2 comments/ 11037 views/ 1 favorites C. O. C., Inc. Ch. 01 By: BOSTONFICTIONWRITER Are you tired of crime and criminals? Are you afraid to walk the streets of your own neighborhood? Are you tired of telling your loved ones to be careful and worrying about them until they safely return home? Do you have that foreboding feeling and fitful fear that the worse will happen and befall your loved one or you when you least expect it? Are you tired of living in fear? Isn't it time we take back our streets and our neighborhoods? Isn't it time we took our outrage and beat the criminals over the head with it until they packed up and left? I have an idea for a business. No, even though the thought is an appealing one, I am not suggesting vigilantism. For those who are thinking about stealing my idea and using it for their own personal gain, it's too late. I've already patented it and the company is already started. Nonetheless, there is no reason why you cannot start your own similar company selling a similar product. That's what this great country is all about anyway, free enterprise and healthy competition. Go for it and take your best shot. Who knows, maybe, I'll get some ideas from your business and copy your product? Every city across America is plagued with violent gangs, horrible crime, and hardened criminals. Vandalism, car thefts, rapes, robberies, assaults, guns, drugs, and prostitution afflict every community from the very poor to very wealthy and every other community in between. You are safe nowhere, not in your car, in your house, at your job, at your school or even at your church of worship. There is no place to safely hide because crime and criminals will find you. Whether you like it or not, chances are you will be a victim. People who have lived in a community for 30 years have watched their neighborhoods erode to the point where they are afraid to walk their own streets even in broad daylight. Inner city crime has touched everyone everywhere to the point that the police have given up and forfeited some of the most troubled areas to the criminals. It is a sound strategy, so long as the criminals stay in the forfeited areas and kill one another, which is what they generally do. It is when the crime and the criminals try and branch out to adjourning communities that the borders are tightened and the line is drawn in the asphalt with crackdowns, early morning surprise busts, and arrests. We all have a sad story to tell. If you are a victim of violent crime, write me. I want to hear your story and I will tell you mine. We all have a story to tell. What's your story? Anyway, with not enough money in the budgets for public safety, there are not enough police officers to handle every hot spot and to answer every 911 call in a timely way. Do you know how long it takes to make a drug buy? Seconds. Do you know how long it takes to pick up a prostitute? Gone in a flash. Do you know how long it takes the police to respond? Too long. With search and seizure on the side of the criminal and my word against your word on the side of the prostitute, the bad guys know the laws and how to twist them to their advantage. Besides, even if they are caught red-handed and arrested, the courts are overwhelmed and the jails overpopulated. Most get off with a fine and are back out on the streets within hours doing their business as usual until they are caught again. Police are apt to turn a blind eye when they see the same felons out of jail and on the street before they can head back to the station and make out their arrest report. It's frustrating and fruitless, after all. Based on a population of 300 million people, the 2006 United States crime statistics is a scary one. Yet, the good news is that the FBI will tell you that violent crime has declined. Yeah, tell that to the victims. There were 17,000 murders, 92,000 rapes, 447,000 robberies, 863,000 aggravated assaults, 1.2 million stolen vehicles, 2.2 million burglaries, 6.6 million larceny thefts, and 10 million crimes involving property. Whether it happened to us personally or to our family and/or friends, we all have been directly or indirectly touched by crime and criminals. We are the army of suckers who pay for the criminals' blatant disregard for the laws and for the carnage that they leave in their wake. Either it makes you angry to take action to protect yourself or scared enough to barricade yourself in your home. Nonetheless, no matter whether crime statistics are up, down or the same, crime and criminals are a big business that continues to grow without regard to the economy being up or down. We Americans have always taken responsibility for our own personal safety. As interpreted in our constitution, the right to bear arms started with the Minuteman in the 18th century, continued with the pioneers in the 19th century, escalated in the 20th century with America being the number one country that is armed and dangerous, and now in the 21st century, we have alarms, trained dogs, security cameras, bodyguards, self-defense classes, Guardian Angels, Hells Angels, and lots of guns from pee shooters handguns to shotguns to assault rifles. How many of you have guns? Did you know that this country boasts more guns than people? Ah, there are those who will debate that point, generally the ones who belong to the