True Detective Stories

While you’ve all read stories featuring Diego The Idiot Detective, the truly demoralizing part of my job is there are a multitude of Diegos in this department.

Yesterday I received a call from the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department in Michigan. (No, I never heard of it, either, but it’s apparently near Ann Arbor.) Anyway, a sheriff’s deputy was out on a car stop with what appeared to be a stolen car taken from Philadelphia.

The deputy gave me the information, and I checked the original stolen auto report. The vehicle was a rental car from Enterprise. The renter parked it on the street on October 11th, and he forgot where he parked it on October 12th. Considering the district where it happened, I am sure the renter was drunk at the time.

As I was scrolling through the paperwork, I noticed something both hilarious and infuriating. Apparently, the renter eventually found the vehicle later on October 12th, and reported it to the police district. A conscientious moron police officer took the information and made an auto recovery report.

Unfortunately for the WCSD officer and the renter, the jackass police officer never sent the report to NCIC, which means it was never taken out of stolen status.

Meanwhile, the renter was stopped on the side of the highway, detained by police, for driving a vehicle which was no longer in stolen status. I explained the situation to the sheriff’s deputy, and after laughing at my department’s incompetence, assured me he would let the renter continue on his way.

I called the district in question – arguably the dumbest police station in the city – and told them to submit the report immediately, before this poor sap gets pulled over again.

You know, this department has more than its fair share of self-owns, but this one was completely avoidable, and still the cops couldn’t get it right. Simply infuriating.

(Thanks to Mis.Hum. at AOSHQ for the ONT link!)