You Can't Make This Stuff Up! #amwriting #amwritingparty

Once again Lee Lofland has written a must read blog post. This one is titled War On Cops, I encourage everyone to check it out. You can read it here.


In other news that loosely pertains to law enforcement.

When I moved from Leavenworth to mid Columbia Basin I lost all my Sheriff and Police contacts. In the two years I’ve been down here, I’ve never gotten around to establishing new connections or setting up ride alongs. Until today.

And let me tell you, this new connection happened in the strangest way.

Mid afternoon, at the company office, we had a visit from one of Adam’s County’s Sheriff’s deputies. He requested the use of my office to set up surveillance on the fuel tank of the farm down the street. Apparently someone has been stealing a boat load of fuel. (although in this case I guess it can best be described as a tank full of fuel) Apparently the thief has siphoned thousands of dollars of fuel from our next door neighbor’s diesel tank.

So while our new friend, the Deputy, was setting up his cameras to catch the thief red-handed , we got to talking and I explained that I was a writer, writing law enforcement heroes/heroine (sometimes) and that I’d lost all my law enforcement connections when I moved down to the Basin. Guess what? Yep! He whips out his card and tells me to call him anytime I have a question. LOL. You gotta grab these opportunities when they waltz in your office with surveillance equipment.

In another story loosely connected to law enforcement, although this one runs along the lines of stupid criminals.

I got a very puzzling phone call today. A woman called asking for the current bookkeeper of the business. Since we run three businesses out of the office, and I do the books for one, but Becca does the books for the other two, I asked which company. She says for which ever company had employed Jennifer Leeland, and had given her the work reference. Now I’m familiar with all the employees in all three companies since I hired them, and I do payroll. I’ve been working for this company for three years and this name was not familiar to me. So I tell her we’d never employed a Jennifer Leeland. To which this woman replies- “well she couldn’t claim surprise considering Jennifer had lied about everything and stolen 30K from her over the past three years.”

So I ask this woman when the reference had supposedly been given, and this woman said three years ago. This news stirred a memory. I vaguely remembered my boss mentioning that one of his old book keepers had embezzled over 50K from him and he’d sent her to jail for a couple of years.

But I’m like no way. No way would this thief be stupid enough to use as a reference the boss she’d stole from previously and who had sent her to jail. But I call the boss and ask him if he had ever employed a Jennifer Leeland, and he says “Yeah, I sent her to jail for a couple of years. She’s supposed to be paying restitution since she was released, but we’ve never seen a dime.” So I told him about the phone call, and he was completely dumbfounded that she’d used him as a reference.

I bet this Jennifer’s newest victim is wishing she’d checked those references!