Boy, this has been my week for close brushes with officialdom. Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from Neighbor D: “Hey, Joel, do you know how long Ian’s place is? Because there’s a tax assessor who wants to go by there right now and do external measurements on it, but since it’s underground it would be hard to get an accurate figure. He’s going to go there right now.”
Emphasis in Original, as they say.
The message being, of course, that there’s a revenuer coming and it might not work out well for anybody should that fine servant of the public weal learn that the property contains two residences rather than the single one he knows about, all properly-registered and marginally taxable.
So I called LB inside, lest he start barking at the sound of a strange vehicle and cause someone to wonder who’s that making that noise just over the ridge. And we just sort of hung out for a while, and the evening Jeep ride was delayed.
But that was yesterday. Today I got to actually walk into a sheriff’s office.
Trigger warning: this story starts with some tweakers doing something very bad and some cops doing something rather good. So if you’re a typical TUAK reader, like me, and positive cop stories make you cry you might want to give the next para or two a miss. I promise the post ends on a negative note, okay? Just saying.
I’ve got a weekender neighbor who has been stockpiling a bunch of stuff in a shed on his property for his eventual move. One day several months ago that shed and another structure got broken into, and a lot of expensive gear went bye-bye. But it turns out the sheriff’s department pretty much knew who the bad guys were right off the bat. How? I dunno but two words come to my mind: The second one starts with an “I” and rhymes with “Informer.” So some or all of the stolen property has been recovered.
Okay, so my neighbor lives in another state and recently has suffered some serious health problems. So getting his stuff back from the cops once they decided they no longer needed evidence in custody or something has proven complicated and time-consuming. But at last he had an appointment to do just that, two weeks in the future. Because of the aforementioned health problems, he hired me to tag along and do the bulk of the carrying duties. I agreed cheerfully because money.
Today was the day. He drove for several hours to make this appointment. You may be sure I dressed carefully since having entered the building I wanted to be permitted to leave, and I’m paranoid like that. We made our appointment but the guy we were supposed to see was nowhere in evidence. In fact nobody would admit to knowing where he was, and nobody knew nothing about no steenking appointment.
So my friend got stood up, and had to drive several hours home after a totally dry trip. Sweet, huh?
Oh crap. And I suppose the guy hoping to recover his stuff had nothing from the po-po in writing, you know, to maybe jog the memory.
I don’t have much to do with officialdom in any way, but when I do… I damn well insist on having something printed off and sent to me. No phone calls and no emails. On paper and sent through the darn USPS, preferably registered if it’s really important. At least I’ve never been stood up like that, though there’s always a first time.
I’m no lawyer, of course (thank god), but it would seem to me your friend might be far better off if he legally appointed a representative of some sort to handle this. If his health problems are serious, he may have big problems later on if he couldn’t show up. The po-po don’t mind if they miss appointments, but they do get surly if the shoe is on the other foot.
“Be wary of strong drink, it can make you shoot at the tax collector…and miss.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
MJR has it right…
Hope you wiped your feet when you came out of there.