This cartoon commemorates an incident early in my career which caused a lot of extra work for my Sergeant, Bill Schemers. One night our bike squad was on patrol in West Phoenix. We’d had a busy night of enforcement and were heading back to the station to go home. On the bike ride to the station my partner, Ray Fulton, and I came across a LARGE woman yelling at us through a fence surrounding an apartment complex. I should have ignored her, but I circled around to see what she was saying. She was really angry about something. After listening to her curse at me for several minutes, I gave into temptation and told her that she should “settle down or else you might have a heart attack.” Oh man, she went through the roof as I pedaled away. The fat lady called the police department to complain and it eventually filtered down to me. My sergeant handled the situation and took the heat for me. I totally owe him to this day because I gave into temptation and told her she was fat.
NOTE: I am still friends with my old boss, Bill Schemers. He lives in Iowa and I visit him and his wife every year. I have brought up this event with him and we both get a big laugh out of it…but at the time, Bill was not a happy camper. He made me apologize to the lady.