In-the-buff defecators? Case solved

Spokane police officers don’t make enough money.

I know. That’s not the sort of sentiment you’re used to hearing out of my mouth.

True, I’ve pounded on the SPD like a timpani over the years, but these days you couldn’t pay me enough to walk around in a law enforcer’s shoes.

I’d be too afraid of what I might step in.

I’m referring to the noisome news that broke this week under the headline, “Warning: These drugs may cause nakedness.”

Apparently a batch of tainted dope has slipped into the Spokane addiction stream. And users, according to the story, have been “stripping naked and defecating in public without any recollection of what they’d just done.”

Mercy. I’ve suffered blackouts before, but only the convenient kind when hostile readers call me up to scream about one of my columns.

“What? I don’t remember writing that,” I tell them. “You must be confusing me with Paul Turner.”

Amnesiac buck-naked dopers who use the city as their restroom is unprecedented.

Unless we’re talking about downtown Seattle on any given weeknight, that is.

But this is sleepy Spokane. We keep our nudists confined to Peaceful Valley.

We’re not immune to raw sewage. But only in the form of effluent from Post Falls that comes rolling through in the river.

(Speaking of politics, I would like to thank the registered voters who took my advice last Sunday to drink heavily and use me for a write-in candidate in the primary election. Based on your e-mails and telephone calls, my name was an irrelevant presence in every race.

“I voted for you twice,” wrote Paul S. in an e-mail. “Once for Lt. Governor and once for state treasurer.”

It’s a proud feeling to be able to persuade otherwise responsible citizens to figuratively toss their votes down the commode.)

But returning to the current drug crisis, the officer quoted in the aforementioned story was a bit fuzzy on exactly which mind-altering substance could be behind this outbreak of clothes-shedding public evacuation.

“The dope is either meth or PCP,” said Tim Moses, a Spokane police officer and narcotics expert. “With the memory loss, I think it sounds more like PCP.”

Sorry, Moses. You need to study your drug textbooks a bit more.

There’s only one diabolical drug that can explain what’s going on.

Yes, I’m talking about a combination of speed and laxatives known by pushers as …

Methamucil.

Man, too much of that stuff’ll wipe you out.

So far we have had four incidents in the last two weeks. Our poor Spokane cops don’t need this. They have a hard enough time dealing with the usual miscreants: bandits, brawlers, domestic abusers, cross-dressing Republicans …

Dealing with Methamucil junkies requires specialized training.

All patrol officers, for example, are now carrying “Depends” along with their Tasers.

Gives a whole new meaning to that old phrase, “Cleanup on aisle 12.”

But as I was saying, the cops deserve more money and they deserve it now.

I’m urging City Council to hold an emergency meeting and vote to give each and every one of our boys and girls in blue a bonus.

Hazardous doody pay, they can call it.