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Police, Death, and Black Humor Euphemisms
In another conversation, I mentioned that when I was growing up my father was a policeman and I heard about some suicides that were not necessarily suicides, like the belt-and-braces suicide. One guy shot himself in the heart with a long gun (a shotgun, maybe), and then he shot himself in the back of the head with a pistol just to make sure. Ricochet member @alfrench contributed this to the thread:
“Stole more chains than he could carry, then tried to swim across the River with them.”
That brought to mind another incident where a “gentleman” died in a one-car collision. It seemed that he had picked up a professional woman and was driving while on the receiving end of a sexual act. He lost control in more ways than one at a certain moment, which led to his sudden demise. The coroner looked over the scene and suggested that he would put the cause of death as “Blown to death.”
I know we have a number of current or former law-enforcement officers, nurses, and doctors here at Ricochet. What’s the best bit of dark humor you’ve heard while standing near a dead body?
Published in Humor
Use of the baton is a vital part of police work. It’s sometimes called “administering a wooden shampoo”.
Best one I’ve heard is from Hill Street Blues. Hit and run, car versus pedestrian, pedestrian has an arm torn off. Cop kneels down next to the arm, turns it over and calls his partner’s attention to the watch on the wrist:
“Takes a lickin’, keeps on tickin’.”
My brother-in-law is a cop in Idaho. Several years ago they had a migrant worker trying to cross the freeway on foot who was subsequently hit by at least 8 different vehicles (I know, hard to believe there’s 8 vehicles in Idaho).
He radioed in: “Better send an ambulance. And a fire truck with some hoses. And a spatula.”
@josepluma, @dougwatt, @quietpi @therightnurse your presence is requested.
Medical abbreviation for a patient that is expected to die soon: P.B.B.B. (Pine Box By Bed).
Impending death is obviously a rather important piece of information, so docs need a way to transmit this info to other physicians. This and other humorous abbreviations are no longer used due to obvious legal concerns. But there are lots of funny ones out there. Well, sort of funny. Black humor.
From the movie Mystery Men: “The police ruled it an accident; he fell down an elevator shaft onto some bullets.”
“You know, I’ve always suspected there may have been a bit of foul play involved.”
“As have I.”
Not directly from LEO’s, but via their reports on the computer:
”Drunken Dognuts” for the local hole emporium.
One July, we got called to a mobile home where a person had not been answering the door for several days. I was out of Vicks, and the cigar I had as a backup crumbled when I took it out of the wrapper. Expecting the worst, I held my breath as the manager unlocked the door for us. We were greeted by a blast of cold air. The guy was on the couch with a spike still in his arm. The body was blue, not the rotting mess we expected. The air conditioning had been turned all the way down. My partner said “that was considerate.”
Another time, we were investigating a suicide where the guy had shot himself in the head. Blood is very caustic, and the metal parts of the revolver he used had deep gouges and pits from the splatter. The officer I was with said “That’ll affect the resale value.”
I usually am not very droll in those situations.
Yep, keep the Vicks handy.
Looks like a lead overdose. One of my favorites was an actual press conference when a reporter asked how come the deputies shot someone 20 times. The Sheriff replied; Because that’s all they bullets they had.
Someone needs the frontal lobotomy from Dr. Glock. Then there’s the homicide detective coffee cup imprinted with; Our day begins when yours’s ends.
Sounds like you had some good partners in crime, though.
I heard a campus cop use that line early one morning after a professor took a dive out of his 12th floor office window. He was hoping to get a time of death. In those days the photos had to be processed, it being late in the year, they came back in a sleeve advertising custom Christmas cards. My boss held up one particularly gruesome one and said, “Let’s use this one, saying ‘Seasons Greetings from your Canpus Police.’”
I am the Queen of Dark Humor. It’s like you wrote this for my amusement. Thank you.
Happy to make you smile.
I have wanted too much Law & Order. I enjoy black humor.
*watched
H Beam Piper, the science fiction writer and one of my favorite authors committed suicide with a gun from his collection. According to Jerry Pournelle, Piper shut off all the utilities to his apartment, put painter’s drop-cloths over the walls and floor, and took his own life with a handgun from his collection. In his suicide note, he gave an explanation that “I don’t like to leave messes when I go away, but if I could have cleaned up any of this mess, I wouldn’t be going away. H. Beam Piper'”
We were called to LA County Med Ctr for an organ recovery. One gang member vs another. As I was drawing blood, as we do to send along with organs soon to be excised, I spied a huge tattoo on the donor’s chest which said “The last laugh is mine”
and I said to myself…”well, actually it’s mine.”
I’m a fan of Sinclair Broadcasting’s professional wrestling show, “Ring of Honor”, and of the likable champ they call “the franchise”, Jay Lethal. I’d buy his merch, but at my age you start to get to the point where you don’t want to be carried into an emergency room with a t-shirt that says “Lethal Injection!!!”
An embalmer I know peripherally once had a gang banger on the slab and, after saying that he’d been shot to death over a ball cap related,
“musta been some hat.”
While I’m not one to undervalue a good hat, a ball cap?
So today my old football coach died. George Welsh (of Navy and later the University of Virginia) had a rather conventional game plan: run twice, try to throw, then inevitably punt on 4th down.
So today in my macabre group of friends someone posted the article and said “George Welsh passed”
the first response “Was it third down?”
I believe that Flavious Maximus, while standing over the body of Julius Caesar, said: “If he were alive today he would be a pretty sick boy”
And…
“This guy is really fixed for blades”
“Then there’s the homicide detective coffee cup imprinted with; Our day begins when yours’s ends”
Also the motto of the LA County Coroner’s Office, which boasts a gift shop where they sell merchandise emblazoned with same. Got one of their hats for my ex, who loved it.
In my family, gallows humor was often all we had. To this day many small disasters are likelier to draw a horse laugh from me than a curse.
I didn’t know that. I always wondered why they always (books and movies) made such a big deal of cleaning their swords.
Yea, the whole point of hemoglobin is to bind oxygen to iron. Outside the body, that’s called “rust.”
We had a similar game plan at Air Force, leading to a regular chant from the crowd: Up the middle, up the middle, up the middle, punt!
(Yes, in football Air Force rarely took to the air. There’s irony there somewhere.)