It’s official. We are living in a Mike Myers movie.
It could be worse. We could be in an Ingmar Bergman flick, where we pontificate to one another about freshman-level philosophical concerns while the Grim Reaper kills us off via checkmate. And everything is in subtitles. Or we could be in the militia’s wet-dream movie Red Dawn, where we find out to our horror that everything we thought was wrong, and we are transformed from proud American liberals to comsymp collaborators before Charlie Sheen kills us in the second reel.
But this is bad enough. On May 14, a guy named Isaac Vigil (who looks like a Mike Myers film character — think Justin Bieber crossbreeding with Krusty the Klown) was arrested on gun and drug charges by Denver police. (They saw him smoking meth in a McDonald’s parking lot — nice way to avoid detection, Ike.) Vigil didn’t come quietly; officers Tasered him and cuffed him (hands behind his back) before tossing him in the back of the wagon and driving him to the substation. The idea was to book him as per routine, but Vigil had other ideas. While still in the car, Vigil produced a gun and fired at one of the cops. He missed, and police officer John Sisneros shot him in the stomach. As of last report, Vigil was in critical condition.
Didn’t the cops search him, you might ask? Why yes, they did. He was exhibiting “violent and aggressive behavior,” the cops said, and he was frisked three times. The cops found a knife on him and removed it. While he was in the car, he kept telling the officers that he was on a three-day meth binge and wanted to die. He also warned them that he was gonna shoot ’em down:
I’m going to kill you. You better have a vest on.
Okay, violent, drugged-up, and threatening, check. But they frisked him three times. What’s the deal with the gun?
Apparently the frisking officers failed to search between Vigil’s butt cheeks. That’s where he had his Raven P25 pistol concealed (one of those “kicky summer guns” that, apparently, fits snugly between your cheeks, if that’s something you want to do). Still with his hands cuffed behind his back, he got off two shots that didn’t hit anyone. That’s when Sisneros shot him in the stomach. Vigil then dropped the gun and said, “Okay, I’m done.”
You gotta love the press coverage on this one. The original story didn’t even reveal where Vigil had his little spit-shooter hidden — seems like the cops weren’t initially forthcoming to the fact that their perp let fly with a butt gun. Subsequent reports said that Vigil had the gun “hid[den] in his rectal area …” The jokes just write themselves.
Vigil is facing multiple counts of attempted murder, assault, possession of drugs and weapons (not only did he have the kicky little pistol in his rear, he had two baggies of meth up there, too), and more.
Yeah, baby.
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Published writer since 2001, focusing on politics, history, Web development, and other topics. First book is coming soon.
