Morbid Cop Humor

This semester has been pretty fun so far, one of the reasons being that I'm teaching Politics of Legal Order, which is one of my favorite classes to do. It's basically a criminal justice class, with a fun admixture of criminal law, criminology, con law and a whole bunch of other stuff thrown in. Any class where you get to read David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is okay by me.

But the main reason that the course has been fun is that there are two campus police officers who are taking the class: the administration pushed through a policy (designed, I am sure, to gin up enrollment) that makes it easier for staff and dependents to take classes, and the net result has been great as far as I'm concerned, in that you get a whole different set of voices and perspectives (which my hunch was both unintended and unanticipated nor entirely desired by those who brought about the change---about par for the course.) Anyhoo, these two are hilarious, and are kicking the butts of the regular students, which is good for all concerned if you ask me. But what's particularly funny is that I'm now getting emails from them, which are forwarded cop humor. This is par for the course:

When Nathan Radlich's house was burgled, thieves left his TV, his VCR, and even left his watch. What they did take was "generic white cardboard box filled with grayish-white powder." (That at least is the way the police described it.) A spokesman for the Fort Lauderdale police said, "that it looked similar to cocaine and they'd probably thought they'd hit the big time."

Then Nathan stood in front of the TV cameras and pleaded with the burglars: Please return the cremated remains of my sister, Gertrude. She died three years ago."

Well, the next morning, the bullet-riddled corpse of a drug dealer known as Hoochie Pevens was found on Nathan's doorstep. The cardboard box was here too; about half of Gertrude's ashes remained. And there was this note.

It said: "Hoochie sold us the blow, so we wasted Hoochie. Sorry we snorted your sister. No hard feelings. Have a nice day.

Real story? It's got urban legend written all over it. But....

Cost to department budget of new computer monitor, as old one is now fried due to being sprayed by Lipton's Rasberry Ice Tea out of my left nostril: $350

Starting a dreary and dreadful Friday morning falling out of my chair from laughing: Priceless.

UPDATE: O.J. confesses?