“When I signed up for this gig a few years back, I thought it would be like in the movies, you know, being all, ‘POLICE, OPEN UP!’ then knocking down doors of murderers and [drug] dealers all day,” said Shorn, sipping on a lukewarm coffee and watching another rerun of Hogan’s Heroes on the Fourth Precinct’s break room TV.  “This is pretty much all I do though, just kind of sit around and wait for the door breach that will never happen.”

Adding to Shorn’s frustration is the fact that Richmond’s crime rate has dropped nearly 19 percent over last year, thus decreasing the need for door-breaking-downing.  It’s news the battering-ram operator calls “good, but frustrating as hell for a guy like me.”

Shorn’s wife, Lisa, said she hopes her husband’s job picks up soon, as he has taken to entering his own home by breaking down the family’s front door.

Raymond M. Vera will be arraigned tomorrow in Richmond Circuit Court for what investigators called a “knowing, callous and willful loading” of rolls onto paper dispensers in the reversed manner, thus increasing difficulty to find and tear the paper.

“The correct toilet paper-install method, of course, is to position the roll such that the sheets sit smoothly over the top of the roll, giving the user easy access and tearing capabilities,” said Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael N. Herring, who called Vera “a sick human being” and noted the city would seek the greatest punishment possible.  “It is obvious to us that Mr. Vera has cost hundreds, if not thousands, of city employees wasted seconds in productivity time and, thus, taxpayer dollars.”

Vera’s bail has been set at $4.2 million.  His attorney said the janitor will plead guilty to the charge, though this is not the 53-year-old’s first brush with the law.  Last year, Vera was handed a $250 fine after officials said he cleaned City Hall’s window-pane doors “too well,” injuring several workers – including the mayor – who walked straight into them.

Moore, a self-proclaimed “comics geek” who owns nearly every Batman comic book since the superhero’s introduction in 1939, praised the president’s “impressive jawline” and “those pull-you-right-in eyes,” traits the business owner says make Obama a natural choice for the role in the upcoming 2011 film.

“Don’t get me wrong, Heath Ledger was awesome as Joker, but in the movie Joker didn’t die, and now that Heath is dead, I think Obama is perfect going forward,” said Moore, who put the banner of Obama, smeared with red lipstick, a white face and dark eyes onto his S. 15th St. strip club on Saturday.  “By hanging this poster, I’m hoping to catch the attention of the folks at [Batman series producers] Warner Bros., so they realize how awesome Obama would be as Joker.”  

Added Moore: “I love Barack Obama.”

Still, Richmonders remained divided on the issue of whether the nation’s first African-American president should play The Joker, a DC Comics supervillain who has traditionally been portrayed as a white man.

“Obama as the Joker? That is ridiculous. I mean the guy doesn’t even have any acting experience,” said King Salim Khalfani, director of the Virginia NAACP, which led a 40-person rally outside of Velvet yesterday protesting the president’s involvement in the next Christopher Nolan film.  “Now, Chris Nolan hasn’t put Mr. Freeze in his latest series, so I could potentially see Obama in that role, or maybe Penguin or Riddler.  Either of those would be cool.”

“Or has anyone thought of casting him as Batman? A black Batman could be a cool thing.  Just something to think about,” said Khalfani, noting he is “more of a Marvel [comics] guy than DC,” but can respect any superhero franchise no matter the company.

Others, however, sided with Moore.

“I never really thought about it until [Moore] hung that banner, but yeah, Obama really could pull of The Joker,” said Maria Salaguinito, standing in front of the roughly 8-foot by 10-foot promotional movie poster yesterday. ”Though most movie stars, like Arnold [Schwarzenegger] and Ronald Reagan, started in the movies and became politicians, not vice versa. Though Obama seems like a pretty hip guy and if he manages his time right, could find a way to fit filming into his busy schedule.”

This weekend’s poster controversy is not the first time Moore has shown his affinity for anything Batman-related. 

In 2007, the 44-year-old installed a pair of batsignals onto the roof of the club, which now shine every night in what Moore calls his “nerdy, nerdy, nerdy, nerdy desire” to draw the Caped Crusader from Gotham City to Richmond.  And last year, Moore was convicted of three misdemeanor charges related to having sex with a minor and filming it illegally, which, possibly, the filming thing had something to do with his love of Batman movies.

A new study released today by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has cited “serious design flaws” with the floodwall surrounding downtown Richmond, saying that while it is adequate enough to hold back rising river waters, it does nothing to keep hordes of Southside residents from entering the city.

The James River – originally constructed as a moat to keep residents of Chesterfield County from invading or patronizing downtown restaurants and shops – was braced with a floodwall ranging in height from 15 to 25 feet in 1988 as a means to further barricade Richmond from a Southsidian infiltration.

“However, one of the key mistakes in the floodwall is that there are several bridges spanning the James, thus allowing those from the south of the river to easily drive, walk or bike into downtown,” said Frank M. Lewis, lead author of the report, titled Richmond Floodwall: Keeping Those People From Down There Far, Far Away.  “The floodwall is almost useless in the sense of keeping those people from entering the city’s core.” 

“It’s as if Richmonders don’t mind that Southsiders come to the city,” he added.

Lewis noted that the presence of a “small handful” of Southsiders in Richmond is not a problem, and can be dealt with properly by law enforcement officials.  Larger masses of Southsiders create the true worry, he said, with the report finding that 70 percent of “south of the river” citizens enter the city and cause trouble, while the remaining 40 percent cannot do math.

