Exciting Night

My wife and I were sitting at the dinner table chatting, winding down for the night, when I saw a pair of headlights shining in our back window. The back side of our house faces the middle school parking lot, with a good amount of lawn and trees between the edge of my land and the beginning of the gravel, so it is not too unusual to see cars back there, but late on a Saturday night did seem strange.

Then we saw a second pair of headlights, and the tell-tale red and blue flashing of police lights, followed by a third cop car with his lights flashing as well. At this point I figured they were going to give the first car a ticket for doing doughnuts or something in the parking lot. It happens, not normal, but not too terribly unusual. But, the cop cars didn’t stop, they tore right through my back yard, driving through the ditch, onto the sidewalk that goes between our house and our neighbors, and out into the street in front.

One car stopped blocking the road, and the cop jumped out of his car, the second car drove around my neighbors house to his back yard. We saw the first cop yell “Stop! Get down on the ground, now!”, and it looked like he had his gun drawn (although he might not have, it was dark), and we saw the guy they were chasing give up and lie face down on the ground. The second cop came from behind and handcuffed him and walked him back behind our neighbors house, presumably to the back of his police car.

The first cop turned out to be our local city police, and the second was a state trooper. The local policeman came to our house after a while to let us know what happened, and to take a look at the tire tracks to make sure that nothing was broken. Everything was fine, and I was happy that the kids didn’t leave anything out that might have damaged the cars.

All in all, it was quite a bit of unexpected excitement! I was chatting with the policeman about what happened, and at one point I remarked “what a moron”. The cop responded, “They don’t normally get too many points for being smart”.