NEW YORK—Expressing concerns about contracting Covid-19 from the interaction, NYPD officer Bruce MacLeod confirmed Thursday that he hoped a local black teen was only coughing because he had just been choking him. “Oh God, please let that be a barely clinging-to-life cough and not a dry cough,” said MacLeod, explaining that he should have followed police protocol and donned a mask before forcibly cutting off the unarmed black teen’s airway with a nightstick. “I promised my wife and kids that until this pandemic is behind us, I would just shoot black teens from a safe distance, but unfortunately, I got carried away. I didn’t even think twice about going in and suffocating him because it’s such a habit to beat these black kids to a pulp. And given that seven of us tackled him, it might mean we all have it.” At press time, MacLeod slowly sang the alphabet song twice while washing the black teen’s blood off his hands.