Editorial: Sex at the firehouse
The guilty should be dismissed
Published 2:15 am PST Wednesday, January 26, 2005A code of silence may finally be broken about firefighters' reckless behavior. The question is when will a code of conduct kick in?
Sadly, some Sacramento firefighters apparently failed to get the message last summer. Several firefighters were fired - others suspended - when they were caught attending the Porn Star Costume Ball while on duty on July 2 and using city fire engines to give joy rides to women. Two were accused of sexual assault, but the district attorney's office said it found insufficient evidence to file criminal charges. In other incidents, firefighters were caught drinking on the job and picking up women in bars while on duty.
[snip]
. . . After reviewing the [earlier] cases and concluding that all of them would not survive a civil service challenge, five terminations were reduced to suspensions.
That must not happen this time. Sex on the job should be a firing offense, and if the firefighters accused are found to have engaged in such conduct, this time the firings should stick. [END; emphasis added]
Anybody know a person in the Sacramento area willing to send a letter to the editor (click here to get the form) along these lines?
Your editorial of January 26, 2005 about the firefighter sex charges said that "sex on the job should be a firing offense." However, they had sex instead of playing cards. There is no indication that it interfered with their jobs.Firefighters go into harm's way for all of us. Why should they be held to a higher standard than was applied to Bill Clinton, a President who had "sex on the job" in the Oval Office and then, unlike the firefighters, lied about it under oath, which lies got him disbarred? He was never fired and those who tried to get him fired were called the "sex police."
Is your paper reconsidering its hard-core defense of the first elected President who was impeached?
Would you or someone that you know be willing to send a letter along the lines suggested in my post 14? The hypocracy is mind-boggling and someone should call attention to it.
I'd do it myself, but I think that they're much less likely to publish such a letter from someone just outside DC as I am.
My letter assumes that the SacBee was an ardent defender of Clinton, but I think that's a pretty safe assumption. Maybe you know for sure?
Incidentally, I would change the last sentence of the first paragraph in the proposed letter to the editor to say: "There is no indication that their private sex lives interfered with their jobs." This being a refrain of the Clinton defenders that sex on the job with a subordinate was his "private sex live."