You're right. I am an apologist in this thread, but that alone doesn't make me wrong.Darth Wong wrote: And KS, you're an apologist. It's not enough for a police officer to be able to show that he's no worse than the average "hur hur can't youze take a joke" thuggish dumb-shit who hung around the parking lot in high school. There are more than enough stories of police corruption and brutality to indicate that police officers need to be held to a higher standard of ethics than they've been accustomed to. Police officers have a clubbish, "circle the wagons" mentality. I know someone who blew the whistle on police corruption and was promptly ostracized by all his so-called friends. So much for upholding the law ... police departments should be squeaky-fucking clean, not allowed to maintain this bullshit clubbish atmosphere that encourages and enables this kind of behaviour.
To be clear I'm not saying this officer should be sent off with a pat on the back. He should be strongly disciplined, but fired? No. His mistake isn't grave enough to warrant him losing his job. Police officers certainly should be held to a higher standard, but this standard still needs to be reasonable.
I completely agree with you about the blue wall thing, but I don't feel I'm being unreasonable here. I take firing anybody seriously, and there should be a damn good reason to do so. A poorly thought out slogan just isn't one of those.