The Mental Evaluation Unit is actually a thing. It started with the LAPD, since we here in Southern California have a more than adequate supply of disturbed individuals, but it’s been successful enough so that it is being implemented elsewhere as well. For purposes of this comic, the Rochester Police Department has such a unit. The MEU have special Response Teams that handle the tricky job of dealing with people like Hayes and getting them into facilities that are equipped for their needs. Hopefully not Arkham Asylum.
Back-To-School Vote Incentive!
More below!
Bobservations
Your New Target
With this page the rationale behind the episode title becomes fairly clear. Probably everyone is familiar with the only-semi-joking phrase “No good deed goes unpunished.” The original phrase, of course, was: “No good deed goes unrewarded” — with the implication that doing a good deed brings a positive response, even if it is only your own satisfaction. However, a rapid Googling shows that people are far more familiar with the darker idiom. Probably because it so often seems true. How many times did you politely let someone cut in front of you at the grocery line because they only had a few items; only to find out that they were trying to pay by check, use outdated coupons, and wanted to complain about the produce? How many times have you helped someone move, only to be rewarded by lasting back injury?
I know that artists, artisans, and skilled people from all walks of life are often inveigled “as a favor” to do work for free — with the promise of “exposure” and “good money the next time.” But all too often the gig being done as a “good deed” turns into a nightmare of petty changes, the money never appears, and all you get out of it is a reputation of doing work for free. As someone famously said about doing work for “exposure” — “Dude, people die of exposure.”
And here Countdown, having managed to subdue a violent and demented criminal without having to kill him, nor subject an unfortunate little boy to too much additional trauma, is apparently about to be rewarded.
Via .338 Lapua Magnum.
A good deed may be its own reward, but first you have to get out of it alive. Or, in Countdown’s case, at least not more dead.
— Bob out