Foiled By Coffee
It seems rather elementary that if you want to avoid the sometimes unpleasant and interference-prone presence of cops whilst committing a robbery, don’t go where blue suits hang out (i.e., police stations, hospital emergency rooms and doughnut shops). But since this general prohibition is a multi-faceted consideration, crooks with IQs below room temperature may not get it.
At the least, you’d think they would know never, but never, to mess with a cop’s coffee. But our newest cell-block centerfold failed on both counts.
Late one recent Tuesday night, Sgt. Michael Regan of the Cheltenham Township, Penn., Police Dept. pulled his cruiser into the drive-through of a suburban Dunkin’ Donuts shop. It had been a quiet, peaceful evening for the big guy, and his thoughts were far from the fighting of felonies. Instead, his finely-honed senses were zeroed in on that most beneficent of beverages: Coffee! Java! Mug-Mug!
Sgt. Regan wasn’t particularly stimulated by the fact that the female cashier at the window was a stranger to him. After all, franchise restaurants experience considerable employee turnover. Nor were his suspicions aroused by the fact she wasn’t properly uniformed as a private in the Dunkin’ Donuts army.
The fact she seemed to be holding down the fort alone, with nary another employee or customer in sight, well, no alarms went off. It didn’t even bother him all that much that she seemed nervous and a tad jittery as he gave his order for one coffee, large, cream and sugar. After all, such important duties can make a less than supremely confident person somewhat shaky.
But when she thrust his order through the window, and it turned out to be a mere medium coffee, black, with the cup only half full, Regan’s entire central nervous system sounded the call to General Quarters, all hands to Battle Stations! This Is Not A Drill!
One can only wish this drama could have been videotaped and Sgt. Regan’s reactions captured on film: the almost imperceptible twitch of tiny motor-muscle groups as his adrenaline floodgates opened; the narrowing of his warm Irish eyes into cruel, merciless slits as he processed this new and disturbing data: coffee … medium … black … half full!
And finally, the cool, professional manner in which he stowed his Styrofoam container, calmly moved the cruiser’s shift lever to Drive and nosed out to a dark and distant corner of the parking lot, cutting his lights and sliding smoothly into surveillance position.
“I figured this person doesn’t work there,” Sgt. Regan later told local journalists. He watched as she pounded on the cash register keyboard, trying unsuccessfully to open the cash drawer. She then disappeared and returned with two frightened but properly attired Dunkin’ Donuts employees.
“Then I saw her make one of them open the register,” Regan reported. “And when he did that, she scooped up the money.” Regan called for backup, gunned his cruiser, and aimed straight for the big “O” in “Donuts.”
Spotting the coffee-deprived kamikaze cop gearing down on her like a torpedo on the Yamato, the suspect sprang like a tree squirrel to the take-out window, scampered through the slot, and fled.
All’s well that ends well. With a toothy assist from a PD canine, the suspect was brought to heel a short time later and identified as Ella Harold, 26, formerly residing in Philadelphia proper and now lodged in the county jail on a $50,000 bond.
“If she had given him the right order, maybe she would have gotten away,” observed Regan’s boss, Lt. John Scholly. Maybe, indeed. Justice was finally served, and so was Regan’s coffee: large, hot, cream and sugar.
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Mark Moritz hung up his satirical spurs last issue to a collective sigh of relief from America’s gunwriters whom he had lampooned in “Friendly Fire” for two long, painful years. The 10 Ring is written by Commander Gilmore, a retired San Diego police officer who bases his humor, like Mark did, on actual occurrences. All the incidents described by the Commander are true.
