Special Forces of Words

The MTA is paying a consultant $40,000 to teach its police force how to talk like Lennie Briscoe:

The MTA has a new plan to add a little polish to its police force: hiring a “verbal judo” teacher who calls himself “Rhino,” refers to cops as “dawgs” and wants officers to walk around saying “Woosha!”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority inked a $40,500 contract with George Thompson’s upstate Verbal Judo Institute to instruct officers on the “martial arts of the mind and the mouth.”

The goal is to help cops use language to get cooperation from drunks, dueling spouses and crazed civilians in a bid to stop confrontations from turning violent.

“It’s all about how to operate in the special forces of words, how to be elite,” Thompson said. “You don’t lose your temper, you don’t swear at people, you don’t put them down. We are the last thin blue line between order and disorder, peace and violence.”

See also: Lennie Briscoe One-Liners Page; The Quotable Lennie Briscoe.

As an update, I located a Verbal Judo training video and Thompson sounds more like Professor Harold Hill in the Music Man than anything else (think Robert Preston on amphetemines). Believe me, if this guy caught me doing something wrong, I’d raise my hands and surrender. You got me, dawg. I’m done. Please cuff me now. (If only he spoke Arabic that nasty Iraqi insurgency might yet just fold!)