Tuesday, July 3, 2007

P.O.P.

Way back when I was a young news director at a small radio station in a small southeast Georgia town, I had some ... interesting adventures.

Most occurred when I had the opportunity to ride along with the local police some evenings.

You ever see Everybody Loves Raymond where Ray rides along with Robert and Robert foils a holdup at the pizza place?

Well, sometimes that's what it's like. You never know when a perfectly quiet, boring night turns into an ... extremely interesting night.

When the police respond to a call, they never know what they are about to encounter. And, sometimes, it turns into a life-threatening situation.

Other times, folks they encounter are just being asses.

And that will ... well ... the best way to describe it is ... pissing off the police. (Which, by the way, has the accent on the first syllable. As in Poe Lease.)

In my hometown, pissing off the police was the way they described what is actually "disorderly conduct."

Police often use abbreviations or initials for various crimes. For instance, you may be familiar with driving under the influence of alcoholic beverages being abbreviated as D.U.I. And, disorderly conduct was D.O.C.

One time, though, an officer put, among the many, many charges against one particularly disorderly individual P.O.P. instead of D.O.C. Don't know if it was just a slip, or if the officer was in a particular silly mood after all the action was over, but that's what he put.

And, when the perpetrator appeared before the judge on his many charges, His Honor paused when he got to P.O.P.

The judges inquired as to exactly what "P.O.P." was. And, when informed that it was pissing off the police, he paused.

He then asked the defendant about that.

He plead guilty.

The judge totaled up all of the various charges on the book, then added $10 for pissing off the police, and went on to the next case.

If only every case was so simple.

4 comments:

  1. Funny you should mention the PO-lice. I normally assign this particular pronunciation to the State PO-lice. Every other usage I pronounce Po-LICE: Local Po-LICE, Po-LICE Cruiser, Po-LICE state, Secret Po-LICE.
    But always State PO-lice. I wonder if that is a phenomenon from the South?

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  2. I happen to know a police officer who has used POP for years. Small world...

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  3. Macker: Must be. We usually say Po-LICE in almost every instance, unless it's directly preceded by the word "the."

    We say "It's the city PO-lice," but we also say "It's the PO-lice" ... and I don't know why. Like you said, must be a Southern thang.

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