SWAT Clown

If you need a name, you can call me Frank.  Before I became an agent, I used to work the rodeos, bulls mostly, but I did do broncos too, once or twice.  I wasn’t half bad, but you have to be more than half good to win any buckles or prize money.  So, when my medical bills and liniment left me in the hole for about the third year, I decided I needed to climb down off the backs of wild animals.  I didn’t want to leave the rodeo, though and I couldn’t see myself selling tickets or just walking the stock.  I still had some sing left in my blood, if you know what I mean.  So I became a rodeo clown.

If you’ve ever been in a rodeo, or just seen one, you know it’s not like the clowns in the little cars under the big top.  The paint on a rodeo clown just helps everybody forget the price of admission for the riders.  Every young guy that comes out of the chute knows that he’s going to have to chip in a couple of broken sticks and a side of cracked ribs over the years for the privilege of wrapping his knees around the sides of a bull or a fired-up horse. But that doesn’t mean he has to get himself trampled or gored.  That’s where the clowns come in. 

When a rider hits the dirt, we run in waving our arms and shaking our butts at the bull to keep it from pitchforking the cowboy or stomping him into gravy while he’s down.  If we’re good, the animal will chase us and we’ll dive into a barrel or over the barrier while the rider gets to high ground.

Everybody laughs when we gallivant around in the greasepaint and hobo rags, but it’s a serous business underneath.

I wanted a little more out of taking so many chances.  Also, the pension plan was pretty sparse.  So I applied to law enforcement and got signed on the force.  I put in my time one way or another and worked my way into the Crisis Response Team, what a lot of people call SWAT.  The ones that knock down doors and separate the sheep from the goats when there’s a standoff.  This is all by way of giving some kind of background on how we happened to stumble on the idea of the SWAT Clown.  I guess “stumble” is as good a word as any.

It was on a Saturday afternoon when some bad cases got boxed into a store with a bunch of customers and all of a sudden we had a situation.  I was off duty, but we’re always on call, so I had to respond.  As it was, I was playing Copper the Clown for my nephew’s birthday party, all dressed up in a Keystone Kops meets Ronald McDonald kind of get up and I didn’t have time to change, things lighting up so fast. 

Anyway, there I was pulling into the scene just after the first team entered for the takedown and I squatted behind the engine block of my car and watched.  They were committed at that point so I was a spectator.

They found out later that the building plans left out some recent renovations, including a bunch of new drywall cubicles and a newly installed safe.  So, when the entry team blew the doors, they suddenly found themselves facing a wall out of nowhere.  By that time, the bad guys had cleared their heads and figured out which end was their butt.  Our team leader was yelling into his mic and the snipers were asking for orders and things had generally hit the fan.  I could see that the guns inside were waving back and forth and I was afraid they were going to stop pointed at the hostages. 

I’d like to tell you I activated some plan, but what I did was pure ignorant cowboy instinct.  I jumped up and ran out into the street, waving my arms and dancing in size 23 shoes with my orange hair bouncing in the air and a big red smile on my face.  Everything stopped, police, reporters, snipers.  None of them could believe what they saw.  Which was fine since the team inside kept coming and in those few seconds were able to overcome the subjects without even firing their weapons. 

They said later those goons were just standing there with their mouths open and you could almost hear the wheels turning in their heads trying to figure out just what in the hell, pardon my French, was happening out there in the street.

Afterwards, they chewed me out and gave me a certificate. And then darned if somebody didn’t propose that we make that a regular component of the response profile.  I mean keeping me in reserve, as it were, so if we had another bad surprise, we could uncork the clown and maybe get those few seconds to react.

So here I am.  I stay with the negotiators unless I’m needed.  If you look you can see me in my frizzy hair and polka dots, what the team calls “Bozo cammo.”  The Department tries to keep photos of me out of the newspapers. They say it’s for security and to maintain the element of surprise.  But mostly I’m just real tired of having the pictures taped to my locker by a bunch of smartass cops.

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