‘There is nothing new under the sun’
Ecclesiastes 1:4-11
Some people attribute this quote to Shakespeare and they would be wrong. Just like the writer of this story finds wielding a prosthesis as a weapon is something new and unique. Nope. I first heard a version of this story over forty years ago.
Female fan uses prosthetic leg as a weapon during a hockey brawl. It might have been unique, had she been a player. But she wasn’t. The story at the link.
I don’t remember who told the story or even where I heard it. I know I was a rookie. I seem to recall the story teller had been a cop for at least a dozen years when I heard the story. That would put the events recounted anytime between the mid-sixties and mid-seventies. The story went like this.
The story teller and his partner answered a family disturbance. The drunken husband had beat the hell out of his wife. Another Saturday night … What made this different is that hubby was equipped with not one but two prosthetic arms. The guy was definitely not Harold Russell. He didn’t have a nice bone in his body.
The guy wasn’t done and soon he was brawling with the cops. The fight ended when the cops cut the harness and ripped the devices from his arms. They then took him to jail, for fighting the cops, not the wife. Once at the jail, the partners separated. One to book the prisoner and the other to write the report. Each completed his task and they met up at the patrol car.
The story teller related that his partner was downright giddy. He snickered and generally acted very pleased with himself. They hadn’t gone far when dispatch instructed them to call the jail sergeant. The discussion with the jail sergeant didn’t go well. The irate sergeant wanted to know where their prisoner’s “hooks” were. The secret was revealed. Partner had booked the prosthetics as evidence, “deadly weapons”. The sergeant was not amused. He offered them alternatives. They could retrieve the prosthetics from evidence or they could return to the jail and wipe their prisoner’s ass. It was entirely their choice.
