Adults flocking to Boston’s viral ‘cop slide’ after officer’s slippery mishap

A police officer’s not-so-slick slide stunt has sparked the interest of Bostonians looking to experience the thrill of the infamous ‘cop slide.’

A video shared widely online Tuesday shows a uniformed Boston police officer barrelling down a metal slide at City Hall Plaza’s new playground. A loud clanging can be heard from inside the slide as the officer makes his way down and lands roughly on his stomach. 

The velocity of the officer’s landing has left viewers puzzled about the physics of the incident. As a result, curious Bostonians and social media users are investigating.

According to Jezebel, adults have since been flocking to the playground, with some apparently waiting in 45-minute lines to experience the infamous slide and capture their own videos.

Software engineer and Boston resident Abhi Agarwal recently told Jezebel he drove by the typically quiet playground and saw a long line of adults queued up waiting for their turn on the slide.

He told Jezebel: “I’ve driven by that place plenty of times, there’s no one there usually. Even on weekends, there’s like, maybe one or two kids. And when I drove by, we had a ton of people wearing business suits and having a blast on a Thursday at 2:45 [p.m.].”

Another onlooker said Thursday they witnessed people waiting as long as 45-minutes to use what’s been unofficially dubbed as the “cop slide.” That person claimed there were more adults than kids at the playground.

The increase in visitors to the slide comes as the video continues to attract the attention of social media users. On Saturday, an X, formerly Twitter, user shared an animated version of the video they had created, along with the hashtag #Copslide.

Another person shared a video of a child venturing calmly down the slide, head first, along with the caption, “For reference here’s my kid 2 weeks ago on the same slide that rocked that Boston cop. No idea how he attained warp speed.”

Morgan Rousseau

Morgan Rousseau is a freelance writer for Boston.com, where she reports on a variety of local and regional news.

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