The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 220: Tim Cotton—The Duck of Justice Flies Again

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

Mike chats with Tim Cotton, the famous cop who saved a stuffed bird from the trash heap and went on to write a couple of bestselling books.

The ocean moves us, whether that's surfing a wave or taking in an inspiring view. The ocean feeds us. Sustainable seafood practices bring the ocean's bounty to our plates. The ocean teaches us how our everyday choices, big and small, make an impact. The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forests. The ocean connects us. Find your connection at monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. Hello, friends. This is the way I heard it episode number 220. This one's called The Duck of Justice

Flies Again. My guest today is a cop I know named Tim Cotton. Tim has been on the job now for 33 years serving and protecting the good people of Bangor, Maine with a level of dedication and excellence that I think deserve to be acknowledged. He's also a gifted writer, though, whose words have done a great deal to bridge the gap between America's cops and the people they serve. I first got winning of what Detective Cotton was doing when I stumbled across a post on the Bangor Main Police Department's Facebook page that was attributed to him. It was under the title, Got Warrants, with a question mark, kind of like Got Milk, I guess, and it made me laugh out loud. Because Tim Cotton had essentially hijacked the local police blotter and rewritten it with the level of

familiarity and humor, not often associated with petty crimes and misdemeanors. Here are just a few of the entries that I stumbled across back on April 13th in 2016. The first one read like this. Hitting the building twice with a motor vehicle will cause those inside the building to contact the local gendarme. Upon the arrival of officers Burns and Perry, they discovered that the driver was a local lady who wore what any of us might wear to bed. The description in the report was that she was draped in a pink plush robe wearing fuzzy slippers with a cheetah print. Naturally, her dog had come along for the ride. It was a small dog, exactly what you would expect if you were to imagine the kind of dog

that might accompany a woman wearing a pink robe and fuzzy cheetah slippers. The woman had been consuming spirits prior to her arrival at the accident scene. She was arrested and charged with operating under the influence. The dog was well cared for at the local shelter for the night. I really don't know what else to say. Here's another one that made me laugh. Reports that start with a shirtless male approached my cruiser usually end with a soundtrack that includes the tinkling of handcuff chains.

This one is no different. The man claimed his shirt had been ripped off by a female as she pulled him out of a cab. She was located by the sound of her voice, which was very much like a typical voice, yet louder and more annoying. Her speech was slurred, and she approached Officer Burns, who informed her that she was standing too close. She refused to back away, and so, before a true and formal introduction could be facilitated, she was around. She was scrappy, though, and during the search was disarmed of a lovely necklace that was not only fashionable, but also functioned as a knife. The lady was then escorted to jail for the crime of disorderly conduct.

She had some experience with the shackles as she was able to slip them off during the short ride to the jail, a veritable knife-toting Houdini, she was, only louder. The shirtless male left the area before. we could speak to him again. I would say he was smarter than all of us. Godspeed, shirtless male, Godspeed. You get the idea. Detective Cotton has a way with words. So I began to share his got warrants column on my Facebook page and was positively delighted by the response. So too was Tim, who wrote me a very nice letter and paid me a series of very nice compliments that made me blush. Anyway, we became friends and five years later, I'm even more delighted to report.

that the Bangor-Main Facebook page now has hundreds of thousands of followers, and Detective Cotton has published a couple of really great books. The Detective in the Dooryard came out last year and went on to become a bestseller. It's a terrific collection of short stories about life in Bangor-Main and the ups and downs of being a cop in a big small town. His latest book is even better. It's called Got Morrance, and it includes the very best examples of what attracted me to Tim's writing in the first place.

can't recommend it enough. In fact, I'll read an entry after the conversation you're about to hear, which touches on everything from the joy of writing to the endless fun of being a cop in this enlightened age of defund the police. We'll also discuss the duck of justice, the famous foul, which Tim plucked from a garbage can years ago, who now greets visitors to the Bangor Police Department, visitors who travel from all over the world to pay homage to Tim and his famous foul. In other words, the duck of justice flies again. This is the way I heard it. Do do do do do do do do Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the

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ZipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire. You know what I just did, Tim? I ran upstairs and did some last-minute manscaping. Excellent. I shaved in the shower, and I missed a quarter-sized patch. Where? On my left cheek.

Face. Yes, on my face. The cheek on my face. Yeah, you threw us off with the manscaping. That's fair. We're talking to a sponsor who wants me to endorse it, an actual manscaping product. But I was just referring to, this has happened to all of us. You miss a little patch on your face.

100%. And it drives you crazy all day long. Yeah, especially if you get under the lip right here. You know, you'll talk. I have a 10-year-old razor in my locker at work for when I missed the spots because I shave in the shower too, which is great that we both do separately. Or now. Yeah, well, unless, you know, things could get strange.

I'd said to my deputy chief, I borrowed it from him 10 years ago. That's not a joke. It's a shick. I don't know if I can say that here. Sure, you can. I'll bleep it. I bleep the shick, and it's 10 years old. And I said to him yesterday, hey, look, I've used this for 10 years.

I borrowed it from you when you were a detective. And now you've surpassed me in the power and authority realm. And I'm using the razor of the guy that's my boss. I feel good. So, yeah. See, once you use another man's razor, Tim, you're really venturing into a, like a whole other spot on the old vent diagrams that I don't think really God or nature intended to be shared. I'll bleep that, Chuck.

You bet. I've never shaved with another man's items. Never. I've never shaved another man's items, which is different. Yeah, wow. This is already going to right down the crapper. Where'd you think it was going to go? I knew. I was waiting. I was going to say I'm chatting with my favorite cop, Tim Cotton, but I have the privilege of knowing a lot of cops. Tim Cotton is my favorite cop because he's done more in my estimation, possibly accidentally, but for cops and for the relationship that our troubled society

needs to have with cops than any other dude in uniform that I know of. Wow. That's a hefty thing to say, and I appreciate it very much. It's been fun to try, and I do fail. I know I fail a lot because I hear from some members of society that don't feel I've done that much. There's some truth to it, but I've tried. In the end, I can say I tried my best. I have it. It's been fun. your support over the last, I don't know, five years has meant a lot to all of us. Well, a lot of what you just said you put in the past tense, are you still trying or is the trying over? Oh, no, no, I want to continue to try. I just know that some days it gets you down a little bit because you'll see the comments. They always say, don't read the comments, don't listen to the trolls.

Good for you. But I like to read Who Hates Me. I like to keep track of it. And I don't buy that. I have read the trolls from the beginning and I try to engage. Never at your level of engagement because I have to go to work the next day and I've still worked for the people. And so I can't say everything I think sometimes, which is sad but true. I've tried to engage with the trolls a little bit and I've tried the kind method. It seems to work, but not always. And there's an element of society that really doesn't enjoy what I've done.

And that's okay too. I've had a great time. Sometimes cops thank me and I appreciate that. Well, look, as a guy who is out there and dancing, as it were, in front of six million people in social media. Yes. It took me a while to figure this out as well. You know, I think some people never figure it out.

