Category: Crime

The firing line

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
A bear in the air just north of El Rancho Pendejo.

The clattering of helicopters overhead had become irksome, so I stepped out to see what the hell.

Hm. City cops, sheriff, KOAT-TV. … Goddamn it, has someone posted my résumé on NextDoor again?

Nope. Seems there was body count up the street around Larchmont and Montgomery. Just a short while earlier I had bicycled through that very area twice, at the start of a fine bike ride and again at its conclusion.

The media called it an “active shooter situation,” and indeed it was. Two people dead — one of them the suspect — and four wounded, two of them police officers. Happily, it seems neither sustained life-threatening injuries.

There were few details in a short presser I caught on Twitter, and nobody asked the question uppermost in my mind: How fucking stupid batshit insane do you have to be to start shooting citizens and throw down on the cops when there’s a police substation within earshot?

Luna. See?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
Banana moon shining in the sky (h/t Tom Waits).

I arose in the dark of the morning to see a dusting of snow on the yard and the blinking lights of an aircraft as it traversed a slice of moon.

“Hell’s goin’ on around here?” I inquired of Herself, as is my practice.

“Fuckin’ Russians,” she grumbled.

“What are they doing?”

“Dominating the news cycle.”

And so they are.

I loathe the smell of fascism in the morning, whether it’s ours or theirs, and especially when it arrives before coffee. The overactive imagination screens a clip of some brass hat in the Pentagon going full George C. Scott (Buck Turgidson or George Patton, take your pick).

But as options go, our menu seems as limited as the bill of fare at a soup kitchen.

Sure, do what you can to choke off Russia’s income — Stoli sales will slump, theatrically, if only because we’ll need the money for gasoline. Africa is going to find itself short of grain. Lots of little people living in various valleys await the shit monsoon from above.

But I don’t expect the oligarchs are sweating much, unless they’re in the sauna.

Oh, they might not be able to strut their stuff on the Riviera for a while, but there’s always the Crimea. Plenty Krugerrands in the lockbox. Shop online from the dacha. Na zdorovye!

Blockade

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
The road isn’t exactly closed. More like not there at all.

Right-wing antivaxxer Canadian trucker nutjobs? Nope. Just another road that goes nowhere by design.

This one butts up against Sandia Pueblo land, between Balloon Fiesta Parkway and Roy Avenue, which becomes Tramway Road NE just past Interstate 25.

It would be convenient to be able to press on to Roy via San Mateo. But you know how the white man is. Give him a bike path and the next thing you know he’s grabbed the whole damn’ country.

So I roll up to the Pan American Freeway and hang an illegal left turn, riding about a quarter-mile to Roy/Tramway on the west shoulder, against traffic.

Frankly, I don’t relish doing this. It gives ammo to the haters (“Look at that douche on the bicycle riding against traffic!”). And it gives me a small jolt of The Fear, because Pan American just south of Roy/Tramway is half frontage road, half interstate on-ramp, and I don’t care to become a hood ornament on an accelerating F-350 whose driver can barely see over the hood when he’s sober.

But there’s a nice wide shoulder — full of debris from previous mishaps, natch — and anyway, it’s the cost of doing velo-business in that neighborhood. So there you have it.

The payoff is the gradual, mostly uninterrupted, half-hour climb up Tramway to the stop sign at The County Line Grill & Smokehouse. There’s just one stoplight, at the casino just east of I-25, so you can just pick a gear and roll it.

Wave at the buffalo herd as you pass. Just don’t try to roller-skate through it. Because you can’t.

Show Low suspect behind bars

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Shawn Michael Chock.

Finally, a bit of follow-up regarding the vehicular assault on the Bike the Bluff race June 19 in Show Low, Ariz.

According to the White Mountain Independent, suspect Shawn Michael Chock faces 20 felony counts — 10 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument; nine counts of leaving the scene of a collision involving serious injury; and one count of unlawful flight from law enforcement.

Chock was charged in Navajo County Superior Court, but the state Department of Public Safety is handling the inquiry. No trial date has been set.

The suspect was hospitalized after being shot, presumably by police. He was shifted to the Coconino County slammer in Flagstaff on July 2.

Six of the seven cyclists hospitalized remain so, according to the Independent.