Editor’s note: American Police Beat has printed this story several times over the years. Here’s a shortened version we thought you’d enjoy.
When the Lord was creating police officers, he was into his sixth day of working overtime. An angel appeared and said, “You’re sure doing a lot of fiddling with this one.”
“Have you read the specs on this order?” the Lord said. “Police have to be able to run miles through dark alleys and scale walls.... They have to sit all day on stakeouts, cover a homicide scene, canvass for witnesses, and testify in court the next day. They must stay fit while running on coffee and half-eaten meals. And they need six pairs of hands.”
“Six...?” the angel asked.
“It’s not the hands causing me problems,” said the Lord. “It’s the three pairs of eyes….”
“That’s standard?” asked the angel.
The Lord nodded. “One pair sees through a bulge in a pocket before they ask, ‘May I see what’s in there, sir?’ When they already know....”
“They need a pair on the side for their partners’ safety. And a pair that can look reassuringly at a bleeding victim and say, ‘You’ll be alright,’ when they know it isn’t so.”
.... The Lord continued, “I already have a model that can talk an ornery drunk into a cruiser without incident and feed a family on a civil service paycheck.”
“Can it think?” asked the angel.
“You bet,” said the Lord. “It can recall elements from crime scenes, recite Miranda warnings in its sleep, detain, investigate, search and arrest... in less time than it takes five judges to debate the legality of the stop... and still keep a sense of humor.”
“This officer also has phenomenal personal control. It can deal with crime scenes from hell, coax a confession from a child abuser, comfort a murder victim’s family, and then read in the paper how police aren’t sensitive to the rights of criminal suspects.”
The angel ran her finger across the officer’s cheek. “There’s a leak,” she pronounced. “You’re putting too much into this model.”
“That’s not a leak,” said the Lord. “It’s a tear...for bottled up emotions, for fallen comrades, for commitment to that funny piece of cloth called the American flag, for justice.”
“You’re a genius,” said the angel.
The Lord looked at the angel and said, “I’m no genius, I didn’t put the tear there.”
A couple of good jokes from the policedaily.com
are in order before we mention bad news.
The Winter Funnies
My Stuff!
A yuppie opened the door of his BMW. Suddenly a car came along and hit the door, ripping it completely off. When the police arrived at the scene, the yuppie was complaining bitterly about the damage to his precious BMW.
“Officer, look what they’ve done to my Beeeeemer!” the man whined.
“You yuppies are so materialistic, you make me sick!” the officer retorted. “You’re so worried about your stupid BMW, that you didn’t even notice that your left arm was ripped off!”
Finally noticing the bloody left shoulder where his arm once was, the yuppie cried, “Oh my God, my Rolex?”
Old Injury?
Two retired cops, who had not seen each other for a while, are approaching each other on the sidewalk and both are dragging their right foot as they walk. As they meet, one looks at the other knowingly, points to his right foot and says, “Happened in a gang shootout, South Bronx, 1999.”
The other officer hooks his thumb over his shoulder and says, “Stepped in dog shit, 20 feet back, watch your step.”
Holy Water
A church minister is driving down to Florida, when he’s stopped for speeding. The Highway Patrol Officer smells alcohol on his breath. Then he sees an empty wine bottle on the floor and asks, “Sir, have you been drinking?”
“Just water,” replies the minister.
“Then, why do I smell wine?” asks the patrolman.
The minister looks down at the bottle and says, “Good Lord, He’s done it again!”
Late for Work
For 30 years, Officer Johnson arrived at work at 9 a.m. on the dot, ready for duty. He had never missed a day and was never late. On one particular day, 9 a.m. passed without Johnson’s arrival in the briefing room and it caused a stir. All announcements and patrol assignments ceased and the sergeant looked at his watch and muttered to himself. Finally, at 10 a.m., Johnson showed up. His uniform was dusty and torn, his nametag was missing, his face was scratched and bruised, and his shield was bent. He limped painfully to the time clock and punched in. Being aware that all eyes were upon him, Officer Johnson announces, “I tripped and rolled down two flights of stairs. I nearly killed myself!”
The sergeant replied, “And to roll down two flights of stairs took you a whole hour?”
Dept. of Homeland Absurdity
[American Police Beat, Nov. 2008]
We no longer have billions to waste on gadgets and gimmicks
According to a recent poll, eighty-nine percent of Republicans believe actions taken by the federal government to prevent terrorism are a major reason there has not been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in seven years.
Among Democrats, that number drops to 53 percent.
What’s significant about the poll is that it’s an exercise in faith, as there is no direct evidence to suggest that the “war on terror” is making America safer, less safe, or neither. Any of the information that would be used in such a calculation is likely classified and therefore unavailable to either the public or the press.
But if it’s not exactly clear where and how the Department of Homeland Security has prevented acts of terrorism in the USA, one thing is abundantly clear: DHS is wasting inordinate sums of taxpayer dollars.
According to research by Congressional investigations, in the five years since the inception of the super-bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security has overseen roughly $15 billion worth of failed contracts for projects ranging from airport baggage-screening machines to trailers for Hurricane Katrina evacuees to a massive border fence between the U.S. and Mexico.
