By John Grogan
Inquirer Columnist
Sometimes the police get no peace.
And so it was Saturday afternoon at a small Chinese restaurant near my home. The occasion was my daughter’s ninth birthday, and she and nine of her best pals had taken over the joint.
This was to be a two-part birthday party - lunch followed by a movie.
My wife and I were trying to get them filled up on moo goo gai pan and fried rice so they’d have plenty of energy to talk through the entire Narnia movie at the multiplex next door.
Our group had commandeered all of the restaurant’s eight booths. One had become a coat rack; one a buffet table; one a soda bar. Food was flying, soup sloshing, drinks spilling. One little girl in pink ran up and down the aisle like a traveling opera star, doing her best to hit a sustained high C.
Into this den of bedlam walked an armed police officer. I wasn’t surprised someone would call the cops on our unruly group - Can we all say *disorderly conduct*, boys and girls? - but I was surprised he showed up without the SWAT team in full body armor.
Actually, he was just there to eat lunch.
He was a Hercules-sized man with a shaved head. I swore if he wore a hoop earring, he could moonlight as the Mister Clean muscle man.
Reinforcements arrive
He picked his way through the shrieking children, stepping over the spilled food and drinks that we were trying to mop up with napkins, and ordered his meal. He moved a pile of our coats to free up a booth and sat down.
Pretty soon two more officers arrived. Reinforcements! My face brightened at the prospect that they might be carrying 10 pint-sized sets of handcuffs. They sat down, too.
“Do you guys do juvenile detention?” I asked as an eggroll came flying over a booth.
“Not during lunch,” one of them said while a boy in our group crawled under their booth to retrieve a bottle cap.
The officers had every right to be annoyed. They had every reason to be snarly. They just wanted to eat their sweet-and-sour pork in peace, and here they were thrust into a bad outtake from a Chevy Chase movie.
I tried to steer the children away from the cops, but Mr. Clean waved me off. He turned to the kids and asked in a booming voice, “OK, whose birthday is it?” My daughter raised her hand. “And how old are you, young lady?” he asked.
I tried to warn my young incorrigible that anything she said could and would be used against her in a court of law. No matter, pretty soon she was talking the officers’ ears off, regaling them with the minutiae of her life.
They nodded and smiled and sincerely seemed enthralled by my daughter’s detailed descriptions of her gifts. All the kids crowded around, and the cops, like it or not, officially became part of the party.
I cringed and had to admit they were pretty good sports.
Good cop, bad cop
The day a cop misbehaves is the day he makes the front page. If he takes a bribe or loses his temper or succumbs to the temptations of the street, we all hear about him. We all heard about the Philadelphia police officer with the long disciplinary record who cost the city $750,000 in a court settlement over his physical handling of a minister at Philadelphia International Airport. But what about the hundreds of police officers who at that same moment were simply doing what they’re paid to do?
The day a cop acts out is the day a citizen notices him. But in a Chinese restaurant filled with spilled rice and little squeals Saturday, three police officers made a different first impression. And they won some young fans in the process - fans who soon enough will be young adults and either part of tomorrow’s problem or part of its solution.
When movie time came, the kids said goodbye and I hustled them out the door onto the sidewalk. Before leaving myself, I turned to the officers and said, “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Mr. Clean replied. “I want them to know if they’re ever in trouble, they can come to us.
“The police are their friends.”
Philadelphia Inquirer (http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/)