I work in a hotel. A week or so ago, a newly hired housekeeper found a .357 Magnum with the hammer cocked in one of the rooms and freaked out. She called the head housekeeper, who grabbed it without gloves (she got in trouble for that) and took it to the office. The police were called and they took it away.

Our hotel is a budget hotel and used to be a lot worse where violence, drugs, sex work, and crime in general are concerned. Our new management has been cracking down on that and issuing Do-Not-Rents as necessary — a lot, sadly. The last gun violence that occurred here was two years ago when a murder fugitive had a shootout with police and died. Since then, we’ve had the occasional high-strung guest point a gun at staff, but nothing beyond that.

Today, a young guy with multiple facial tattoos walks in. There is a ton of cursing on his side but I’m not going to type that all out; it’s in nearly every sentence.

Guy: “I stayed in room last week, and I forgot my gun. I need it back.”

Me: “Okay. Can I have your ID, please?”

I know the room wasn’t registered to him; it was registered to a single female with no other guests listed.

Guy: “Why? I just need my gun back.”

Me: “I need to verify your identity before I can give out information for your room, sir, for security purposes.”

Guy: “What?! That’s stupid. I forgot my gun. I told you it was there, and I know you have it. No one else asked you for a gun, just me, so why do I need an ID?”

Me: “Again, sir, it’s for security purposes and the safety of our guests. I am not allowed to release private information to anyone other than the registered guests. I am not going to violate that policy, especially where firearms are concerned. If you cannot produce a valid ID, I cannot release any information. I’m sorry.”

Guy: “I know you have my gun, and you’re not going to give it to me. That’s stealing! I’m going to stand here until you give me back my property.”

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t allow loitering.”

Guy: “I’m not loitering! You’re not giving me my stuff!”

Me: “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave before I call the police and have them escort you off the property.”

Guy: “Then call them! I don’t care!”

So, I called them, and they arrived fairly quickly. After forty-five minutes or so, they arrested him and took him away. I’m guessing he either had a warrant or was a felon in possession of a firearm. I’m not sure why it took so long to identify him, though.

I work in a Swiss city police dispatch department. It’s a Sunday morning, around 6:30 am when I start my shift, when someone rings our doorbell. Whenever someone does that, our observation screen switches to the camera at the front door. The guys from the night shift recognize him from ringing about an hour before, demanding that we find him a hotel room. This time, he’s here asking for his car keys, which we don’t have.

I tell the guys from the night shift to leave and I take over. I ask the visitor to come in and send a couple of officers out to talk to him since he’s clearly inebriated. Meanwhile, I do some digging in our systems to figure out if we even have his keys; we confiscate them in the case of drunk driving, for example, and tell people to come pick them up once they’re sober. I can’t find him in our records, unfortunately. However, we have the ability to look at entries of another police organization. As I said, I work for city police, but there’s also cantonal police, which is akin to state troopers in the US. 

I find an entry in their records about our visitor, but it’s not at all what I imagined happened. Turns out that he was on his way from his home to a campsite around twenty minutes out from our city where he has a permanent spot. His license plate was scanned on the way over and our colleagues received an alert because it was registered that the owner of the vehicle was missing and possibly suicidal. Once they arrived at the campsite and found him, he told the officers that he wasn’t suicidal but that he had been drinking before driving over, and also after arriving. Because he also claimed to have been drinking after arriving, they had to bring him to the hospital to extract some blood for analysis and to make sure he really wasn’t suicidal. So far, pretty much standard operating procedure.

Once they were done with everything, however, at around 11:30 pm, the officers were radioed to head out to another case. Instead of driving the suspect home (remember, they got him there from his campsite a mere twenty minutes away), they dropped him off in front of a hotel in the city. Now, to be fair, this is a hotel where you can randomly pop in and ask for a room and they’ll let you stay if they have a vacancy, even in the middle of the night.

You can already guess that that wasn’t the case and the hotel was completely occupied. But by that point, the officers had already driven off. So this poor fellow was left stranded in our city, still somewhat drunk and without a cellphone, and wandered around for hours until 6:30 am when I finally managed to get him some help.

I organized a taxi for him to get him home while cursing my colleagues for not making sure the suspect was safe.

I’m driving from Michigan to South Dakota to go to the Badlands National Park. It’s a two-day drive, so I decide I’ll just go for one day and then turn around and go home.

My GPS gives me two options on how to get there. I can either go essentially 270 degrees around Chicago, through Wisconsin, across Minnesota, and then across South Dakota, or I can keep going west through Illinois, into Iowa, and then north to Minnesota. The second option is ten minutes longer and about $6 cheaper from the lack of tolls. I say great and go that route.

Being the little speed demon that I am, I end up passing an Illinois state trooper going seventy-four in a seventy-mile-an-hour zone. He pulls out behind me but doesn’t turn on his lights. I hope the universe is being merciful and get in the right-hand land going sixty-nine. He follows. I come up behind a semi that’s going sixty-five. I turn on my blinker, change lanes, pass the truck, turn on my blinker, and move back over.

