This is when the action happens

After Randy and I had told the women sitting outside that their neighbor was a total nark, we headed towards 4th St.  Historic 4th Street is the revitalized part of down that has a bunch of bars and restaurants.  Someone had been drinking and driving and was subsequently arrested, but now their vehicle had to be towed and somehow Randy was put in charge of this.

On the way there, Randy turned on the siren which was simultaneously cool/terrifying.

We pulled into the alleyway behind MacBehr's, the largest bar on the street and the one with the roughest reputation and Randy got to work talking to other police officers, filling out more paperwork, and printing reports for the tow truck operator.  This part was very boring.  But the part that wasn't boring was what was going on outside of the car.

MacBehr's was shoving patrons out the door and they were of course all drunk and belligerent.  And the part that shocked me most was that I had never seen a single one of these people in my entire life.  I've lived in the Sioux for 22 years and know a ton of people (not to brag or anything, no big) and yet somehow an entire crowd of them is still a mystery and they all go to MacBehr's.  Where did they call come from?!  This is still a mystery to me.

I was watching the people mill about and generally act like fools, when all of a sudden I saw two guys who appeared to be arguing.  They each had their own little posse and continued to argue back and forth.  After a few minutes each of them began to take their shirts off and that's when I started to get worried.  I turned to Randy and said, "I think those two guys are going to start fighting..."  And then Randy responded:

"One thing at a time."

One thing at a time!?!  These two guys were gonna beat each others faces in and Randy was concerned with printing tow reports.  I couldn't believe it.  But he was of course right because the guys didn't fight and were actually broken apart by another officer.

After the car was towed away and the potential fights had been broken up, Randy and I drove slowly down 4th St.  I was beginning to think that the potential fight was going to be the most exciting part of the night but then all of a sudden Randy just whipped the car around on a sharp U-turn and pulled back to the end of the block, no explanation or anything.

He parks the car, jumps out, and no fewer than 4 additional officers are rapidly taking guys down to the ground, pulling them off of one another, and cuffing them.  In literally less than 2 minutes, 4 guys were in handcuffs and lined up on the curb, with another guy in the back of our car.  It was insane.  I'm still not totally sure what they were all arrested for, but one guy was bloody and I think it was all just for fighting.  Our guy got arrested for Intoxication and manhandling a police officer.  To be fair, the police officer was undercover and looked like a total hobo, but still, it's not like the police weren't there.  Drunk people be crazos.

Randy put the guy in the back of the car and then kinda hung around to make sure that the other officers didn't need help or anything.  Our guy's girlfriend came over to ask if we could call his mom and blah blah, she'd be worried, whatever.  She decided to let him stay the night in jail, which I found to be a bit sketchy, mostly because whenever she was standing on the curb another guy had his hands on her waist.  4th St. drama!  Whatever, the case, we took our guy and the bloody one back to jail and booked them in.  According to Randy, this kind of stuff is just a typical Saturday night.

Lesson learned:  Leave the bar a little bit before closing.  You can avoid a lot of problems that way.  And arrests.  Can't forget about the arrests.