Or the cops will make fun of you*

Lt. B.M. (not to be confused with the Sgt.) at least tells me what's going on.

Like the time the guy came into the police station to hand over 3 grenades he happened to have found on his property. Just walked right into the station with the canister and said he'd like to have the police take his grenades into safe-keeping.

They had to evacuate all the civilian workers at the station.

"People can be so stupid," Lt. B.M. said.

According to him, the guy should have called the explosive ordinance unit at the military base instead of taking it to the police.

"But people do stupid things," he repeated.

Then he recounted a story about how one guy found an unexploded ordinance buried under some sand at a beach in North Kohala. The guy dug it up, stuck it in the back seat of his jeep and drove all the way to Kona to turn it in to police.

Lt. B.M. said he was apalled by the unnecessary danger the guy had put himself, and everyone else for that matter, in by picking up an unexploded ordinance, dumping it in the back seat and then bouncing along for 50 miles to Kona. He could have been blown to smithers.

But now that the guy was at the station with the possible bomb, the issue of liability reared its ugly head and Lt. knew he couldn't let the guy leave or it would be his ass on the line. (Incidentally, if you can make it so that it's the cop's ass on the line, not yours, chances are things will work in your favor).

So he told the guy to leave the ordinance in the far, far corner of the parking lot and surround it with orange cones.

Then he called the military's explosive ordinance unit himself.

So the moral is, if you don't want to end up as the center of ridicule in a cop story, don't go to the police station.


* I don't hate the police. I make fun of them, but I don't hate them. Oh, and the ordnance turned out to be a dud.