But ultimately, when you engage with a troll, you're not really engaging with the troll. You're engaging with the troll in front of, in your case, what do you guys have over there now? Half a million people or so? About $3,000, I think is on the Bangor PD page. And my own page is like $63,000. Those people are friendly. I mean, those are friendlies that have come in on the beach. You know, I've collected them to my own writing page a little bit, and a lot of them, just wonderful.

But on that page 325, and so you always will find somebody. And it happens on the days, actually, I can thank you for some of the hate because when you share a post, it goes to places where it never would have gone, right? And when anybody shares a post, it will end up in the strangest places. And suddenly you pick up several trolls. They're like, oh, I hate you for this reason, or I dislike what police are, or I dislike what you've done. and I don't think cops should be funny or interesting or mildly amusing. Those days when you get a big share, you meet people that you never would have, they won't go searching for Bangor Main PD, right?

They're not going to search for it. But they'll find it through someone else. Right. And then they engage. I'm not going to change all the hearts and minds, but you know what? I can maybe make it be a little faster or I do what I can. Look, last week we talked about Don Quixote, and you know, and it occurred to me.

And I didn't set out to do this at all. but when I look back at a lot of the stories that wound up in this library, they are quixotic tales. Sure. They're Sisyphian in nature. And part of the reason I wanted to talk to you, aside from shamelessly plugging both of your terrific books, which I'll get to, is because you have embarked on a quest for a kind of unreachable star. Let's just start with air. First of all, has there ever been a tougher time in your life to be a cop?

And do you think there's a way to be something other than the one-dimensional guy in a uniform that many of your detractors would prefer you to be? Do you think by becoming more human and writing as a human and channeling as you do so well this weird mix of Garrison Keeler and Tom Bodette, do you actually think you can build a bridge back to a sane land with those kinds of tools? That's a good question, obviously. Damn right, it's a good question. It's all I've got him. He's known for that. He's known for some gems. There's no question. I got no answers, but my questions are multitudinous. I think maybe to a few people, but I think the decisions are made before people engage with a cop. What they're basing it on is their past experiences with a cop.

And they're not really using the current that day, that moment, they're focusing on what was my experience with a cop before. So I came up in a different time. I came up in a time when it was a Motorola radio, your older FTO field training officer, and they would literally smack you if you did something that was totally stupid. And it was okay. You accept it because, you know, you're the new guy or girl. When you treated someone poorly in those days, even if it came across that way, you'd get back to the cruiser after and they'd say, hey, hey, what was that all about?

Are they an enemy or did they do something? Did they have an infraction or did they, oh, I guess they're not the enemy? No, they're not the enemy. And they always told you the same thing. This person's going to work today. They're going to work today and they're working so they can pay your salary. Lovely people will tell you they pay your salary. That happens a lot. It's old. It's so funny to year. But they do. You do need to keep that in mind. They do pay your salary and they pay you to do a job. I think we're missing older guys because I think they're leaving, older guys, older ladies that have been a cop for 15 or 20 years. We're lacking in that group. You know, we've got old guys who should leave. That would be me. You've got young guys and girls who are coming into the job. But if they don't have that older shoulder or that person to listen to and tell them they're stupid or that was idiotic. That was dumb. You did something stupid.

You learned from that. But if we don't have those people with those experiences, I think we've lost some of that with the loss of cops. And that is happening, I think, due to now, more so in the last couple of years, this movement, this anti-cop sentiment, some of it rightfully shared, okay? Because we see things. We know there's horrible things happening. So we've lost not the love and feeling, but we've lost some of that age-old sage advice.

I hate to see that go. I hate to see it go too, Tim, because I don't understand if there's a shortcut to get that back. Right. How long now on the job for you? 33 this year. In a row. Some might say have been disengaged for a couple of years at a time. Yeah, 33 years, started off part-time in a small town.

That was the best experience just working with cops who'd been cops for 25 or 30 years that came out of the Vietnam era. Cops of the 70s. I was in a bookstore last week signing some books off the shelf. Nobody was there. You can't do anything in person right now. Your books are just random books? Actually, I sign yours now. I sign Chuck's name.

So it's you who's doing that. Gotcha. People are all confused. A cop walks up to me and he sees me at the table. He sees the name on my book. and I'm doing just 10, 12 books for Barnes & Noble. And he said, you're a cop? I said, yeah.

He said, oh, I was on the job. I said, when did you come on? You could tell he was a little older than me. He said, 72. Well, that was a tough time to become a cop too, right? Post-60s, he came out of Vietnam, went right to work in a rather large town in Mass. I won't give it out. But he said, man, it was the greatest job ever.

I loved it so much. And do you love it? I said, I do most days. He goes, oh, it's in a horrible time. I said, well, think back when you came, when you started. 72? I mean, race ride. 60s.

Jeez, of course. That whole big mess, right? Is this the worst time? I don't know. I do think the attitude of society has changed toward cops, but I don't think it's the worst time in our history for a cop. You know what I mean? What do cops say?

And I'm not asking you to betray a trust, but I guess really the first time I heard the expression defund the police, my first thought was, I must be watching a skit. Maybe someone's filming me, like I'm being punked. Right? To see if this is actually being taken seriously. But of course, it's been taken very seriously. In many cities. In fact, on returning the favor, we had just profiled a great cop. The profile is probably the wrong word. Featured a cop in Minnesota. Okay. You know, Mike the bike cop. Sure. My first thought was Jesus, how is he dealing with this? Because it was Minnesota. And then I thought of my buddy Lamar Sharp, who we also featured on that show, great cop, loves the community. And then I thought of you. But I really never had a chance. to ask, when you guys are together, how does the whole defund movement metastasize among men and women who wear the uniform? Well, I think initially it was a shock because we thought we had already been

defunded. And then I realized, no, no one took any money away. They just didn't give it up first. And I say that jokingly, because I've worked for a great department and they've taken good care of their cops. But I think it's laughable to a point because I've watched some of the comedy take place after that became the cry. And I've watched the mayor of certain cities call the cops immediately upon with an issue that really wasn't something that should have been called about, but instantly that mayor, that's who you reach out to because we did become, we are the last resort for many people. And the reason we go to so many different calls is because someone called.

