Federal Block Grant for Policing: One Million Dollars. Having a monkey on your SWAT Team? Priceless.

This has just got to be a joke---but alas, it's probably true:

"Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it," said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove, who builds and operates tactical robots for the suburban Phoenix SWAT team. "It would change the way we do business."

Truelove is spearheading the department's request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee. The department is seeking about $100,000 in federal grant money to put the idea to use in Mesa SWAT operations.

My initial instinct--I'm willing to bet the grant was part and parcel of the vaunted Clinton administration effort to put new cops on the street. But, it looks like the grant is to DARPA.

I've only got one thought about this: can you imagine what possibilities this raises for reviving the career of Tony Danza? Can't you just see the movie possibility: because of an affirmative action program, the SWAT team monkey gets promoted to be the LT. It would be "Barney Miller" meets "BJ and the Bear." The monkey--dressed in a suit with shortsleeve shirts, ala Sipowicz---would yell, scream, throw bananas etc at Detective SGT Danza, and his sidekick who could be played by Joey Lawrence. Judd Nelson could be the criminal mastermind heading up the crime family dominating the city, and could be aided by the other members of the family: Naomi Judd, Judd Hirsch, Ashley Judd, and sycophantic cousin Judge Reinhold.

The possibilities raised by crime-fighting monkeys, they are a endless.