Alright, come on in, have a seat. Officers Wallach, Friedman, congratulations on graduating from the academy. Sergeant Bickell, I'm pleased you were able to transfer from Milwaukee. Usually we wouldn't see so many new faces, but we finally fixed a computer error that wouldn't let a bunch of our guys retire. Kept pushing the date forward a day.
Still, it's good to have you three. Hopefully you'll make good time in the Sloth's Pit PD. I'm not going to say its quiet, but violent crime is pretty low, and as for the rest… you'll get used to it.
This is going to be kind of an informal seminar, and you'll be in several of these over the next couple of weeks. If we tried to put together slideshows and do all the paperwork, the staties would laugh us out of the building. Still, you're probably going to run into this stuff at some point, so you might as well know.
Today, I'm talking about time travel. Yeah, yuk it up. I'll wait.
Yes, I'm serious. We ready?
Alright. We've generally got two kinds of issues with time travel. The first, and arguably the easiest, is the Tourists. Sometimes, we get people from elsewhere. Past, future, whatever. Most of the time, they're just passing through, or have to do something symbolic, like the Ojibwe hunting party that wandered through the Thanksgiving parade last year. Sometimes, though, they get rowdy, or a bunch of rednecks in a low-rider UFO decide they're going to rip off Dean's Doughnuts for our hilarious monopoly money. Either way, we get the pleasure of dealing with it.
You get called in on Tourists, there are three rules. First, stay in cover. I don't care if it's a lance or a phaser gun, your vest ain't gonna stop shit. Second rule is, stick to less-than-lethals. Even if they've got a forcefield, they still gotta breathe. Pepper spray if you can get close, CS gas canisters if it comes down to that. We keep a riot gun in every squad car, courtesy of the US Army. Still working on getting an MRAP.
Third rule, and this sticks in general, trust the eggheads. If you get to a Tourist call and there are already a bunch of dudes in hazmat gear and cheap suits, or if a bunch of vans labeled "S & C Plastics" pull up mid-incident, be polite. They don't usually bring much firepower, but they're still the cavalry. Don't worry too much about calling them either, they monitor all our frequencies for weird shit. Well, weirder shit.
Once you've got a Tourist in custody, things are still pretty complicated. For the most part, they're either long dead or haven't been born yet, so they're not technically… people, legally speaking. What we've generally found to work is, try to recover anything they've stolen or make amends for damages, then throw them in the drunk tank. If you're lucky, by the morning they'll have disappeared back to whenever, and it's not your problem anymore. If you get some kind of time cop or old-timey marshal show up to collect them, just go with it. It's easier than trying to book them.
Your second variety are the Fixers, and they're a pain in the ass. These are perpetrators who think they can go back and fix whatever they did to get caught. God knows how they do it. There's a well by an abandoned farm off County Road 18 that's the most likely candidate. If you stare hard enough into it, sometimes you get one chance to go back and fix your biggest regret. We keep that thing boarded up, though, and they still keep coming somehow.
The good thing about the Fixers is, time travel doesn't make perps any smarter. You might lose leads, but usually while they're going around picking up the murder weapon, they leave just as much evidence the second time through. If you find a crime scene with five separate sets of footprints, all from the same pair of shoes, you're probably dealing with a Fixer. If there's no evidence whatsoever, it's probably a ghost. That's another story.
Fixers, you can usually deal with by sticking to procedure. Find and document all your leads, do good detective work, and, most importantly, do not share case details with anyone outside of the department. You say nothing to the press, nothing to your family, nothing to your shrink, nothing to God in heaven; no one. The day you go back to the evidence locker to find an empty box and a stinging headache, you'll learn.
We had one guy accidentally mention a dropped wallet in a press conference, and poof, it was gone. Migraines for everyone who happened to have the TV going, and a nasty call from the mayor. Not good for your career. You keep your lips zipped and your case files tight until we ship the whole thing off to the DA. Hopefully, after that, the perp'll be too busy stamping license plates in Dodge to gin up a time machine.
Alright, I think that's about enough for now. As I said, we're real glad to have you two on the force. Good to have some new officers. First things first, why don't you two take a squad car over to County Road 18. Seems like someone's kicked the boards off that damn well.
I'm gonna go find some Advil, I feel a migraine coming on.

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