Does the Cleveland Police Department logo look like a pig? That's the premise of a music video created by Greg Reese, a one-time Cleveland resident who moved to Madison in 2006. Set to a catchy tune with the refrain "I'm gonna kill the man who put the pig on my cruiser door," the video tells the story of a vigilante cop out to exact revenge upon a stoned graphic designer who won a contest to create a new logo for the Cleveland police.
While the story is of course fictional, the logo is authentic. Reese created the film for an online contest organized by the Independent Film Channel. Formerly from Cleveland Heights, Reese says he never notice any subliminal image of a pig in the C-Town police logo until a friend from Chicago suggested this to him in 2005. From there, the story of the mischievous artist who designed the logo and the vigilante cop after him was born.
This music video homage to the Cleveland Police Department logo follows below.
The film was a hit with the powers that be at IFC, eventually making its way into a commercial for the cable channel's website, one that was screened at this year's Sundance Film Festival. With this, Clevelanders took notice. A columnist for the city's Plain Dealer wrote about the video and its porcine subject in late February; he found the logo "was designed by the city's sign shop in the late 1960s or early 1970s, after the racial riots that rocked Hough," and quoted a department historian who found any comparison "ridiculous." This was followed a few days later by an item in the weekly Free Times, which quoted the reaction from the vice-president of the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association: "You know what PIG stands for, don't you? Pride, Integrity, and Guts." Shortly thereafter, the idea made a minor splash online before the next bizarre story set tongues wagging.
A cleaner but smaller streaming copy of the short comedy can be found at the IFC Media Lab. The short has also been shown at the January 2006 monthly Wis-Kino screening, in the Wis-Kino showcase at the 2006 Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison, and the 2006 Wildwood Film Festival in Appleton. There's more discussion about the flick in the Wis-Kino forums.
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