Keep It Under Your Hat

Thanks to John Kennedy the only people who wear hats these days are hipsters and cops. Hipsters do it ironically and cops have to. Cops don’t particularly like wearing hats, and the hats even have a special loop for attaching them to a belt carabiner.

NYPD duty hats have a special little pocket in the lining. Over the years I noticed many interesting items in there: icons, shopping lists, wanted posters, family photos. By far the most common is this little card featuring Archangel Michael, the patron saint of law enforcement.

It seems to be this particular holy card with a prayer on the back. Interesting to note that in Guido Reni’s painting from which this card was made, Michael holds a chain instead of a scale, his cape is pink, hair is longer, there are pink ribbons in his outfit, and there’s a very prominent nipple showing.

RNC In NYC

Conventioneering Fingerlicans and protesting Tastycrats are out in full force, but so many New Yorkers got out of the city that the streets are almost empty (by New York standards of course). In honor of those who left the city the Empire State Building was yellow yesterday (despite the fact that the official website says that it’s in honor of US Open).

I’ve seen a lot of regular police officers and semi-military ones out before, but I haven’t seen such a concentration of police brass performing regular cop duties. There was a police lieutenant guarding the subway turnstiles, another lieutenant directing traffic and a captain guarding what looked like a normal transit bus with police “Christmas tree” on the roof filled with cages and lockers of assault rifles (and probably other stuff). They even posted a sergeant and a couple of cops to guard Victoria’s Secret (probably from Republicans who might want to find out what it is).

I took this picture because my wife was egging me on. Now she wants credit.

There was this cool bigbrothermobile driving around. Hey, it doesn’t matter if you are in a velo-rickshaw. You gotta get your 2 minutes of hate on.

Reading Signs

Joel sez: users don’t read anything. That’s true. But sometimes they’ll still get some use of the instructions in one way or another.

I wonder what the code under the letters “WET” refers to….. Oooh, I know! It’s one of those “markers and signs [that] are part of a civil disturbance control plan that will implement Emergency Executive Orders #11002 and #11004 to process, control and relocate “dissenters” to detention camps, and prisons during a National Emergency.

The Boldest

Ok, so last morning I was sitting in my window office. The guy next to me opened an exam preparation book and started reading. He was studying to become a member of New York’s Boldest. One of the questions caught my eye:

What is the most important quality in a corrections officer:

a) Physical strength
b) Not being afraid of anything
c) Quick reaction time
d) Intelligence

and another one:

What should the correction officer’s attitude towards inmates be?

a) Suspicious
b) Fraternal
c) Impartial
d) Indifferent

The official correct answers are probably d and c, but I think it’s actually c and a in real life.

Here is what I found on the Net:


Preview a typical Correction Officer training program.
-Interpersonal Communication
-Hostage Survival
-Special Inmates
-Objective Observation and Report Writing
-Security Skills
-Transportation of Inmates
-Fire Prevention
-Crime Scene Preservation

Cool.
I bet this sort of training is even more relevant in corporate culture. Just replace “inmates” with “coworkers”.
I think there is a decent store of psych warfare knowledge in these training books, I should get some for my library.