Police agencies find themselves in awkward situations made worse when the correct decision is applied with the wrong technique. Who can forget the hapless Pittsburg Lieutenant who rightly concluded that the suicidal bridge jumper should be confronted in a less than lethal manner. To this day I’m sure he’s wondering how Mr. Murphy forced his way to the head of the pack of options and the Lieutenant reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out the “Capture Net”. Can you see it coming? Our illustrious Lieutenant couldn’t. The net wrapped up the suicidal subject, he lost his balance, fell in the river below and drowned.

Not to be outdone, when an NYPD Lieutenant found himself confronted with a crazy outraged 300 pound black man dancing on the storefront awning, he knew that he had the solution. He deployed the taser. Some subordinates follow their leader out of loyalty, others because it is just too entertaining for those with a morbid sense of humour to see what he will do next. The taser dropped that crazy like he’d been poleaxed.  Nobody contented for the half roll that carried him off the awning and down onto the street one story below. The subject no longer suffers from violent outbursts, no outbursts at all. 

Which brings us to TSA-confiscates-huge-teddy-bear. TSA maintains a twitter feed. I can understand why they would want one but I’m not convinced that it would be mission enhancing.  I was right. TSA confiscated a stuffed teddy bear. It wouldn’t fit in an overhead bin, so didn’t qualify as carry on luggage. It was so big it needed its own seat and that wasn’t going to happen either. So the bear got left behind.

If that was the end of the story, well and good. In law enforcement, anything worth doing is worth doing to excess. Somebody decided to create a backstory. I know, I know, it’s Christmas we’ll give Teddy a really bummer backstory: The teddy bear unloved by his family was abandoned at he airport. To get by Teddy has resorted to hanging around the concourse 3C men’s room and is giving reasonably priced blow jobs.  It would have been so much simpler to say that the guys at Alaskan Air stepped up. He’s going to Nome, on a dinner flight, as the main course.