Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do

Jesse Cornett

In the middle of a lot of serious political debate, I thought I'd post something I thought was both funny yet sad. It serves no political purpose whatsoever....

So I'm sitting in my office at home working on a few things one evening last week when I hear someone running between my building and the next. Shuffling quickly, really. Being that it was out of the ordinary, I went to take a look.

At first, there was a man leaned over right by my gate who then turned and sprinted crossways across our yard and into our garden. As he approached the corner of the fence, he turned around and started to pull his pants down. It looked like he planned to add a little of his own fertilizer to the garden.

I almost said something at that point and was just about to when just as quickly, the pants when back up and he struggled repeatedly but ultimately climbed over our 6 foot fence into the next yard where he had an easy escape. It looked like a scene from your average crime show and I fought the urge to just wait and watch the cops run through next.

Oh no, not me. I was curious what he dropped over by my gate, unaware the corner of the garden was where the bulk of the evidence was deposited. Alas, before I could get to my backyard, I confronted a police officer who confirmed they were searching for that same guy.

I curiously walked around my block and almost went inside – despite the fact there were about 4 cops on the next block. When almost inside my door, another officer pulls up and asks if I was the one who called. Why no, I answered but the next door neighbor who’d seen the same thing immediately piped up “it was me.” I was not the only witness.

Jointly, we all went to the backyard to look at the evidence left behind. More on that later. As we went back to the front of our house, the officer left on foot for a while but when he came back, he assured us that the suspect had indeed been captured. When I said I was going to take a picture of the evidence for my Facebook page, he agreed that was a good idea and went to get his camera for the same purpose. He was in the best of humor – as we know, officers sometimes lose that. He confided in us that in his ten years as an officer, this was his first such chase (not his first chase, mind you, but for the offense).

As we waited with the officer for a few, completely unsure why, I overheard him ask if the cameras wanted to come get video of the evidence before it was seized.

When he got off the radio, he had our attention. Video cameras, we asked? Yes, COPS was in the middle of an 8 week stint in our precinct and since they had the suspect, they wanted to bring him back and film our alley and yard both with the suspect in the yard and not in the yard.

You cannot make this stuff up, folks:

The crew arrived and barnstormed back into our backyard like they were about to arrest the Unabomber. Meanwhile I was rapidly shooting as many iPhone shots as possible while laughing with the other witnesses, who jokingly referred to ourselves as the victims (when the only victim was a poor tomato plant).

One of our neighbors has a slightly older, rugged looking houseguest right now and happened to come to the back door as the film crew arrived and in a deep gravelly voice, shouted out “hey, what the hell’s going on here!” Funnier even more is that the door from which he spoke had a 3 foot drop-off and no porch so it looked like classic COPS material.

I’m on the phone a lot with my wife Molly at this point. She loves COPS and was driving home from the coast so missing the action. She told me that I should take my shirt off because that’s what everyone does on the show (for the record, I put on a nicer shirt than my white undershirt I had on when the whole incident began). The COPS crew later even wanted to interview me on the show to tell them the story of what I saw (i.e. the get away and evidence being ditched). Ladies and Gentlemen this is the sad, sad story of how I achieved a spot on national TV.

So, what actually happened? Someone riding his bike down the street got eyed by a police officer in a way that made him think the officer knew he’d just committed the crime he had. He ditched his bike and started running through yards and alleys before ultimately being caught thanks to “aware citizens like me,” ha ha, as the officer referred to me very seriously to the COPS crew.

What did the suspect have that made him run… drugs? No. Money? Not even. Guns? No way. This was all over 30 or so Hershey’s Chocolate Bars (with Almonds, of course). All of which were dumped in the corner of the garden.

So, it turns out the highest yielding crop of the garden this year was Hershey’s Bars. And it’s too bad the Police had to seize the whole crop, citing it as evidence.

By Jesse Cornett Aug. 18, 2009