National Rifle Association. Yet, all you have to do to get a fairly accurate count is to take the amount of registered guns in this country and triple it. The tripling of the number of registered guns will give you a fair approximation of the illegal guns that are in the hands of those who should not be armed, the convicted criminals. To be continued... C. O. C., Inc. Ch. 02 My idea is simple, cost effective, and it works. My company is called C. O. C. Catchy name isn't it? It stands for Cutout Cops. I make life-sized, cardboard cops that look like the real thing. You see, I use actual police officers as models, pay them a fee to photograph them and to use their image, and reprint their likeness on cardboard. I even make phony police cars. I take retired police cars, buy them for a song, and remove the engine and drive train, so that they are lighter and easier to roll. I repaint them to match the patrol cars of your community and decorate them with a couple of cardboard cutout cops, and viola, officers on duty without the coffee breaks, stops for donuts, and bad attitude. Then, I park the cardboard patrol car on your street, in front of your house, and leave it in your driveway, wherever there are criminals. Crime and criminals will quickly go in the other direction when they spot a police car regardless if it is real of fake. It is the human nature of criminals to react reflexively and to flee the area pronto. Trust me, they can spot a police unit from a great distance and will not even come close to it to see if it is real or fake. Once my idea catches on, once I sell my products nationwide, and once I am a multi-millionaire, I plan on taking my idea to the military. I plan on making cutout soldiers, cutout sailors, cutout airmen, and cutout marines. Also, I plan on making cutout tanks, planes, and ships. I plan on making a frigging war arsenal of cutout military icons. What do you think? I know; I'm on to something. I figure my phony cutout arsenal will dissuade war. They'll take one look at the million cutout tanks, planes, and ships and go home. Moreover, it is a way for the military to save big bucks by buying recyclable cutout cardboard instead of having to maintain tons of rusting steel. Why spend a billion dollars on one plane when you can buy my fleet of a million cutout planes for a fraction of that amount? Once I supply the military with my phony cutout tanks, ships, planes, and recruits, war as we know it will end. Of course, to make it effective you must pepper your phony cutout arsenal with the real thing. Only, the enemy will never know which is real and which a decoy, until they waste their time, effort, and ammunition on the phony cutout decoys. Yeah, I can see myself winning the Nobel Prize for Peace and standing up where Al Gore stood. How better to win a war than by intimidation and without firing a single bullet and wasting a single human life? "I'd like to thank everyone involved in the creation of my Cutout Cop company, COC, and now my Cutout Military Company, CUM, and those who are responsible for the production of products and who directly and indirectly helped me to win the Nobel Peace Prize." Yes, I am sure that I will have my detractors making a negative comment to this story, but if you are someone driving in an unfamiliar neighborhood looking to buy drugs, pick up a prostitute, or break into a home and there on the corner is a cardboard cop and an authentic looking police car, you are not going to drive closer to investigate. You are going to keep on going. Yeah, it's that simple. And I am not so naïve to know that my idea is not original and has not already been tried by someone else and/or is being done now. Nonetheless, it is a good idea and one that will work. Sure, criminals will laugh at it, once they discover that it is just a cardboard cutout. Yet, it will make them weary and uneasy, even when they fully know that it is not real. Moreover, once they get comfortable having the cardboard cutout sitting their innocuously in their neighborhood is when you do the old switcheroo. You park a real police car where the decoy had been sitting for a week. Bait and switch will jail the bitch. Besides, much of the crime is from criminals coming into your unfamiliar neighborhood from their familiar neighborhood. Now, if there is a decoy police car parked at the corner, on your street, in front of your house or in your driveway, they are not going to take the risk to determine if it is real or not. They will drive to a street where there are no police cars real or otherwise. Moreover, there are all kinds of possibilities with this kind of business. I can make cardboard cutouts of people to sit in your car, so that you can drive in the carpool lane. I can make cardboard cutouts of you, your wife, and your kids and have them sit around the house when you are away on vacation so that burglars will think that you are home. I can even make a cardboard cutout of your car to leave parked in your driveway so that criminals will think you are home. I can even make a cardboard cutout of you, should you ever need an alibi. "Yes, officer, I saw him sitting there at the time when his wife was murdered. There is no way that he could have murdered her. There is no way that he could be in two places at the same time, now is there?"