'Make that man Chief Minister': why we loved cop's verbal burnout

"Move over Barr, there's a new sheriff in town."

"This man is a legend, let me buy him a beer."

We may not know exactly the reaction inside police HQ to Acting Inspector Mark Richardson's luridly colourful description of hoons who did illegal burnouts over the Summernats festival as "morons" and a barely evolved "subspecies" of humans.

Clearly he was not reading from anything resembling a media team script when he suggested IQ tests at the borders to keep out the idiots drawn here like moths to a flame each January.

But all across Canberra, he was being applauded for saying exactly what people think.

"Thanks to the police for voicing what a lot of Canberrans really think about this degraded activity ... we've been putting up with this garbage and disrupted nights for years," said one of dozens of supportive comments on our story.

The last time I can recall our readers responding this way was almost two years ago when a Canberra driver was filmed telling an anti-vaccine mandate protester who had been blocking traffic just what he thought of their antics.

"Vaccinations are the only thing saving the population ... go back to where you came from you piece of s---," he said.

And that was some of the tamer content of his livestreamed blizzard of blue language.

People loved it, calling him a "national treasure" and "the hero we need".

What did these two events have in common? They were the voicing of frustration at interlopers in our city putting themselves first and us last.

While Canberrans generally tolerate if not welcome protesters of all stripes, the lunacy and belligerence on display by the "Convoy to Canberra" anti-vaxxers during those summer months of early 2022 was different.

And just as many of us hold an attitude of forbearance towards Summernats, illegal burnouts at all hours of night pushes us over the edge.

Another thing the old boy in the car and the acting inspector had in common was the element of surprise.

No one imagined the expletive-laden tirade to emerge from the granddad in the puffer vest.

Nor did we expect a senior to cop to Tell. It. Like. It. Is.

We're more used to "policespeak" and of them calling a spade a handheld soil excavation implement.

Instead, Acting Inspector Richardson decided to tell those idiots who threaten the social licence the festival needs (to the frustration of many true car aficionados) that they could decamp right off, in doing so laying down a bit of verbal rubber and smoke of his own.

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