I don’t envy police officers. They have a very difficult and stressful job that I could never handle. For instance, they sometimes have to handle hostage situations or suicide threats. I don’t know if I could keep my cool on the scene of one of those incidents. Especially since I knew we wouldn’t have a monkey on our side.

You heard me right, a monkey. Thanks to a SWAT officer in Mesa, Ariz., the monkey is becoming to the tactical police what the Dalmatian is to firefighters.

Except for the fact that the police won’t have monkeys.

Mesa Office Sean Truelove wished that weren’t the case. He filed a request for $100,000 in federal grant funds to train and care for a capuchin monkey that would aid the SWAT team in Mesa.

That’s the kind of monkey Ross had one “Friends,” by the way.

Except Truelove didn’t want the monkey for comic relief. He wanted it to stop bad guys. Especially bad guys who don’t expect to see a monkey.

“Would (a suspect) really believe what he was seeing? … I’d think he wouldn’t shoot an animal. He’d be quite stunned to see a monkey there,” Truelove told the Mesa Tribune.

Does anyone else remember seeing this on an episode of “Get Smart?”

And don’t worry if the bad guy doesn’t fall for the old Monkey Surprise trick. Truelove will have the monkey trained to beat a quick path for the exit, using the same path he used to get into the building.

Plus, the monkey would have a tiny little Kevlar vest. No word whether that would come from a box of Cracker Jack.

The Kevlar vest would only start the outfit for this little guy. He would get a tiny video camera and a tiny two-way radio. I assume that would be for the suspect to communicate with police and not the monkey. Unless Truelove has gone completely off the deep end.

It didn’t take long for his superiors to declare the plan request dead on arrival. Especially once CNN and other national media outlets got a hold of this story. The Mesa brass did commend Truelove on his innovation.

The officer – who is probably a fantastic asset to the Mesa police – said he came up with the monkey idea in a dream. I don’t know if I would have admitted that if I were him.

I hope he takes the news well. Only a small portion of the grant money would have gone to the purchase of the monkey. The rest would have paid for training and care of the monkey, which would have lived with Truelove.

Maybe this whole plan was a cry for help. Maybe Officer Truelove just needs someone to talk to when he gets home from his busy, stressful job.

If you know someone who might be willing to be his friend, let me know. They just have to be small enough to fit into a tiny Kevlar vest. We don’t want that to go to waste.