Stereotypes And The Law

Fire chief shot by cop in Ark. court over tickets
JERICHO, Ark. – It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn't hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps.

The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.
[...]

"You don't trust your soul to no backwoods southern lawyer..."

You would think that in this day and age, even beer-bellied, hick town cops would be smarter than this. Evidently not. This brings to mind an incident of my youth.

Back in the day, I lived in a small farm community of 5,000 or so people. The sheriff's department used to patrol our town along with the rest of the county. They were typical small town cops, bored, and willing to write a ticket for the smallest of infractions just to belay that boredom.
The town was a fast growing boom town at the time, due to a couple coal fired power plants being built in the area, as well as several coal mines starting up and others ramping up production of coal in order to fuel these new power plants.

Eventually, the town acquired sufficient money to fund their very own police force. The town of course, sought personnel and ended up with a bunch of local yokels to man this force. With no prior law enforcement experience but a quick training course, they were now 'qualified' civil servants. They were on the prowl for the slightest and the most menial of 'crimes' with which to pop a perp.

So one night, in fact, the evening before the beginning of the county fair (which was held in our town), a few of us small-town boys got our heads together and thought "What sort of practical joke can we muster to play upon these hapless morons?", which will display a harmless protest and voice our dislike and disgust toward the under qualified, dumb-assed hic cops?

So here's what we did. (The statute if limitations should have expired years ago, and I also doubt any of these morons are still alive or living in the area.)
We stole an old wooden outhouse from some farm - moon on the door and all - and created a sign to hang above the door with the verbiage of "Wipe Out [town name] City Cops". We loaded in the back of someone's pickup, scurried to the courthouse, unloaded the outhouse on the lawn, and scurried back to whoever's house we had originally congregated.

Well, it caused more of a raucous than any of ever dreamed possible. Several boys from the town who had nothing at all to do with the joke were taken into custody and questioned extensively. Of course, they had no clue as to who it was or when it was placed. They were fucking sweating bullets. As were we when we found out the magnitude of the ire we had inflicted upon the police department.

Some of us later saw the offending shitter dumped at the landfill, and were quite disappointed the thing was so relentlessly discarded of. Never to be used in another practical joke job.

Awww, good times in the country. Good times.


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