Sidelines 7: Not a Beat Cop

I was supposed to shadow my coworker today, but when I arrived on patrol they were no where to be found. I still don’t know if they told me the wrong location by accident, or if it was some vast prank to haze the new girl. I did the best I could, patrol means keeping an eye out for crimes and an opportunity to meet my fellow citizen. A good working relationship with the community is a must. So I chatted with the sims on the street.

Deep breaths. We can do this!

I knew I was supposed to out give citations, to practice that before heading back to the station. This is where things went totally wrong. I found a group of three sims chatting by piles of garbage, but they all protested their innocence to the crime. Highly suspicious, but there’s no way I could ticket them without proof.

So…. um… keeping out of trouble?

Then I saw the tail end of a knockdown drag-out fight, but when I arrived they claimed no one was fighting. I know I’d seen the dust fly. I didn’t dare go back to the station without proving I was doing my job, so I hung around all day to make sure no one else misbehaved. I also threw away the garbage.

Perhaps I should have returned, the Chief was disappointed in my performance and I got written up! I didn’t dare tell him that my coworker hadn’t shown. I dislike patrolling.

Saturday was better. Despite my poor performance yesterday, Chief gave me my first case. A robbery at the Spencer-Kim-Lewis mansion. Their new stereo had been stole. I felt like a proper detective-in-training, running around looking for clues and interviewing witnesses.

Nova puts the evidence up on the board.

It was Mr. Mustard in the bedroom with a a forklift. Or not. This wasn’t a murder investigation after all. So I spent the analyzing the clues we’d found and using the cork board at the front of the office to map out the crime.

This wasn’t exactly an amateur theft. They’d climbed up to the second floor balcony and lifted the stereo as Alice was downstairs. It was bold being done in broad daylight. We took fingerprint and footprint evidence from the crime, so if it was a professional, they were being sloppy. The fingerprints didn’t match anyone in our database.

So many connects, so few real leads.

I was running out of idea, resorting so staring at the cork board hoping for a miracle when one occurred. Someone had called in to report a suspicious man trying to sell a stereo over at Willow Creek Park. It was running late, but I rushed over. The sims who’d called in the report could only point me in the general direction and didn’t have much in the way of proof, beyond the fact that it was a stereo and he was blond. That matched the evidence at the crime scene, but heading over I realized there were two sims who matched the description. Blast.

I took their names and had to call it a day. Although the chief is rather brusque and dismissive: “I’ve had bladder failures smarter than you,” he was apparently pleased with my progressed and promoted me out of trainee status.