We don't seek those things out to do. We didn't seek to get into the game of trying to take care of the mentally ill. but the ball's been dropped in other parts of society. And so they go, well, who do we call? And what people tend to forget about mental illness and the scourge that it is for folks suffering through it is that the people that call us have already tried to talk to them and they have letters after their name,

they have skills that have been taught to them over years. But you know what they do when it gets violent or angry? Who do we call? But you call a cop. And I don't like some of those, oh, who's going to run towards crime and danger? I don't play that game. My point is just that the people,

that call us already are typically involved in the mental health game and they have much more training. But what they don't have training in is sometimes things turn physical because the person becomes physical and you can't talk your way out of a fist fight at times. You want to with a nose like mine, no one wants to be punched in the face. So you try to talk, but by the time they call, they've lost control of the situation and there's only a couple things you can do, show up and sometimes grapple. And it's sad but true because the person who had all the training and all the degrees couldn't handle that situation because people don't always follow the rules. When you talk about defunding us, the fact of the matter is you're giving up something that you've caused it to

happen because you called because society dropped the ball already. They've just let these people wander and there's no help for them and they just call it cop. So we're like the garbage can. Sometimes we're the last resort, you throw it in and hey, what do you get? You get the the cops. We do talk about it, but we've never talked seriously about it until recently because we've seen some cities, I think of someone in Texas that starts with a day that's having some real tough times. And they've lost 150 million from their police budget. And we know a cop's down there. We know a cop down there from our agency that said, I responded seven hours later to two persons with guns seven hours after it came in because there's nobody to go. I think we're

seeing a backlash of that talk now. And people are realized. that that's not really the fix. It was a great slogan. It came out as a slogan, and it became a mantra, but now it's becoming kind of a bit of a joke, if you ask me. That's exactly what I was hoping you would say, because in my world, I spent a lot of time looking for examples of the language becoming not just corrupted, but a parody of itself, a platitude, a trope. And then all of a sudden people are taking things literally. Right. Like literally, Follow your passion. We don't literally mean that, right? Except a lot of people do. Sure. It's like, how the hell did that happen? When I first heard cries to defund the police, I didn't think

that's what they meant. Sure. I didn't think anybody was seriously saying, let's take the money out of the police departments and do everything we can to affirmatively discourage more good cops from applying, which is what we desperately need. Sure. Right. I thought it was going to be some sort of platitude that said, hey, let's think a little more broadly about where we put our money and is there perhaps a more equitable way to distribute the funds that are available to serve society's greater needs and so forth. No, they meant defund the police. Actually meant it. I think they did. Right. And now there's a reckoning. Yeah, it's coming around. It's like that moment when you lean too far back on your chair. And you realize, you know what, I'm going down. I'm going

backwards. Right. What can I do to save the embarrassment now? Nothing. Yes. Right. It's going to have to go splat, something's going to have to go and then we're going to have to clean it up. That's when the experience that you talked about before will save us. And I just hope there are enough men and women left with 30 some years of experience who are there to pick up the pieces. Because I don't know how the rookies are going to do it. It's a valid point and well taken. I do think during the last couple of years, there was a mass exodus. If you were close to your retirement, cops said, okay, I'm going to go drive a dump truck for a while to make the gap between now in Medicare.

You know what? You want a cop who could drive a dump truck, I think. You need a guy who's done a lot of things and we'll do other things. We've got to think outside the box. I hate that term. But the truth of the matter is, we've seen the reckoning. We've seen agencies say, well, now we can't get anybody to apply what happened. All we heard about was how horrible we all were.

This is a horrible comparison. But I said it to some folks today because I have this conversations with people who come to speak to me. And some are not pro-cop, but they're not anti. And some are pro-cop, obviously. My significant one works in the health. health care field. I've heard a lot of stories. She works in quality and safety and things. The thing you don't hear is if they take out the wrong kidney during a surgery in Poughkeepsie,

you don't stop going to your doctor in Bangor, Maine. You just don't because you know there's bad doctors. And I'm not a doctor. I wish I had been, but I'm not. But the fact of the matter is, you can't compare them to me. You can't compare apples to oranges. There are bad cops. They should be reckoned with. They should be put in prison when they do things. There's no question. but you don't hate another cop because there's a bad one. You work to get rid of the bad one and you embrace the ones who are working hard every day to do their best to make society maybe safer or at least more comfortable in what they live with, right? I can't make you feel safe, but maybe I can make you feel secure for 20 minutes when I show up and take the report. But you don't hate the cop that shows up at your house or your kid's car accident.

You don't even think about what that horrible cop did somewhere else because this person right now, this officer is doing exactly what you. you want. They comforted your kid after the airbag went off. I mean, it's a minor thing. But it's a big deal when you've got a 16-year-old driving a car to have somebody with some maturity talking to them and say, hey, it's going to be cool. You know, if you're going to be mad, yeah, I live through this too. The comparison just can't be had. There's bad cops. There's bad doctors. There's bad talk show host. There's bad everything. And it's oversimplification. But the fact of the matter is you don't hate your doctor because many doctors do horrible work. You embrace the ones who do a good job and you try to get rid of the ones that don't.

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It's not an oversimplification, actually. It's screamingly self-evident. And unfortunately, most truths that are eventually embraced as screamingly self-evident are initially greeted as heretical, insane, or otherwise dangerous. is dangerous. But look, you just talked about the difference between good and bad cops, and I think that's great and what a good cop can do on a micro level when he or she arrives at a scene. That's transformational to the people who are there on the ground, obviously. What you're doing, Tim, is different. Not that you're not doing that. You've spent 33 years doing that, but you're doing something on a macro level. And it's not thinking outside the box. It's actually

acting outside of the box. You're actually doing something that most great cops can't do, don't do, or won't do. I'm not sure why. You're a gifted writer, and I will have sung your praises appropriately in the introduction to this conversation I've not yet recorded. Thank you for that. What you've done to humanize police work, just with your latest book, got warrants. Just by reprinting a few hundred, I don't even know what to call them. A warrant is essentially, I mean, what are you doing? You're writing a description of an event. It's like the police blotter. Sure. What was taken over by Mark Twain. Well, that is a kind thing to say. Some have said it's not quite Twainish and that would be my mom. Klausmeier. It's like it was taken over by Chuck Klausmeier.

Just by Chuck. I mean, I just revel in the name anyway. I've always said, I love that. that name. I wish I was... Solid. Solid. Are you kidding me? Chuck. You could do work on stuff. Look at you. You're a machine. Chuck. I love the name. This podcast was nearly called What the Chuck. Which I thought really had legs. But I didn't feel like there was enough me in it. Yeah. I get it. Hey, I want to say something. I want to go back to that to fund the police thing. And I got to tell you that this year, in particular, this September 11th, when I watched some of the coverage on there, all I could think of were all those men and women who ran toward the buildings, whether it was the Pentagon, whether it was the World Trade Center, or whether it was the cockpit on Flight 93.

And I thought, wow, man, don't we want those people on the job? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Don't we need those people on the job? I look at that and I think, man, I don't like the term hero. There's places for it. I don't use it much. But those firemen cops, everybody who ran upstairs in that mess, are you kidding me? I, with no engineering skills whatsoever, barely could put two two by force together, can look at that building and say, that's not safe, right? I mean, you see it. And you see people jumping out of it. And yet you're taking stairways, a stairway that most of us couldn't make.

We couldn't even go 70 floors. Wow. I read about the fire service guys. Are you kidding me? With that gear, going up those stairs, in smoke-filled hall, it boggles the mind that someone could physically be in the condition to do that, but they're probably running on adrenaline. You're 100% right. And when that comes around, I watch every one of those shows, and I watch the same show over again. And I'm just amazed when I hear the body's raining down over those firemen. An interesting story, I went to polygraph school with, I'm going to use his name, Chris Sechrist, major case detective from NYPD.