The trooper then turns on his lights, and I pull off the side of the road.

Trooper: “Hello, ma’am. Illinois state law says that you need to have your blinker on for 300 feet before you change lanes. Now, I’m not going to write you a ticket for that, just give you a warning.”

Me: “Thank you, officer.”

Trooper: “Where are you going to?”

Me: “Badlands National Park.”

Trooper: “Oh, neat. How long will you be there for?”

Me: “I’m just driving out there, spending one day, and then coming back.”

Trooper: “Just a day?”

Me: “Yeah, I mean, the trip is going to take a week as it is.”

Trooper: “Huh. Can I have your license? I’ll just run that real quick and get you the warning, and you’ll be all set.”

I hand off the information and sit and wait. And wait.

A second car that says, “Sheriff,” pulls up behind the gentleman with too much time on his hands. Finally, the sheriff comes up to my window.

Sheriff: “Hello. Do you mind if we have the dog sniff your car? He will be checking for narcotics.”

I have six more hours left to drive and want to get a move on.

Me: “That’s fine.”

The dog circles my car. And I wait some more.

Trooper: “So, ma’am, we get people carrying drugs across the state. So, I just want to know, do you have any contraband on you?”

Me: “No, sir.”

Trooper: “Are you carrying large amounts of cash?”

Me: “I think I have a dollar bill in my wallet.”

Trooper: “Did anyone give you any little baggies or other packages to carry?”

Me: “No, sir.”

Trooper: “Okay. Do you mind stepping out so we can search your car?”

I am pretty sure I can tell him no, but again, I want to get back to driving, and agreeing seems like the fastest way out of this corn-filled state.

Me: “Just so long as you don’t judge how messy my car is, that’s fine.”

I step out, and they spend about thirty seconds glancing through my car with luggage in the back seat and craft supplies in my trunk. The trooper comes back to me with my license and a warning for going seventy-four in a seventy.

Trooper: “Sorry about that, ma’am. There seems to have been a misunderstanding. You drive safe now.”

Me: “Thank you, officer.”

I’m not really sure what was misunderstood there, but I didn’t go that way on my way back home.

This happened about a decade ago while I was still a university student. One day, on my drive home from campus, I passed by the bank my account is with as I did nearly every day. However, this time, I saw numerous police cars in the parking lot and figured something had gone down.

Sure enough, when I checked the news upon arriving home, I found that the bank had indeed been robbed. There was a silver lining, though; the culprit was arrested at his home only a short time later and all the money was recovered. And when I say, “a short time,” I mean it took police less than an hour to track the culprit back to his house, arrest him, and recover the stolen money.

How did they manage to track the criminal back to his house so quickly, you ask? Well, in this case, the bank robber was incredibly dumb. How dumb was he? Dumb enough to write the note to the teller on the back of one of his own personal checks — the ones containing his full name and home address. Not only that, but he only lived a short distance from the bank.

I am a patrol police officer. I am with my partner patrolling a busy party street on Halloween, so it’s pretty crazy. So far, despite a couple of people drinking way too much, most people have been in a good mood and wearing amazing costumes, but we’re always on the lookout for things to get ugly.

A drunk and loud Marge Simpson comes running up to us.

Marge Simpson: “Help! I’ve been mugged!”

Me: “Are you injured, ma’am?”

Marge Simpson: “No! But I’ve been mugged! Follow me!”

She frantically runs down the road, and we quickly follow. She approaches the outside of a bar, where a bunch of people are smoking.

Marge Simpson: “There! They stole my bag!”

She is pointing to a literal group of pirates.

Me: “Which one, ma’am?”

Marge Simpson: “Jack Sparrow!”

There are about four reasonable impersonations of Jack Sparrow among the group, but thankfully, one of them walks up to us.

Jack Sparrow: “We told you, lady, we don’t have your d*** bag! Someone else must have taken it!”

Me: “What does your bag look like, ma’am?”

Marge Simpson: “It’s an expensive blue leather bag! It’s Gucci! Gucci!“

Just then, Jack Sparrow and I see the same thing at the same time and lock eyes.

Jack Sparrow: “Your bag is in your hair, you stupid woman!”

Marge Simpson: “What?!”

Me: “There is a bag fitting your description… uh… currently positioned securely inside your wig.”

She reaches above her head and grabs the bag, and her eyes widen with shock. She then turns around and starts screeching at a group of costumed women.

Marge Simpson: “Which one of you b****es put my bag in my hair?!”

She storms off and I am left standing there with Jack Sparrow.

Me: “Has she been bothering you tonight?”

Jack Sparrow: “A little, nothing too bad. She just saw a bunch of pirates and assumed.”

Me: “Well… you take care, then.”

Jack Sparrow: “This is the day you will always remember as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow.”

Gotta love Halloween!