Police Beat Roundtable #18

The eighteenth installation of our ongoing look at that most charming column of the Daily Universe. Previous installments can be read here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Today we’re joined by GST, Ken Jennings and a mysterious female BYU alumna who we shall call “Brunhilde.”

March 8: An individual reported money and medication stolen from a backpack during Dancesport. The individual had left the backpack unattended containing $10 and a prescription of Lortab. Upon return, the items were missing.

Brunhilde: Dancesport participants definitely need their meds.

Steve: Not sure what is worse — the abuse of hydrocodone or attending Dancesport.

Brunhilde: You need one to do the other.

GST: What is Lortab? Quick, someone WebMD it.

Steve: Lortab = vicodin.

Ken: I am busy Googling “Dancesport.”

Brunhilde: That’s illegal in most states, Ken.

Steve: Lortab is also the name of the leader of the Hill People. “I am Lortab, you will dance sport for me!”

Ken: I am the Lortab, I speak for the trees.

GST: If lambada is the “forbidden dance,” Dancesport is the “BYU-sanctioned dance.” Lemme quote Jim Rome on this (Re bowling, but applies here): “Anything you get better at as you chug beer is not a sport.”

Ken: So it’s ballroom, is that right? Because that is not a sport.

Steve: Not complicated, Ken. Dance + sport = dancesport. It’s like doing the foxtrot combined with winter biathlon.

Brunhilde: And waterproof mascara.

Ken: If no one gets Gatorade dumped on them after a successful event, it’s not a sport.

Ken: Wikipedia says there are three regulatory bodies for Dancesport! I say unify the belts.

Brunhilde: Regulatory bodies just sounds wrong. Unify the belts sounds wrong too. esp. when it comes to BYU.

Ken: BYU insists that regulatory bodies be inserted between all Dansport partners

Brunhilde: Do they wear Danskin to Dansport?

Ken: And eat Dannon?

Steve: There are three belts: serpentine, disciplinary and chastity. BYU currently holds all three.

Ken: They put the “strict” back in “strictly ballroom.” And take out the “ball” part.

Oct. 1- Individuals spray-painted political messages on a complainant’s vehicle in a parking lot near Foreign Language Housing. Three witnesses reported four or five spray-painters. The license plate number on the suspect vehicle was obtained.

Brunhilde: License plate: LIBERALZ

GST: “Vote No on county ballot measure R!”

Steve: let me get this straight: someone vandalized a car, and so police were able to obtain its license plate. Good job.

Ken: Despite the spray-paint obscuring the plate, our crack squad was on the case!

GST: How does PB know that they were acting as individuals? Might they not have been part of some collective?

Ken: Or an LLC.

Brunhilde: Actually, they were the spray painters.

Steve: the bitter irony here is that the no-one could understand the political messages, as they were sprayed onto some dirty foreigner’s car who doesn’t speak English anyways. The car, that is. The foreigner speaks English just fine.

Ken: “GO HOME LITHUANIANS!!!” Foreign language housing isn’t really foreigners at BYU. It’s people who can’t cut the mission umbilical.

Steve: That explains the names of those housing buildings: Placenta Hall, Mucus Plug Building, etc.

GST: I always wondered about those freaks. Now I’m going to hear about it in the comments. Like that time I accused band members of being gay.

Brunhilde: Freaks who decorate their apartments with souvenirs from Japan, wear kimonos and preach about the virtues of seaweed.

Ken: You never get to know them. Within 6 months they marry that girl from their last area and move back to the mission.

Brunhilde: That’s what happened to Boz.

Steve: (pours out some Courvoisier for Boz)

Brunhilde: Anything that gets better with brandy is not a sport.

Sept. 27- A male student at Wymount Terrace reported his bike stolen. The student came home from class, parked his bike and after a few minutes started walking to the laundry facility. While on his way to the facility he saw a person walking a bike that looked exactly like his. When he got home and found his bike missing and his lock cut with bolt cutters, he realized it had been his bike. The individual who stole the bike is described as a 6-foot blonde white male wearing a backpack with the initials NFD.

Ken: Not @$% Dancesport!!!

GST: Hmm… the perp does not sound “suspicious”

Steve: NFD: Nice Freakin’ Description, buddy. We’ll never catch that dude.

Brunhilde: But was the blond guy wearing his t-shirt from the laundromat?

Steve: NFD is a well-known Lithuanian political protest slogan.