We spent 14 weeks together in like a quad, like college kids, and we're both. he's a little older than me, just retired. I'd sit on his bed at night while he went through his Rolodex of stories. I called it the Rolodex. He'd always have a story for everything. And what he did on 9-11 was he was on the other side of the bridge and his job became, this is a detective. He's not in the uniform anymore, got a bad knee from an on-the-job injury. And his job was to clear out the tunnels. So that's what he did. The cars were sitting in the tunnels and his job in what particular tunnel I don't remember. But all he did was I guess my job is to clear these tunnels out. We're going to get people moving because people get out of the cars and went right over the hoods, right, to get out of town.

And he told me the story of these record drivers who we don't hear about, who just showed up. He said, we didn't call. All of a sudden, they knew it was intuitive. And they showed up when they start hauling cars out of the tunnel so that we can have access. All I had to do is kind of guide and save another one down, another one down. And these record drivers show up out of nowhere. So you look down the line of that. We're all looking at firemen and cops as heroes and everyone who did what they could to save those lines.

but here come the record drivers. And I always thought to myself, we don't think about the record drivers. Those guys are just, we're going to do this, man. And they are in a gridlock city, taking them out to a point somewhere, wherever they went.

And they just took the cars and dumped them, don't know who they belong to. They didn't get paid for that. They just did it because they were New Yorkers. And I'm amazed at how many heroic stories there are that we don't hear about that day, right? The record drivers. You don't think of the record.

I do it when I need a record in the middle of Northern Maine. Guys are a hero. Sure. But in that situation, without being called, they just said, we're going to serve. They employed their wreckers. It was an incredible day. Incredible day. I'm not familiar with that term, wrecker driver?

Toe truck. It's a tow truck driver. There you apologize. Up here, a wrecker. A wreckus. Up here we call it a wrecker. I apologize. I was used in terminology.

No, you were being all quaint and you were being colloquial. That's how they used to be called when I was a kid. And I wasn't even trying. I'm wearing plaid. You got so much foxy oozing out of you. I imagine there's a drop cloth underneath you to catch the I love folksie and I love Maine and I love the people and I was telling the ladies at the bookstore today, this three ladies own it. And I said, we were talking about maybe another book down the road

and I have what I'm working on. And I said, I'm going to use all the names, the nicknames of the folks I've met in down east Maine. And those names would be booger, snots, spike, stinky, peanut, not together, stinky and peanut. I said, that's the part of Maine. People don't know. And those people, when your name is snotts and you demand it 50 years old, no, I'm snotts. You're not Dave. You're snotts. That is campy. And I mean, that's made. Now are booger and snots related? No, different. And they came to the name by completely different reasons. Different nostrils. Fascinating. They beg for the name, Chuck. Yeah. They wish they were a Chuck. Chuck Snots. If you want to go with stinky, I want to go with stinky peanut.

You said they weren't together, but I kind of like them together. A stucke. stinky peanut. Of course you do. I want to go back to the point in this conversation where we lost it, where I lost control and Chuck just started pretending like it was in fact a podcast named for him. What the Chuck? No, Chuck, it's a great point. But my point was we can always find a calamity. We can always find a disaster like a 9-11, like a shooting. And then we get a reminder of where our bread's buttered and who really steps up. But those moments, as critical as they are, are, are not the reason that I'm talking to Tim. Tim has been in those moments,

but Tim gave life to the duck of justice. Tim reached into a trash can and pulled out a stuffed duck. I did. And somehow turned it into an avatar, an emblem, the embodiment of something. So while we turn on the TV

and we see protests and we hear cries for all kinds of justice, social justice, Anytime the word justice is preceded by something, I get a little nervous because it's going to turn into something that's justice plus or justice minus or some version of a thing that ought to be able to stand all on its own. So when Tim first showed me the duck of justice, I just thought that is freaking brilliant. And I don't know if you meant to lampoon anything with it, but you did something that was so Bangor. Oh, yeah. And so small town.

Sure. And so great that I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you to pontificate on your favorite foul. There we go. Chuck's got his sweatshirt. Of course he does. And it's a hoodie. And they're still available, by the way, at duckofjustice.com. And all the money goes to kids' causes in the Bangor area.

No money is taken for anything but that. Of course. Where can someone get this? Duckofjustice.com. Duck of justice. And she's ready to make the orders and she donates a piece of each. shirt in cash form to the department's community outreach fund. I just want to say there's a quote of yours on the back of mine. It says, I think it's great. It's like, this is the kind of justice that should be

everywhere. Keep your hands to yourself. Yeah. Leave other people's things alone. Be kind to one another. If everybody did that, we wouldn't need, we could defund the police if everyone did that. Oh, absolutely. And we're up for the defunding if that's the case. That's how Tim, by the way, signs off on every post. And that's the reason I shared his first post that I saw four, five, years ago. Yes. Because in the end, it's a great tagline, but it's also clearly something you actually believe. It's from my mother, frankly, I heard that a lot as a kid, and it's true. All the anger, when you're really in the midst of a major argument, it's so tremendous. One of the things body cams have brought to police, besides being able to tell the entire story, is the fact that it has

allowed us to show the world while still trying to be kind to someone, they don't always reciprocate. It's a great tool for us to be overly kind because some people just can't handle that from the cop, right? Well, I'm sorry, you feel that way, ma'am, that I'm an idiot and a loser. And I agree, you do pay my salary, albeit probably more goes to the fire department than me. But that said, continue to be kind to them. It's a fun little side gig that we have. But Tim, what if it's not the side gig? I'm probably overreaching.

But in most great stories, the tale at some point starts. to wag the dog. At some point, a little thing you did, you didn't wake up thinking you'd reach into the trash can one day and pull out a stuffed duck and put it under glass, right? Oh, no, an old aquarium from Burt Street, we found, by the way. That's not really, it was a dump day. And a dump here, Chuck, is a transfer station and the rest of the world, but we still call it a dump. Thank you. Yeah, kind of like a wrecker. Dumps and wreckers. A wrecker, a dump truck, a dump. It was kind of a joke. I mean, while I wanted that duck for years, it was. was in the DA's office and the German girl, completely true. Her name is Andrea and she's come

forward a few times. I always call her the angry German girl because she always sounded angry because of her German accent. And some Germans have taken offense, but I don't mean it that way. It's such an angry language. And it's and so when she said, Doc, and then she swore and she slammed it into the trash game because I'd asked for this duck for eight or nine years and she said, you take that damn duck. I was looking at her like, man, I feel like I'm in a bad film. Like, I don't know, top secret. I don't know if you remember that one. Fine film. Anyway, Val Kilmer was actually funny in that. Yeah. Long story short, I retrieved it from the trash in knowing that you don't need a warrant to take something that's been discarded. A little tidbit for folks. You put it in the garbage out by the

street. It's ours. Fair game. Right. So I took the duck and I took it back. You called it the duck of truth as I did polygraphs. And when I did interviews in my cubicle, people would say, wow, why do you have that duck? I said, you can't lie in front of the duck. It's the duck of truth and you just can't lie. And it would break the ice. I mean, it became the duck of justice because we used to, my partner and I, Brent, in those years, when people gave us the finger. And it happened, you know, maybe at times.

