Recurring nightmare 

Why is it that whenever I wake up from a really good dream—where I’m, say, making out with a certain celebrity—I can never fall back into it, but when my brain is filling itself with nightmarish flashes, enough to snap me into consciousness in the middle of the night, I’m right back in the slumber from hell as soon as my eyes close again.

I didn’t sleep much last night, and being awake wasn’t much better. Last week, I was a bit perturbed over a kccn.tv video that showed sheriff’s deputies invading a home without a warrant and then making up phony charges to justify their hijinks, which landed some poor sap in jail.

After that, I nestled my head back on my pillow, closed my eyes hoping for a Hollywood smooch fest, but fell right back into the dream.

There’s just no other way to describe this week’s cover story: A Grover Beach cop Tasered an 82-year-old man in the butt—or tried to, at least—and then inflated the incident in his arrest report to cover his own rear.

Did you know police Tasers come equipped with video cameras? I didn’t. Apparently officer Sonny Lopez wasn’t aware, either. Or, if he did know, he must have forgotten.

If you haven’t yet watched the video at newtimesslo.com, go click on it and then come back to me. I’ll twiddle my thumbs for a bit.

Did you see it? Kind of confusing, right?

Lopez’s report made it sound like Peter Hewitt—an octogenarian—snatched an infant, took off, and resisted police with all the energy he could muster from his withered old-man bones.

In the video, however, it’s clear Hewitt did everything he was told: He calmly handed over the child, slowly stepped out of the car, and even stood politely as Lopez tried to zap him in the ass. Luckily the barbs didn’t connect.

And Lopez was the Grover Beach Police Department Officer of the Year in 2002.

To be fair, we can’t see what was happening that caused Lopez to aim to shock a senior citizen in the back. (Did I mention Lopez shot an 82-year-old man who wasn’t looking at him with electrically charged darts?) Unless Hewitt had his finger hovering above a doomsday machine trigger, he didn’t appear to be an imminent threat.

In fact, he didn’t seem to pose any threat at all, which is probably why prosecutors dropped the kidnapping charges to a simple disturbing the peace. And you can get a disturbing-the-peace for farting out loud on the street.

Flush, flush

The Los Osos sewer is an intsy bit closer to completion. The county is gearing up to tear Los Osos a new one now that it has a permit in hand to start the work. And in order to get the thing moving, the county has this fast-track process all planned out, which supposedly requires dumping another $400,000 into the project. Gotta spend money to make money, I guess.

I get this feeling that there will be a few lawsuits along the way, which seem to be a dull drone in the county’s ears as they try to ignore the nasty road ahead to getting this project built.

In the end, the town will have a sewer, many residents will probably be billed into bankruptcy to fund it, the rest of us are paying to patch this thing up as it inches closer to completion, and it seems as though everyone will be miserable. But at least the thing will finally be done. Hopefully.

Vroom, vroom

I’ll preface what I’m about to say by saying that I don’t know how to make this any funnier.

Making its debut at this year’s Mid-State Fair, the sheriff’s department is showing off a shiny 1994 Dodge Viper. Suck on that, SLO PD, with your puny little Chargers.

Here’s where it gets outrageous. The department seized the male-enhancing sports car about two years ago during a marijuana bust in Atascadero. Clearly they couldn’t let such a beautiful machine go to waste, but they needed some way to justify keeping it.

Here’s where it gets mind melting. The department has decided to parade the car around local schools in promotion of the D.A.R.E. program. That’s the program that’s supposed to keep kids off drugs.

Here’s where I kid you not. Our sheriff’s department, in an effort to keep kids off drugs, is showing them the sexy super car that was purchased with drug money. And it wasn’t heroin or coke money, just plain old marijuana money.

“Hey kids! Don’t do drugs!” I can imagine them telling a roomful of wide-eyed 12-year-olds. “If you do drugs, or sell drugs, you might end up with a car like this. It’s pretty cool, huh?”

What’s next? Maybe they can bring big-venue rock bands to local schools to show the dangers of drugs, or have the little ones listen to The Beatles for a few hours. See? How is it possible to come up with an example more absurd than the reality?

Maybe I’m still in that nightmare.

The Shredder needs a new car but doesn’t know where to get the money. Send tips to [email protected].