CALGARY – The Calgary Police Service has paused an order from the Calgary Police Commission requiring all Calgary cops to remove the ‘thin blue line’ patches from their uniforms after large numbers of cops proved unable to follow this straightforward command.
“This is a complicated situation, because we’re dealing with a group of people who are very, very simpleminded,” Calgary Police Chief Mark Neufeld explained when he announced the pausing of the new order.
“Clearly, this is a case of the officers not understanding the order or how to go about complying with it, as the alternative – that the Calgary Police Service does not consider itself beholden to civilian oversight and is made up of armed individuals who refuse to remove what many consider to be a racist hate symbol – is unthinkable.”
“It would frankly be ridiculous for officers to knowingly refuse an order to remove a thin blue line patch, when the ‘thin blue line’ in question represents police seeing themselves as the thin blue line between chaos and order. How can police represent order when they themselves refuse to be governed? No, they didn’t refuse, they’re just too dense to understand the order.”
The Police Chief is adamant that it’s not a case of widespread refusal to follow the rule because an entire police department made up of cops who refuse to follow rules they don’t like would be tantamount to a publicly funded armed gang. As such, the Calgary Police Service maintains that their officers have neither the manual dexterity to remove the patches themselves nor the intelligence required to ask others to remove them.
“The officers have had over a week to remove the patches, they were told there would be consequences if they didn’t, and they still did not remove the patches – probably because they didn’t even know what a patch was or didn’t realize that they were the ones being ordered to remove them,” Chief Neufeld continued. “There is a complexity to picking away a piece of thread that our officers are unable to grasp, and that’s not their fault. They’re, as I said, deeply unintelligent.”
Since the order to remove the patches failed, the new plan is to get officers to understand that they have to remove their patches by inviting people who have other jobs that require dress codes to come and speak to the officers, to explain to the slow-witted police officers that grown ups at work sometimes have to dress a certain way, even when they don’t want to.
“We’re hoping that hearing their favourite hockey player explain that he can’t just decide not to wear his skates, or to wear the jersey of the opposing team, or to put a Confederate flag on his back, will help our officers understand why they need to remove the patch,” Neufeld said. “And if not, then I guess our only option is to allow our officers to continue to do whatever the hell they want with no repercussions.”
While he was adamant that Calgary police officers are too stupid to follow basic uniform rules, Chief Neufeld was equally adamant that their obtuseness doesn’t mean their guns should be taken away because such mindless creatures are in constant danger from both human predators and wild animals.
