Day In The Line of Duty

There are many poor and dirty rooming houses (apartments), in the district, where the different number of insect species out number the people living there. My partner and I were called into one of these rooming houses for a disturbance.

We were let into the building and directed to a room on an upper floor. We went into the room and found three people hanging out and, to us, it appeared obvious that they had been doing drugs for the better part of the day. The room was small (maybe 8′ by 6′)and it had a very low ceiling (my head was almost touching). It was extremely dirty with garbage, soiled clothing, used condoms, random junk, cigarettes and the whole place looked like it had a thick layer of ‘gunge’. The kind of place that makes you feel like you need to shower immediately after leaving.

These three people were lounging around like they were hanging out at a vacation resort. We checked all of them to make sure they hadn’t overdosed and that none of them were wanted. We then asked the two people who didn’t live there to leave because of the trouble they had been causing. They agreed to leave and began to collect their belongings.

On of them lifted the mattress, that was laying directly on the floor, to retreive something from underneath and a stampede of cockroaches streamed out. With no exaggeration there must have been well over a hundred bugs crawl out and run in every direction. There were different species and all assortment of sizes and they ran across the floor, up the walls and quickly made it to the ceiling. This looked like something out of a horror movie.

Some of the cockroaches even crawled onto the people in the room and disappeared into their clothes. The people didn’t even seem to notice, they were apparantly so used to it happening.

With my head only fractions of an inch from the ceiling and bugs running everywhere, my partner and I made a quick retreat out into the hallway to supervise the eviction.

Once outside, we both took a minute to make sure we were cockroach free and try to shake the Willies away…yuck.

I had the ‘creepy-crawlys’ for most of the rest of the day.

In my patrol district there is a park that is located in the heart of ‘Skid Row’. This park has a couple of buildings off to the side of the grassed area and a childrens playground. Not many kids use this park because it is usually filled with the area drug and alcohol addicts. The buildings in the park have several purposes and uses and one of those is a public washroom.

One afternoon, my partner and I were driving by and we both looked over at a man that was well known to police as a homeless alcoholic. He was shuffling toward the door of the washroom and appeared fairly drunk. The door of the washroom was propped open and you could see that the door to the toilet stall had been removed.

We slowed our car to have a look at this guy as he is known to get so drunk he couldn’t tell where he was anymore. We watched him shuffle just inside the washroom and then reach into the back of his pants. He then pulled his hand out and we could plainly see that he’d just pulled a good sized turd out of his pants. He then proceeded to drop the turd into the toilet and then, very nonchalantly, turn around and shuffle back out of the washroom. (No flush/No hand wash)

We both laughed with disgust and floored it out of the area. He looked stable enough and we didn’t think he needed our immediate attention. Ugh. Gross but funny.