Eight-year old, Edmond Dane, wanted nothing more to be a cop when he grew up, but when he celebrated his birthday with an underwhelming “cop for a day” outing, he quickly changed his tune.
Edmond, also known as Eddie, suffers from a rare form of color blindness and, as a special surprise to him on his birthday, the police department in his town decided to treat him with a “cop for a day” excursion given his dream to one day be a cop himself.
Officer Pabst, from the police department, telephoned Eddie on the morning of his eighth birthday to inform him that they greatly needed his help that day.
They picked Eddie up in a car used to patrol the local college campus though, as that was “the only cruiser available at the time”, according to Officer Pabst. To make matters worse, the car smelled of urine and vomit, presumably from drunken college students.
The day didn’t seem to be getting much better when they took Eddie to the station where he had to read emails from the Chief, hear about budget cuts and go over policies.
After this, they promised to take Eddie on an exciting “stake out” in attempt to catch some troublesome kids who had been tagging an abandoned home. The “stake out”, however, involved sitting in silence for three hours, followed by lunch at Arby’s.
Finally, Eddie’s excursion finished with writing up a report of the day back in the office.
When asked what his favorite part of the day was, Eddie stated: “We had cake. They said it was for me but it said ‘Happy Retirement, Lou’”.
It definitely wasn’t the Die Hard moment Eddie was hoping for, but perhaps it was a more real portrayal of every day cop life – something that Eddie no longer wishes to do in his future.
