FORSYTH TOWNSHIP — Most of the time, when thirty police officers, firefighters and EMTs get together and somebody yells “go as fast as you can,” something has gone terribly wrong.
Saturday, it was apparently the plan.
About 30 Upper Peninsula emergency personnel climbed into go-karts at the Marquette County Fairgrounds for the second annual Battle of the Badges, a charity race benefiting local food pantries. This is a wonderful idea because it takes three groups of people whose professional lives revolve around responding to bad decisions involving speed and gives them tiny gasoline-powered machines specifically designed to reward it.
Marquette City Police Sgt. James Britton understood this immediately. His racing strategy, as explained to TV6, was essentially “all gas, no breaks.”
There it is.
We spend millions of dollars every year putting signs next to roads telling people to slow down. We buy radar guns. We write tickets. We run public-service campaigns. Insurance companies produce commercials explaining that speed kills. Then somebody puts a police officer six inches off the ground in a go-kart and suddenly the official position is floor the bastard.
And you know what?
He’s right.
It’s a race.
Nobody has ever purchased a ticket to a motorsports event hoping to watch thirty responsible adults maintain a safe following distance.
Before anybody tries using this article as evidence in 86th District Court, however, Pasty HQ’s legal department would like to make something perfectly clear: “all gas, no breaks” is an excellent go-kart strategy and a catastrophically bad defense during a traffic stop. If a Michigan State Police trooper asks why you were doing 91 on US-41, saying you were following the advice of Sgt. Britton through a satirical internet newspaper is unlikely to improve the remainder of your afternoon.
The racing had an actual purpose beyond determining which public-safety agency could most effectively transform gasoline into bragging rights. Battle of the Badges collects food and money for area food pantries, and organizers said last year’s event raised $1,100 along with 1,100 pounds of food.
That’s where this stops being merely funny and becomes a genuinely good idea.
Britton specifically mentioned the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul, organizations helping many of the same people police encounter through their regular work. Forsyth Township EMS EMT Krystol Neadow told TV6 that food pantries had helped her personally, which is about as straightforward an explanation for supporting the event as anyone could give.
So we’re not making fun of the charity.
We’re making fun of cops in go-karts.
There is a difference, and it’s an important one.
Neadow also reminded racers about safety, including the possibility of getting burned by hot exhaust. This created the magnificent spectacle of emergency medical personnel giving safety advice immediately before climbing aboard motorized lawn furniture and attempting to outrun the police.
That’s America functioning correctly.
Think about how perfectly Battle of the Badges reverses the normal order of things. On an ordinary Saturday, if a police officer sees a firefighter accelerating aggressively through a corner while an EMT tries to pass him on the inside, paperwork is probably coming. At the Marquette County Fairgrounds, somebody waves a checkered flag and hands him bragging rights.
The Daily Pasty has been unable to determine whether any officers instinctively looked over their shoulders for patrol cars while accelerating.
We hope they did.
And somehow, underneath all of this nonsense, people got fed.
That’s the part worth remembering. Nobody needed a strategic planning committee to discover that people enjoy watching cops and firefighters race go-karts. Nobody commissioned a feasibility study on whether human beings like watching their neighbors do stupid things in small vehicles. Somebody figured out that emergency workers racing one another would be fun, attached a food drive to it, and people showed up.
Last year, that produced more than a thousand dollars and more than a thousand pounds of food.
That’s a pretty damn good afternoon.
So The Daily Pasty congratulates the police officers, firefighters, EMTs, Marquette Kart Club, donors and everybody else who helped turn sanctioned speeding into groceries.
We support Battle of the Badges returning next year.
We support making it bigger.
We support more departments entering.
Hell, bring in the road commission.
But we respectfully request that Sgt. Britton’s “all gas, no breaks” doctrine remain confined to the Marquette County Fairgrounds.
Judging by US-41, too many people have already heard about it.
