Spotting Criminals Is A Challenging Job
If you happen to see the police in your neighborhood, make sure you wave, smile or greet them politely. It’s important for police officers to feel appreciated because they have extremely dangerous and challenging jobs. One of the biggest challenges is figuring out who is a bad guy and who just looks like one.
What would you do, for example, if you were a police officer and spotted a man running down the street with a refrigerator strapped to his back?
I would do exactly what some cops in Britain did: stop him for questioning.
This encounter happened recently in the town of Stevenage, Hertfordshire, about 27 miles north of London. Police officers stopped a man named Daniel Fairbrother who was running with a fridge.
Officer: “Freeze!”
Fairbrother: “Me or the fridge?”
Officer: “Both! What are you doing?”
Fairbrother: “Training for a race.”
Officer: “Why do you have a fridge on your back?”
Fairbrother: “Just in case.”
Officer: “In case of what?”
Fairbrother: “In case there’s no fridge nearby when I’m done running. I might need a cold drink.”
Actually, as the BBC reported, Fairbrother told the officers that he was training for the London Marathon, where he hoped to break the Guinness World Record for fastest half-marathon while carrying a household appliance (white goods). The current record is 2 hours, 4 minutes and 13 seconds, set by Sam Hammond of Brighton, UK, on Feb. 26, 2023. (White goods, in case you’re wondering, is a British term for large domestic appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines that are sometimes found on the backs of white people.)
Fairbrother, for his part, did not mind the questioning. “I would expect the police to do their job and check on someone running about with a fridge,” he told the BBC. “If I got pulled over another 10 times, I wouldn’t be annoyed.”
This cannot be emphasized enough: if you are running with a refrigerator strapped to your back, you have given up your right to complain if the police stop you for questioning. The same applies if you are running with a weapon of some sort, or a large plastic bag filled with $100 notes, as though you just robbed a bank or got a divorce from Ariana Grande.
As part of their jobs, the police have to be on the lookout for potential criminals—and this is not as easy as it looks.
What would you do, for example, if you were a police officer and came across a man carrying an ATM on his back? Would you stop him for questioning? I certainly would.
Me: “Excuse me, is that an ATM on your back?”
Man: “Yes, but you can’t use it right now.”
Me: “What are you doing with it?”
Man: “I’m trying to set a Guinness World Record. Most ATMs snatched in a day.”
Me: “Wow, that’s impressive. Best of luck to you!”
As you can tell, I would make a terrible police officer. To be a good police officer, you need to have a discerning eye. If you spot anyone transporting an ATM, you should immediately detain them—at least until they provide evidence that they’re trying to set a record.
To be a good police officer, you also need to have a discerning ear. You can’t do what a Florida cop recently did. Mistaking the sound of an acorn falling on his patrol car for gunfire, the officer fired back—but not at the oak tree. He fired at a suspect sitting handcuffed in the patrol car, but thankfully none of the bullets hit anyone. This incident underscores the importance of training officers properly at the police academy, so that they know how to respond when someone is actually shooting at them (fire back and call for backup) or when an acorn is falling (don’t fire back, just share the bad news with Henny Penny and Ducky Lucky).
It’s easy to pass judgment on officers who make poor decisions, but we should also consider the pressure they’re under, needing to take action in a split second. If you are responding to a convenience store robbery and three people are running from the scene in different directions, which of them would you chase? (1) The woman holding a gun in her hand; (2) the man wearing a mask; or (3) the man carrying an ATM on his back.
I would chase the man carrying the ATM, because surely someone carrying an ATM would not be able to outrun me.
In this hypothetical scenario, there is no right answer. Any of them could be innocent or guilty. In real life, however, officers have to react quickly, exercising good judgment and not letting prejudices get in the way, as they should be trained to do. Criminals come in all shapes, sizes and colors. If you don’t believe me, just ask the police officers who arrested a 78-year-old woman in Missouri last year for robbing a bank.
According to the charges filed against her, the woman handed a robbery note to a bank teller demanding “13,000 small bills” and adding “Thank you sorry I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Then she took off in her getaway mobility scooter.