And we'd always call it the finger of justice. We got the finger of justice today. And we tell the story. So we said, hey, let's call it the duck of justice, because it's kind of cute. And then no duck, no justice was like, you know, no peace, no justice. It was kind of a play on the words. And then got warrants is really a playoff. on gut milk.

Sure. You know, you steal things from everything. But when we started sneaking that duck's bill into the pictures, like, let me just do it for you here. If this was a duckhead, and I've learned this, I do a post on the page about something else, and I just have this. Yeah. Okay.

Picture that as a duck, Chuck. Gotcha. And there you go. And so I just stick the bill and people would say, why do you have a duck in your post? And I wouldn't answer because I pictured it as a Kilroy was here moment, right? You know, over the wall. It's zeal. Exactly.

You got it. And so we just did that for a while. And people say, why? And I would get notes and letters. Why do you have a duck? I said, I don't know what you're talking about. And that was so tremendous just to be able to play off. And then soon, people wanted a name.

And I'm like, I'm not naming because this duck is bigger than a name. It's the duck of justice, right? And people say, you need to name the duck. Well, why don't you go get your own duck out of a can? I'll call mine the duck of justice. And then it became an iconic thing. Wednesday, I walked through the lobby at the station. This is true.

There's a person from New Jersey. one from Rhode Island and two families from Pennsylvania. And one of them had my book and wanted it signed. I look into the museum, which is quite small, but it's very well kept and not exceedingly dusty. I walked in. I met those people and they all came, some came for the book, but they all wanted a picture with a duck of justice. And I still stand by people that are mad about me wasting time on social media and they're out there. And I hear from them all the time. And I don't care because I write it for free. I do it at home. I always have said, that's free. You could hate, but it didn't cost you. sense that you're not paying my salary on the couch at 3 a.m. No one is. These people from around the world,

the country at this time, not the world, came to Bangor, Maine. Okay, number one. Number two, they came to a police station. Number three, they came to see a duck under glass in a museum that's not that well cared for. And I thought, go ahead and try that somebody. Try that. No reason to be here. And we can tell when they come in, the people who come through the door, you can see if it's a duck person, or you can see if it's just somebody that really hates us for some other reason. I signed a book. I talked to some people why. Oh, we just love this. You know, they're coming from all over the place to Bangor Main is spending money, number one. They're going to stay overnight somewhere. They're going to have a bad meal somewhere. There's plenty to be had. There's good, but there's bad. Sure. They go to Acadia National Park.

There's a four million visitor number down there in Acadia this year. Maybe it's because of the duck. Three and a half last year, four million this year. Coincidence? Don't think so. Not saying, but just think about it. I don't think so. But some people come just for the duck. And this is my favorite duck story. A lady from Indiana is cleared of breast cancer. And she says to her husband, I've told the story, maybe to you, Mike, he goes, what do you want to do? You know, this is a great day. You know, you're completely clean. I want to go to Bangor to see the Duck of Justice. Beautiful woman, lovely family. And they drove straight through from Indiana to see the duck and then decided to go to Acadia National Park. And they stood by that story. They said,

No, it was the duck we came for. And I thought to myself, hey, this is a good day. Come for the duck. Stay for the trees. Stay for the park. And that is exactly my point. This is how broken and jacked up things are. I think deep down, people want to love the cops.

And I think most people do. I do too. You're giving them a reason to get in the car and drive halfway across the country. Sure. Of course, it's not the duck. It's you. Maybe. Not you with a capital, why, but it's the idea.

I think it's the idea. By the way, did it occur to somebody that Duck of Justice is also the DOJ? You said earlier that there might have been some other things, and I really get sick of seeing Department of Justice things because I know how it works. I understand, no offense against my federal friends, but real police work is done at the street level by street cops. And there are people that will come in, maybe under the, DOJ, maybe under another national organization with another acronym. But the fact of the matter is,

when you say, well, DOJ came for, I know down deep because I've worked directly with some of these great federal agents that, you know what, they come, they pick up a report, they like it, they stamp it, and they will take that federally. They've got some stuff we'd like to have. Their home is worth a lot of money. This is a good case. And sometimes it goes on that order in my mind. So the DOJ thing was a little bit of a, when people hear DOJ, maybe they'll think about, the duck. So that was in my mind when I created that acronym. No offense. If I may be so bold, DOJ, the Department of Justice is macro. The duck of justice is micro. Sure. And bad puns with my own moniker aside, people don't drive across the country for macro issues. They drive across to sea.

And I want you to talk about Bangor, Tim, a little bit, because the other thing that struck me, the first time I read one of your God warrants posts on Facebook, this had to be close to five years ago. I think you wrote about some guy that was jaywalking and his pants fell down and he may have urinated on a mailbox. Sure. All of that could have been chronicled in a single sentence. You gave him about 900 words. Okay.

And when I stopped reading it, I thought, well, there it is. It's part bang, gourmet, knowing Stephen King is just up the road for some reason made it interesting. Yeah. But there was also this weird, forgive me. But for whatever reason, as I read your stuff, I started thinking of Cabot Cove and Angela Lansberry and murder, she wrote. And Tom, what's his name? Bosley, the worst main accent ever created for television.

I've written a thing about that, too. Thank God, because it was terrible. Gosh. Oh, if he wasn't Richie's dad, I'd a hundreded him down. That was so bad. But it was so bad, Tim. It was so bad that it became forgivable. It was campy, 100% correct. Had it been less bad, it would have simply been unacceptable, but this was like a caricature of a lampoon.

Anyway, all of that stuff somehow got channeled into your Facebook posts, and I found it just so delightful. And I never used that word because I'm very masculine. Well, I appreciate that. But it was delightful. Oh, we've already spoken to the manscaping, so yes, you are. Some might call it shaving. Just saying. We're not going to circle back to Timothy's obsession with Shick, I believe. Other men's razors. But no, talk to me about Bangor and why small towns matter.

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Use code Mike. Get 20% off your order at American-giant.com slash Mike. American Giant American Made. American Giant American Made. Well, I have flight of ideas, so sometimes I get off on a tangent. So stop me, Chuck, if you will. You bet. The interesting thing about Bangor is like it's the third largest city in Maine, 33,000 people. But we're only third because there's others that are below us. When you call it a city anywhere else in the country, I always have corrected. And by the way, we only have 33,000 people, but it is a city. But during the daytime, the population here rises to close to 150,000. We have a medical center. We have wonderful medical care. here, everything you might want, a waterfront, a tidal river, good restaurants, great people.

