For police PR flacks, quack lives matter
Police seem to be heroically rescuing baby ducks . . . pretty much everywhere
The San Francisco activist and attorney John Hamasaki tweeted out this amusing thread today:
The entire thread includes six stories about cops rescuing baby ducks. Which is a lot!
I’ve written quite a bit over the years about how local media cover police, but until today I was unaware of this particular trope. So I did a quick Google search of my own. And, my goodness. I had no idea!
I found 30 — yes 30 — separate stories from just the last two years before I decided I’d spent enough time on this post. I’m sure a more thorough search would have turned up a lot more.
What’s incredible is not just that so many baby ducks keep wandering into storm drains, but also that there are so often police officers nearby to save them, and that word of these rescues keeps finding its way to a local news reporter. It’s quite the fortuitous string of coincidences.
In any case, please enjoy these 30 stories about police saving baby ducks.
This post is not paywalled, so you won’t be billed.
(Sorry.)
Is 30 really that many? There are lots of cops, ducks and cities in this country.
More generally I don't much blame PDs for wanting to maintain decent public image. How much media outlets collude to provide one for them - and how much it's to the detriment of decent reporting - I'm less sure of, though.
Yesterday the Times of London ran a story about Atlanta, GA cops pulling a car thief from an overturned cop car -- on trains tracks! -- just before the train hit the car. A miracle to be sure. Why Londoners needed this information, I can’t imagine.