"The Dancer Who Couldn’t Walk"
Rollie is not 5 feet 9 inches tall as he claims. He's so skinny that his friends call him "Runt." He's also a serious drunk. Here's one incident Rollie will never forget.
He gets locked up for selling dope. As a drunk and a troublemaker he fights both inmates and jail guards. Such conduct gets him put in restraints. That means manacles around his wrists and his ankles.
Rollie is real quiet for a couple days, so the jail captain goes up to his cell to check him out. Rollie says he couldn't walk because "the chains are too tight."
Rollie is taken for a medical exam and the doctor says he can't find anything wrong with him because he refuses to stand up.
A few days later the detectives in charge of Rollie's case say their primary witness left the state. Charges against Rollie are dropped and he is released.
That isn't the last the cops will hear from Rollie. Several weeks later Rollie's lawyer has the sheriff served with the notice of a lawsuit for an undisclosed sum of money (meaning big bucks). Rollie alleges that because of the manacles, he is no longer able to stand or walk.
A few weeks later the sheriff gets a call from one of his narcs. The narc is in a surveillance van and spots Rollie outside a bar. The sheriff tells the narc to go ahead and videotape Rollie's antics.
A few days later the sheriff telephones Rollie's lawyer and invites him to the screening of a special video. The lawyer accepts the invitation.
The videotape made from the narcotics van reveals Rollie and a couple of his buddies leaving a bar. Rollie, the young man who claims to be permanently crippled by manacles when he was in jail, is seen dancing an Irish jig with great skill while his friends laugh and applaud.
Rollie's lawyer thanks the sheriff and quietly excuses himself from the conference room. Following that screening there is no further mention of Rollie's lawsuit.
Copyright-Bob Ford 2009
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