The Aspen, Colorado Police have it tough. Not that they have to deal with vicious inner city gangs, murderous Juarez drug cartels or mass Benghazi type protests.
No.
They have to deal with driving silver police cars with aspen leafs painted on the sides. With a large, yellow canary sticker on the back.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that- at least to we normal citizens of Aspen (if there really is such a thing).
But there is with other cops. Most police jurisdictions like to think of their patrol cars as being an extension of their macho, tough guy image. As a symbol of masculine virility. A panther prowling amongst the kitty cats of civilian autos. A tank rumbling amidst the Trabis of regular autos. Not a silver car that looks like an updated hippie mobile that Scooby Doo would drive to ghostly adventures in.
Show up to a police convention in another state with an Aspen police car; see what happens. Pull up to the curb and you’ll see the other cops elbow their buddies, point and snicker.
At Louisiana seminars they bend over guffawing and yell out loud “Hey buddy, you’re at the wrong place! The Gay Mardi Gras is the next block over!” In the tougher towns the other cops make the Aspen delegation park out on the streets where they come back the next morning and find their cars up on concrete blocks with the wheels missing, windows broken and gang graffiti such as “Is the circus in town or what?”, “I let the Green Hornet borrow my real car.”, and “Good trade-ins available at Al’s Friendly Used Cars.” spray painted on them.
During the meetings the other cops are merciless. The harassed Aspen cops put up with endless taunts from them participants: “Hey man, I like that canary sticker on the back. ‘I tought I taw a puddy cat wobber! I did! I did! I did taw a wobber!” “I bet you have a hard time chasing those Mercedes and BMW’s in that thing!” “Do you guys use them as taxis between calls?” Even their local brethren, the Pitkin County Sheriffs don’t give them any slack- “Hybrid huh? Does that mean yer half man, half woman?” “Does hybrid mean you have a tube hooked up to your rectum when you drive so it can use the methane?”
All this is very hard on an Aspen policeman’s ego. After all, he has to be tough to deal with all the divergent aspects of an international town. He has to be intelligent enough to deal with difficult situations. And his intelligence and toughness tell him that he shouldn’t be driving around in a silver car with aspen leaves on it. It works against the image he is supposed to project. It would be like Dick Cheney running around pulling a rickshaw (which I would really, really love to see).
But the Aspen police have developed an ace in the sleeve to deal with this fraternal humiliation. In a secret hidden cave deep beneath the Aspen Police Station they have a special move machine that drives like a sports car, is armored like a tank and has the firepower of Schwarzenegger in his better movies. It is the hereditary evolution of the Batmobile and James Bonds Austin Martin. And with no aspen leaf anywhere to be seen. It is designed to be incognito with no makings to give away its sponsor.
It is the ultimate in crime fighting vehicular intimidation. The Aspen police use it mainly for impressing other police units in the towns they visit. Special features include a large scoop that can be extended from the side to go under a neighboring, obnoxious police cruiser and flip it on its side.
A fiendishly powerful magnet in its bumpers can pull an annoying foreign cop car to itself and allow the Aspen driver to propel it towards a river bank or short cliff and disengage itself at the last moment. A state of the art electronic interference device can interrupt and take over another police cars navigation and allow the driver to direct the offending fellow cops car to whatever humiliating destination he desires.
Think you are so bad Detroit? Wait until the Aspen mobile gets on your tail!
Note- The writer will be unavailable for contact for a couple weeks until the fallout from this article has subsided and he can safely come back to the town without being tailed everywhere and the police have forgotten about this article and have reconcerned themselves with other things.