I discussed fat out-of-shape cops with a friend who was a Chicago cop -- yes, sorry, I do have some friends in law enforcement -- and (at the time) a law student, now an ex-cop and lawyer. You see a lot of them in Chicago. Fat cops, I mean, maybe they are law students, that you can't tell by looking.
Don't you have to pass a physical to be a cop, I asked him? To get on the force, yes, he said, but then you're on. Well, I asked, what if you have to chase someone, a mugger or robber? Hah, he said, "have to chase someone?" What do you think we have radios for?
* * *
When I was a philosophy prof, years ago, I had a grad student who was a cop, he'd come to class right off duty, in uniform and armed, which was a little unsettling. He ended up writing a paper on Foucault's Discipline and Punish, not bad, if I recall. I asked him, did the other cops think it was odd he was doing graduate work in in philosophy. (Yes.) He said he'd study while sitting in speed traps, dull work. So, the next time you get pulled over, reflect that it is marginally possible that the officer may have put down a volume of Foucault before switching on his lights and siren.
> In L.A. of 2000 a friend of mine was running away
> from
> a cop. Why, I dunno. This was during an
> anti-corporate
> glbo protest ("The Battle of Los Angeles"). The
> police
> officer apparently was so porcine and out of shape
> he
> couldn't keep up at all, began having chest pains,
> bent over heaving, and went to the hospital,
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