But it once was the worst crime-ridden town in America, and that was when the woodsmen came out of the Northwoods and met the schoonermen who were picking up lumber and potatoes and whatever else they grabbed from this end of the earth spot. The prostitution was just rampant, the speakeas, it was a tough town. And it was called the most dangerous city in America in a Boston newspaper years ago because it was. These fellas were coming out of the woods and they were tick and flea-ridden beasts thirsty for the devil's quenching fluids. And also the companionship of fair maidens in our city who probably didn't have a shick. Yeah, shickless. Shickless ladies. I apologize. Long story short, Bangor has become a center for commerce for

in Nobscot County. And it's the dropping off point to go everywhere, really, north, southeast, and west. Well, not south, because once you're here, you can't get there from here. But point being, Bangor's a great city, great people, really down to earth. And I always think of Bangor as a place that would be considered a flyover state or a flyover spot in America that's forgotten, except where we are also famous for being one of the longest runways on the East Coast, a secondary landing strip with the space shuttle, and also a location where most drunk Europeans are dumped. on their way to Mexican and Floridian vacations because they get so crapped up on the planes coming over on liquor.

They get out of control, soccer team type stuff, and they say, okay, where are we going to dump you? Well, the first place you hit when you come across the Atlantic, you see Greenland, and then you land at Bangor, and they would dump these people here. And we were responsible for a long time. We were in the news weekly, it seemed, for drunken UK folks being dropped off, and we'd go take them off the plane, and we'd be cheered and lauded by languages we didn't even understand English. Anyway, so Bank was known for a lot of things, Stephen King, but we weren't known for our police department being famous,

and the duck kind of put us on the map. You know, we're happy about it. We've won some awards due to the pandemic. We haven't been able to accept our award, but we won an award from our Greater Bangor Business and Convention Bureau as being one of the top making us a tourist location. So we've been successful. Will it continue?

I don't know. Yeah, look, I get it. I get the all shucks thing as well. You know, I come from Ah, shucks, shuck. I come from Baltimore, right? And I go back a lot. I know that, yes. And I sit on their tourism bureau. I try and find ways to remind the rest of the country that in spite of what you saw on the wire, there's more to Baltimore than getting a really reasonable rate on a crack whore and scoring some cheap heroin. There's more. I mean, those things are true, but there's more. There's still some deals to be had, yeah. I just want to make sure I got it right.

Woodsman, schoonerman, and prostitutes? I did say that, and I'm not sure those are words. I know prostitutes is words. Well, I'm jotting it down because it's quite likely going to be the title of this particular episode. I always try and attribute a title. I'm sure the city fathers and mothers will appreciate me off bringing back the heyday of Bangor, Lumberman, schoonerman, like the sharks and the jets in West Side Story. Exactly. That's it. Yeah, they couldn't click their fingers because they were calloused from work, Chuck. They just were they a thudding sound. And also, interestingly enough, and I don't know that you can call them this anymore, but hobos, I find it to be an endearing term. I love that term. Me too.

I always have, and I always will, and some people you can't call them hobos. What do you want me to say? I mean, it's a step up from bums. Gosh, anyway, yeah, it is. And hobo seems to give you that feeling of the road, you know, the carolack, the wandering, with the sack on a stick. Sure. Yeah, you hop on the train, you take a ride. Maybe you write a song or your ukulele. Play a little on your harmonica. There could be other things that happen on that box car, Willie. And, of course, Destination Bangor, Maine from Roger Miller.

You bet. The reason that's in there, yeah, well, I won't sing it. Trailer all right. Rooms to let, 50s, said, no food, no smokes, no pets, or whatever. Ain't got it. Where does it get to? Anyway, destination. Bangor, Maine.

Second verse, yeah. Destination, Bangor, Maine. That's where it is. That song brought all the hobos there. Well, no, they were here before that, Chuck. They came because it was the last stop heading north, and they would find this to be a great place to summer. As do people with much more wealth than the average hobo,

they come to Maine, they buy places on the coast. You go to Camden, you go to Bar Harbor, you go to all these beautiful coastal communities. but Bangor had the hobos, and there was a hobo village, and I've read about it in some of our historical documents. This was one of the largest hobo populations in the summer. So hobos actually taught the world how to vacation in vacation land. Wow. Hobos. Yeah, they came here for the summer and headed out. Great stuff. And to be clear, Chuck, don't know if you knew it. I didn't know it until I went up there one summer, but vacation land is on every license plate in Maine. Yes. No, I did not know that.

Yes. See, Chuck, you've got a cabob. It's vacation land. Vacation land. I spent a week or two on a Lake Lovejoy, I think, not far from Wayne. Wayne, Maine, Maine, rain, ring any bells? Wayne, there is a Wayne, Maine, I don't know of Lake Lovejoy, but it sounds pleasurable. They shot some of the exteriors for on Golden Pond there.

Okay. I thought that was in the Belgrade Lake region down where Travis Mills is, but I don't know that. They shot, from what I'm told, now this was the guy who rented me to cabin, and he looked like most Mainers do. Shifty, right. He said, I did some filming here for on Golden Pond. It was really a weird thing because I went up there, Chuck, with my old buddy Steve Lawan, just to fish and drink beer and be knuckleheads.

But I think the guy who rented us the cabin thought we were there for other activities. And so really leaned into the whole Lake Lovejoy. He's like, it's so romantic, fellas, when the sun goes down, you really should take the canoe out. But be careful out there. because you can fall out of a canoe if things get a little enthusiastic. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about, man? I just want to go fishing. Wow. Leave us alone. He's making some assumptions there, isn't he? Big assumptions. He was due to the grooming. Excessive grooming.

Nice gall back. It's a great story. But look, in this hot mess, the point, and I still feel duty-bound to extract a point from time to time simply because otherwise we're just three dudes talking, and I think we're better than that, Tim. Yeah, I do too. You and I especially? Hey, wait a minute. How many Bangor main type PDs are out there that just don't happen to have a Tim Cotton fishing through the garbage to find a bit of iconography that becomes emblematic for all

that's good and right in your chosen field? There are a lot of cops. There are a lot of small departments doing a lot of good work, and we just never hear about them. Oh, yeah. No, you don't. And they're not going to tell you either. The stories that you hear are not the stories. that we relish. I know personally

fellas at our office, many of them have paid for that hotel room for someone who came and ended up here looking for the glory of Maine and ended up with nothing and helped them get on buses and tickets and gathered money to buy groceries. I watched the stories of cops

buying groceries. And those come out about once a year, somewhere in the country and the whole world loves that cop. Rightfully so, because the cop didn't do it for any glory. They did it because it was the right thing and someone needed something and I know cops and I call them cops people are so you can't call them cops it's disrespect no it's cops that's what we are we're cops we're not agents we're not we're cops I know of so many stories like

that have never been told and I hate it when they say this is an incredible story no that is just one story of thousands probably that happened today we have millions of interactions every day and people are safely led through whatever trial they're put up against cops do things that no one knows about and they're not going to tell you about it just as other people do too. There's other people that do the same things. But when it's a uniform, in a year when we were really getting kicked in the groin, rightfully so in some ways. Don't give me wrong. I don't want to make an excuse for some things that happened in this country. But I can say that I know these cops are worked beside me every stinking day. And they do it.

