Seriously, Cop cars do not have comfortable back seats.

.... No, you will not see an article in the Tribune with a headline that starts with "Teacher gets caught..." and ends with "...student."

.... It's been a long time since I sat in the back seat of a cop car, over 32 years.  Let's just say that I wasn't a model teenager.  But I have avoided them my entire adult life, until tonight.

.... I worked at the Chevron tonight, and sometime around 5:30, I turned around from helping my co-worker find the right can of Skoal for a customer to see a guy in his 40's walking out the front door with a 30-pack of Busch Light.  I turned to my co-worker and asked if he had sold the guy the beer.  He said "no".  So I told him I'd be back in a second, walked out the back door, saw they guy crossing 2100 So at Douglas Street and yelled at him "Hey, did you pay for that beer?"  He turned towards me, turned back and just kept walking.  Fine.  So I head back into to the store, grab the wireless phone and call Salt Lake City Police.  As I'm talking to dispatch on the phone I head out the back door again and spot him walking down Douglas Street.  Dispatch is asking me where he was headed, and as I'm describing it to her, the guy ducks behind Sherwin-Williams and heads up the alley.  Still talking to dispatch, I walk up 2100 So and spot him through the car wash heading north down another alley.  I also notice he's not carrying the beer any longer, so I head over to the alley to see where he ditched it, no longer on the phone with dispatch.  As I'm headed over there a cop shows up and I tell him where the guy was headed and that he didn't have the beer with him anymore.  The cop takes off and I find the beer in the dumpster at Sherwin-Williams.  Of course I leave it there, 'cause I know when CSI shows up they're going to want the scene left alone.  Yeah, ok, what really happened was another cop showed up, I asked him if I should leave it there and he said they'd pick it up and bring it back to the store.   I get halfway back and the phone, in my back pocket now, rings and it's dispatch with an address for me to go to so I can identify the perp. (The guy they found, I just wanted to say 'perp').  I walk to the address, three cop cars are there and they already have the guy in cuffs.  I identify him, they get all my information and then ask how much the beer is worth.  Nope, "about" won't do.  They ask me to call the store and get them the actual price ($16.99, we don't count tax when dealing with theft.)  Um, sorry, can't, the store phone is in my back pocket.  So one of the cops drives me back to the store, with the beer, to get it's retail value. On the ride back, (in the uncomfortable back seat, which, by the way, the airconditioning doesn't get to) he told me that this guy has been arrested several times for beer theft. He leaves the beer with us, and my job is done.
.... My co-worker texted (yeah, I know I'm probably making up that word) the manager to let him know what happened before I could tell him to send him a text that just said "Steve was brought to the store in the back seat of a cop car."  Oh well, it's not a good idea to give your boss a heart attack.