After a long year full of racial, social and political violence and increased calls for police accountability throughout the United States, the City of Fort Collins has conceived a groundbreaking idea: a committee to oversee the police which is to include criminals.
We reached FCPS spokeswoman Betty Humpter for comment. She had this to say, “Our community is about inclusivity and diversity, isn’t it? If we’re gonna have oversight of our police, we need to include a more diverse board; not only do we want a racially diverse board, but we want it socially inclusive too. That’s why we’ve invited a whole cross-section of FoCo criminality, from burglars, to murderers, to the more run-of-the-mill drug traffickers and fraudsters. The only people we don’t have here is child molesters, ’cause even the ordinary, decent scumbags can’t stand a chi-mo.” When asked about the controversial move to get input from criminals on policing matters, she replied, “How can you have policing without criminals? It’s kind of like having an economy without consumers or football without the pigskin, isn’t it? Not only that, but isn’t it criminals most affected by our boys and gals in blue? It’s about time their voices should be heard. When we say that we’re about inclusion and diversity, we don’t just mean it, we put our taxpayers’ money where our mouths are.”
Area criminal “D-dawgg” (he declined to reveal his real name) gave his two cents worth of a comment, “Yeah, I can’t wait to get outta da slammer at least for a couple hours. They offer free pizza, and shit. Uuuhhh… yeah, the cops should go easy on us… you know, discourage homeowners from using cameras, not setting up neighborhood watch and shit, and letting us do our deal. We just wanna make a living and shit.”
We contacted Fort Collins Police Commissar, Geoffrey Freedom, and he had the following to say, “100% of our officers are on-board with this.” He went on, “We at FCPS [Fort Collins Police Services] welcome more equitable interactions with those who keep us in a job. 99 times out of 100 our interactions with criminals involves handcuffs on them, a tasing, and on occasion, a good, old-fashioned beat-down, so a dialogue would be a welcome change in interaction. We can’t wait to hear what criminals have to tell us about how to do our job.”
Applications at the Larimer County Jail have been pouring in, and selection has been hampered by an overwhelming sense of civic duty on the part of our beloved criminal members of our community. We at the Focopolitan Tribune think that this is yet another wonderful idea in the greater police reform movement. We also think that nothing can go wrong with this well-intentioned social experiment.
