NEW YORK — It’s been a jaunty, fun-filled week in New York City, where cops have been entertaining the normally bored masses with a series of drunken shootings. New Yorkers are calling the cops’ antics “hilarious,” and are hoping that the NYPD will continue nurturing the “edgy humor” its officers have recently perfected.
“I think it’s great living in a city where even the police know how to kid around,” said Greg Hamm, 26, of Prospect Park. “They’ve really mastered the art of slapstick. What’s funnier than a hammered cop spraying bullets wildly around the city? Nothing–that’s what.”
The latest romp occurred early Wednesday morning, as Sgt. Wanda Anthony of Staten Island’s 122nd Precinct was finishing up a date with a man. When the man’s wife exited the house and confronted them, a drunken Anthony fired a shot at the woman, hitting the latter’s car.
“Infidelity clearly adds a new element to the joke,” said Becca Gilley of Chelsea. “But firing a weapon at an unarmed woman is just classic, you know?”
Only a few days before Sergeant Anthony cracked up an entire metropolis, comedy team/Bronx detectives Jay Poggi and Matthew Sullivan pulled off the notoriously difficult “accidentally-shoot-your-partner-in-the-hand-then-drive-to-the-hospital-wasted” routine that has frustrated even the best comedic minds for decades.
“Matty lost a lot of blood during that sketch and needed immediate wrist surgery,” Detective Poggi, the shooter, recalled. “You’ve got to be totally dedicated to your craft.”
Most belly-busting of the three incidents was the buffoonery that occurred near the New York-Westchester line Tuesday night, when 27-year-old Brendan Cronin, a six-year veteran of the force, fired thirteen shots into a random car while in a drunken stupor, hitting the car’s occupant six times. Cronin—whom New Yorkers are calling “clearly the class clown of the NYPD”—was so drunk when he shot his victim that he could not recall the incident later.
NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton commended the three officers involved in booze-fueled shootings so far this week, calling their practical jokes “just what the city needed.”
“Normally, I’m more of a Benny Hill kinda guy,” Bratton admitted. “But these guys have given New Yorkers a great gift–that of laughter–and we’re already seeing regular citizens pulling their old six-shooters out of the closet and getting in on the fun themselves.”