And they don't talk about it. We had three fellas, one female officer and three, two guys. Last week, a lady was down and out. They pitched in. They got her a hotel room. They did it. They walked away. Only because one of the wives told another wife. who told somebody else, did we even find out about it? We don't write about that because it happened so much. I could fill that book. So good on America and good on the national networks to pick it up every now and then, but you missed a lot. You missed a lot that you're never going to see because you're looking past us for something more, something different. It's sad sometimes, but we don't need to be lauded. We just need to be maybe embraced as people like you doing a job wearing a

uniform. I wrote a piece once. I don't know what happened to it. I wrote a piece. I wrote a piece. of you don't have to say thank you to me. That's what it was, because I got so much of that after 9-11, they transferred some of that love to everyone, you know, when we were doing crossing traffic. Thank you for your service. Oh, I'm so sorry about what happened. They connected us to those lost officers. We didn't do anything, right? We're not related to that. We don't even understand what those people went through in that situation, but they transferred some of that love that we felt after 9-11 to every cop and every firefighter. I just wrote that, why don't you just stand beside me? and say, hey, how's your kid doing in soccer? Let's have a soda. Let's have a coffee. But you don't have to say

thank you for your service because I don't want you to because you pay me. You do pay me to do that. And I do that because I like it. I love it. I love the people. I do that for that reason alone. And so I don't need to be thanked. It feels uncomfortable to some of us to be thanked a lot. Weirdly enough. Look, I know that about you. I know that about most of the cops I know. I'm worried that it will impede your ability to shamelessly plug your own book, which you need to do, my friend, because you've written two really terrific books, and I'm going to fillate both of them right now by simply asking you to describe the first one. Detective in the dooryard, I've been hawking this thing from time to time. I think I've sold a few copies for you. You've sold more than I have, Mike. Thank you.

But everybody wants to know what's wrong with the title? What the hell is a dooryard? Is it a misprint? What is this? Yeah. When I do sell a T-shirt to try to raise some funds to get out of prison, there will be a company tomorrow that will sell this shirt. Sure. But door yard is the area closest to your door in New England. So we don't say yard.

We say door yard because the area that we use needs to be shoveled. We can't do the whole lawn. It's not necessarily where you park your car. The door you use the most. So you have a front door to house. Well, if that door doesn't have a worn path or stones or something that the Gaines designed with some whitewash, the one with the path worn is the dooryard, because that's where you go in and out. You let your dog into the dooryard. We have dooryard visits.

So someone drives by and they pull in and you walk out, you put your rake down, you lean on the car, you pull up your pants to the cracks not showing. That's where the dooryard is. It can be any place that you use the most in your curtilage. Interesting. Okay. Now, it's a dooryard. The detective in the dooryard came from, I'm the detective in your dooryard. And I didn't want to call it detective because that has caused me much angst. As a matter of fact, today at the book signing, a man who was kind of looking at that book on the table to be signed for someone said, is this a detective book? And I'm like, you know what? If that's what you're looking

for, heading to the store, because it's really not that. It's a story about our interaction, cops, interaction with people and my interactions with people around Maine. I'm a detective, or was, but that's what it's about. It's just people's stories. Some are good and some are funny, and I really enjoyed writing it, and they're all true stories, and they're all true. It shows. I read it over the course of a couple of days. It took me longer than your current one, which is a real breezy, quick read. Yeah, it's fun. Do you remember the dedication in this one? Yeah, to all the folks who have been picked last. This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever picked last for anything and refuse to let that define them.

Yep, nice. I knew it was going to be a good book when I read that. Part of that informed dirty jobs and a lot of other stuff I've done. Yeah, absolutely. But I've just never read anything by a cop who ruminates on it. It's funny, it's smart, and you kind of sneak in a little bit of a memoir there as well. But this is the one for sale now, and it's called Got Warrants, and it's very yellow. And it has a 58 Ford Cruiser on the front, so look for that.

It sure does. Like a one atom 12 kind of thing going on there. Yeah, we were going for the noir thing. You know, if you look at some promotional videos for promotional posters for Broderick Crawford, what was his film? The show in the 50s, 58, 59. Before one out of him, 12. Highway Patrol.

Highway Patrol, of course. So if you look at some of the promotional pictures, it has that feel. And this is what my editor came up with. He sent me four different, you know, you like this. You don't really have a lot of say when you're a mope working here and low-grade guy. But they do ask me probably after they decided what to do, hey, let's reach out to cotton and see if he likes it enough so that he's not mad. And that's all they want.

And that's all I want, you know, I don't want much. So he came up with that and I was like, I have a lady that works with me who's done a lot of my editing and helpful. And she used to edit for some large houses. She happens to be the front desk lady, Melody, queen of the front desk. She looked at that and she's done. She's that gold. And it's yellow.

It's yellow, man. It shows up on the N-cap. If someone would give me a God-forsaken N-cap, it would show up. Come on America. Can we get them gotten at N-CAP, Barnes & Noble? How hard can it be? Barnes & Noble in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, gave me an N-Cap, and so did none such books in South Portland and I think a few others.

So it's yellow, and it shows up. It's a short, feel it, Mike. Rub your fingers across. I got it in my hand right now. I'm rubbing it all over my manscape, twigs and berries. You had to make it weird. I'm more comfortable now, oddly, but it's kind of a water-resistant kind of feel. And I believe this belongs, I'm being totally serious.

This belongs on the back of every toilet in America. It does. You can pick this up, no matter how long your business takes, there's plenty there to read, but you can get through a story if things are quick and easy. That's right. In fact, that is so funny you said here because that was my thought, too. I don't want to spend more time on the bowl than it takes me to get through one entry and got warrants.

That could be a goal. If it takes longer than I went in too early. And if I get done sooner, I probably waited too late. It's a terrific barometer of my lower GI track. It's a potty book. I'd have that book read in a day. And there's something about Chuck I didn't know. IBS, sure.

Anyway, it's a great little book. It's my homage to the police beat columns as a youth because I actually did read a newspaper as a kid. I think Thursdays in the Bangor Deadly, also knows the Bangor Daily News, they would have a police beat and there'd be a few. And I always thought, man, that's great. I just need more. And so what I did is I just combed through true reports. And I blow V8, use hyperbole, and the magic of alliteration.

And I create another story based. When you said 900 words, that's one of my big kicks is that people like, that's too long on Facebook. You're an idiot. TLDR. And I always say, if you wrote TLDR, dude, you read it. You read it. Oh, I got you.