Most of the contracts wound up over-budget, delayed or canceled after millions of dollars had already been spent, according to figures and documents prepared by the House Committee on Homeland Security.
A panel of “experts” is now scheduled to testify before the House Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight on how to fix problems with the DHS acquisitions process as the agency moves forward and evolves over time.
The six-member panel includes an acquisition director from the Government Accounting Office, leaders of watchdog groups and the deputy inspector general for DHS.
A spokesman for DHS declined to comment about the matter when contacted by reporters….
According to the congressional leaders, about $351 million was wasted and not properly overseen in the U.S. Coast Guard’s Deepwater program after ships were built and then scrapped.
The $1.5 billion Boeing program to help secure U.S. borders with a “virtual fence” made up of electronic sensors and other equipment, is being shelved after it was over-budget, late and had technology problems.
Another $10 billion program called US VISIT is a computer system designed to record the entry and exit of visitors to the United States at airports and border crossings.
That initiative is behind schedule and not being managed well, according to figures prepared by the committee staff.
Perhaps the most disturbing example is the $200 million mismanaged and poorly spent in buying trailers from Bechtel and Fluor for those left homeless after Hurricane Katrina.
“You’re talking about a third of the agency’s contracting spending that’s resulted in failed contracts,” Scott Amey, a lawyer for the Project on Government Oversight told the Washington Post.
“DHS is definitely not the poster child for good contracting or management.”….
Update on Drunk Driving
Over the last few decades, aggressive enforcement of drunk
driving laws has made our roads safer. At the same time, however, the number
of officers killed in traffic-related incidents caused by drunk drivers has
risen. Data from the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund has shown this
figure to rise 41% over the last three decades. During the ten-year span between
1978-1987, the number of officers killed by drunk drivers was 74. It went
up to 89 between 1988-1997 and kept rising to 104 between 1998-2007.
Source: American Police Beat
Technology,
treatment part of effort
to
reduce drunken driving
[Chicago Tribune, May 26, 2008] — It’s hard not to wince at the thought of Joseph Richardson being crushed to death against an iron fence as he shielded his 4-year-old daughter from an out-of-control car. And it’s hard not to feel repulsed when police say the driver of that red Chevrolet Cavalier had a blood-alcohol content nearly twice the legal limit when he hit Richardson….
With drunken-driving rates stuck at a level that has changed
little over the last decade, experts are recommending new approaches that
may offer the best hope of reviving the great gains made against DUIs during
the 1980s and early 1990s.
One method relies on technology: Stopping drunks from driving before they
can get started. Another is treatment: Not only making hard-core drinkers
serve time, but also helping them overcome their addictions.
“It’s now becoming increasingly difficult to make [the statistics] go down,” said David Hanson, a retired sociologist from the State University of New York at Potsdam who has studied alcohol and drinking for more than 40 years. “If we keep trying the same old approach, it’s probably not going to make much of a difference.”
The old approach, stricter laws and the efforts of advocacy groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, paid off significantly, according to a study released [in May] by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That report also cites the aging of the driving population and an increase in female drivers, who are less likely than men to drink and drive.
But as in 1997, 20% of the drivers involved in fatal crashes are legally drunk, and the number of alcohol-related traffic deaths has not budged. It’s as though the country is stuck, forced to live with an annual death toll of about 17,000 people….
Even the proportion of teenage drivers killed in alcohol-related crashes has held steady for the last 10 years, further evidence that there is a portion of the populace that’s simply not getting — or accepting — the message.
”The challenge is how do we drive the numbers down even further, knowing that we can’t give an inch in terms of aggressive law enforcement or targeted advertising or working with our advocacy partners,” she [Nicole Nason, administrator of the highway safety agency] said. “How do we do even more?”
The most widely accepted answer is to turn to technology, namely alcohol ignition interlock systems. These devices, installed in the cars of convicted drunken drivers, link a blood-alcohol monitor to the ignition. If the driver has been drinking, the car won’t start.
Illinois has been a leader in the use of these devices,
Nason said. Under legislation that goes into effect next year, the state will
become one of only a handful in the country requiring use of the device for
first-time DUI offenders.…
New Mexico, the first state to adopt such a law, saw alcohol-related fatalities
drop by 12% in the law’s first year on the books.
Another approach gaining attention is the establishment of special courts — known as DWI courts that work to make sure convicted drunken drivers not only serve their time, but also receive court-supervised substance-abuse treatment. It’s based on a model that has proven effective in the treatment of drug offenders.
Almost two decades ago, the first drug courts began showing up in counties across the country, working to keep prison populations down and to lower recidivism rates by diverting convicted drug abusers into supervised treatment programs.
There are now more than 1,900 such courts, according to the National Drug Court Institute. Some studies have found that drug court graduates return to prison at less than one-fifth the normal rate.
David Wallace, director of the newly formed National Center for DWI Courts, said 110 of these courts are up and running, along with 286 drug courts — two in Illinois — that act as hybrids, also taking DWI cases.
A study released last year examining several DWI courts
in Michigan found that over a two-year period, offenders who went through
the regular justice system were 19 times more likely to be arrested for another
DWI than those who went through the specialized program….
