Today's short story or: The Stupids Hit Again

There's a friendly local high school here, Fictitious High. They haven't had any problems with violence, other than the usual fist fight or name-calling, some gang grafitti in the bathrooms, cat fights, a kid who's wearing colors and won't take them off (come on, it's a bandana tied around his wrist, and the dummy knows that gang colors/bandanas/headbands in any shape or form are not allowed there).

So, this afternoon, two young women came into the main office, the only way to enter the school unless some moron kid lets someone in through one of the side doors. The young women were there to take pizza to some group of troubled youths in the school. They do this every week. Those of us who work in the main office are never offered any pizza. We They just get to smell it for the rest of the afternoon.

Fictitious High, like the other Fictitious City schools, has a police resource office in full uniform stationed at the school. She was in the office today, getting ready to sign out for lunch, when a call came into the office that a young man refused to take off his gang colors bandana tied around his wrist, so she went upstairs to take care of the problem. After she came back to the office, the pizza was delivered and the delivery man left.

Several minutes later, Fictitious I answered the phone. In response to "Good afternoon, Fictitious High School," a male voice said, "Good afternoon, this is 911, I'm calling in response to a call from a pizza delivery man who said that two suspicious-looking young men wearing black hoodies were going into to the school as he left. Are you aware of any problems of this nature?" Uh, no. Fictitious I was not aware of any such thing. The office was rather full at the time, what with me Fictitious I, the resource officer, two rather large young women carting off pizzas and a cooler (what is in that thing? Shouldn't it be searched?), and six loud teenagers carrying on conversations unrelated to anything else, along with three kids asking for headache meds.

Fictitious I alerted the resource officer, who was again trying to leave for lunch, and the building's administrators of this development. The resource officer told the officer on the phone that as far as we Fictitious High's administration knew, there was no danger, but they would search the building to be sure. No need to send reinforcements.

Approximately 30 seconds later, two police cars rushed to the front of the school and four officers ran inside. Might as well fan out and check things. So here we have 1/3 of the students at lunch in the cafeteria, 2/3 of them in classrooms, possibly two dangerous men, and five people known to be carrying weapons legally. They searched the school as quickly and efficiently as possible, then determined after talking to Pizza Delivery Man that the suspects had been about 200 feet away from the building, at the transit stop, waiting for the bus. They had not been near the building when PDM called 911. The bus had already picked them up so it wasn't known who they were.

By this time, the resource office was rather pissed off that PDM hadn't bothered to call the school after he called 911. It would have been nice if someone inside (and the main office is the only yadda yadda yadda) (which is where I Fictitious I works 1/4 of every school day) had known about this before a bunch of officers came rushing in and there'd been a lot of yelling on the walkie talkies that all administrators and the resource office carry. Everyone in the school was aware of what was going on. It's one of those things that the administration tries to keep quiet, but it never happens that way.

So. No danger. Police officers ready to leave. A fifth one came in at this time. Time to arrest a fine, upstanding young man young hoodlum and cart him off to jail. Not that this is anything new; there's no violence at Fictitious High, but there are plenty of small time hoods. So Alleged Perpetrator (of what this time? Don't know yet. I Fictitious I will find out.) was called to the office, warrant was served on him, and off he went with his escorts.

Fictitious High's resource office never got her lunch today.

Fictitious I knows where she will hide if any suspicious people make their way into the school. Fictitious I knows all the good places. She has a plan.


P. S. Three kids trashed a boy's bathroom this afternoon, too. The fun never ends.