“Southsiders come into the city, many times for big outdoor concerts or street festivals, and will naturally become confused, lost or intoxicated, and the police can handle that,” Lewis said.  “The danger here comes in when there a massive influx of Southsiders come into the city – typically corresponding with a public event – and become agitated and destructive.”

A worst-case scenario, Lewis said, would be something like that one sweet scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, whereby 10,000 Uruk-hai use ladders and catapults and stuff to climb over the wall during the battle at Helm’s Deep.

“I love that part in the movie,” Lewis said.  “But for real, Southsiders are like that.”

Indeed, Richmond residents say.  With nearly four dozen incidents of trampling, suffocation and beheadings during downtown outdoor events during the past year – all attributed to Southsiders – locals say they are concerned with the study’s findings.

“I don’t know why they want to come here anyways, they have their own speedway and like 15 different malls,” said Richmond resident Anne Burwell, noting that expensive tolls were placed along almost all direct entry points into downtown from Southside as a means of keeping “those people” away from the city.

As for resolving the “many inherent problems” with the floodwall, the report offers several approaches, including making the wall higher, rigging it with barbed wire, or “installing nearly 400 motion-sensing flamethrowers with grenade launchers attached because that would look really awesome.”

“You see this thing? Basically a fortress built on a Ford-550′s chassis. Loaded with guns and grenades and stuff.  Who wants some?  Do you?  You want some?” asked the 52-year-old, who explains that he has long wanted to open up several cans of his special blend of Whoop Ass onto anyone who so much as lays a finger on his armored truck, which transports valuables from banks and retail establishments throughout Central Virginia.

Raising the tip of his tactical shotgun, McHale explained that he is more than ready to go up in fisticuffs with any sumbitch who tries to mess with him.

“You see the gun holes on the sides of this truck? They’re for sticking guns through,” he said.  “Our clients can rest assured that their valuables make it to their destination, and that we will take you down.”

Added McHale: “Bring it.”

Richmond resident Hugh Van Simonds said that he would likely heed McHale’s warning should he ever encounter the armored truck driver anywhere around town.

“I’ve seen in that Batman movie and Heat how hard it is to take out an armored truck, and this guy seems like the real deal,” the 25-year-old said, loading his rocket-propelled grenade launcher.  “That being said, he did just issue us a challenge, and I’ve never been one to turn down a dare.”

A Richmond police officer in the midst of a high-speed pursuit said today that he “caught some wicked air” during the chase, thus fulfilling a lifelong career goal: to catch some wicked air in the midst of a high-speed pursuit.

“Dude, it was so awesome, I got call for a 481 [police code for hit and run], so I sped up to 31st Street and the guy was heading back down Broad…I flipped around and knew if I could get up enough speed I could nail the lip of the hill coming down, and get some major airtime,” said Richmond police Sgt. Aaron Zay, who described himself as being totally stoked at the time.  “It really was like something you’d see in a movie with Steve McQueen.”

Added Zay: “Or maybe that Transporter movie or something.”

Continued Zay: “Or Die Hard and basically anything with Bruce Willis, the ‘Bourne’ movies, or The French Connection, though that chase sequence is a bit dated.”

According to onlooker Mike Ridenour, Zay’s unmarked Ford Crown Victoria caught “at least seven or eight feet of air” on the jump, before hitting the ground pretty hard and bouncing up and down a few times for dramatic effect.

“It was pretty sweet, I mean, if I were the cop I’d have completely forgotten that I needed to catch the bad guy,” the 22-year-old said. ”I’d really be focused on how awesome it looked.”

Zay later said that he had hoped the car he was chasing would take a hard turn so that he could do one of those “super badass” fishtails around a corner, but never managed to do so.

“Duh duh dum dum da da dum, da da da bop bop bum,” the car’s recorder picked up the 32-year-old officer as humming, a score believed to be a mix between the soundtrack for The Rock and Speed, including what was a possible crescendo from The Dark Knight while radioing for backup. “Dah, dah, dah, dah, duh, DOMP.”  

The officer, whose humming-while-pursuing influences include well-known composers Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman,  also made makeshift percussion sounds by beating his thumbs against the steering wheel as he rammed the left rear wheel of 38-year-old David Marcus Price’s Chrysler Sebring in an attempt to force the vehicle off the road.

After unnecessarily fishtailing around a corner for dramatic effect, Hopkins later provided himself with a suspenseful choral interlude when the suspect slammed headfirst into a tree and was killed upon impact.

“It’s great to be able to have a three-day weekend like everyone else for once, ” said officer J.J. Finch III, relaxing at his West End home as the city’s 911 call center was flooded with nearly 18,000 phone calls, none of which were answered as operators, too, had the day off.  “It’s nice to know that the only serving I’ll be doing today is in terms of hot dogs and hamburgers.”

Richmond Police Chief Bryan T. Norwood said the mandatory paid time off for officers was “well deserved,” with violent crime in the city having dropped 22 percent from last year.

“These humble men and women of our force need this time off, despite whatever happens today without them on the streets.  We can just clean it all up later,” Norwood said at a noon press conference, as four city buildings stood engulfed in flames nearby and the sounds of gunshots were heard ringing in the distance. 

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get over to my neighbor’s house for a cookout,” the chief said.

The city’s supervillains also took advantage of the break, using the time yesterday to destroy all roadways into and out of Richmond, and taking more than 40,000 residents hostage.  Police said they’ll “do their best” to mitigate the situation today, just as soon as they get over this raging hangover.