Cops, The Show
Reprinted with permission, originally by Lo, who retains all original rights. She emailed it to me and it made me laugh... hope you all enjoy it too...
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There are several things I've discovered during the extensive stay on
my couch. One of them I found from watching a few solid hours of
Cops. I
have decided that
Cops is a show completely devoted to displaying
stupid people attempting to run away from only slightly less stupid people.
Usually the very stupid people are sitting in a car under a bridge with
a needle or two sticking out of their arms when the cops (remember now,
they're only slightly less stupid) sprint up with drawn guns. The
officer usually runs up screaming in a southern accent. In my
experience, screaming at a stoner is not the best way to keep the
situation calm, but nobody has seen fit to tell the cops this vital
information. Now if I saw a sprinting person carrying a gun and
screaming in a southern accent while running at me, I would probably
just implode, but not the stoner. Often they try to run away while
screeching complete gibberish, and then the cops have to chase them.
Which shouldn't be as difficult as it often turns out to be. Usually
about fifteen more cops show up before the stoner, who can't walk a
straight line, much less run it, is caught while trying to stip naked
and climb a tree at the same time. Once caught, the stoner is again
given directions that are nearly impossible to carry out. "Get your
hands where I can see them, now! Get out on the ground! I said put
your hands where I can see them! You get on the ground!" These not
only confuse the stoned perp, but they are also physically impossible
for a completely stoned person to follow. To keep his/her hands where
they can be seen and get down on the ground at the same time, the
stoned perp would have to be coordinated enough to spread his/her arms while
lowering themselves to the ground.
When this doesn't happen, because let's face it, naked stoned people
are usually not even coordinated enough to say "the," especially after
being chased through the woods, the cops then decide to throw the
stoned
person to the ground and kneel on them. The cops then like to pretend
that they were in some sort of mortal danger from the running,
stripping, stoned perp. "Did you see that Bobby Joe, they just ran out
of nowhere!" "Yeah, I know, he looked like he was gonna jump right at
ya." Then they ask, "Are you high? Were you shootin up some kinda
dope
up in there? Cause I drove around the block and you were still sitting
here."
Which, maybe they're required to ask this, but it seems to me that if
you have just pinned a stupid person to the ground and you have not yet
read them their rights, do you think this seems like the kind of thing
that is going to hold up in court later? But the ground bound stoned
perp replies, oblivious to the needle sticking out of his/her arm, "No
officer, I swear to god, we were just talkin bout the way the car was
flying. You scared me. Why'd you scare me like that? I'm not
stoned."
The cop offendedly replies, "You're lyin to me. I don't like lairs.
You be honest with me, and I'll be honest with you, but that's not the
way you wanted to play it, so now we're gonna play it the hard way."
"What'd I do officer?" the stoner is usually crying at this point, "I
don't know what I did to make you come up the way you did." "What's
that needle sticking out of your arm?" "That? Oh, that. That ain't
mine, I was just holding that for a friend. He said he was gonna kill
me if I didn't stick it in my arm till he came back for it." "Oh,
well,
who's your friend?" (Like we need to go down this path. Do they think
that asking this stoner another question to which they'll inevitably
have to make up another answer is going to make anything any clearer?
I
think we established that the person was stoned once they began talking
about the flying car. The reason train left the station when the naked
tree climbing commenced. Throw them in the car and move on.) "Ah,
well, I don't know his name. I just seen him around. And that ain't
my
rock in the ash tray neither." "Well, whose is it?" "I don't know,
you
must've planted it."
Does that ever work? At some point, if I were
being arrested, I would not stand there and make up excuses for items
obtained before I was read my rights by the arresting officer. You're
in handcuffs, do you really think they're going to let you out? Your
best chance at not going to jail for a long time is to look as sober as
possible. This rarely occurs to either party. "Well, I seen you with
it when I walked up, so that'd make it pretty hard for me to plant."
"That wasn't me, that was some other naked stoner with a needle
sticking
out of their arm. I ain't never seen this car or that rock before in
my
life. Sure, it's in my yard, and yes that's my butt print on that
seat,
but I never seen it before. That rock was here when I bought this car
that I never seen before in my life."
Finally the arresting officer reads the person their rights, which
means that everything said before this is inadmissable, and we have all
just wasted 15 minutes of our lives listening to one idiot argue with
another stoned idiot about the drugs that this person was obviously
doing. Now I am by no means saying that every cop in America is
stupid.
I believe that there must be several hundred thousand police officers
out there who watch
Cops and feel like they've just watched pure,
unadulterated idiocy ooze out of their television screens. No, I am
convinced that
Cops goes across the country finding the finest displays
of density available in the force and records their adventures and puts
them on TV. And yet, I keep watching it. Why? I don't know. There is
just something slightly soothing about watching stupid people being
chased and, eventually, caught by only slightly less stupid people.
Side note: Both me and Lo respect cops a lot, we just think the show is a little bit rediculous most of the time...
Posted by 10lees at May 26, 2004 08:20 PM