Review: The Million Dollar Policeman

The Million Dollar Policeman
The Million Dollar Policeman by John Swartzwelder
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Because this book chronicles the exploits of the worst policeman ever, I thought it would be fun to look at some real police blunders.

2010: A woman is arrested for possession of methamphetamine. It turned out that what the police thought was meth, a black substance crusted on a spoon, was really Spaghetti-O’s. What I find truly disturbing about this is that A) Spaghetti-O’s rot until they look like cooked meth, and B) Someone had a spoon that once held Spaghetti-O’s in their CAR for SO LONG that the substance turned black.

2004: A DEA agent, doing a classroom demo on gun safety, accidentally shoots himself in the leg. You might’ve seen the video. It’s not terribly gruesome or anything. All I could think about was how the officer at my junior high always refused to show us his gun, and then you’ve got this guy waving one around. Some kids get all the fun.

2013: An officer arrives to do an anti-drug presentation at a school. The officer comes on a motorcycle with a mounted machine gun, which was loaded, and a student walked up, pulled the trigger, and the gun fired. No one was shot, but a couple students were hospitalized after injuries they got in the panic. This one’s got me saying, Hold the phone, there is such a thing as machine guns mounted on motorcycles? That seems irresponsible and awesome. Look, police, if you want to recruit people, I’d say start with motorcycle machine guns, then talk about shoulder-mounted missile batteries, and then maybe finish off with some nonsense about fingerprinting or whatever.

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