Actual headline from today’s San Jose Mercury-News, which outsourced headlines to Bangalore around the turn of the century.

Seems like a lot to pay for a toy gun shooting, but no, wait, sad to say, it was a dude sleeping off a drunk after a Halloween party, in a hotel stairwell, in costume including a toy gun, who got shot.

With real lead shot from real guns by four count ‘em four cops. Plugged him twenty times, in fact, and the poor bastard survived, albeit in bad shape. All of a sudden, five big makes a lot more sense.

First in an occasional series of headlines with that ineffable Bangalore ESL style.

Or we could talk about the increasing militarization of America’s police forces. But that would be pretty grim. Better to laugh at illiterate headline writers.