“ Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha' Gonna' Do? Whatcha' Gonna' Do when They Imperceptibly Come for You??”

Police here say they arrested a man after he ordered his pet to attack two officers. Lucky for them that 9-foot-long pythons aren't very obedient.

Police Lt. James Viadero says 21-year-old Victor Rodriguez was charged with threatening police and disorderly conduct after Monday's incident. No one was hurt.

Officers were called to Rodriguez's apartment on a report that he was threatening his girlfriend with the pet reptile.

Viadero says that when the building superintendent opened the apartment door for the officers, Rodriguez allegedly threatened them with the snake and told it to “Get them!”

When the snake did nothing, Officer Viadero and his partner checked that the snake was alive and unharmed. They did same for Rodriguez's girlfriend. Finding that the greatest threat she faced was death from embarrassment, they offered the young woman a ride and took her home.

Rodriguez was made aware of the variety and quality of decaffeinated beverages now on the market, and left to his own devices.


Or that's how I would have assumed this would have ended. Seriously, “disorderly conduct” and “threatening police?”

I'm not saying that Victor isn't “eat up with the dumbass,” as it were, because, clearly, he is. I'm just wondering if the proper outcome, here, is an arrest.

He no more threatened the police than I would have if I'd told an officer I was the god Excretus and that I was going to smite him with bolts of magic urine from my groin staff, and I'd stood there afterwards pointing my pelvis in his general direction. Having a nearly catatonic reptile blink at you is the same Code Meh type of threat.

As long as the girlfriend wasn't in any real danger or didn't appear to be abused or threatened — anymore than the average woman is who's dating an idiot — they should have laughed and gone for doughnuts.

If the police are going to start arresting the citizens for general douche baggery, we're going to need bigger jails.