A disturbing amount of people were shocked by this
By Rebecca Peterson, Humour Editor
Barely recovering from her last foray across the border, the Other Press’s newly reinstated foreign correspondence reporter Ogahd Wy once again travelled into the land of the free to investigate a shocking report out of Harvyale University.
“There’s just no getting around it,” said statistics professor Dr. Jayne McNumbers. “We’ve tested this from every possible angle to see if there was a mistake, but… well, it turns out that a lot of the police officers who are involved in the shootings of unarmed black men have a history of racism and violence.”
Upon finishing his sentence, a strawman opened the door to Dr. McNumber’s office, shouted “Not all cops!” and left.
“Obviously not all cops are like this,” Dr. McNumbers said, pulling at his hair a little. “And not all cops with obvious racist traits shoot people for holding e-cigarettes at scary angles and having car trouble. But a lot of cops who do have, like, really obvious signs of racism and violence. It’s not like it’s coming out of nowhere, is what I’m saying.”
When asked how this information might help to prevent future murders, Dr. McNumbers pulled a bottle of Pepto Bismal out of his desk, took a swig, and answered, “I have no idea. Ostensibly the police forces are supposed to check to make sure they aren’t hiring racists, but what do you do when the guy doing the hiring is racist? You could say, well, maybe the findings of this study will spur people into action, but as a stats guy I can tell you that the odds are definitely not in our favour on that score. People will just bring up crap like ‘black-on-black crime’ and ‘ohh white people get murdered too’ because they don’t understand how percentages work, never mind institutionalized racism. I have no idea how to get the general populace to start caring that police are killing innocent people in the streets-”
At that moment the door was thrown open again by an out-of-breath TA, who panted, “The cops shot a white person.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Dr. McNumbers. “Well, maybe this will get more people caring about this problem-”
“Wait, false alarm,” the TA said, as she squinted at her phone. “The person was mentally ill. Some people are saying it was justified.”
Dr. McNumbers then apparently sank from his chair to the floor, held his bottle of Pepto Bismal tightly in his grasp, and whispered to Wy, “Get out of this garbage country while you still can.”
Reporter Ogahd Wy has since requested never to be put on foreign correspondence duty ever again.
