Internship Entry 3: Down Time

This past week has kind of been a joke at the office for Nick & Casey and Sach & me. We're running a little dry on work to do, and that's the understatement of the year. Well, we all need a little down time. Or, a lot.

7/20 You Only Hurt the Teams You Love
Want your favorite baseball team to have a chance at the play-offs? Here's a piece of advice: don't get me tickets to any of their games. The Amy Chen curse continued unabated Wednesday night with the disappointing defeat of the Nationals by the Rockies, after a 4-0 win the night before. What's the Amy Chen curse, you ask? Well, it's shitty, is what it is. When every single baseball game you've gone to has resulted in the defeat of the team you rooted for, it's natural to come to the conclusion that you are cursed, that your team will never have a fighting chance in a game where you have a seat in the stands. So what do I do in a predicament like this? Do I leave halfway through a game, knowing that my absence will consequently garner my team a mind-blowing win, albeit one that I will never get to see in person? Or do I stay and cheer until my voice gives out, only to watch the game end with my team's painful, ignoble defeat? This is the kind of dilemma that needs to be discussed more in philosophy courses. I'd like to hear Kant's take on this little quagmire.

So the night ended with the Nats losing 3-2. In addition to that the O's lost to Milwaukee, and the Yankees came out on top against Texas. The curse is cruel. But at least Nick, Casey, and I made a lot of noise in the stands. Half the stuff we yelled made absolutely no sense, and the subdued (and annoying!) silence of the people around us only made us that much more obnoxious. But we worked up a good sweat and wasted our voices, so in the end it was a good night.


Casey, Nick, and me at the Capitol Brewery before the game. I got to take advantage of Happy Hour without getting carded. This never happens.


Casey and I after the game. We were very sweaty at this point. The Washington humidity doesn't quit after dark.

7/21 The Many Faces of Sachin
At work, this has been the Week of Nothing. As in: What work did we do today? Nothing. What's next on our to-do list? Nothing. How much are we getting paid? And you get the idea. While Matt & Karen and Mike & Naomi seem to still be consistently knee-deep in work, Nick & Casey and Sachin & I have been spending the vast majority of our time either playing HORSE in the intern office or humming that over-caffeinated Six Flags commercial ditty ad nauseum. Here, Sachin and I spice up a phone call to the nincompoops at the witness voucher office:


Sachin annoyed by the incompetence of the witness voucher office.

Sachin sad, also sleepy.

Sachin high; drugs taken from client.

Sachin worried, about to wet himself.

Sachin practicing for his role in an off-Broadway musical.

I don't know what the fuck is happening in this picture.

Internship Entry 2: D.C. is full of neat stuff!

June 28:
Casey and I took a walk around the Capitol after work. It was overcast and drizzled almost the entire time we were out, but we barely felt the rain. We walked by all the congressional offices, the Library of Congress, and the Supreme Court. It's a liberating feeling to be surrounded by all these historic and important American buildings, while at the same time being able to just be totally giggly and carefree with a girlfriend. In your little world, all these symbols of power and grandeur are relegated to the background, and all that really matters is having a fun night. There were pictures of me and Casey hugging a palm tree outside of the botanical gardens, but they were a little blurry so I left them out. These photos are less humorous.


The Capitol.


Some flowers in this garden-thingy we walked through by the Capitol.


A fountain near the Capitol.

July 8:
Sachin and I were in Adams Morgan to investigate an incident that happened outside a bar called "The Reef." While walking through an alley to the back of some bars and stores, I saw these little "cave paintings" on the building walls. I snapped a few shots of them with my camera phone.



And the day before, while waiting for one of our interviewees to arrive, Sachin and I took a detour to Adams Morgan and stopped by Meridian Hill Park, on the corner of 17th and Euclid. This isn't a good photo (again, taken with my camera phone), but it gives you an idea of how expansive the park is. (This is just one section of the park.) I never even knew this existed.

Internship Entry 1: The Blue Wall

Some days doing this job, you just feel like you have accomplished nothing the whole working day. Case jackets filed at the courthouse mysteriously go missing, and you leave empty-handed. Searches for an individual's contact information turn up nothing. Clients for whatever reason don't keep their appointments. Nobody ever calls you back when you ask them to.

But compared to most situations in which you go home at the end of the day wondering where all your time and effort went, I don't think anything feels as fruitless and aggravating as trying to find a cop.