Brunhilde: No Foreign Dinks!

Ken: I like how foreshadowing works in the story. By the time he sees the identical bike being walked away from his home, you just KNOW whats going to happen!

GST: The downfall of many would-be career criminals: the inability to reject monogrammed gifts from mom.

Ken: Nice Foreshadowing Device

Steve: Ken ftw

Brunhilde: EXCELLENT

Ken: Aw, I set it up.

Sept. 30- An officer responded to reports of non-soccer players using Haw Field. The officer asked the group of students to leave, which they did.

An officer responded to reports of eight to ten male students playing football on the football practice field. The students left when asked.

Brunhilde: What’s wrong with these panzers?

Ken: I’m not a football player. I consider myself a “non-soccer player.”

Steve: They were they SAME KIDS both times.

GST: He could tell that they weren’t soccer players. You know, they looked like Americans.

Brunhilde: I understand the non-soccer players being booted. That’s only fair. Soccer fields are for soccer only.

Ken: Soccer is football. I am one of those can’t-come-home-from-his-mission kids. GOOOOOOOL!

Brunhilde: But the football guys were ON THE FOOTBALL FIELD.

Ken: I’m a big “supporter” of “Barthelona.”

GST: It’s “metric football.”

Brunhilde: No Foreign Dinks.

Steve: yeah, what’s with that cop booting people for precisely what they are supposed to be doing?

GST: But the football players were PLAYING. It was a PRACTICE field.

Steve: ahhhhh

Brunhilde: ahhhh

Steve: jinx!

Ken: One had five h’s.

Brunhilde: He always overdoes it.

Ken: Technically, not a jinx. No coke need be bought.

GST: Ken, I was about to type that same thing. Would have been double-jinx?

Steve: Ken, you didn’t phrase your zinger in the form of a question, you jerk.

Ken: I am not convinced these are the same incident – in one case the problem is that there’s casual playing on the practice field, in the other it seems to be that a non-soccer sport is being played.

GST: Ken keeps beating me on the buzzer. I guess it’s a life-long thing.

Brunhilde: Quit whining, GST. Be a man.

Steve: Suck it up already. MOVE ON, GST.

GST: I cannot.

Ken: I have always been a little “quick on the buzzer” but I just try to think of baseball. Or Dancesport.

Sept. 10: An individual held a sign offering free hugs in the Harold B. Lee Library. When asked by an officer to leave, he declined to leave the area and continued offering free hugs.

Brunhilde: Did he hug the officer?

Steve: “Beat it, freak.” “No thanks! La da dee da dum… FREE HUGS!”

Ken: Assuming the officer and individiual are both men! SEXIST!

GST: I know that scam. The hug is free, but if you want to upgrade to a grope, they charge.

Brunhilde: Maybe if he’d been charging for hugs it would’ve been different.

Ken: He was offering “free drugs” at the HBLL – it’s a typo!

Brunhilde: Lortab, stolen.

Steve: I love how that’s the entire story. The dude just ignores the cop, and…. scene!

Ken: BYU cops, at their most impotent: “I didn’t think he would just say NO!” Call for backup!

GST: Seriously, I hope they maced the guy.

Brunhilde: Funny how the hugging guy is more of a man than the footballers.

Steve: The cop then went to the nearest bathroom stall, choked down some Lortab and tequila, and cried himself to sleep in a puddle of his own impotent urine.

Brunhilde: I didn’t know urine could be potent.

GST: And when I say “maced” I don’t mean the trade name for pepper spray. I mean hit him in the head with a spiky iron ball on a chain.

Ken: The suspicious male offering free fist-bumps was carted off by police.

Sept. 4: A bicycle was reported stolen from a bike rack near the Wilkinson Center. The owner had gone into the bookstore to purchase a lock for the bike. When he returned, the bike was gone.

Steve: This Police Beat entry brought to you by O. Henry.

Ken: Police Beat: ironic O Henry version…… beat by Steve!

Steve: I BEAT YOU JEOPARDY PONCE!!

Ken: And our contestant GST is still in third place. But he can turn it around in our Double Jeopardy round!

Brunhilde: The thief headed to the barber shop in the basement, sold his hair to buy some training wheels and a bike bell.

Ken: Ironically, the thief was also inside the bookstore buying a pair of boltcutters.

Brunhilde: Ken does it again!! What are you on, young man?

Steve: Lortab!

