Not terribly exciting, and no physical violence, but a quick acceleration of cop work that might turn a relatively small crime into a larger victory for society...

Ike and I were doing a little fishing near Index, and parked my van at a trail head to get down to the river. A POS blue Eagle Talon (with no door handles...your guess is as good as mine) was parked there, with two fairly sketchy characters sitting on the ground near it.

Sketchy characters were a young woman and "gentleman" of around 35 or so.

They asked if we could fix their car, or if we had a cell phone that they could use to call for help...they had been there all morning, and their car wouldn't start or run...he had the hood up, but was staring at the motor like it was a spaceship.

I told 'em that the cell phone gets no service there, good luck, and we're going fishing. My old phone didn't get service there.

We fished for a couple of hours, and returned from the other direction...as we approached my van, there was a white Mazda MPV parked behind the Talon...and the young woman was pouring gas from a gas can into the Mazda's tank.

There were also two other people in the van, and an older woman standing outside the van...

The young girl asked us if we'd help them push the Talon out to the road, about 30 feet or so...and then I noticed that the fuel door on my van was open, my gas cap was laying on the ground next to the van...and a white hose and a siphon pump were also laying there.

Walking over towards the group and asking her who the f*&K she thinks she is asking for my help after stealing my gas...she stared at me like I was speaking Japanese or something.

Seein' how there were at least five of them and only two of us, I decided the best course of action would be to see if my cell phone worked...and, surprisingly, it did...albeit weakly.

911 Dispatch had descriptions of all the characters I could see, both the cars, and both the tag numbers, within about a minute...when they noticed I was looking at all of them and describing them and their cars to Dispatch, they also seemed a little surprised that I was getting cell service...

The younger girl walked off into the bushes, returning about 30 seconds later, and everyone piled into the van, leaving the Talon there.

Deputy Odenberg showed up about five minutes later, and said that he didn't see the MPV on the road coming in, so he suspected they were nearby.

He asked for descriptions, and I started out with "They looked like f*&king tweakers to me, which probably doesn't narrow it down around here."

We talked about a statement, and found out I was a lawyer, and asked what I thought about the Talon being parked in the power lines right of way...to which I agreed with him that it was likely a public safety hazard...what if Puget Power had to come out to do emergency repairs?

He agreed and called for a tow truck...the tow truck drivers recognized the car and the descriptions of the tweakers...

A 21 year old girl, Jessica, to whom the Talon is registered, and her 35 year old boyfriend, Josh Brown, Chief Tweaker of this particular crowd of dirtbags.

Jessica is 21, reddish brown hair...Josh is 35, about average size, blondish crew cut, lots of tatoos.

Josh is well-known as a local tweaker and dip$hit, and also for stealing gasoline.

The truck drivers also knew where he'd be...a suspected crack house near River Bend on the Skykomish.

After a prolonged job of getting the Talon on the tow truck (they had to break in, and couldn't use a slim jim as there were no door handles), off they went with the car in tow. Ike and I saw them a while later along the highway where skid marks followed the car off the side of the road...it was an all wheel drive, and apparently the transmission siezed up after towing it a mile or so...what a damn shame.

Deputy Odenberg called me about an hour later, or so, and said that another deputy at the station house was on his way out to the very same house that he was on his way to...because it is a crackhouse, and they received a complaint. Interestingly enough, the house is owned by the older woman who was driving the MPV.

The Deputy told me that Jessica had been charged with 3rd Degree Theft, but couldn't tell me about busting the crack house, or the rest of the story...at least not yet. He's going to give me a call back near the end of the month after a few more things have been ironed out.

So...I lost about 8 gallons of gas...one tweaker's got another bust to add to her record, and the other tweakers and the owner of a crack/cook house are likely being busted, too. The neighbors around this house have been complaining about the tweakers hanging out there, but the cops have been unable to get at 'em...now they can.

The tweaker mobile is pretty much torched and sitting in impound in Sultan.

I guess that's about it for now...I have some pics of the Talon that I'll put up when I get around to it so you can all keep your eyes out for it if you're out fishing that way...and keep an eye out for that Josh character if he's still at large...he just got out of jail last week, and Jessica's Talon just got out of impound a few days ago, too...Josh's Bronco is still in impound from his last arrest.

Fish on...

Todd