracking" device installed in Helicopters.. it's just MS Paint.
The two "dots" are Police Officers that I had directed into the location via my radio once we made positive Identification of the pot.
Here is another shot from a different angle:
See how easy it is to distinguish pot from regular foilage? Tsk tsk tsk to those of you trying to grow it outside or something. You can't hide it. Now once positive ID has been made from the air and from the ground, thats all we need to seize it. Too bad for you. No search warrant, no knock on the door, no nothing. Just roll in, yank and pull. Private property you say? No such thing. This particular crop happened to be on a local farmer's property. Unfortunately for us (fortunately for the owner of the pot) the pot was too far away from a residence to charge anyone with growing it. So whomever it was, just lost a crapload of product but beat a arrest. In the end, the stuff stays off the street, the guy who is growing it gets hurt in the wallet and the town feels great about the job we are doing. So an arrest would have been nice, but it wasnt.
All in all we grab about 50 pot plants. The smallest being around 4' tall and the largest over 6' tall. We load them into our trusty Army Surplus Dodge Pickup truck (love that truck, it can pull down a house if we needed it to) and of course, parade it through town, doing 30MPH full lights and sirens so the "good" townspeople can see what we got, and more importantly, the "bad" townspeople can see what we got.
We arrive at the Police Station and start the unloading process:
We lay out the individual plants all nice and neat and of course, not missing a chance to "ham it up":
(Yes that is me. The sexy looking guy on the left hand front of your screen. If any of you are women, I am available.
)
And of course that part that will make those of you who are "users" get on your knees and cry; the destruction of the seizure:
I have no clue as to what the "street value" is of the seizure but I am guessing it's worth a pretty penny. GOOD! Those of you who use, you better watch out. Those of you who grow it, watch out. Those of you who sell it, watch out. The old addage is true: You can run, but you can't hide.
So, thats why the Gaming CoZmos hasn't been updated in about a week or so. I have been busy doing real life stuff. I was of course, shocked to see that no one posted anything at all *AHEM* and kept looking back everyday to see if someone, anyone, would pick up the slack... but I guess it's just me, and only me (save for ldonyo) that cares about whether or not the site gets updated and taken care of....
I will be back to posting news after the Memorial Day holiday. I hope you all are enjoying yours.
Until next time I get on my soapbox....
.