Ken: I’m high on LIFE man! Come have a free hug.

Steve: Meanwhile GST says nothing.

Brunhilde: gst is here?

GST: I’m still reeling from the Jeopardy! stuff.

Ken: Just like you were back then, biatch!

Sept. 7: A microwave was reported stolen out of Budge Hall in Heritage Halls. This is the third time it has been taken. It is speculated that somebody has selfishly taken it for their personal use. There are no suspects.

Brunhilde: Personal use?

GST: Again, the moralizing of these PB writers!

Ken: BYU police strongly suspects the moral failing of all involved.

Brunhilde: Microwaving kittens for those who ate them on their missions.

Steve: How wrong they are. It was taken by Jesus to provide popcorn for the multitude. YE WHITED BUDGE HALL SEPULCHRES!

Brunhilde: One bag fed all of DT.

Ken: He turned an empty-seeming bag of kernels and two burritos into a meal for the entire dorm multitude.

Steve: Elder Redenbacher fell to his knees next to Elder Gordito.

Brunhilde: The beans just kept on coming. You know, I just read an inspirational story about never-ending beans. I’m dead serious.

GST: Oh, I believe you.

Steve: Was the protagonist named Mongo?

Brunhilde: There were no names. it was too sacred.

Ken: I think all Beat items should have the tsk-tsking at the end. “The bike thief is probably using the bike for his own selfish, prideful, ill-gotten gains, and should be reading the scriptures more.”

Brunhilde: Return what thou hast borrowed.

GST: She probably also wears the single-strap bookbag, the tramp.

Steve: The author views the PB as their own ’small plates.’ Instead of “it came to pass” the oft-repeated phrase is “there are no suspects.”

Ken: Woe unto ye inhabitants of Budge Hall! Who strain at a microwave but swallow a toaster oven!

GST: I know, and that’s a shame. Police blotter columns should really be more Hebrew bible-type books.

Ken: Old Testament stuff? So there should be more incest?

Steve: I am waiting for some monks to provide the Illuminated Police Beat. Little suspicious males encircling a skateboard.

Sept. 8: Approximately twenty-five juveniles were reported throwing water balloons on campus. A victim contacted University Police with the license plate number of the car and they called the owner, who turned out to be the father of one of the suspects. He called back a few minutes later with the cell phone number of his son. The son went to police and admitted he and his friends had been on campus throwing water balloons. In this case, police basically slapped their hands and let them go rather than give them citations.

GST: Thanks dad.

Ken: Police Beat disapproves of this lenient treatment!

Brunhilde: Does “basically slapped their hands” mean what I think it means?

Ken: Yep, public spankings, just like in the Ernie Wilkerson days

Steve: By “basically slapped their hands,” the author means, “they were given a merciless caning in a darkened sub-basement of the JSB.”

Brunhilde: And then a haircut by the Wilk barber.

Steve: It sure helps campus police procedures when your dad is Cecil Samuelson, doesn’t it?

Ken: Nepotism! Famous Daddy (NFD callback there).

Brunhilde: oh, wow.

Ken: If you gotta explain em…

Steve: Ken you’re some sort of svengali on the PBR.

Brunhilde: Will you marry me, Ken? Polyandry is the new black.

Ken: I consider all my swooning female PBR readers to be sister-wives of a kind.

August 30-31: A female student reported that her vehicle had been vandalized. Police don’t think it amounted to anything except some paint on her window that wiped right off.

Brunhilde: That’s the worst kind! It’s brown and stinky and…

Ken: You can wipe off the paint, but the dent is still there! I remember this from YM/YW chastity lessons.

GST: She suspects her bridesmaids. Also, they tied cans to the bumper.

Steve: I’m just confused here. Does the fact that paint can come off mean that her car wasn’t vandalized?

Ken: I like how BYU cops would rather do some minor body work than actually fill out the paperwork for a crime.

Steve: The BYU Police – Maaco division was on the scene.

Ken: They do the same thing for Wymount domestics. Ma’am, that bruise is going to just wipe right off. Or wear long sleeves!

Brunhilde: I always get Maaco confused with Aamco.

Steve: But your muffler is dazzling!

GST: I confuse them both with Aramco.

Steve: Well kids, that’s it. Final words of wisdom to our fans, who waited months for this disappointingly steamy pile of crap?

Brunhilde: Eat up!

Ken: Natural Fan Disappointment.