‘I can’t stop watching’: Cop slide returns with a vengeance as one brave soul tests out viral death-trap in the middle of winter

Every police officer hopes to do something in the line of duty that earns widespread recognition, but they probably think that means cracking an unsolvable case or arresting a wily most-wanted felon. In the case of one Boston beat cop, however, he earned himself internet immortality when he responded to complaints about a local park slide being dangerous — and found out the hard way how accurate those complaints were.

Maybe you’ve seen it before, maybe you haven’t — either way, it’s practically the law that you watch it whenever it comes up in your feed. The hilarious video — originally posted by TikTok user @ryanwhitney6 — captures the moment the curious cop gives the slide a go for himself. Foreshadowed by a hilarious clattering as he tumbles down the death-trap, the cop soon comes shooting out of the slide’s end like a bullet out of a barrel. Finally coming down to earth feet away from the killing machine, he lets out a muffled expletive as he rolls to a stop.

One reposter spoke for us all when he wrote in his caption, “I can’t stop watching.”

As rib-tickling as his tumble was, the unknown officer did actually require some medical attention after sustaining a minor head injury when coming off the slide. That’s why it’s surprising to discover that the death-trap is still up and running a year and a half later.

Even in this safety-conscious world of ours, it seems Boston’s very own Suicide Slide still survives in tact in all its lawsuit-waiting-to-happen glory as another Bostonian also went viral this winter for braving it in the snow. Instagram user @jack_reedy15 first posted the Christmastime cop slide reboot in a now-deleted post which has since been reshared by @barstoolsports. Interesting, despite the addition of ice, this one was far less chaotic, which maybe proves that Slide Cop is just particularly buoyant. But why is that?

Since the unlikely airborne officer went viral, exactly why he popped out of that slide like a cork from a bottle has actually spawned a lot of scientific debate online. One physicist told HuffPost that it may have bee caused by the low coefficient friction from the cop’s synthetic uniform and the metal of the slide, while an injury biometrics expert informed Slate that the curved design of the slide would provide the same kind of propulsion as a luge. Petition for Boston to host the next Winter Olympics.

That said, the Suicide Slide isn’t the only one of its kind in the world, though, as one commenter from down under revealed: “When I lived in Melbourne there was a slide in point cook that hurt so many people they had to employ a 24 hour guard, for months, to stop people going down it and getting injured.” We need one daredevil with a lot of frequent flyer miles to burn to go on a quest to test out all the world’s worst slides. Going viral’s got to make up for all those broken bones.