So we were watching the news, my family and I — three younger siblings and my parents — on a news channel whose name I couldn't be bothered to remember, when an interesting story of cops abusing a citizen came on. It seems a Tim something was at a gay strip club, apparently enjoying himself, and touched an employee on his chest. The employee wasn't too gracious about it, and they got into a scuffle. The two slugged it out until an off-duty cop tazed Tim or something along that line. Tim decided it was time to haul ass and get the hell out of Dodge in light of his being tazed, and so to the Tim-mobile he went, until according to Tim some cops came and smashed in his windows, pulled him out, and started beating him. Now poor Tim claims to have been crying out, "Why are you hitting me? Why are you hitting me?" to be met with the response, "STOP RESISTING!!!" and the batons falling on his face. Now, as the more-than-likely biased-as-frig reporter went on to essentially say the exact same thing, my father remarked that it reminded him of a rather ridiculous story he heard that was in one way or another similar to Tim's. This is how it went...

"When I was in the police," my father started, "one of the guys back in the station told me about a story like that, from up when he was in uh... Up in Barbados."

I, of course, was intrigued, because my dad's years of service in the RCIPS weren't donuts and coffee galore, and had seen their fill of life-or-death scenarios and twisted f*cks for whom my father wished nothing less than their deserved deaths (I wouldn't argue, had I been in his shoes I probably would wish so, and even wish to be the one to bring them to their deaths) so I turned to him intently, waiting for him to continue. My mother also asked him to tell us and rubbed his thigh. So my dad continued recounting the tale as he remembered hearing it.

"So these cops found a suspect, and they were interrogating him and he wouldn't talk. He was just quiet..." He waved his hand to emphasize this. "He refused to talk, so one of them got a baton! So the guy, the suspect was like, 'What are you gonna do to me with that? Break my arm?' because he thought that they were cops and they wouldn't do something like that. So the cop with the baton said, 'Yeah, I am.'

"And WHAP!" He brought his fist down rapidly on the air. "Broke his arm, so the suspect was like, 'Oh shit! They're serious! I better talk!' And he sang like a canary! So the cops got all the info, the location of the weapon, the reason, you know, that sorta thing, so they took him to the neighbourhood where his family lived and told him to get up in a tree..."

My father then leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "It was about three... Three or four in the morning that time so they were just like, 'Go on! Up in the tree, we'll help you! Don't worry! We'll help you up!' So the suspect, still scared shitless of these guys, complied, and he climbed up and they helped him up and made sure to keep him from hurting himself on the way up, and then the same one that broke his arm got a blow horn..."

To effectively convey this to my younger siblings he put his hand to his mouth as though he were holding one, so at worst they would assume it was a type of microphone. "And he started bawlin' out, 'John Brown! Come out of the tree and you will not be harmed! I repeat! John Brown, come out of the tree and you will not be harmed!' This of course woke up everybody and made them come out and look, so the suspect was scared shitless and trying his best to climb down but his arm was broken, so he ended up falling out of it."

I started chuckling and this made my father grin as he continued, "So then since he fell out, when he tried to report the police for breaking his arm and forcing him into the tree, his family actually came out and testified that he was in the tree and fell out and broke his arm when he fell out!"

I broke out into a full-fledged laugh and my dad joined me, with my younger siblings giggling as they grasped the joke, whilst my pacifist anti-suffering super Christian woman of faith mother (that's a long-winded and smart-ass way to say really nice) looked at us in disgusted disbelief. Not wanting to believe such a thing was possible of men of law and order. My father made the argument that it was effective all the same in reaping confessions, and asked her if she wouldn't want them to get the confession out of someone who raped or murdered her.

She replied with, "Not in that way."

I then backed up my father and said that I personally would feel very satisfied that if that happened to me and I heard that that's how they got the confession, because it would be deserved, and it's funny as hell. My dad went on to explain that they in the long run did the right (and funny) thing, because they got the confession as well as the location of the evidence needed to make a case, at the expense of no more than the criminal's broken ego, and arm.

With that I remarked, "That's one good bad cop!"

And my father once again agreed, still to the dismay of my mother.

Hope y'all enjoy reading this story as much as I do laughing at it! Cheers and God bless!