I especially like the one about the monkey!!!
While it's time for auld lang syne and recalling the good old days for many of us, it's also a season often filled with the bizarre, particularly for central Ohio law-enforcement officers.
Fairfield County Sheriff Dave Phalen recalled a bad man in a Santa suit.
"I was working at the old Lazarus downtown," he said of his time as a Columbus vice officer. "At one time, they had problems with men in the suit department engaging in inappropriate conduct."
One of them was the store Santa.
"Santa was bad, very bad," Phalen said.
He also was arrested for indecency.
Sometimes, family members treat each other indecently.
"I was working the East Side of Columbus," said Rollin Kiser, police chief in Grandview Heights, of his past work on the city force. "A guy shot his brother on Christmas Day for turning the cartoon channel. I imagine there was some alcohol involved."
It wasn't fatal, Kiser said, and the gun-toting brother went to jail.
It wasn't during the holidays, but Kiser can't help telling his favorite weird crime story, the tale of the messy monkey.
It happened during a traffic stop when he was an Upper Arlington officer.
"I was working third-shift traffic on Lane Avenue, working speed," he said. "I saw a car going fast, so I pulled the guy over, asked for his license and registration and asked him why he was speeding.
"He said, 'I had to get home. My monkey just (expletive) on me.' I looked down and there was this little spider monkey on his lap that had the runs. I said, 'Just go.'
"I worked traffic a lot of years and heard a lot of stories, like 'My mother died,' " Kiser said, "but never anything to match that. That monkey had this little haphazard look on its face."
Worthington Police Chief Michael Mauger recalled the bird that had the last word in the 1987 murder of Edward Montgomery, an assistant director for the Ohio State University marching band.
"One of the items stolen was his white cockatoo, a big one named Studebaker," Mauger said "We got a call from a Worthington school-bus driver going up to Findlay with the girls soccer team about a guy heading north on I-75 in a (stolen) Mercedes with a white cockatoo on his shoulder.
"The guy's doing hard time now," he said.
Not long before Thanksgiving, a Grove City woman exhibited poor judgment. Not surprisingly, she was intoxicated.
Perhaps that's why she asked a police officer parked in the Tee Jaye's Country Place Restaurant lot for a ride home, according to the police report.
He patted her down for weapons before allowing her to sit in the cruiser and found a crack pipe. There was another one in her purse, and other drug paraphernalia.
Busted.
