[ithacaartist]

Here's another example of wishy-washy police behavior.

Years ago, my son's BMX bike was stolen from the carrier on his mom's car, while she was shopping inside a place. As these things tend to happen, a kid who went to the same middle school rode it one day and parked it in the bike rack. OK, now the bike is found..but it's "evidence", right? This means it has to be picked up by a Sheriff's deputy (the city school is actually outside the city limits), transferred to the city police, where we were told it could be picked up later. We watched the deputy put the bike, intact, into his trunk.

When we went to retrieve it, we were taken to a back hall of the station where the bike was leaned up against the wall; but the saddle was missing. We all looked for the seat in a mountain of bikes in a storage garage across the street, to no avail. The sergeant, however, stood right there and watched as I proceeded to act upon my statement, "There's a seat on this bike that looks about like it.", by twisting the bike's seat off the post before returning to the station to load up our bike.

Nowhere near the magnitude of your experience, Terry, but still indicative that LEOs anywhere can have jerks/thieves among their ranks. Either a sheriff's deputy or city officer had purloined the original seat, and another city cop, a sergeant, was complicit in our rough justice. TWO bad showings for the price of one... I actually still feel kinda bad about snitching the other seat, don't think I'd repeat it