Cops ‘Mourn’ Krispy Kreme Doughnut Truck Fire In Kentucky

LEXINGTON, KY — “Counseling is available,” someone wrote on Facebook after the police department in Lexington, Kentucky, posted pictures of cops in the throes of mock grief after a Krispy Kreme doughnut truck burned. “Don’t carry this inside of you.”

Playing off the decades-old joke that police officers are about as inseparable from doughnuts as they are from their badges, the Lexington Police Department posted the photos with the message “No words” on New Year’s Eve. There were no injuries in the truck fire, except for the doughnuts, police said.

“The driver was lucky he didn't get Kremated,” someone else wrote on Facebook.

The selfies the police officers snapped were complete with quivering lips.

The social media posts, which gained worldwide attention, prompted police departments across the country to offer sympathy

“We feel your loss,” the University of Kentucky Police Department tweeted, punctuating the condolence message with a crying face and doughnut emojis. “We donut what else to say.”

Police in Chicago’s 14th District also chimed in with “condolences from Chicago.”

Here’s another condolence to Lexington police in their hour of need:

“We’re thinking of you during this difficult time … and have more doughnuts on the way,” Krispy Kreme tweeted. “Hope,” the Lexington Police Department posted in response.

Sure enough, the police department received about 20 dozen doughnuts Wednesday afternoon, according to television station WYKT.

The jokes about cops and doughnuts date back to the days before police working graveyard shifts had few options to grab a bite to eat.

“Graveyard cops in the forties and fifties had few choices. They could pack lunch, pray for an all-night diner on their route or fill up on doughnuts,” Norm Stamper, the former chief of the Seattle Police Department, said in “The Donut: History, Recipes, and Lore from Boston to Berlin” by Michael Krondl. “They were cheap and convenient.”

Police aren’t allowed to accept gifts while on duty, so it makes sense they would spend their money on a relatively inexpensive snack like doughnuts, Paul Mullins, an Indiana University-Purdue University professor of anthropology and author of “Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut,” told Time magazine.

In “Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey,” the chain’s founder William Rosenberg said he wanted to make sure the doughnut stores, which were open at odd hours of the night, were a hospitable place for police. “It protected the stores and kept the crime rate very low,” he said.

Here's the tweet that started all the hilarity on social media.

For more reaction, go to theLexington Police Department Facebook page.

All photos courtey of Lexington, Kentucky, Police Department