View from the cop: Crime & punishment
View from the Cop is moving to a new site on Wordpress. Blogger Steve Rose of the Sandy Springs Police Department gives his take on crime, offers safety tips and give his weekly picks from the police blotter. Follow Steve Rose to the new blog site.
AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2008 > June > 18
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The History of Doughnuts: By a cop
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Inevitably the week doesn’t pass without some poor guy making a pitiful stab at the fabled doughnut joke.
Along with “He did it” and “It wasn’t me,” it remains one of the top five lamest lines to deliver to an officer.
But did you know how the historical pasts of the doughnut and police officers came together? Read on.
The first recorded history of the doughnut goes back several centuries.
Archaeologists turned up several petrified fried cakes with holes in the center in prehistoric ruins in the Southwestern United States. Because of the difficulty in identifying recipes from fossils, except for what would later be known as the convenient-store burrito, it wasn’t until the 19th century when recorded history gave us the first peek at the doughnut - or olykoeks - as the Dutch called it.
Olykoeks, not to be confused with Oly-Oly-In Free, were composed of dough balls fried in pork fat.
Fast forward to the early 1900’s in Brooklyn, New York. Irish cop Brannagh O’Toole, working a foot beat on Montague Street and Court Street stopped by a sidewalk stand to look at something that he had never seen—a convenient-store burrito.
Deciding on something a little less likely to cause him problems later, he opted for an Olykoek, a name that he couldn’t pronounce. Maybe this was the beginning of the relationship with cops and doughnuts but who knows.
Do cops like doughnuts?
Beyond the mythical association with doughnuts, cops, like just about everyone else, like doughnuts. The association probably had to do more with the convenience of locations and hours. Not many eateries are open at 3 a.m. so the doughnut shop was convenient. Actually, it had more to do with coffee than doughnuts although the sugar in a doughnut was good for the extra boost to get an officer over the 4-7 a.m. hump prior to the Red-Bull days.
Although I have been doughnut-free for several years, thanks to rehab and convenient-store burritos, I preferred the chocolate something or other at Dunkin-Donuts and the hot glazed doughnut at Krispy-Kreme.
For those of you lucky enough to enjoy international travelling, Spudnuts is a favorite in Panama City on West 23rd Street, across from Horacio’s House of International Convenient-Store Burritos.
As far as trends, wings have become popular with the evening-watch cops but unpopular with the fleet-maintenance manager who has to clean all the chicken bones from under the seat.
More health-conscious police traditions have failed to catch on. Most cops will pass on establishments called “The Tofu-Tavern” and McAlphalfa’s” but will dig in at “Sid’s House of Pork-Fried Dough.” Yum.
Services »
