Yielding to Harvey
Thursday, 8th April 2010GLENDALE, CA [NotS]
We have to talk about something here.
First, let’s look at a jpeg. It’s worth 30,224 bytes, and possibly a thousand words.
Okay? Without context, what are we seeing: a rabbit two metres tall in an intersection, evidently being watched by a gaggle of cops. Pretty routine so far, I suppose. Oh, and a car not stopping to find out why a rabbit the size of Darth Vader is in an intersection. There must be more going on here….
Did I mention that this is an intersection in Glendale, California? That might add some context.
According to wikipedia.org [so it might be true], Glendale houses more than thirty competing streetgangs. And now a rabbit. I can’t guess, from the image, which gang Harvey belongs to; I also can’t guess that it doesn’t belong to at least one of them. In fact, that could explain all those nice white policemen keeping an eye on it.
It doesn’t, but it could.
Instead, the cops are on hand to pull people over for failing to stop their cars while Harvey Gangbanger walks up to them in an intersection. That is: the cops are stinging those who see a guy in a mask approach their cars, in Glendale.
Astonishingly, there were those who didn’t stop to get carjacked by a fucking rabbit while the cops sat around on motorbikes watching it happen.
The sting, as designed, placed Officer Tom Broadway in this stupid costume in order to entrap those trying to stay alive for another day in Glendale when those people failed to stop and let Harvey Gangbanger hop along his merry way. Presumably because there’s no other crime to fight in Gang Central LA. Curiously, the sting was declared something of a failure, Councilman John Drayman describing the whole idea as a ‘stupid traffic stunt…breathtakingly dangerous’.
Officially, the problem with the whole stupid idea was that ‘the idea of a giant rabbit—a total anomaly out in the roadway—is not exactly training our drivers to learn really anything’ [Drayman, again]. Unofficially: there’s a guy dressed as a fucking rabbit in the gangy capital of the world walking up to people’s cars.
Officially, from Officer Dennis Smith: ‘One of the violators said he was confused by it; he said he hopped in front of him.’ Unofficially: look at the jpeg; you’re in Glendale; an anonymous guy masked in a rabbit costume is approaching with his hands concealed.
Maybe I’m overthinking this a little, but the bestcase I can come up with is that you might be being approached by a guy in a rabbitsuit you shot in the eye sometime in the future; and that doesn’t really make it okay.
Look: I’m okay with cops, in the abstract. I get that we kinda need them, or something like them. And I’m brutally aware that most of them—over ninety-nine percent—are goodguys who hate the corrupt ones at least as much as I do. But this is blurring the edges a little, for me. I can’t quite assume that every cop involved in this stupid strategy is crooked; I just can’t assume that anyone involved is remotely selfaware, either. It doesn’t help that it’s no secret that orchestrated trafficstops like this—creating a situation designed to create a crime in the presence of the fuzz—is nothing more or less than a modern protection racket: thanks for breaking a meaningless law; please remit a fractional element of our budget forthwith. When it’s all about revenue, I have less tolerance for the fuckups performed during the process.
I do see the idea behind this stupid event. Easter. Which, in modern times, is somehow all about rabbits. Which I suppose I’m okay with: I don’t really give a damn about Easter’s original fertility LARP, let alone the revenantid purpose the ThouShaltNotStealians stole it for; and I like chocolate, so it can totally be about oviparous bunnies; let’s do that.
Here’s my question, though: if it’s about folding a stupid, seasonal costume into a traffic sting, does it have to be a rabbit? Could it be SantaClaus, or a leprechaun, or—for July the Fourth—a terrorist? Could we have in July a freedomfighter with anything from a musket to an AK47 approaching cars trapped by law in an intersection in Glendale, California, handing out fines to those too stupid to run the fucker over? Can we get that one worked into whatever List of Stupid Ideas Glendale PD have on their whiteboard? Can we? Huh? Because that’ll make for far funnier a NotS, I think.
You’re cops. Crimefighters. Go fight crime. Stop dicking around, pulling people over for thinking for themselves in reaction to situations you’ve invented, but for which no crime would have been possible. Also, don’t be surprised when idiotic actions like these lead some of us smarter civilians to develop a new strain of myxomatosis. Morons.
Of course, that’s just my opinion; I be rollin widdit.