Memo from Ferguson Police to the National Guard

As tensions escalate in Ferguson, Missouri, Governor Jay Nixon has called in the National Guard to assist the Ferguson Police and Missouri State Highway Patrol forces in controlling the growing protests in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown.

Below is an internal memo from the Ferguson Police Department to the National Guard.

FROM: Ferguson Police Dept.
TO: U.S. National Guard
CC: Missouri State Highway Patrol

SUBJECT: Internal Memo To National Guard Troops Heading To Ferguson, MO

Hey guys, thanks so much for the additional support in the coming police operations here in Ferguson. We think you are going to really be into what’s happening here. I know we’ve all been pretending to be soldiers like you guys a whole bunch so getting to pretend next to the real thing is going to be such a thrill. Overall our operation has been focused on ‘making people safe.” We have been doing that by firing gas canisters, arresting, and macing all these crazy upset yelling people who are outside. We aren’t totally sure if what we are doing works but you guys are coming now so we must be doing something right.

When you get here today our main focus will be on you guys showing us all the cool Humvees and guns and stuff you brought. We have some cool stuff you may like too so get excited about that. Then we’ve just been spending all day making it hard for people to stand still. We have this theory that all crimes happen when someone is standing still so as long as we keep everyone in the city walking no crimes will happen. We’ve been doing a lot of this thing where we tell people to ‘keep moving” and then if they don’t or say ‘what?” or something then we arrest them. Super easy and it always looks like we are doing a good job when we do that. Ask us about our ‘Hot-Sand Crime-Proof Shoe” prototypes we are developing. They are shoes with a bunch of hot sand inside them so you have to keep walking or they burn you just like at the beach.

Some quick tips:

We’ve all been taking off our name tags. This is so that no one can look up who we are later and tell anyone about what we’ve been doing. Feels like a costume party here. Anything goes, you know? Leave those inhibitions at the door; you can say and do anything in Ferguson. Especially while wearing a gas mask.

One cool thing is to imagine you are Batman, when you see our weapons and stuff you’ll get it. It’s like we are a ton of Batmans, so dope.

We haven’t figured this one out yet, but while some people have signs and things that say stuff, other people just have this weird mechanical equipment. They put it up on tripods and point it at us and stuff. We don’t know who they are but we believe they are all named Preston because they keep shouting to us they are ‘Pres” but we’re like, ‘OK? Are you friends with my wife or something because I don’t know you.” We don’t think the equipment they have are guns but we keep shooting them with gas just in case. Totally unrelated: Somehow images of us doing this keep showing up on the computers. We don’t know how those images are captured. Some people think maybe we are living in a movie and these are promotional images leaking out into our reality from the world wherever that movie is playing. If that’s the case all of us over here are guessing the movie is called ‘Cool Cops: The Story of the Best Cops Ever.’

A cool thing we have been trying is telling residents that Michael Brown may have deserved to be shot after all. Like last week we released a video of the cigar robbery he committed prior to being shot. While so far releasing that video hasn’t seemed to stop the protests, we think it’s just because they haven’t seen it. It takes a while for videos to spread from computer to computer, especially on the weekend. We are basically banking on pretty soon everyone coming around and realizing we did the right thing back then, and then all this will stop.

One weird question that has kinda just been popping up from people: ‘Are we the bad guys?” No answer there, just something cool we noticed that a lot of us had been independently thinking and it was a funny moment when we all realized we were thinking the same thing. If that happens to some of you guys let us know because that would be one of those fun ‘we-all-have-the-same-brain!” kinda moments.

So, cool, really excited to meet you all. I wish there was more to tell you but so far we haven’t been able to learn much from what we are doing. Our best guess is that all this will just go away soon for no reason just like how it all started last week for no reason. It’s like clouds forming and drifting away you know? Except these clouds look like Batman right now and it’s pretty fun.