According to the latest report from the RNC, two males were arrested this morning for throwing rocks off the Pearltown Road overpass and striking two vehicles passing underneath along Pitts Memorial Drive, one of which was a cop car.

The icing on the cake is that while one of the males is a youth, the other, who turned 18 at midnight, is considered an adult.

Welcome to adulthood, dude.

I wonder if these were the same wunderkind who were responsible for throwing the picnic table off the bridge at Bowring Park, seen here Monday morning, July 12th.

A bridge not too far. Click to enlarge.

Whoever or whatever did this tore their way through most of the park, leaving a trail of busted up picnic tables and scattered garbage behind them.

I mean, wow. They sure showed the park custodians who’s boss.

The oldest civil police force in North America will be holding information sessions throughout the province this month for anyone interested in applying for their upcoming Recruit Training Program.

Not just anyone can be an officer of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. Along with having the necessary post-secondary credits, applicants must make it through a selection process that involves “screening, physical fitness testing, selection board interviews, polygraph, visual acuity, medical and psychological assessments.”

Then you have to actually make it through the program. Then they give you your gun.

A friend of mine once told me about how his cousin was rejected by the RNC because they felt he did not have enough life experience. I think it’s refreshing to know the RNC actually take such things into consideration.

The St. John’s information sessions will be held on Thursday, October 29 at Room IIC 2001, Inco Innovation Centre, MUN.

Four people in their 20′s were arrested Tuesday night when they were found to be in possession of a loaded 9mm Beretta and 2 stun guns. One of them was wearing body armor.

From The Telegram:

At approximately 9:45 p.m. Tuesday, a call was received from Avalon Mall security advising that a male was inside the mall and suspected of carrying a firearm. As police responded, a vehicle suspected of being involved was stopped on Kenmount Road near the entrance of the Avalon Mall.

It’s unclear how their vehicle came to be suspected by the police, but I assume it must be akin to how when I was a kid my mom always knew what kind of shit I was getting into even when she wasn’t around. Magic powers and whatnot.

Dozens of charges are expected to be laid.

VOCM published a news clip today regarding a marijuana shortage in Corner Brook. Well, the real word on the street is that the shortage is actually province wide.

Over the past several months there have been countless high profile marijuana busts across the province, and as Corporal Kymbal Vardy of the RNC says, “police are doing a good job of keeping marijuana off the streets”.  And, while these headlines may bring comfort to the conservative citizens of our city, and province, the real story is that hard drugs, such as cocaine and ecstasy have never been easier to obtain.

The same, “word on the street”, states that as the RNC and RCMP dedicate increased resources on taking down petty marijuana dealers, hard drug dealers can peddle their wares at a lower cost to a young population that can’t find or afford marijuana.

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Update: The CBC are reporting that the RNC are after a syringe-wielding thief who’s description matches that of the guy I found shooting up earlier today, as mentioned below. Yikes.

Just now, I came upon three members of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary scouring the park between Long’s Hill and Livingstone Street.

According to the officer I spoke with, they were in pursuit of a suspect in a car theft. She asked if I’d seen a gentlemen in a black t-shirt go by. I explained how I came across a man in black t-shirt in the park an hour or so ago shooting up, but that was it.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve come across someone shooting up in broad daylight in this park. In either case, I’ve never gotten any trouble from the people doing this, probably because whenever I cross their path I don’t say anything and just give them a wide berth as I pass on through. Like you would.

The officer I spoke with told me they weren’t certain the man they were after had stolen the car, but they pursued him because he ran off when he saw them. If it was the same guy I saw, she figured he may have just ran off because he was in possession of drugs.

That’s the message sent today by the sentencing handed down to former head of the Corner Brook RNC, Bob Garland.

Garland sexually assaulted a fellow police officer, which netted him a conditional discharge (though he’d already resigned his position when the OPP got involved in the investigation) and some probation time.

Doesn’t it just give you that warm, creepy feeling?

To be honest, I’m not really an advocate of prison time as a solution (it’s like reverse rehabilitation, makes no sense whatsoever), but considering we haven’t changed any of our policies on prisons yet, this really just sets a bad precedent.

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There have been some unfortunate incidences lately involving the police in St. John’s and people with mental disabilities. There was the autistic teen who got picked up on Topsail Road and mistakenly thrown in the drunk tank overnight, and the mentally delayed teen with a toy gun who came face to face with an officer and his very real gun.

