side story
went to a training session in SF there were two detectives from NO. Circa 1982. They told this story. During mardi gras there was a new best selling t-shirt.
Cops were chasing around a neighborhood one of those where the houses were a little elevated with crawl spaces underneath. A man crawls out wearing dark
clothes and something metal in his hand. Fitting the description of the one they were chasing. Cops say drop it, he doesn’t; they kill him. He was a plumber working under the house with a small piece of pipe in his hand.
The t-shirt? Don’t shoot, I’m a plumber.
When a joke serves as a dual purpose safety sign.
Yes There are several cities similar, I think I shared this story before here somewhere. My friend said he worked as a tree trimming contractor for the City of East St. Louis. He said the first summer after A time they smelled something rotten so looked and found a decomposing body then called police.
Few days later it repeated. He said by the end of that summer they could actually ID the smell and would just call police. Seems the gang bangers (and a few others probably) would kill then take the body and dump it in the nearest brushy area which was often around power lines, which of course they were working in.
He is not the lying sort.