Officer Alex’s cop car is a rollling collection of...well, just about everything imaginable.
Just don’t let me get to my trunk.
Not a threat. Just a statement of fact.
With the passing of the venerable Crown Victoria comes the new Ford Taurus as the primary repository of “stuff” for a profession known for not knowing what you need until you need it. And like its ancestor…the Taurus provides many such options.
Closing down an interstate? Not a problem…I have a half-dozen reflective two-foot-high traffic cones to the rear left.
Going to have a myocardial infarction in a hastily erected circus tent on the side of Shallowford Road? Rock it on out, sir: I’ve got an AED to the rear right-hand side. You may as well enjoy another rack of ribs while you wait.
Going to steal the contents of a semi-truck inside a large gated area sealed by a fence from the main road where I can’t get to you? Boom. I’ve got a master key (aka “bolt cutters”) the height of a middle-school student parallel to the rear bumper up in there. Allow me to join you.
I literally have no idea what to expect from one call to the next, but whatever it calls for, there’s a substantial chance I’m ready for it—thanks to me and my trunk.
It actually started out quite simply: I needed a place to sit. Nothing says “longterm” like taking a young, high-strung person and endlessly preparing them for the worst case scenario society has to offer in the way of danger, then placing them in charge of a clipboard for up to eight hours on end on a lonely crime scene.
I didn’t need the AED or a master key on those scenes; I needed a damn chair, and so by the next shift, that’s exactly what I had tucked into the back of my trunk.
And on that next crime scene, while comfortably seated, I had two more needs: To eat, and to pee. The world was my urinal (an entirely separate column for another time when you’re ready for it), best I couldn’t so easily create food, so by the next shift, I had that covered as well.
Water was easy, but the little powdery things you pour into them for variety in flavoring was something unheard of until I prepped for it. And the beef stew and raviolis? My hunger wasn’t just abated, it was hunted down and executed thanks to the amazing advent of the pop-top lid. Silverware? Boom.
In possession by the disposable dozen—because what’s a meal if you’re having to eat it on two nasty “crime scene” fingers digging two-thirds of the way down an unheated can of whatever?
But it doesn’t stop at the basics of traffic and crime-scene details. Sarin gas on the menu? Well, welcome to the 21st century.
For a time in my trunk, I had Mark I auto injectors for an atropine cocktail, should I need one ordered up. Nicolas Cage at the end of “The Rock”, waving the green flares and sticking himself in the thighs with a miracle drug? Boom. I had that. (OK, not the flares, just the auto-injectors.) Thanks, Saddam Hussein.
Say it wasn’t nerve gas, but a car down a steep embankment in the rain with an injured child? Hello, 50 feet of rope. I coiled you up in there for a reason after all. And to cut the engine oil and blood that may have accumulated, there was my half gallon of Purell with the pump handle on top to get through the worst of it.
Yes, it was more than an office, that Crown Vic. It was a warehouse for mobile Doomsday prepping long, long before that was a topic on the Discovery Channel. Because who better to expect Doomsday than a cop? And all this has been listed before I even got to the contents of the black Pelican case strangely nicknamed the “Box of Death”. (I told you not to let me get to my trunk at the beginning of this, after all.)
You need service? I deliver. And when I do, I come fully prepared, or as close as I can be. But if you mess with me, consider the stuff adorning my belt, and if that’s enough? Just pray you don’t see me ambling towards the rear of my car.
I mean—unless you’re hungry or need a seat or are concerned about biohazard and chemical exposures, of course, because in the orange bag I have the neatest suit and mask and…and…and…