STORY BEHIND THE POEM THE EXHIBIT MAN

Jennifer McMartin is a brand new officer, only recently graduated from the academy.  She works in an area designated District Three.  In my area we were running a buy & bust operation targetting street level drug dealers.  Basically a buy & bust for those who are unsure, an undercover operator goes in and makes a buy and leaves the area, the remainder of the squad immediately swoops into the area and arrests the dealer.  Operators very quickly get "burned" in this type of operation, so it is always nice to bring in a fresh face to do the buys.  Jennifer certainly qualified, so we made arrangements to borrow her to work the project.  In addition to giving us an operator it gives her a chance to gain some experience.

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Speaking of experience.  Rusty Fostveldt has been around for awhile and on this particular buy he was the designated exhibit man.  The undercover makes the buy and then turns the evidence over to the exhibit man to be tagged in the drug locker for analyzing.  On this occassion, Jennifer bought 1 rock of crack cocaine, less than a gram in weight.  She turned it over to Rusty who commented "This thing is so small I hope I don't lose it".  Well unfortunately as he was in the evidence room he did lose it by dropping it on the floor.  He searched high and low for that rock and I swear I think he would have searched all night.  Luckily, he spotted it hiding in the corner near the cabinet, but it took awhile to do it.

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Earlier Jennifer had commented on the poems and wondered how long it took to write, this incident happened and was funny enough so I took on the challenge.  I started writing at precisely 11:15 pm and the initial draft of the poem was completed and read to the group at 11:43 pm, so about 28 minutes in this instance.  Some take longer and some shorter.  My fastest poem, and I think one of the funniest was the poem Stone Cold which took 7 minutes start to finish.

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