Anyone who has worked with me knows I like to joke around with citizens. Sometimes the person is drunk and the opportunity is too good to pass up.

One night we had an officer involved shooting in a residential neighborhood. By the time I arrived, the scene was Code 4, but they still needed traffic control to keep cars out of the area.

I parked my patrol car just south of the shooting scene at an intersection and waited until it was okay to send traffic in that direction again. Every once in a while a resident would drive up and ask if they could get to their house. After screening them, I moved my car to let them pass.

That’s when I saw a car pull up to a house at the corner where I was at. A person got out of the car and walked up to the front door. The man was looking in my direction because I was blocking the street. He then looked northbound on the street to where all the police lights were.

He went inside his house, but came right back outside. He walked to the sidewalk and looked back down the street again. I could tell he was curious about what happened. Heck, I would’ve been curious too.

He then started walking toward my car. There was something about the way he walked that told me he had been drinking.

He got to my driver door and I saw the “drunk” look. His eyes were red and droopy with all the classic signs of a person who had been drinking. He was tall, thin and about 25 years old, with the smell of beer on his breath. I just hopped he wasn’t obnoxious.

“What happened?”

“Barry Manilow is down there.” I couldn’t resist saying it. It had been a while since I threw Barry Manilow’s name out like that.

“Really?”  he said with a confused look on his face.

“Yeah,” I said as I tried to keep a straight face.

“Is he bad?”

“He’s badass. You should Google him.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He’s bigtime.”

“OK, thanks officer, I’ll Google him.”

The man smiled and turned around to walk away. It made me laugh because he had no idea I was kidding around. It also told me that more people in the world need to learn who Barry Manilow is.

Sometimes you just have to have fun on this job.  Are you a Fanilow?