Instead, the police officer isn't merely humorless. She is needlessly hostile and unprofessional. What kind of adult castigates a 15-year-old for walking around without identification? What kind of adult calls a couple of high school students "retards"? Is running the identities of these kids possibly the best use of her time? That hypothetical lecture about distracting police officers from important duties is impossible to deliver once you've spent so much on-duty time unraveling a novelty mug caper. How much petty theft happened on that beach in the meantime (or how many lost tourists weren't given the directions they needed)?

As if to highlight the needless hostility in the first police officer's approach, a second police officer comes over, reacts like a normal person, and charms the teens with friendliness. They would've been receptive to any gentle reprimand he then delivered... but he walked off. If I had to write a thought bubble for him it would be, "OMG I can't handle my absurd colleague, I gotta get away from her now."

Says the first officer, who has already called the kid a retard, "My guess is you don't stay in school." Because novelty beer mug pranks are associated with dropping out?

Says officer two, "I guess you guys were the class clowns in school." Yes. Obviously. And not the kind of class clown that the principal really wants to expel—the kind that the principal can't help but like, because they're obviously goodhearted.

Finally, a third police officer arrives on the scene, totally fabricates smelling marijuana, and weirdly tries to intimidate the kids into admitting they have weed in their pockets by implying that if they just admit it he won't arrest them. (Police are allowed to blatantly lie.) Of course, they obviously don't have marijuana—as the video notes, who pranks the police while carrying illegal drugs in their pockets?

This is obviously more lighthearted than the other videos of police officers we've recently reviewed in this space. There's no danger or violence (perhaps in part because these are white kids in an affluent area—three black kids in their late teens would know damned well that they'd better not even attempt a prank like this one). But there's still a serious point to be made about effective policing. Police officers number one and three left these kids—and unbeknownst to them, their many YouTube followers—with the impression that law enforcement is needlessly hostile, petty, and humorless. They fit every negative stereotype of police officers save knee-jerk violence, and exactly none of the normal excuses applied. They faced no danger. They were not dealing with hardened criminals. They just chose to be jerks, needlessly. Whereas officer number two left them with the impression that police are friendly, goodhearted people that one might voluntarily assist and trust.