Legaleeze

Alright, time to come clean I guess. A LOT has been going on here since we last talked, and I can't really be sure of where to start, being as how I have thoroughly neglected all four of my blogs, but I haven't forgotten you.

Actually, I think of you several times a week, not that you'd know by my absence here, however.

So here's the dish, short and sweet.

The reason I've been gone so long, and the reason my posting was so sparse before I up and disappeared. Or, at least the biggest reason, anyway.

The man I had been calling husband for four years was in the paper a couple of Saturdays ago, under a headline that read, simply, "WANTED" in two inch letters on the front page. He was there with three other criminals, who were wanted for either molesting children, murder, or armed robbery, depending of whom we speak.

He's now in jail awaiting trial, and Ladybug, who has now changed her name to Pirate, and I have been subpoenaed to attend his preliminary hearing, as wittnesses for the prosecution, since he was stupid enough to plead not guilty after confessing his crimes to no less than three separate government agencies. But I digress.

Yes, I'm being intentionally vague, but if you don't know of what I speak, then mayhaps it is better for you that you don't. If you really want to know, there are ways to fill in the details for yourself, which you can also figure out yourself.

An aside:
I the past year or so, I have had to sensor myself a bit, in order to prevent the wrong kind of people, mainly predators, sociopaths, and stalkers, from preying on my children and I as they have attempted to do in the past. If they are reading these words themselves, which I don't doubt in the least, they should remember that I still have all of the information collected previously, and all of the protective measures are still in place, including the information garnered from the repeated attacks and attempts at manipulation via MySpace and YouTube. My willingness to call the police and report the harassment has not wavered. I will not hesitate to press charges.

Amusing tales arise out of every tale, of course, no matter how bad the situation is, and this time is no different...

For example, I don't know of anyone else who has berated a U.S. Marshall and gotten away with it, much less twice, and received two apologies in the bargain.

It all started when I got a knock on my door the Tuesday after the article ran in the paper. I was rather surprised to see un-uniformed men at my door with badges hanging from their necks, but then I'd never seen a U.S. Marshall before either. When they asked me if I knew where that man was (after verifying my identity), I retorted by asking them if they were too lazy to open his file. Probably not the best possible reply, but after having learned not long before That he'd had a warrant since January, and the police hadn't bothered to open his file enough to actually call or write him at his contact address and ask him to come in for "some more questioning", I was pretty ticked. Especially since he...Maybe I should start a bit earlier in the story...

After he broke the law, he went in to the police department and confessed to his crime. They thanked him and sent him on his merry way. In the process of their investigation, to build a case against him, several other folks from government agencies interviewed him, and he confessed to his crimes each and every time. That's Social Services/CPS/DFS, The police, the prosecuting attorney for the state, and the district attorney. During all of that, he repeatedly told them, and verified extensively, his contact address and contact phone number. The police knew where to go to contact him, at ALL times, and simply didn't bother...

The paper published an article whining about how our poor police force was SO low on resources that they couldn't catch the hardened, dangerous criminals that were out on the street. There was another criminal, a murderer, that the police knew he was the entire time, and didn't bother to pick him up. After all of the people in the neighborhood calling the police repeatedly, and filling them in on where he was and when on his daily trek (same times, same places, every day, mind you), They still said that they didn't have the resources to "track down" the most dangerous criminals on our city's streets. This is despite the fact that out of the four criminals whined about in the paper, two of them were VERY easy to find, and would have been relatively simple to apprehend.

Of course, I'll be one of the first to agree that our police force is seriously lacking in resources. In the winter, spring, and fall, when our college-town's population explodes, we're at an extreme shortage of officers. When those few available officers spend their time stalking homeless people down the street and harassing harmless kids on the square, that's squandering the department's meager resources. But I digress.

Okay, enough with the flashback, we return to the U.S. Marshals.

After I asked them if they were too lazy to open his file, they looked taken aback for a moment, before telling me that they had not been given his file. "Does the idiocy of our city's police department never cease?", I wondered to myself. Seriously, send out professionals to do the job you were supposed to do, but don't give them any of the tools or information you have gathered. Make them start from scratch, and see how much longer it can take to get the job done.

I made my feelings clear about the incompetence of my local department, and the Marshals apologized for how long it was taking, and promised me that they would be able to actually do the job right, and quickly.

So I gave them the information that he had so often provided, that same information that was in his file, and after a bit of further discussion, they went on their way.

About that further discussion though, that's were the funny happened...

So these armed men and I are talking outside of my front door, and one of them spits into one of my potted plants that I had just recently brought outside to get some sun. Spits his nasty tobacco-juice in my plant! I looked back and forth from him to my plant a couple of times, then said "That's my plant.". He looked down at the plant and back up at me, with a guileless look on is face, and replied "Yes, I'm helping it, see how dry it is?", but I told him that he wasn't helping it, in fact, if it were a tomato plant, he'd be killing it. I asked him if he'd ever heard of Tobacco Mosaic Virus, and when he repeated the name, looking confused, I went on to educate him in what it was, and what it did, as well as how tomatoes contract the disease. Realizing that he had committed a serious faux pas, he apologized rather profusely (for an agent of the law, anyway), and proceeded to spit in the parking lot from then on out, until they both left.

About 20 minutes later, I got a call from Clifton's mother, saying that the police just left with him, having just picked him up. He didn't put up any fight, and was very cooperative when they came for him, having discovered them in his mother's house when he returned from having purchased a beer for her. I guess they had meant it when they said they would get him into custody quickly.

About 10 minutes after I got off the phone with Flo, the U.S. Marshall calls me to let me know that they have picked him up, and to thank me for my help. Not that I did anything that the police couldn't have done by providing even a part of the case file on the crime, but if they want to give me credit, fine, I'll take it.

So now you know.