It was a good day...again

I just had a train day (day when I do mass transit and don't drive to work), and I saw two of the coolest things I've seen over the past few weeks.

First, on the way to the train I saw a driver jibber-jabberin' on her cell phone (and yes, the driver really was a woman) at a freeway exit adjacent to the train station. She was waiting to turn right and either didn't see or didn't care that about the large sign above her traffic signal that read "No Turn on Red."

In typically Miami fashion she turned against the red anyway, causing an oncoming car to slow down dramatically to make way for her. Seconds later a motorcycle cop who sometimes stakes out that exit from under a nearby overpass turned on his sirens and lights and chased that numbnut down.

Yeah! The mouth breathers do get busted sometimes.

Second, while on the train I was doing my favorite commuting thing - reading a book. I'm on page 400 of Lawrence Sanders' The Second Deadly Sin. If you like old-school cop/murder mysteries this is a great one. And Sanders is one of the best. I'm a huge fan.

Anyway, I was reading, and I heard a young guy - maybe in his early 20s - about four rows up and across the aisle answer his cell phone and start talking. It's ironic. His subject matter wasn't bad. He was telling the person on the other line about how he was maturing and realizing that hot cars and hot clothes and hot tunes and hotter women weren't anything compared to stability in your life. He even cracked a joke about a friend of his with bad priorities who recently spent several hundred dollars on a new high definition radio, but that friend didn't even own a car to put it in.

The problem was this guy was really loud and every other word was a swear. Well, sitting right next to me was a woman with her grandson. He was probably six or seven. I know he was her grandson, because his mother had taken his other siblings to the upper deck so they could look out the windows.

After a few minutes of the phone call grandma calls out "Excuse me young man, I'm sitting here with a little boy. And he does not need to hear what you're saying or how you're saying it."

It took phone guy a second, but he realized what she meant. And would you believe it, he was embarrassed! He actually expressed shame, covered his mouth, stammered an apology, and carried on his conversation at a lower tone, minus the swears. And when he got up to exit the train at the next station, he stopped at grandma's seat and apologized profusely again.

Very cool. There's hope.

Also, my last post was one I started writing on Monday but didn't get around to finishing till today. So you may have missed it. It actually posted as two items ago. Give it a read. It's on a stupid political move in Florida.

Good even, and peace and hair grease. I'll post more tomorrow.

Law enforcement rocks when it works, but...

something stinks in my 'hood.

I can call the cops in my fair city about being menaced by a neighbor's unleashed pit bull and get no response, or call them about Sling Blade blasting his stereo over french fried 'taters in his back yard, and get no response, or call them about anything else going down in my hood and get no response, and every time, they tell me it's because officers aren't available for low priority calls.

I think I understand what a high priority call is now. An hour or so ago, I took my dog out for a stroll and a coffee in the heart of downtown, a few blocks from my house, and as we sat and sipped (him from a water bowl), five cops gathered on the corner...downtown, where the worst thing that usually happens is people park at meters without plugging 'em. Those patrol officers stood there shooting the breeze and laughing for half-an-hour, before slowly meandering off in different directions.

Yeah, high priority.

PS. Don't anyone write me about cops having to spend most of their time dealing with the tougher, more violent stuff. I know that. I spent four years as a crime writer before switching to pop culture, and I know it's a tough job. I count lots of cops as personal friends. But I also know that it can't be coincidence that I can't even get a squad to drive by Sling Blade's house or crazy pit bull-owner's apartment, and yet I see the same officers whose patrol zone is my side of the neighborhood always on a park bench or a bar stool (drinking coffee, of course) in the touristy downtown zone a few blocks away.