I got you. Good game. And your cronies will think you're awesome. But the fact is you read it. and I win because I got the algorithm. Thanks. Zuck. Chuck. This is the other thing, Tim, seriously, this is a good place to land a plane because it's the other thing we really do have in common. Deep down, you're a hardhead. And somebody pulled you aside and told you what not to do on Facebook. And all I can tell you is the same thing happened to me. I was lectured, scolded, sermonized.

Yes. If it's longer than 300 words, you're just wasting your time. My first post was nearly 3,000 words. Absolutely. I've put up 5,000 worders before. gold. If you're in a hurry, go somewhere else. I really don't care. And you are at a level in society where you could say that and still be successful, whereas I can say it and they'll be like, hey, it's time to go. And that's okay, because I'm ready to go. But I was recently pummeled for not writing more on the Bangor PD Facebook page because I write it at Tim Cottonwrites.com. I have a news log, which is delivered to your box like news, but it's a blog.

News log. I love the term log too. Log is good. Renan Stimpy made that better for me. But I'm going to write what I'm going to write. I'm going to be done when I'm done. And I'm at the point now where I feel good enough to say, don't read it. Move on. Scroll by. Just wonderful. There's so much stuff out there. Why do you have to tell me I suck? I know. At my age, dude, I don't care. You know, one of my sergeants, I'll say to him, he'll come in and he goes, hell, we get this problem. But I say, hey, Wade, I don't care. This is not a big. problem. The big problems of the world, I'm not fixing them, you know, and this book didn't do it. But it's fun. It's cheap entertainment. And it makes me laugh because I forgot what I wrote. So I'm going through this. And I actually laugh. So fun and cheap, grouped up together is a consummation devoutly to be wished. I want to be respectful of your time because I know you're working on your third book. Just looking at a man wrapped in that much plaid makes me restive. Final question. Yes, sir. Do you have a favorite little warrant? Do you have a favorite little story in this one because this podcast is going to end at about 60 seconds and after it does, I'll read it in another

attempt to offer yet more shameless pluggery in your general northerly direction. I can't say as I do, Mike, I'd rather you pick your favorite. You did it. I like drunk with a side of stupid. Who doesn't? I like Dr. Dre beat down, but everybody's read Do Do Do Do Do Deposit Disaster, Dale Carnegie Discourse. That's one of my favorite titles. I'm not sure it's my favorite is about a fully clothed man making substantial monetary contributions to a program design. to cause other people to take off their own clothing. It's from a strip club in our local region that hobos would have loved if they had the cash to get in.

All right. I don't have a favor. Don't worry. I want you to pick it. Drunk with the side of stupid sounds good. I'm going to read it momentarily for those of you still listening. If you want to get a copy of either of Tim's books and you'd be a fool not to, what's the deal, Tim?

Amazon work, any place? Amazon. And actually, almost every bookstore in America has it, along with other great reading material. I like to promote the Indies. but I know how it is in America right now getting something. And sometimes people say, who? When you ask a bookstore clerk, tell them my name and then go order somewhere else.

And you can also send a stamp self-addressed envelope to 240 Main Street, Bangor Main, 0441 to me. And I'll send you a signed bookplate with my quote on the back. No charge. Just make sure you send enough stamps because I'm not paying. I don't make enough money. Holy cow. Repeat that address because I know people on my page are going to eat that crap up.

240 Main Street, Bangor Main, 044. send it to T.C. And Melody picks up the mail for me. We sign book plates with my famous quote that's on Chuck's shirt, which I love to think of that, this on Chuck shirt. And I'll just send you a bookplate just for the stamp because I can't get to your house to sign your book. But if I do get to your house, I'll use the bathroom and I'll sign the book in there. Speaking of stamps, I don't want to say too much, but Chuck actually has turned your quote into a tramp stamp. It's in the small of his back right now. And it's tasteful, Tim. It's tasteful. I told you that in confidence, well, you know what?

I saw it up at a little place called Lake Lovejoy, not so long ago, in the beautiful town of Wade. Hey, thank you. You guys, thank you for having me on. I know you've reached out. You must be really dragging bottom, but it's such an important thing for a guy like me to have some promotion from people like you, too. I just appreciate it, and I know it sounds goofy, but, man, you've done a lot for cops, you've done a lot for America. You've made us feel good. You've made us feel normal to think outside the box, and it's cool.

And you guys just keep it up. I appreciate it so much. Brother, look, man, I'll speak for Chuck since he's talked enough in this one. We are grateful. Everybody on my Facebook page loves you. You're a good cop, a better than average writer, and a friend. And the next time you see Travis Mills, tell him and forget about that 20 bucks, he owes me. We're square. I will do that for sure, Mike. Thanks. All right, Tim Cotton. Thanks, Chuck. Be careful out there. All right, guys. All right. Adios. Maybe I'm overstating it, but I got to think if every police department in the country had a guy like Tim Cotton writing up the daily events of life as a cop, you know, I think the country would be a better place.

Anyway, a big thanks to him for joining me today and thanks too for Chuck's ongoing impersonation of a producer, which just gets more and more believable with every passing week. As promised, a story from Gott Warrants, which I'm holding in my hand right now, it's super short, like all of the chapters in this book, actually taken from the police blotter up there in Bangor, Maine, and brought to life by Tim. Drunk with a side of stupid is on page 83, and it goes like this. The clerk at a convenience store noted that the man was visibly drunk, and she followed the rule of, quote, no sales to those who are visibly intoxicated. End quote. It's a state law. No kidding. It seems that this law is commonly violated at saloons and whatnot, but I am not a judge.

I am merely the purveyor of stories that I believe need to be told. While we are appreciative of the clerk's attention to detail in trying to keep the public from doing naughty things, the drunk man was not so keen on her response to his slurred speech and glassy eyes. He determined that it was best to engage her in a battle of wits. What could go wrong? Well, I'll tell you. His angry voice kicked in, and he asked the woman what she would do if he were to tell her that he was a robber and wanted all of the money in the register. She showed him. She called the police department. Tushay, drunk moron. Tushay. While your BAC, blood alcohol content, by percentage, might have appeared to be higher than your IQ test scores indicate, we believe the BAC, might have been responsible for most of the talking. When the officer arrived, he found the man,

Sons Licker, walking across the barren parking lot of despair. It is a dry land surrounded by a thirst that cannot be quenched by a conversation with a sober cop. He was advised that his choice of conversational icebreaker should be revised in future visits. He was also given a written warning to stay out of the retail establishment for the next 300.

65 days. This will make it much more difficult to quench his thirst or engage in a battle of wits with a woman who found him to be an idiot and a drunken one at that. Keep on, keeping on, Tim Cotton. Talk to you all next week. If you're a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility and your machinery isn't working right, Granger knows you need to understand what's wrong as soon as possible. So when a conveyor motor falters, Granger offers diagnostic tools like calibration kits and multimeters to help you identify and fix the problem. With Granger, you can be confident you have everything you need to keep your facility running smoothly. Call 1-800 Granger, clickgranger.com or just stop by. Granger,

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