Unfortunate as the incidences were, in both cases nobody was hurt. But when a schizophrenic man in New Jersey was stopped by police last week things took a turn for the worst.

From CNN.com:

Surveillance tape from Lawrence’s Grill and Bar in Passaic on May 29 shows a police car pull up to Ronnie Holloway, who is standing still on the curb outside the restaurant. After a few moments Holloway zips up his sweatshirt — because the female officer in the car instructed him to do so, Holloway said.

At that point, the other officer in the vehicle, Joseph R. Rios III, exits the car, grabs Holloway and slams him onto the hood of the police car. He then pummels Holloway with his fist and baton.

Holloway said he had exchanged no words with the officer before he pounced on him.

The man spent the night in jail without any treatment for his injuries.

This is when the fire alarm went off after everything went downhill at the Nas show in Torbay :

Here’s a shot of the police piled on top of someone.

[Thanks for the videos, Lunch Box]

They must have some serious kitchen parties in St. Anthony.

Northern peninsula RCMP announced what might be the biggest ecstasy bust in the province’s history today. 5,000 ecstasy pills and three kilograms of cocaine were seized.

“This seizure would be significant in any urban setting in this country, but when you consider the location where these drugs were destined, it certainly highlights the problem with drugs that does exist in our communities, urban and rural alike,” Staff-Sgt. George Noseworthy, RCMP said in a statement.

Has this guy ever heard of trafficking? Most of the drugs weren’t staying in buttfucknowhere. They were probably en route to St. John’s.

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Some very dear friends of mine had their apartment broken into recently. Because I was present roughly 24 hours prior to the incident, the police asked me to come down to the station to give a statement and my finger prints, which I did yesterday.

I announced myself at the front desk and told them who I was there to see. They advised me to do the same thing at the wicket upstairs, which I did. After about 20 minutes (let’s watch him stew, I imagined them saying, little white coffee cups littered at their feet) the Constable appeared, introduced himself, then asked me to come this way.

I followed him back through the door he’d arrived through, down a hall and into an interrogation room. The room was very small, with one table and two chairs and walls that were covered with scratched-on markings, presumably etched by the suspects of various crimes past.

The Constable asked me questions, and as I answered them he wrote the details onto a page which he later read back to me and asked if I agreed was my statement of the events as I knew them.

After signing this document, he presented another, which he read to me section by section. The first section was basically an explanation of my rights and it asked if I understood them, yes or no.

Yes. Signature here.

The next explained my right to council, that it was available to me free of charge, and asked if I wished to avail of the service, yes or no.

No. Signature here.

It then asked if I was willing to provide one of a list of things for the purposes of this investigation, the list including items like my fingerprints, DNA, shoes, each with a box next to it for ticking. The constable had the fingerprints box ticked and presented me with the question, yes or no.

Yes. Onto part two.

Now the question was whether I’d allow my fingerprints to be kept on file for the purposes of future investigations.

I asked if there was any good reason why I’d want to have my fingerprints kept on file. He replied, well, no, not really.

Well, no, then.

Yeah, I don’t blame you, really.

Our signatures and the date completed the form. The Constable then explained he had to check and see if we could get my fingerprints done now and asked me to wait for him to return. That’s when I snapped the pictures, above.

It’s kind of cute how that document is laid out. If you’re a suspect in a crime you might be inclined to go along with whatever the police ask of you for fear of otherwise appearing guilty. Obviously you’re going to give your fingerprints for the purposes of the investigation since, if anything, that should help get you off their list of suspects. By following that up with a request to keep your prints on file, they’re praying on your fear of appearing guilty by not cooperating.

Giving my prints didn’t take long. When the Constable returned we went down the corridor and into another tiny room with a counter top and sink and a man who taped a sheet with print ink to the counter and inserted a sheet into a metal holder next to it. My fingers and thumbs were taken one at a time, rolled in the ink and then again on the sheet.

You’re gonna wanna give those a good scrub now, the man told me.

The soap dispenser next to the sink was huge, and the soap smelled like oranges and had exfoliating bits in it to help remove the ink from your skin. After a good minute or so of rubbing and rinsing, my fingers were as good as new.

The Constable thanked me for my time, told me he’d contact me if he had any more questions, and asked me about what I do for a living as he escorted me back to where he found me.