Let’s Do Welcome COPS

The TV show COPS has chosen to film right here in Bernalillo County. I am so excited and upbeat about this really great development for our city and county. I can’t for the life of me fathom why the mayor and other gov officials are pushing this great opportunity away, distancing themselves from COPS, because if there’s one thing we do well around here, it’s run away from the police. I have no idea why we run away from police around here, but we do, and fortunately that’s what COPS is all about—running away from the police. Perhaps the skill we are all honing in flight from law enforcement has something to do with a certain federal investigation into the APD for some reason or other…. I’m not sure. I guess this aura of uncertainty and vagueness in regard to this investigation dealiwhacker just adds to the wonderment and mystery of living in the Duke’s Querque.

For all the other tens of thousands of you out there who can hardly wait to receive COPS with open arms, offering the producers and director green chile, and weeping with welcoming joy, here’s how every COPS show goes—a cop approaches a guy in a hoodie on a bike. They have a friendly conversation until the guy suddenly throws down the bike and runs off into the streets, jumping over hedges, scaling walls with the police and the COPS camera crew in hot pursuit.

At long last the police wrest the suspect to the ground. The COPS camera zooms in as drugs are ripped from the suspect’s warm-up pants pocket along with a needle, a spoon, and a mashed-up pack of Pall Malls. The suspect is hogtied and dragged back to the cop car, while the officers joke about the hole in the person of interest’s pants.

If the cop discovers a needle, he says, “I could have been spiked with that!” He then hogties the imputed criminal and hauls him to the copcar.

If it’s a marijuana pipe the cops have discovered, the officer sniffs at it and says, “Hmmmm, freshly smoked.” The cop then hogties the suspect and drags him to the car. If the suspect has not, for some ungodly reason, been hogtied, when they reach the car, the officer holds the suspect’s skull very tightly in his surgical gloved paw. “Please watch your head,” he says as he shoves the “client” into the back of the police car and slams the door as the suspect rams his head repeatedly into the side window while he screams obscenities.  

It just so happens my neighbor Kirk, for the princely sum of 125 pennies, has volunteered to be pursued by sheriff’s deputies through my backyard. He will then claw his way over the chain link fence and scramble along the ditchbank finally collapsing just as the German shepherd and the officers hogtie him in front of the COPS camera and light crew. Yay Kirk!

That was one heck of a tryout for Better Call Saul, Kirk.  Oh, and as for “the coming up with bail” bit, I think the dollar twenty five covers my end of the deal. It’s so nice to have you as a neighbor. I know you’ve been unemployed for five hundred consecutive weeks. I know the buck twenty five means a lot. But much more than that— Your immortal soul has been super nourished.  Just think, you played a part in making Albuquerque and Bernalillo County great. Yay COPS!  Yay Kirk!

 

(Image credit: "Welcom to Albuquerque" image by BJ Carter)




This piece was written by:

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James Burbank

James Burbank has written and published over 200 articles for regional and national publications such as Reuters International News Service, The World & I Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, Farmer’s Almanac, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, La Opinion, New Mexico Magazine, Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque Tribune. He is author of Retirement New Mexico, the best selling book published by New Mexico Magazine Press, now in its third edition. He is also author of Vanishing Lobo: the Mexican Wolf in the Southwest, published by Johnson Books.

As a professional writing consultant, he has written and edited publications, video and radio scripts, annual reports, and investment information for a wide variety of corporate clients. A Lecturer II for the Department of English, Burbank has specialized in teaching technical writing and professional writing. His interests extend from composition and writing theory to environmental and nature writing. He has played a leadership role in developing and implementing the English Department’s teaching mentorship program.


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