The era of social media has complicated the simplest of acts, down to grabbing a bite to eat. As we share more and more details of our intimate lives, we exist more frequently online, and that can make us lose focus on the real world.
This uniquely modern problem very nearly got TikTok user Faith Enokian (@faithenokian) in trouble with the law when she was approached by an officer for lurking in the dark. Where the policeman saw a problem, however, the rest of us simply saw a foodie reviewing pizza from a unique location, prompting demands to know just what our police force is doing with their time.
Enokian was barely a bite into her thick crust slice when her street side review caught an unintended cameo. A passing police officer was so startled by her location — which appears to be on the sidewalk outside of a business — that he flipped his lights on and rolled over to question the unexpecting TikToker. His initial words to Enokian are hard to make out, but it’s clear that he tells her it’s “not worth it” to… peacefully stand outside and review a pizza?
Weird thing to take issue with, but okay. While Enokian was technically loitering, she was also doing something completely innocent, and people — including the TikToker herself — were quick to wonder if there weren’t more pressing matters the officer could have been looking into. As Enokian noted in the caption “I dont do dr*gs or anything I just get in trouble for eating pizza.“
Stops of this sort are infuriatingly common, even as actual crimes rob citizens of their lives and businesses of their wares. Yet somehow our police find time to harass innocent pizza eaters when they could be out solving actual crimes.
Police actually spend a truly frustrating amount of time dodging their actual jobs in favor of conducting racially based stops and, apparently, fighting pizza-based crime. Data pulled from 2019 shows that 79% of law enforcement time is spent dealing with traffic stops, while our officers spend a measly 11% of their time on stops with reasonable suspicion of a crime. That leaves our police spending a truly upsetting percentage of their days twiddling about while actual “crime fighting” falls to the wayside.
Perhaps, if we refocused our police force, they’d spend less time haranguing pizza lovers and more time stopping crime. For the time being, unfortunately, eating pizza while outdoors may still elicit police presence, something commenters took major issue with. They poked fun at the officer, who clearly has too much time on his hands, and cheerily dressed the pizza-hating officer down.
From “PIZZA REVIEW? Not in my neighborhood,” to “So glad I can sleep well knowing there isn’t someone making a pizza review,” people made their opinions of the officer’s actions clear. Sarcasm was a major player in Enokian’s comment section, where people rushed to assert that at least “the streets are safe now.”
Enokian may actually be thanking the officer for his interruption, however, given the numbers her video is doing. While most of her content sits pretty at between 10,000 and 200,000 views, her foiled pizza review boasts a full 10 million views, alongside nearly 950,000 likes and going on 4,000 comments. And all for daring to eat some ‘za on the side of the road.