SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Glossy News) — October 5, 2010, was as any other day in San Francisco. Tenderloin beat cop Mike McKenna stepped into his routine that morning, patrolling the stretch of Leavenworth that starts at Market Street and ends somewhere before the hills get too steep for the crack-heads to climb. Nibbling a cheese Danish, he explained to his partner Dan O’Maley, “I don’t like donuts, but these are great.” Then a fateful call came over the radio, ordering a response to the methadone clinic across from the YMCA.
As Officers McKenna and O’Maley approached the growing line of homeless, drug addicts and mind-addled veterans off their medications, they noticed a wired and known drug offender, Snicky Mean Bean (named for his bean-pole frame). Mean Bean was holding a man in brightly colored, ragged clothing against the shelter’s outer wall, by the neck. The man on the wall looked grizzled and fatigued, but like many meth users needing a fix, he was tweeking. He could have been someone’s once-kindly grandfather, they noted, like many men in line.
“Hold on there, Snicky,” said McKenna. “What’s the problem here?”
“He stoled my CRACK, man! He stoled it!” Snicky said. “He been swallowing everybody’s balloons when we crash and pooping it out in the alley to sell and then go and buy his meth!”
As the officers pried Mean Bean off the offending stranger, O’Maley noticed a striking resemblance, despite the dreadlocks and Rastafarian outfit, to Osama Bin Laden. He cuffed the man and took him to detox, while McKenna questioned the other men in line.
“He comes here when his money runs out. He gets the methodone but only takes it the first night. He stays in the shelter long enough to steal whatever’s on the other guys, then leaves before they get up and goes to get high,” one man said.
“We call him Rasta Camel. ‘Cuz he spits like a camel but wears the Rasta gear so people think he just smokes pot. But he’s a cranker,” another man said. “It’s a disguise.”
“I never INHALED!” Rasta Camel shouted at the two crack-heads talking to the police. “What?? It’s ok for Clinton not to inhale, but not me? I HAVE PAPERS! I TOOK THE CITIZENSHIP TEST! CHE! My name is Che! I’m worth more alive to you than dead!”
After closer inspection of Rasta Camel’s documentation, officers noted a glaring discrepancy. The work visa and taxi driver’s license were registered under the name Yuki Hiroshima. DHS immigration specialists later confirmed that the documents were falsified.
“We took him to detox in the tank and just waited for the Feds to come,” said O’Maley.
“Yeah, it took about a month for them to respond to our queries, believe it or not. We didn’t fill out the proper forms at first, but once that got straightened out, they came and identified Mr. Hiroshima as Osama Bin Laden,” said McKenna. “He still maintained that he didn’t inhale the meth, but that’s what they all say, isn’t it?”
“Just another day in the Tenderloin,” O’Maley said, and McKenna finished, “And the streets of San Francisco.”
Officers McKenna and O’Maley were awarded a year’s supply of cheese danishes by local bakery Happy Donut as a neighborhood thank-you for ridding the Tenderloin of yet another crazy crank-head taxi driver.
Splendid work there!