On Friday, a stop sign was stolen from Lancaster Avenue. Upon learning of its theft, the Syracuse Police Department immediately put 99% of its resources into finding the stop sign and reprimanding the perpetrators.
“How will people know whether to stop or not?” asks SPD Chief Steve Grabowski. “We need that sign back or else”¦it’d be chaos!” Grabowski says that within five minutes of the theft, more than 70 SPD patrol cars were dispensed and almost the entire SPD squad was sent to look for the sign.
Many people in the Syracuse area are confused as to why the police department decided to use most of its resources and effort to find a measly traffic sign. “There are real crimes being committed in the same area,” says Michael Dawson, a sophomore at Syracuse University. “Why is SPD wasting its time and the taxpayers’ money to find a fucking stop sign? Why not try to stop the armed robberies and assaults instead of looking for stop signs and 19-year-olds drinking beer.”
“We’ve definitely gotten some guff for it,” says Grabowski. “But I stand by our course of action. It’s like this: we get the stop sign back, then put it up on Lancaster. Then, the criminals go walking by, looking for crime or whatever, and then”¦wait, what’s that! A stop sign! The sign says, “stop,’ as in “stop committing crimes.’ And then they don’t commit the crime. Because the sign told them to stop.”
That’s some fine police work.