One important job of defense investigators is trying to interview possible witnesses for the prosecution. The goal is to take down a signed, official witness statement, thereby locking them into their story. Therefore when they take the stand, they can be impeached by the defense attorneys if there are any inconsistencies between their testimony and the statement they've given to the investigators. This is very valuable in case witnesses try to change their story, and it is also helpful in casting doubt upon a witness' reliability.

Unlike a lot of other people who might take the stand for the government, cops hold two valuable pieces of information that make them incredibly frustrating for defense investigators. First, they know exactly who you are and what you want from them the minute you pop onto their radar. Therefore, the minute cops hear that you are looking for them (which investigators try to keep under wraps as best they can), they - and all their fellow men and women in blue - will give you the run-around like there is no tomorrow. What else explains why Sachin and I have been unable to interview an Animal Control officer for about three weeks, despite the fact that a) we know when she works, b) we know where she lives, c) her supervisor has already given us the go-ahead to talk to her. Take another example in which while trying to find two cops to talk to who arrested our client, their co-workers have already given me and Sachin three different times of day for when their shift starts. A typical attempt to reach them goes like this:

"We're here to see either Officer A or Officer B."
"A or B? They're already out on the streets/not working now."
"Can you please check? The last person we talked to told us they'd be just coming in to work right now."
"Oh nooo....They come in at [insert yet another time of day] ."

This happened today, again. Very defeating.

The other thing that cops know that makes them virtually useless to interview (much less take a statement from) is that simply they don't have to talk to you. Unlike your average person who feels like they want their side of the story told, or will talk simply because they are asked, cops know that talking to you - even if it doesn't hurt - will not help the government's case. And since dealing with defense investigators is inevitably a part of a cop's job description, they have plenty of practice shutting you down without a second thought. Sachin and I had an "interview" with a U.S. marshal a few weeks ago that lasted about a minute. Aside from their general unwillingness to talk, it also doesn't help that you're face-to-face with a man who could snap you in half.

But the great things about us investigators is that we're incredibly tenacious. Although Sachin did not seem too keen on this idea, I have vowed to set up a small tent outside Officers A and B's district station and embark on my first stakeout. But seriously, though - they're wrong if they think we're not going to keep going back there (and this goes for the Animal Control officer too). Sometime this summer, it will be a glorious moment when Sachin and I finally find them. And then, it will be the shortest interview ever as we wait for those soul-crushing words: "I'm not going to say anything about the case."

Lightning Round, Part III

My blog entry ideas have been backlogged for weeks. There have been so many things I've wanted to write about but just haven't gotten a chance to do so. I still want to get to all of those topics, so I'm kind of trying to figure out a way to organize everything so I don't just have one giant overwhelming entry that covers way too many things.

Well, let's get the quick, superficial things out of the way first, shall we?

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According a Yahoo! Insider News article today, Bennifer II have officially wed secretly in the Caribbean. The article also confirmed Garner's pregnancy, which will no doubt be intricately weaved into future Alias episodes. I hope it's not something corny like Sydney's eggs being harvested to create a baby, like they did on the X-Files. But I'm sure it will be.

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The recent Supreme Court ruling on the issue of public displays of the Ten Commandments caused at least one D.C. citizen to publicly express his dissent. While driving with Sachin on a routine investigation run today, we spotted a comical monstrosity on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and North Capitol Street. A man had turned his truck into a protest van of sorts, covering his vehicle with sheets of wood bearing various hand-painted political slogans. Homosexuality is a Sin! Abortion is Murder! End Judicial Injustice Now! No, it was not Bill O'Reilly driving the truck, just a disgruntled-looking old man. However, I do have to give him credit for the construction of the whole thing, which was quite competent-looking despite resembling a Mexican fruit-stand. I will regret for the rest of my life not having a camera with me.

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Speaking of Sachin, bless the man for introducing me to the Flaming Lips, especially their song Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Hopefully I will scrape together some money to purchase their album of the same name, but I fear this plan will go the way of The Office (it's been 3 months since I've intended to by that DVD set, and no I still don't own it).

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And thus ends Lightning Round III. Tune in again soon for highlights of my awesome internship, of which I've written practically nothing about so far. Also, I will finally get to writing my response to an article Matt David sent me entitled How Psychology Majors have Corrupted America's Youth. And lastly, I may say a word or two about a children's story idea I have in mind; or at least, a story done in the style of a children's book. However, copyright infringement may be a slight obstacle...you tell me: do you know what a magic bullet is?