ARMED AND INFAMOUS

Car 54, where are you? Officers Muldoon and Toody, your new assignment is to bust the armed and infamous. Starting January 10, CBS Television will be airing ARMED AND FAMOUS, a new reality series featuring celebrities serving as police officers in Muncie, Indiana. The cast includes Erik Estrada from the '70s cop show ChiPs, La Toya Jackson, the 2005 Super Bowl bare-breast stripper, and Jason "Wee Man" Acuna from the MTV show Jackass.

Shame on the City of Muncie and the State of Indiana for participating in a television show which will result in the degradation of the police profession. This show will lead its viewers to believe that any jerk can be a cop. Sorry, but it takes a special type of person to be a good police officer and that excludes Michael Jackson's sister and "Wee Man," who is afflicted with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism. Say what - a dwarf as a police officer? Why not Snow White? CBS advertises Armed and Famous as a reality show in which "Real Celebrities Become Real Cops" - bullshit, that's false advertisement.

Muncie must be really hard up for money. Joe Winkle, the police chief, believes the advertisement Muncie will receive every week will be invaluable. The law breakers who were handled by the celebrity cops have been paid a sum of money for their permission to be seen on television. There are already charges that the police coerced some of those law breakers into agreeing to be shown with these phony cops.

The celebrity cops were not permitted to participate in felony cases and they were always accompanied and supervised by veteran officers. The State of Indiana requires that before anyone can be vested with any police powers, they must have successfully completed a minimum of 40 hours of instruction in a pre-basic training course. Besides some firearms training, the only other training the celebrities participated in, as far as I was able to ascertain, was a phjysical fitness and agility program.

Where was the Indiana Law Enforcement Training Board when all this nonsense was going on? That state agency is charged with the responsibility of enforcing Indiana's peace officers standards and training laws. Where were the Indiana police chiefs' association and other law enforcement groups in that state? And where was the International Asociation of Chiefs of Police? Tlhese groups should have pressured the City of Muncie not to participate in this embarrassing venture.

CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU? was a farcical cop comedy which ran on television from 1961 to 1963. It featured two stumblebum cops, Muldoon and Toody, who screwed up every assignmetnt they were given. Most cops were furious with that comedy, seeing it as a humiliation of the police. Several California law enforcement groups publicly protested their displeasure to the show's producers and to NBC television.

I thought Car 54 was funny as hell and enjoyed every moment of it. I told my fellow officers to lighten up and keep from taking themselves so seriously. I've always believed that cops would feel better about themselves and their jobs if they could laugh at themselves once in a while. I felt that Muldoon and Toody were so farcical that no one in their right mind could possibly believe cops were that dumb.

When it comes to Armed and Famous, I cannot bring myself to say anything good about that "reality" show. It will be an awful embarrassment to law enforcement. This is not a comedy. It will end up humiliating cops everywhere in this country, not just in Indiana. A more appropriate title would be ARMED AND INFAMOUS. MTV is not the only network with jackasses. Car 54, where are you?