4/12/24 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: Eighth Graders at Mount Vernon on Washington DC Trip.

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

Homage to the Sixties television show, Dragnet.

1:15pm, Friday, March 22. I’m Silcott, working out of the Recess Division. My partner is Mike Kaylor. It was a sunny day, warm for the end of March here in Central Ohio. We were on routine patrol in the Our Lady of Peace parking lot watching the Second and Third graders. I had just put out the cones blocking the access to the parking lot from North High Street after placing the cones on the other end, blocking the alley.

A white Smart Car with wording on the driver’s side door and a ladder on its roof—too far to see from my vantage point—pulled up and stopped just before the OLP alley entrance. A slender man, approximately 5-foot-eleven inches got of the car. Workers were at the new climbing dome, and I thought he was there to speak to them. At that point I turned facing north. Kaylor was watching the students in the field. When I turned back around the Smart Car was gone. So were the cones on the east side.

Conferring with my partner, we quickly surmised that the driver of the Smart Car had apprehended the cones. We proceeded to interview witnesses. One of the climbing dome workers said that the car had signage on it for a roofing company but could not recall the name.

I contacted Jen Bryant by telephone. She proceeded to take a car out through the neighborhood to see if she could make contact with the suspect. I did the same. We reconnoitered on Beechwold Ave. Neither of us could find the aforementioned car.

I sent out an all-points bulletin, asking the public to be on the lookout for the wanted vehicle. Meanwhile, Susan Gualtieri, working the second-shift desk, took advantage of technology and was able to identify the roofing company that uses cars like the one that we had seen leaving the scene of the crime. Bryant proceeded to the roofing company’s headquarters where she interviewed the owner. He was cooperative and identified the suspect by name and made contact with him, urging him to give himself up. The suspect promised to do this and said that he would return the stolen cones.

Our front desk started to get calls from good citizens who had spotted the white Smart Car. At 2:55pm, the suspect drove up to the scene of the crime and apologized. He claimed that he was teaching someone how to drive and needed three more cones to fulfill his mission. He took the school’s cones out of the confined space in the back of the car and handed them to me.

Ascertaining that this was our suspect’s first offense of cone stealing, he was released on his own recognizance. A stand-down order was transmitted to the public so no well-meaning citizen would confront the suspect as we considered the case closed.

The suspect, Arthur Coning (name changed to protect his identity) did not have to appear in municipal court and did not face any fine or prison time.



My name is Silcott. I carry an OLP lanyard. Another crime solved. On to the next one. The word is that there is a student consuming chewing gum in the east hallway.

Jim Silcott