- Something about the past week brought cops and animals together on multiple occasions.
Cops often have to deal with various kinds of difficult and unpredictable customers. Drunken people, enraged neighbors, farm animals…
There’s been a strange uptick in the latter cases recently. Cops have had to wrangle with lonely and perverted goats — but they’ve also received assistance from unusual four-legged informants.
Over the last week, Oklahoma officers had to break up a goat fight, while others in New Jersey went on a days-long hunt for a caprine peeping tom. In North Carolina, though, a helpful herd of cows helped the police bust a reckless driver.
Let’s take a look at each story and see how they unfolded.
A Caprine Call for Help
On May 11, officers David Sneed and Neal Storey from Enid Police Department hopped in their patrol vehicle after a member of the public raised an alarm. According to the emergency call, somebody was audibly crying for help.
When the officers got to the scene, their concerns were confirmed. Indeed, they could distinctly hear someone yelling “Help, help!”
Body camera footage shows the cops beginning to run toward the source of the sound.
“I think that’s a person. That’s a person,” Officer Sneed says on the video.
Yet, when they finally reached the place the sounds were coming from, they found no emergency. Instead, they faced a very confused farmer — and a rather upset goat.
Someone was indeed calling for help. But it wasn’t a person but the goat, whose cries of frustration sounded eerily human.
According to the farmer, he’d had to separate the goat from the rest of the herd and confine it into a single-animal enclosure. The animal wasn’t very happy about it and kept repeatedly — and loudly —demanding to be let out.
So, no police action was necessary in the end. At least the cops and the farmer shared a hearty laugh, although the goat didn’t join in.
“All in all, you really can’t say it was that baaad of a call,” said the Enid Police Department.
The Peeping Goat
Also on May 11, the police from the Chatham Township Police Department in New Jersey received a call about a peeping tom. However, this pervert wasn’t a greasy weirdo.
Instead, people were complaining about a goat that was wandering the area. It wasn’t really doing any harm but people still found the animal unsettling.
The goat would walk from house to house and stare. It stared in through people’s windows and doors in creepy silence.
If it couldn’t find any other opening, the goat would walk up to a security camera and stare into it for minutes on end.
What did it want? Where did it come from? What is it staring at?
People were quick to blame a nearby farm market for letting their animals run free. But according to the cops, they weren’t the culprits.
“We know who the rightful owner of the goat is, and it is not Creekside Farms,” the cops said in a statement.
They went out looking for the animal, but the goat proved to be slippery. It eluded all attempts to catch it for several days.
Finally, after a four-day wild goat chase, the cops caught the peeping pervert. On May 15, they announced the Township Peeping Goat had been caught.
The animal is now “resting comfortably at his new home at a local farm.” We can only hope the farmer keeps their blinds drawn.
Crime-fighting Cows
Our third and final story took place on May 9. This time, we’re traveling to Boone, North Carolina.
On the day, the local police were engaged in a high-speed chase with one Joshua Mitten. The 34-year-old had been driving recklessly and sped away as he saw flashing lights in his rear-view mirror.
Eventually, Mitten had had enough of endangering traffic and decided to continue his escape on foot.
“The suspect abandoned his vehicle … and fled into an undeveloped area,” the Boone Police Department said.
“Due to the suspect’s fast and reckless driving our officers were not close enough to see exactly where the suspect ran.”
The cops began searching for an area, but Mitten had hidden himself well. However, he hadn’t counted on getting ratted out by cows.
Cows from the local herd approached the police officers, seemingly asking them to follow. Finding their behavior strangely compelling, the cops complied.
And what do you know? The cows led the police directly to where Mitten was hiding.
“The cows communicated with the officers as best they could and finally just had the officers follow them to the suspect’s location,” said the Boone Police.
After Mitten’s arrest, the police department thanked the cows for their assistance. They also said they may now have to consider further bovine crime-fighting potential.
“As we examine the obvious next steps of incorporating a Bovine Tracking Unit into our department’s law enforcement capabilities there are many factors that we will have to consider,” the department said.
“Are cows more cost-effective than K-9 dogs? How will we transport cows to the scenes, and is this compatible with the Town’s sustainability goals in terms of types of vehicles needed? And obviously, are there methane issues?”
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