Vermont Man
The cops are all inside the station one morning when they hear strange noises coming from the parking lot out front. They look around at each other in confusion for a minute or two, then suddenly drop their doughnuts, slam down their coffee mugs, and race outside to see what’s going on. What they find is bent metal, puddles of light blue glass shards, and debris spread throughout the parking lot.
“We came out, and sure enough there was someone who had run over our cruisers with a tractor,” said Orleans County Chief Deputy Philip Brooks.
The apparent nonchalance of Brooks’s statement—said almost as if having the sh*t smashed out of your car by someone driving a tractor is a relatively normal occurrence—is likely because the cops had a pretty good idea who had done it.
Roger Pion, a 34-year-old from Newport, Vermont, had recently been charged with possession of marijuana and was apparently pissed as hell about it.
“It felt like I was in a Monster Jam rally or something; I just couldn’t believe it,” an eyewitness told reporters. “He’s backing up, going over it, turns around, makes his way to the other vehicles, smashes those up.
“He did his business and headed right down Route 5.”
Although officers may have had a hunch about who’s just destroyed all their toys, they weren’t able to do anything about it right away—they didn’t have any cars.
“We have other county sheriff’s departments who are offering cruisers to us,” Brooks said. “We’ve already had one county that’s dropped one off to us, and we’ve got two others that are on the way.”
When they were finally able to get back out on the road, it didn’t take them long to find Pion.
Although apparently perfect for smashing cop cars, it turns out that tractors aren’t very practical getaway vehicles. Cops found Pion a mile down the road—still driving the tractor.
The Orleans County Sheriff’s Department lost eight vehicles and estimated the total damage at roughly $250,000.
“The radios are ruined, the radar detectors, the cages in the cars,” said Sheriff Kirk Martin. “We’re going to have to get the jaws of life up here to pry the trunks open and see about the rifles and shotguns.”
