Following the huge public outrage over the death of Eric Garner, the New York Police Department has scrambled to deal with its police brutality problem. Its solution? Make all officers watch a scene from 1989 Patrick Swayze film, Roadhouse.
Cops are made to watch a two minute clip of Swayze, who plays a no-nonsense bouncer, teach his team how to deal with rowdy customers. What are Swayze’s pearls of wisdom? “Be nice, until it’s time to not be nice”. We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.
“It’s just ridiculous, the stuff they’re showing us,” a cop told the New York Post. “It’s crazy. They’re showing us something from a movie and they want us to act like that in real life. It’s not realistic — it’s Hollywood.”
The Post has also published reports that the training programme is so boring that many of the officers attending have fallen asleep during the seminars. No doubt Swayze, sporting one of the slickest mullets in film history, livened things up a bit.
The film is part of a compulsory three-day retraining programme that was put in place after Eric Garner died last year as a result of a police chokehold. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the $35million scheme last December. De Blasio maintains the course involving New Yorks 22,000 strong police force, is “going to have a transcendent effect”.
We can think of a few ways that the NYPD can learn to deal with police brutality – namely, stop beating up and killing innocent people.
Watch Swayze in Roadhouse below:
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