Cool Cops

The Marion County Police Department, in an effort to improve their approval ratings among the key 18-35 demographic began to bust into parties not to break them up, but to crash them. At first, their efforts met with failure. After all, most parties, or at least most good parties, see people running for the hills at the first sign of those flashing lights. By the time the police made it up the drive, only two or three people remained, and only rarely were those people conscious. Still, they persisted. They made small changes to their approach . Instead of saying “Who has drugs?” they would ask “Who has some drugs?” No longer did they say the music was too loud. Rather, they would ask if the music was loud enough. They made beer runs in record time. They replaced sirens with dubstep, and suddenly instead of driving up in a cop cruiser, it's like they were a rolling rave. They carried six-packs instead of six-shooters. They learned to DJ and dance and mix drinks. They loaned out handcuffs to people feeling frisky. In the end, it worked. For the first time in history, police had a record 89% approval rating among teens and twenty-somethings.

Excited at having succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, the police set out to use their new found influence to tell kids about the dangers of drugs, binge drinking, hooliganism, and other unsafe behaviors. These efforts failed, however, as their target audience had been told since birth not to give in to peer pressure. To prevent Operation: Cool Cops from being a total wash, the MCPD revamped their plans, and Operation: In Like Flynn resulted in the largest bust of minor drug traffickers, under aged drinkers, and drunk drivers in state history.

- Originally mailed to T. Switzer from Biloxi, Mississippi