Criminals, please put on a class act

I am terrified that the popular TV reality show “Cops” is in Spokane to ride along and film members of our police department as they go about enforcing the law and electrocuting the populace.

But it’s not what you think.

I’m not worried in the least about being embarrassed by the police. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times: “The Spokane Police Department is the best damned police department on Earth!”

(I practice this speech in front of the mirror every morning so it will come out automatically in case I get pulled over.)

Besides, the SPD has been making positive strides at cutting back on the use of high-voltage electricity.

The magic number now appears to be three Taser zaps per perpetrator. Any more and a suspect could resemble a vegetable or County Commissioner Todd Mielke.

But as I was saying, what concerns me about this “Cops” visit is being civically humiliated by our dumber-than-dirt criminal element.

Nothing speaks louder about a community’s status than the caliber of its riffraff.

I’ve watched “Cops” for years. I know the sort of felonious dunderheads they love to put on the show:

Cop – “OK, buddy. I’m gonna give you a break. All you have to do is not lie to me.”

Suspect – “Awright, man. I tell ya the troof.”

Cop – “Now. Do you have anything illegal on you that I should know about before I search you?”

Suspect – “Naw. I got nuttin’ on me.”

The officer then reaches into the suspect’s pants and pulls out: a kilo of cocaine, a switchblade knife, a set of brass knuckles, a baggie of pot, a rubber band-tied roll of $3,600 in small bills, an Uzi, a grenade, a meth crystal the size of a cantaloupe …

Suspect – (looking offended) “Maaan. Where’d all that stuff come from? You musta planted it.”

Do we want the Lilac City disgraced like this in front of a national television audience?

Of course not. That’s why today I’m asking all of the area’s miscreants and malefactors to bring out their criminal A-Game.

Don’t settle for your grimy old smash-and-grab, drunken driving, dope dealing, and “I didn’t know she was a hooker” jive. Show a little class. If you’re going to commit armed robbery, do it in a rented tuxedo.

Try to act like when you were a little hoodlum and Mom and her crack-addict biker boyfriend with outstanding warrants got a surprise visit from the CPS workers.

Remember how they took you aside and offered you beer if you held off on mugging the elderly neighbors until after the visitors left?

“Cops” will only be snooping around until Oct. 2. Once the crew is gone you can revert to being the predictable lowbrow Spokane dirtbags we’ve all come to know and loathe.

So take a lesson from that woman who pummeled a guy in a bar the other night for singing bad karaoke. Witnesses say the woman told the singer his version of Coldplay’s song, “Yellow,” sucked just before pushing and punching him.

“It took three or four of us to hold her down,” the bartender told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, who added that the attacker had imbibed only a single shot of Jagermeister.

Now that’s the kind of aberrant behavior I’ve been talking about.

Roughing up karaoke singers won’t make a TV audience think worse of us.

On the contrary. It could boost tourism.

Aw, I’m probably wasting my breath.

The crime stories I’ve been reading in The Spokesman lately don’t offer any hope.

There was the moron who broke his leg when he took off from the cops and ran smack into a car.

There was the besotted fool who drove away from a bar only to crash into another tavern.

“Bad boys. Bad boys. Whatcha gonna do?”

We’re hosed.