My day playing an undercover cop, sort of…

Sure, liking the police is super square, they’re the ones who shut down your after-parties, give you fines for buying student fare metro tickets without your student fare card and give you tickets for drinking in the park. But you know what? The police are fucking awesome!

I got my wallet along with my cellphone stolen while I was singing Karaoke at a bar downtown and after questioning what happened (did I forget them in the bathroom? did they fall out of my purse?) I woke up with a brain-ripping hangover and attempted to call my cellphone. An answer! Hallelujah! I asked if the kind stranger would like to meet me and swap my missing goods for a thanks-for-finding-my-phone cup of coffee. Nope! The not-so-kind stranger tells me he exchanged my phone for 100$ worth of drugs. Wicked! Too much to handle for my tired brain. I call Telus and ask them to cancel my account but sadly, for many frustrating reasons, they won’t do it. Blah blah blah, crappy no ID days, no debit card, no phone… C’est la vie right?

While wishful thinking had me hoping that after the batteries ran out, he would simply toss my phone and that would be it. But yay for me, he did not, in fact, he’s been using it to his hearts content this past month, telling my friends who would call that they had the wrong number and asking me when I would give him his 100$. This morning, not knowing what to do, I headed over to the police station to ask my burning question: ”So… what do I do now??!”

So they came up with a master plan. Calling him and telling him I’ve got a sweet little 250$ for him in exchange for my phone back. He said he was happy about giving someone something back that belonged to them. He even mentioned that ”maybe after all this is over, we could go for coffee or something”. Thanks man. So I planned a little meeting on the corner of a busy street, close to a park with many people, and waited for his arrival, dreaming of wild scenarios that involved stabbing (mine), amongst other things. Hoping the 2 decoy cops were close by, but unable to see them, I massaged my sweaty hands obsessively, waiting for my faithful and inevitable death. After 45 minutes, the hidden decoy popo drove in front of me and told me that they couldn’t wait around all day. Justice, not served. Damn…

However, the friendly men drove me back to the police station so I could retrieve my bike, escape the rain, and so we could further discuss my despair and well, slow down my heartbeat that had been escalating with each passing taxi in the past 45 minutes. My cop posse and I gave a phone call to my cellphone provider, rattled a couple of cages and they searched their big fancy cop computers to retrieve some information I was missing and voila! I might still have to pay my thousands of dollar telephone bill but at least the bad ass unkind drug dealer from New York can no longer make some phone calls to his crew. The cops were as cooperative as Telus was not.

Yeah, I have no street cred. Standing on a street corner waiting for a drug dealer to deliver his stolen goods then get arrested, thanks to me, so he could potentially hunt me down later and kill me (or at the very least, rip out my braces) didn’t sound all that appealing, but to be honest, neither are my unpleasant monthly cellphone bills. Well now he gets to run free, without consequence but without a phone either and while I didn’t really win all that much today, I really appreciated their patience and how helpful police men are, and let’s be cheesy for a moment here, these guys really don’t get all the credit they deserve most of the time and I was pretty surprised that 2 cops took nearly an hour out of their day so I could get my cellphone back while I nearly peed my pants.